"There is something in the idea of grandeur with which these high plains inspire me, that I cannot fully understand." --Scenes Beyond the Western Border - August 1852; deleted in revision, not in the book version of this passage as published in Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857), page 361.
"... yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood." --Moby-Dick chapter 42, The Whiteness of the Whale.
"WHALES—a word, which, in the popular
sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness." --Moby-Dick chapter 32, Cetology
In revision of the August 1852 installment of
Scenes Beyond the Western Border, "I cannot fully understand" at the end of a sentence:
"There is something in the idea of grandeur with which these high plains inspire me, that I cannot fully understand."
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| Scenes Beyond the Western Border - August 1852 |
was changed to "I cannot tell why..." at the start of a new sentence:
"I cannot tell why,—but even with the snow-peaks in view, it seemed the summit of the earth."
"Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly...."
--Moby-Dick, Loomings
Compare too (while we're at it) this part, deleted in revision:
the idea of grandeur with which these high plains inspire me
with a similar collocation in
Moby-Dick of abstract noun (here
horror; there
grandeur) plus "with which" plus "inspire":
the peculiar horror with which he seemed to inspire
the rest of the herd
Busted again, right?
