The Indefinite Sublime

Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick,” published 175 years ago, is a parable of both man’s power and his impotence; of space’s cartographic conquest and the blind spot at the heart of every map; or, to couch it in scientific terms, of knowledge and its limits, or foundations, in the irredeemably unknowable.

In an exclusive event, Tom McCarthy will trace Moby-Dick’s own tides and meridians to unpack the ways in which Melville overhauls the language of the Enlightenment and breaks open the horizons of modernity. Drawing on twentieth-century visual art as well as classical and eighteenth-century philosophy, he will reveal a “grammar of the indefinite” at work in Melville’s prose, and suggest that Moby-Dick’s ultimate battleground might be that of culture, language, and writing — that is, of literature itself.

McCarthy’s novels have been translated into more than twenty languages and adapted for cinema, theatre, and radio. He is also the author of the study Tintin and the Secret of Literature, and of the essay collection Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish. His latest novel, The Making of Incarnation, was published in 2021.

Photo credit: Kate Joyce. Image: detail “Moby Dick.” Gérard Dubois. Courtesy of the artist.