Bronze, 7 foot figure on an 18 inch high granite base
Seamen’s Bethel, New Bedford, Massachusetts
Melville and Jonah’s Journey was commissioned by the City of New Bedford to honor Herman Melville and the city’s role in the creation of Moby-Dick.
The sculpture draws on Father Mapple’s sermon on Jonah in Chapter 9 of Moby-Dick. Melville rises from swirling water surrounded by three whale ribs, suggesting both Jonah’s emergence from the whale and Melville’s own transformative experience at sea that would ultimately find expression in the writing of Moby-Dick. The three ribs also allude to the novel’s final three-day pursuit of the white whale and to Jonah’s three days and nights inside the whale. The granite base is inscribed with the hymn that Father Mapple leads the congregation in singing before his sermon.
Melville faces the harbor from beside the historic Seamen’s Bethel—the chapel where he attended services before sailing aboard the Acushnet in 1841 and which became the model for the Whaleman’s Chapel in Moby-Dick. Wind moves through the figure, clothing, water, and ribs, enveloping Melville in the forces of the journey from which he emerged as a writer.
The patina shifts with the light.