Explain the dark romanticism in "Moby Dick."

The "Dark Romanticism" in Moby Dick is also closely
related to the love of the sublime that English and American writers from the late-1700s
to the early-1800s relished (primarily the Gothic writers from 1790 to 1830).  The
meaning of "sublime" in today's vernacular is quite different from the way "sublime" was
used several centuries ago.  Then, sublime primarily had this meaning: "impressing the
mind with a sense of grandeur or power;inspiring awe, veneration, etc."
(Dictionary.com).  Things that were "sublime" were absolutely unexplainable, but
literature of that time period attempted to explain the unexplainable, and, in falling
short, further evoke a sublime reaction in readers.

The end
of Chapter 16 is a perfect example of Melville's use of the sublime.  At this point
Ishmael and the reader have learned only a little about Captain Ahab.  The narrator's
curiosity about him piques the reader's curiosity as
well:

As I
walked away, I was full of thoughtfullness; what had been incidentally revealed to me of
Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him.
 And somehow, at the time, I felt a sympathy adn a sorrow for him, but for I don't know
what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg.  And yet I also felt a strange awe of
him; but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was not exactly awer: I don
not know what it was.  But I felt it; and it did not disincline me towards him; though I
felt impatience at what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me
then. (This is from p 79 of the 2nd Norton Critical
Edition)

Ishmael is
mysteriously attracted to, while simultaneously repelled, by Ahab, and he has no idea
why--the feelings are beyond his control.

Once you start
to notice Melville's use of the sublime, you'll see it everywhere--in his
characterizations of Queequeg, in the way he describes the sea, and certainly in Ahab's
relationship to Moby Dick.