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the nineteenth-century attic whose dark, sloping lines seem an extension of frontal and parietal bones of the skull itself—aware that my attention is wandering, or perhaps fixed but inaccessible, and aware that this condition must be allowed to play itself out . . .
    There being division, I am able to observe myself, to be at once within and without, and an exploration occurs, inwardly derived, over the surfaces, the topography of face and head, and downward over my body; I gain the sense of being different, of causing this difference in myself, of altering the outwardness of myself. I discover that flesh and muscle, perhaps even bone, and certainly cartilage, are potentially alterable, according as the plan is laid down. And the plan itself may shift and change: I may be this Michael or that, Stonecipher or Mills—Western Man or Indian, sea-dog or lubber, large-headed or small, living then or now; and even such outrageous fables as that of converting Ulysses’ men into swine become not unreasonable, when we understand that the men must have experienced some swinish designs within themselves, to which Circe had access . . .
    Certainly, the study of Man: Literature is the study of Man: Anatomy . . . when it ceases to be, books become merely literary.
                                             (Melville: “I rejoice in my spine.”
    Leaning back in the chair, my body straight out, I let the awareness sweep, as a tide, through my trunk, down my legs and into my feet.
               Ahab: “. . . I’ll order a complete man after a desirable pattern. Imprimus, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel; then, legs with roots to ’em, to stay in one place . . .”
    and, with the carpenter,
               “Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away?
                     “Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard something curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?
                     “It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, to a hair, do I. Is’t a riddle?
                     “I should humbly call it a poser, sir.
                     “Hiss, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most solitary hours, then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers?”
    A sudden fury lashes me, a desire to mutilate myself, to amputate the great, round, ugly globe of a clubfoot—to make it not me. As in M ARDI , in the chapter Dedicated To The College Of Physicians And Surgeons,
               “In Polynesia, every man is his own barber and surgeon, cutting off his beard or arm, as occasion demands. No unusual thing, for the warriors . . . to saw off their own limbs, desperately wounded in battle . . .”
    and
               “The wound was then scorched, and held over the smoke of the fire, till all signs of blood vanished. From that day forward it healed, and troubled Samoa but little.
                     “But shall the sequel be told? How that, superstitiously averse to burying in the sea the dead limb of a body yet living; since in that case Samoa held, that he