IMO the still beating heart of Moby-Dick is the ‘Grand Armada’ chapter, in which Ishmael encounters the mother whales and their calves, in a protected ring at the centre of a whale hunt. Something about Ishmael’s wonder, and the violence of the hunt, being so close together, breaks my brain/heart, and is just an extraordinary attentive description: ‘as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;—even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us.’