books of talk

In Melville's Muse, John Wenke insightfully calls Mardi a "book of talk" that as such anticipates The Confidence-Man, and Clarel.  Aha!  To my mind the same "conversational expansiveness" that Wenke observes in the philosophical travelogues of Herman Melville also describe the dialogues between C. and F. in the second part of Scenes and Adventures in the Army, first published in the Southern Literary Messenger 1851-1853 as "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."

 Wenke on Mardi:

... the narrator's visionary trance manifests how ideas determine not merely the exotic nature of place but the perimeters of behavior.  Here Melville presents the creative moment of transfer.  The quotidian is left behind, and the narrator figuratively loses hold, though he does not tumble into the Cartesian swirl but instead lifts into poetic rapture.  For the narrator, the desire for philosophic vent cannot be dissociated from the mind-moving medium of poetic invention.  (Melville's Muse, 30)

 * *  Blessed IDEAL! rosy realm!  Welcome resort of sad and weary souls!  welcome, as to the fainting lost way-farer, struggling with darkness and perils, the rising sun revealing prospects of relief and enjoyment!

Dear Friend!  whose presence I have felt—whose spirit has taken the poetic embodiment and has by the holy sympathy of Love illumined my soul to recognize thee with joy—Sweet Inspiration! that leadest me from this drear world, through transparent skies, to the fountains and groves of Memory—Beautiful Presence!

I. F. —"Dreamer, awake! Thy monologue I endured whilst it touched of earth; but, when self-forgetting, thou transformest thy true friend to a spirit-minister of dubious sex—who, methinks, would wander here, from no comfortable abode of earth or sky"—

 "Scoffer! Thou knowest not what thou hast done. Now,—I feel that we are on the earth. " There has been a change; Destiny has new shuffled the cards of our small fates; they had been stocked by some attendant imp, who was leading us (and tickling us the while with exciting chimeras) to the D—."

I. F. " Nay, Friend, I belong to earth—from thy flight descend not lower: as your old fashioned friend, I feel interested in your surface wanderings; but let your double-refined poetry and romance go 'to the D—.'"

"I submit. But the Reality I think is too darkly, coldly real, the earth very earthy; but, to please you, mark—I now attempt a lower level."

("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," December 1851; and, with significant revisions, in Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

I.F. you know by now stands for "Imaginary Friend."  YOW!