Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
squares or parks. You suffocate for room.--You pass close together.
The cafés of the Turks. Dingy holes, faded splendour, moth eaten. On
both sides rude seats and divans where the old musty Turks sit smoking
like conjurers. Saw in certain kiosks (pavilions) the crowns of the
late Sultan. You look through gilt gratings & between heavy curtains
of lace, at the sparkling things. Near the Mosque of Sultan Suleiman
saw the cemetery of his family--big as that of a small village, all his
wives and children and servants. All gilt and carved. The women’s tombs
carved with heads (women no souls). The Sultan Suleiman’s tomb & that
of his three brothers in a kiosk. Gilded like mantel ornaments.”
_Clarel_ was, in 1876, printed at Melville’s expense. More accurately,
its printing was made possible by his uncle, Hon. Peter Gansevoort,
who, as Melville says in the dedication, “in a personal interview
provided for the publication of this poem, known to him by report, as
existing in manuscript.”
Not the least impressive thing about _Clarel_ is its length: it extends
to 571 pages. Mr. Mather states: “Of those who have actually perused
the four books (of verse) and _Clarel_, I am presumably the only
survivor.” Mr. Mather is mistaken: there are two. But since, because of
the excessive length of _Clarel_ and the excessive scarcity of _John
Marr_ and _Timoleon_ (both privately printed in an edition of only
twenty-five copies) it would be over-optimistic to presume that there
will soon be a third, some account must be given of Melville’s poetry.
Stevenson once said: “There are but two writers who have touched the
South Seas with any genius, both Americans: Melville and Charles
Warren Stoddard; and at the christening of the first and greatest,
some influential fairy must have been neglected; ‘He shall be able to
see’; ‘He shall be able to tell’; ‘He shall be able to charm,’ said
the friendly godmothers; ‘But he shall not be able to hear!’ exclaimed
the last.” When Stevenson wrote his passage, the artist in him seems
for the moment to have slept; taking no account of Melville’s frequent
mastery of the magic of words, he berates Melville’s genius for
misspelling Polynesian names as a defect of genius. That Melville had
an ear sensitive to the cadences of prose is shown by the facility with
which he on occasion caught the rhythm both of the Psalms and of Sir
Thomas Browne. Yet the same man who at his best is equalled only by Poe
in the subtle melody of his prose, at times fell into ranting passages
of obvious and intolerable parody of blank verse. The following from
_Mardi_ is an example: “From dawn till eve, the bright, bright days
sped on, chased by the gloomy nights; and, in glory dying, lent their
lustre to the starry skies. So, long the radiant dolphins fly before
the sable sharks; but seized, and torn in flames--die, burning:--their
last splendour left, in sparkling scales that float along the sea.”
In his poetry, as in his prose, is the same incongruous mating of
astonishing facility and flagrant defect. It is the same paradox that
one finds in Browning and in Meredith,--whose poetry Melville’s more
than superficially resembles. Melville shared with these men a greater
interest in ideas than in verbal prettiness, and like the best of them,
when mastered by a refractory idea, he was not over-exquisite in his
regard for prosody and syntax in getting it said. When he had a mind
to, however, he could pound with a lustiness that should endear him to
those who delight in declamation contests: a contemptible distinction,
perhaps--but even that has been denied him. The poem to the Swamp
Angel, for example, the great gun that reduced Charleston, is fine in
its irony and vigour. The poem begins:
There is a coal-black Angel
With a thick Afric lip
And he dwells (like the hunted and harried)
In a swamp where the green frogs dip
But his face is against a City
Which is over a bay by the sea,
And he breathes with a breath that is blastment
And dooms by a far degree.
Though there are memorable lines and stanzas in _Battle-Pieces_, only
one of the poems in the volume has ever been at all noticed: _Sheridan
at Cedar Creek_, beginning:
Shoe the steed with silver
That bore him to the fray,
When he heard the guns at dawning
Miles away;
When he heard them calling, calling--
Mount! nor stay.
The following letter to his brother Tom bears upon Melville’s
_Battle-Pieces_.
“PITTSFIELD, May 25th, 1862.
“MY DEAR BOY: (or, if that appears disrespectful)
“MY DEAR CAPTAIN:
“Yesterday I received from Gansevoort your long and very entertaining
letter to Mamma from Pernambuco. Yes, it was very entertaining.
Particularly the account of that interesting young gentleman whom you
so uncivilly stigmatise for a jackass, simply because he improves
his opportunities in the way of sleeping, eating & other commendable
customs. That’s the sort of fellow, seems to me, to get along with.
For my part I love sleepy fellows, and the more ignorant the better.
Damn your wide-awake and knowing chaps. As for sleepiness, it is one
of the noblest qualities of humanity. There is something sociable
about it, too. Think of those sensible & sociable millions of good
fellows all taking a good long friendly snooze together, under the
sod--no quarrels, no imaginary grievances, no envies, heartburnings,
& thinking how much better that other chap is off--none of this:
but all equally free-&-easy, they sleep away & reel off their nine
knots an hour, in perfect amity. If you see your sleepy ignorant
jackass-friend again, give him my compliments, and say that however
others may think of him, I honour and esteem him.--As for your
treatment of the young man, there I entirely commend you. You
remember what the Bible says:--
“Oh ye who teach the children of the nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany or Spain,
I pray ye _strap_ them upon all occasions,
It mends their morals--never mind the pain.”
