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can someone explain what the fuck this passage means:
>This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted. But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand - however grand and wonderful, now quit it; - and take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; an antique buried beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a broken throne, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that proud, sad king! A family likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and from your grim sire only will the old State-secret come.
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It's hard to say out of context, but I think this may be after ahabs leg was bitten off and they were returning to Nantucket. He seemed to be sane and in control of himself but had a deeper darker secret (his monomania and hatred of Moby-Dick) growing inside him. Like the hotel de cluny, he had a surface look with lots beneath.
Then it goes on to describe his monomania in a romantic way, saying it is sad and proud and kingly. He is trapped like a caryatid because at that moment he is unable to act on his single desire to hunt Moby-Dick.
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>>8483582
What about this?
>and from your grim sire only will the old State-secret come
The last three sentences make no sense to me
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>>8483590
The sad proud king is the captive king that Ahab is similar too in that they are both spiritually exiled.
The state-secret is the mystery and orgin of his being.
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>>8483626
The captive king is biblical btw
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Holy shit are all the high school lit classes reading this already?
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>>8483682
No. I'm just going through shit I never read before
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