Herman Melville (1819-1891)
American author, best-known for his novels of the sea and his
masterpiece MOBY-DICK (1851), a whaling adventure dedicated to
Nathaniel Hawthorne. "I have written a wicked book and feel
as spotless as the lamb," Melville wrote to Hawthorne. The
work was only recognized as a masterpiece 30 years after
Melville's death. The fictionalized travel narrative of TYPEE
(1846) was Melville's most popular book during his lifetime.
"All that most maddens and torments; all
that stirs up the less of things; all truth with malice in it;
all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle
demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were
visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby
Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the
general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and
then, as if chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's
shell upon it." (from Moby-Dick)
Herman Melville was born in New York City into an established
merchant family. He was the third child of eight. His father,
Allan Melvill, an importer of French dry goods, became bankrupt
and insane, dying when Melville was 12. His mother, Maria
Gansevoort Melvill, was left alone to raise eight children.
Occasionally she received help from her wealthy relatives. A bout
of scarlet fever in 1826 left Melville with permanently weakened
eyesight. He attended Albany (N.Y.) Classical School in 1835. He
left the school and was largely autodidact, devouring Shakespeare
as well as historical, anthropological, and technical works. From
the age of 12, he worked as a clerk, teacher, and farmhand. In
search of adventures, he shipped out in 1839 as a cabin boy on the
whaler Achushnet. He joined later the US Navy, and started
his years long voyages on ships, sailing both the Atlantic and the
South Seas. During these years he was a clerk and bookkeeper in
general store in Honolulu and lived briefly among the Typee
cannibals in the Marquesas Islands. Another ship rescued him and
took him to Tahiti. In his mid-20's Melville returned to his
mother's house to write about his adventures.
Typee, an account of his stay with the cannibals, was
first published in Britain, like most of his works. The book sold
roughly 6,000 copies in its first two years. Its sequel, OMOO
(1847), was based on his experiences in Polynesian Islands, and
gained a huge success as the first one. Throughout his career
Melville enjoyed a rather higher estimation in Britain than in
America. His older brother Gansevoort held a government position
in London, and helped to launch Melville's career. From his third
book, MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER (1849), Melville started to take
distance to the expectations of his readers.
In 1847 Melville married Elisabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief
justice of Massachusetts. After three years in New York, he bought
a farm, "Arrowhead", near Nathaniel
Hawthorne's home at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and became
friends with him for some time. Melville had almost completed Moby-Dick
when Hawthorne encouraged him to change it from a story full of
details about whaling, into an allegorical novel.
"In general, it is the non-psychological
novel that offers the richest opportunities for psychological
elucidation. Here the author, having no intentions of this sort,
does not show his characters in a psychological light and thus
leaves room for analysis and interpretation, or even invites it
by his unprejudiced mode of presentation... I would also include
Melville's Moby Dick,
which I consider the be the greatest American novel, in this
broad class of writings." (Carl
Jung in The Spirit in Man, Art, and
Literature, 1967)
Inspired by the achievement of Hawthore, Melville wrote his
masterpiece, Moby-Dick. He worked at his desk all day not
eating anything till 4 or 5 o'clock, and bursting with energy he
shouted: "Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand!"
When the novel was published, it did not bring him the fame he had
acquired in the 1840s. Readers of Typhee and Omoo
were not expecting this kind of story, and its brilliance was only
noted by some critics. Through the story Melville meditated
questions about faith and the workings of God's intelligence. He
returned to these meditations in his last great work, BILLY BUDD,
a story left unfinished at his death. Its manuscript was found in
Melville's desk when he died.
"Call me Ishmael," says the narrator in the beginning
of Moby-Dick. We don't know is it his real name and exactly
when his story is taking place. He signs abroad the whaler
Pequod with his friend Queequeg, a harpooner from the South
Sea Islands. Then the mood of the story changes. The reader is
confronted by a plurality of linguistic discourses, philosophical
speculations, and Shakespearean rhetoric and dramatic staging.
Mysterious Captain Ahab, a combination of Macbeth, Job, and
Milton's Satan, appears after several days at sea. Melville named
the character after the Israelite king who worshiped the pagan sun
god Baal. Ahab reveals to the crew that the purpose of the voyage
is to hunt and kill the snow-white sperm whale, known as
Moby-Dick, that had cost Ahab his leg on a previous voyage. The
captain has his own faith and sees the cosmos in contention
between two rival deities. "Oh! thou clear
spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did
worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to
this hour I bear the scar; I know thee, thou clear spirit, and I
now know that thy right worship is defiance." Ahab
has nailed a goldpiece to the mast and offers it as a reward to
the first man who sights the creature. Starbuck, the first mate,
tries to dissuade Ahab from the quest. The novel culminates when
Moby-Dick charges the boat which sinks. Ahab is drowned, tied by
the harpoon line his archenemy. In his end Ahab takes his crew
with him. The only survivor is the narrator, who is rescued by a
passing ship.
Moby-Dick was misunderstood by those who read and
reviewed it and it sold only some 3,000 copies during Melville's
lifetime. The book can be read as a thrilling sea story, an
examination of the conflict between man and nature - the battle
between Ahab and the whale is open to many interpretations. It is
a pioneer novel but the prairie is now sea, or an allegory on the
Gold Rush, but now the gold is a whale. Jorge Luis Borges has seen
in the universe of Moby-Dick "a
cosmos (a chaos) not only perceptibly malignant as the Gnostics
had intuited, but also irrational, like the cosmos in the
hexameters of Lucretius." (from The
Total Library, 1999) Clare Spark
has connected in Hunting Captain Ahab (2001) different
interpretations with changing political atmosphere - depending on
the point of view Ahab has been seen as a Promethean hero or a
forefather of the twentieth-century totalitarian dictators. The
director John Huston questions in his film version (1956) which
one, Ahab or the whale, is the real Monster.
