Poetry, Gnosticism, and the White Whale Introduction One of the most persistent interpretations of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is that it contains a fundamentally gnostic vision of reality. Gnosticism traditionally imagines the world as the creation of a flawed or malevolent demiurge and views visible existence as a deceptive veil hiding a darker metaphysical truth. The white whale has often been understood in these terms: as a manifestation of cosmic malignity, an embodimen