Plato's Honey Head: Darden's Title Image to Condemned Building

Title Image of Condemned Building by Douglas Darden

In my previous post on Douglas Darden's frontispiece to Condemned Building I briefly discussed the title image of the same book. While I discussed the title image's theme of decapitation as a theme in tandem with the frontispiece's theme of overturning, it is, in my opinion, a cursory and all too brief of an analysis of the title image itself. In particular I wish to focus on the passage from Moby-Dick that Darden inscribes on the side of the guillotine:

"How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head and sweetly perished there?"
—Moby-Dick, Chapter LXXVIII

Before I began digging heavily into Darden and his work I had never read Moby-Dick, which I now regret as I continue to read such a delightful, humorous, insightful, and ponderous tome as is Melville's magnum opus. Rather than actually read Moby-Dick, I instead did cursory search through Plato until I found some references to bees and honey, which of course is not without just reasoning; but the simple fact is that what this passage means can be found in Moby-Dick itself.

Beginning with the latter half of Moby-Dick a sperm whale is captured and killed (Chapter LXI), then it is skinned of most of its blubber (Chapter LXVIII) — or as much blubber as could be gathered after the sharks had their feast — then they behead it (Chapter LXX), let the carcase drift into the sea for the sharks to eat, while they keep the head hooked to the ship for some time. Contrary to established whaling practices, Captain Ahab announces that if a right whale should be spotted, that it should be hunted, cut, beheaded, and attached to the other side of the ship; which is then done (Chapter LXXIII).

With the two different whale heads — a sperm and a right whale — attached to opposite sides of the ships, Melville presents a rather brilliant image of a noble and an 'ignoble' leviathan counterbalanced, which is an image that is loaded with symbolism and allegory, but far too afield for the purpose of this post. The two whale heads are presented as contraries (not necessarily opposites, but only different — as the two chapters describing the two heads are subtitled "Contrasted View"), and Ishmael describes the differences in the anatomy of the two heads. The latter of the two chapters describing the anatomy of the two heads ends with this:

"I think his [the sperm whale's] brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. ... Does not this whole head [of the right whale] seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This right whale I take to have been a Stoic; the sperm whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years."
—Chapter LXXV

Next the head of the sperm whale is described as being both like a great wine vat, namely alluding to the Heidelburgh Tun (which holds over fifty-thousand gallons of wine), and a beehive: "The lower subdivided part [of the forehead], called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibers throughout its whole extent" (Chapter LXXVII). This is the portion of the head in which spermaceti is found: that oil in which whaling became well practiced in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and is extracted in order to produce candles, perfume, lamp fuel, skin creams, and other oil-based substances.

Now we have a great deal of references to work with in understanding that passage Darden admired so greatly. The two leviathans are decapitated, and Ishmael regards the sperm whale as Platonic and the right whale as Stoic — justly we can call these two whales Plato and Zeno respectively. Plato's head is likened to that of a beehive containing that precious substance spermaceti, rather than honey. But like honey, spermaceti is described as being fluid, but will crystallize: "Though in life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it soon begins to concrete; sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots..." (Chapter LXXVII). And again the leviathan's head is likened to that of a beehive in an earlier chapter: "...the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent blood which began to flow from the carcase — the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a beehive" (Chapter LXXII).

Thus, arriving now at Chapter LXXVIII, Cisterns and Buckets, we may comprehend Melville's meaning. The crew have now begun the process of extracting the spermaceti from Plato's head. One of the harpooners, Tashtego, climbs upon the head and cuts a hole into the forehead, and begins to scoop out the oil in buckets. While doing this he slips and falls into the hole and down into the great cavity of the Plato's head. At this very moment some of the hooks that held fast the head to the ship tore out, and the head began to sink into the sea. Suddenly Queequeg jumps into the ocean with a sword, cuts a hole on the underside of the head, and pulls Tashtego out by his head.

The whole scene is allegorical of life and death, birthing and dying. Tashtego falling into the head is like that of a boy who has fallen into a well; he is buried alive, and his grave (the head) sinks into the ocean. Queequeg is likened to that of a midwife and assisting in the birth of Tashtego, who is pulled out of the tomb-womb by the head via caesarean section. In fact, when Queequeg first reaches into the head he grabs a leg, but shoves that back in and grabs Tashtego's head: "...he came forth in the good old way — head foremost." Melville even makes light of the situation by writing: "Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing"; and as the head was sinking into the ocean when Tashtego was birthed, the birth was called a "running delivery." (Furthermore on the note of humor: Tashtego writhing about in Plato's head is depicted as if the head suddenly had a thought: "...they saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous idea...").

Ishmael then begins to ponder what Tashtego's death would have been like if Queequeg had not save him. He believes it would have been a sweet and precious death:

"Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled — the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed."

Here are ideas and symbols swarming like bees about a hive: death, birth, Plato, sperm, temples, honeycombs, catacombs, tombs, King Solomon's Temple, the Holiest of Holies, midwifery, decapitation, contemplation, et cetera. No wonder Darden called Moby-Dick "the greatest novel in American history."

Thus we now have a much more informed idea of Darden's particular usage of this passage from Melville, as it presents an image of a decapitated whale's head and it is written on the side of a guillotine. The object mounted on top of the guillotine, which I suspect is a beehive or some contrivance derived therefrom, is further likened to the scene where Queequeg births Tashtego from Plato's honey head through an incision — the incision being depicted as a labia. In the spirit of the theme of overturning: the head was a tomb for Tashtego, but Queequeg overturns that into a womb from which Tashtego is birthed (mind you that the incision Queequeg cuts is on the underside/underbelly of the head). Et cetera and so forth. I am beginning to conjecture too much. In short, Melville's passage inscribed on the side of Darden's guillotine fits in perfectly with Darden's theme of decapitation for the title image, which is but another expression of overturning architecture to study its "underbelly."

Further reading:
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick: or, The Whale. 1851.
Darden, Douglas. Condemned Building. Princeton Architectural Press. 1993.