REDBURN (1849) and WHITE-JACKED (1850) Melville wrote to get
money, comparing his work to "sawing wood". PIERRE
(1852), a Gothic romance and psychological study based on the
author's childhood, was a financial and critical disaster.
Melville's stories in Putnam's Monthly Magazine reflected
the despair and the contempt for human hypocrisy and materialism.
Among the stories were 'The Scrivener' (1853), 'The Encantadas'
(1854) and 'Benito Cereno' (1855). 'Batleby' was a story about a
man, who confronts life with an Everlasting Nay - "I would
prefer not to," is his quiet defense against onrushing
materialism of the day.
THE CONFIDENCE MAN (1857), Melville's last novel, was a harsh
satire of American life set on a Mississippi River steamboat.
After 1857 he wrote only some poetry. His health was failing, he
did not earn enough money to support his family, and he was a
dependent of his wealthy father-in-law. To recover from a
breakdown, he undertook a long journey to Europe and the Holy
Land. CLAREL (1876), a long poem about religious crisis, was based
on this strip, and reflected his Manichean view of God. The book
was ignored. Subsequent works were privately printed and
distributed among a very small circle of acquaintances.
After unsuccessful lecture tours in 1857-60, Melville lived in
Washington, D.C. (1861-62). He moved to New York, where he was
appointed customs inspector on the New York docks. This work
secured him a regular income. Melville's later works include
BATTLE-PIECES AND ASPECTS OF THE WAR (1865), privately printed
JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS (1888), and TIMOLEON (1891).
Melville's death on September 28, 1891, in New York, was noted
with only one obituary notice. His unfinished work, Billy Budd,
Foretopman, remained unpublished until 1924. A definitive
edition appeared in 1962. The story is set in 1797 during the war
between England and France. Billy Budd, 'the Handsome Sailor', is
favorite of the crew of HMS Bellipotent. He becomes the target of
John Claggart, the satanic master-at-arms. Claggart accuses
falsely Billy of being involved in a supposed mutiny. The innocent
Billy, who is unable to answer the charge because of a chronic
stammer, accidentally kills Claggart. Captain Vere sees through
Claggart's plot, fears reaction among the crew, if Billy is not
punished. He calls a court and in effect instructs it to find
Billy guilty of capital crime. The court condemns Billy, who goes
willingly to his fate and is hanged from the yardarm after crying
out 'God bless Captain Vere'. Later Vere is killed during an
engagement with the French, murmuring as his last words Billy's
name.
For further reading:
Herman Melville
by William Ellery Sedgwick (1944); Call
Me Ishmael by Charles Olson (1947); Herman
Melville by Richard Volney Chase
(1949); Reading of 'Moby-Dick'
by Milton Oswin Percival (1950); The
Long Encounter by Merlin Bowen (1960);
Melville's Thematic of Form
by Edgar A. Dryden (1968); Melville:
The Ironic Diagarm by John Seelye
(1970); Hawthorne, Melville, and the
Novel by Richard H. Brodhead (1976); New
Perspectives on Melville, ed. by Faith
Pullin (1978); Melville
by Edward H. Rosenberry (1979); Herman
Melville, ed. by A. Robert Lee (1984);
A Companion to Melville Studies,
ed. by John Bryant (1986); White Lies
by John Samson (1989); Empire for
Liberty: Melville and the Poetics of Individualism
by Wai-chee Dimock (1991); Herman
Melville by Rebecca Stefoff (1994); After
the Whale by Clark Davis (1995); Herman
Melville's Moby-Dick, ed. by Harold
Bloom (1996); Herman Melville: A
Biography: 1819-1851 by Hershel Parker
(1996); The Cambridge Companion to
Herman Melville, ed. by Robert S.
Levine (1998, paperback); Herman
Melville's Religious Journey by Walter
Donald Kring (1998); American
Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania
by Hilton Obenzinger (1999); Hunting
Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival
by Clare Spark (2001); Herman Melville: A Biography:
1851-1891 by Hershel Parker (2002)-
See also: Little
Blue Light; Eugenio
Montale - 19th
century writers criticizing colonial system: Cuban
José
Martí and Multatuli,
whose - novel MAX HAVELAAR depicts the Dutch exploitation in
Java.
Selected works:
- TYPEE, 1846 - Taipii
- OMOO, 1847
- REDBURN, HIS FIRST VOYAGE, 1849
- MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER, 1849
- WHITE-JACKET, 1850
- MOBY-DICK: OR THE WHALE, 1851 - Moby Dick eli valkoinen
valas - several film adaptations: The Sea
Beast (1926), dir. by Millard Webb; Moby Dick (1930), dir. by
Lloyd Bacon, starring John Barrymore;
Moby Dick (1956), dir. by John Huston, screenplay by John
Huston and Ray Bradbury, starring Gregory Peck, Richard
Basehart, Frederick Ledebur, Leo Genn, and Orson Welles. - 'Moby
Dick was the most difficult picture I ever made. I lost so
many battles during it that I even began to suspect that my
assistant director was plotting against me. Then I realized
that it was only God. God had a perfectly good reason. Ahab
saw the White Whale as a mask worn by the Deity, and he saw
the Deity as a malignant force. It was God's pleasure to
torment and torture man. Ahab didn't deny God, he simply
looked on him as a murderer - a thought that is utterly
blasphemous: "Is Ahab Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that
lifts this arm?...Where do murderers go?... Who's to doom,
when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?"' (John
Huston in An Open Book, 1980)
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