“In another place the Bible says, you know, something about sparing
the strap & spoiling the child.--Since I have quoted poetry above,
it puts me in mind of my own doggerel. You will be pleased to learn
that I have disposed of a lot of it at a great bargain. In fact, a
trunk-maker took the whole lot off my hands at ten cents the pound.
So, when you buy a new trunk again, just peep at the lining & perhaps
you may be rewarded by some glorious stanza staring you in the
face & claiming admiration. If you were not such a devil of a ways
off, I would send you a trunk, by way of presentation-copy. I can’t
help thinking what a luckless chap you were that voyage you had a
poetaster with you. You remember the romantic moonlight night, when
the conceited donkey repeated to you about three cables’ length of
his verses. But you bore it like a hero. I can’t in fact recall so
much as a single _wince_. To be sure, you went to bed immediately
upon the conclusion of the entertainment; but this much I am sure of,
whatever were your sufferings, you never gave them utterance. Tom, my
boy, I admire you. I say again, you are a hero.--By the way, I hope
in God’s name, that rumour which reached your owners (C. & P.) a few
weeks since--that dreadful rumour is not true. They heard that you
had begun to take to--drink?--Oh no, but worse--to sonnet-writing.
That off Cape Horn instead of being on deck about your business, you
devoted your time to writing a sonnet on your mistress’ eyebrow, &
another upon her thumbnail.--‘I’ll be damned,’ says Curtis (he was
very profane) ‘if I’ll have a sonneteer among my Captains.’--‘Well,
if he has taken to poetising,’ says Peabody--‘God help the ship!’
* * * * *
And now, my boy, if you knew how much laziness I overcame in writing
you this letter, you would think me, what I am
“Always your affectionate brother,
“HERMAN.”
Melville’s family seem all to have been more sceptical of his verse
than they were of his prose. In 1859 Mrs. Melville wrote to her mother
“Herman has taken to writing poetry. You need not tell any one, for you
know how such things get around.” Mrs. Melville was too optimistic:
her husband’s indiscreet practice is still pretty much a secret to the
world at large. And _Clarel_, his longest and most important poem, is
practically impossible to come by.
In 1884, Melville said of _Clarel_ in a letter to Mr. James Billson: “a
metrical affair, a pilgrimage or what not, of several thousand lines,
eminently adapted for unpopularity.” Though this is completely true,
Melville used in _Clarel_ more irony, vividness, and intellect than
the whole congregation of practising poets of the present day (a few
notable names excepted) could muster in aggregate. Yet with all this
wealth of the stuff of poetry, the poem never quite fulfils itself. In
_Clarel_ Melville brings together in the Holy Land a group of pilgrims;
pilgrims nearly all drawn from the life, as a study of his Journal of
1856-7 shows. In this group there are men devout and men sceptical,
some suave in orthodoxy, and some militant in doubt. There are dreamers
and men of action; unprincipled saints, and rakes without vice. In
the bleak and legend-haunted Holy Land Melville places these men, and
dramatises his own reactions to life in this setting. The problem of
faith is the pivot of endless discussion: and upon this pivot is made
to turn all of the problems of destiny that engage a “pondering man.”
These discussions take place against a panorama of desert and monastery
and shrine. In some of the interpolated songs of _Clarel_, Melville
almost achieved the lyric mood.
My shroud is saintly linen,
In lavender ’tis laid;
I have chosen a bed by the marigold
And supplied me a silver spade.
And there are, too, incidental legends and saints’ tales:
Those legends which, be it confessed
Did nearer bring to them the sky--
Did nearer woo it in their hope
Of all that seers and saints avow--
Than Galileo’s telescope
Can bid it unto prosing science now.
_Clarel_ is by all odds the most important record we have of what was
the temper of Melville’s deeper thoughts during his long metaphysical
period. Typical quotations have already been made.
The most recurrent note of the poem is a parched desire for
companionship; a craving for
A brother that he well might own
In tie of friendship.
Could _I_ but meet
Some stranger of a lore replete,
Who, marking how my looks betray
The dumb thoughts clogging here my feet
Would question me, expound and prove,
And make my heart to burn with love.
* * * * *
Doubt’s heavy hand
Is set against us; and his brand
Still warreth for his natural lord
King Common-place.
* * * * *
Art thou the first soul tried by doubt?
Shall prove the last? Go, live it out.
But for thy fonder dream of love
In man towards man--the soul’s caress--
The negatives of flesh should prove
Analogies of non-cordialness
In spirit.
* * * * *
Why then
Remaineth to me what? the pen?
Dead feather of ethereal life!
Nor efficacious much, save when
It makes some fallacy more rife.
My kin--I blame them not at heart--
Would have me act some routine part.
Subserving family, and dreams
Alien to me--illusive schemes.
This world clean fails me: still I yearn.
Me then it surely does concern
Some other world to find. But where?
In creed? I do not find it there.
* * * * *
This side the dark and hollow bound