Chasing the "White Whale" of Meaning in Moby Dick

In 1851, in correspondence to colleague and friend Nathanial Hawthorne, Herman Melville said the following while still at work on the novel that would at first be panned by all critics and then later become the cornerstone of American literature, The Whale, better known as Moby Dick:

"In a week or so, I go to New York, to bury myself in a third-story room, and work and slave on my 'Whale' while it is driving through the press. That is the only way I can finish it now - I am so pulled hither and thither by circumstances. The calm, the coolness, the silent grass - growing mood in which a man ought always to compose - that, I fear, can seldom be mine. Dollars damn me....My dear sir, a presentiment is on me, I shall at last be worn out and perish....What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot." (McCall; Marx, 239)

It's very clear on some level, that Melville felt he was doing something profound with Moby Dick that would have a lasting impact on his career. From the last segment of the above quote: "My dear sir, a presentiment is on me, I shall at last be worn out and perish", a foreboding sense of almost professional doom is apparent.

Indeed, the feeling turned out to be prophetic; Moby Dick was released, and the critics were cool, the public apathetic (McCall; Marx, 239). However, Melville had discovered something in the creation of Moby Dick, and he refused to return to the type of writing that pleased readers earlier in his career, such as can be found in Typee and his travel narratives. He wrote another novel, St. Pierre, which also was not well received, (McCall; Marx, 239), before turning to short fiction and another well known story, Bartleby, The Scrivener.