why can't you forget the past?

 SCENES BEYOND THE WESTERN BORDER

"Why ever look behind, and cherish the unhappy, profitless past? Why hug delusion and disappointment to the soul?"

"Ask the pale plant," I replied, "why it stretches forth in darkness, toward the ray of light."

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border - May 1853; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857)

  BENITO CERENO

"... But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves."

"Because they have no memory," he dejectedly replied; "because they are not human."  

--Putnam's Monthly Magazine - December 1855; and The Piazza Tales (1856).

grim warriors and ghosts

"I loved to yield myself up to the fanciful superstition of the islanders, and could almost believe that the grim warrior was bound heavenward. . . ."  (Typee)

over that grim warrior's grave  (Mardi)

"On that very camp-bedstead, there, beneath his tent on the field, the glorious old mild-eyed and warrior-hearted General had slept, and but waked to buckle his knight-making sword by his side; for it was noble knighthood to be slain by grand Pierre; in the other world his foes' ghosts bragged of the hand that had given them their passports."  (Pierre)

" 'tis enough to disturb the ghosts of the grim old warriors...."
Scenes Beyond the Western Border and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

astronomy from the plains

Has it never occurred to you, Friend, that we ought to be astronomers?—the science came from desert plains.

Friend.  Yes, and botanists too; I think no one can be on the prairies without observing much, the motions of the stars.
(Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

"Then, to study the stars upon the wide, boundless sea, is divine as it was to the Chaldean Magi, who observed their revolutions from the plains."  (White-Jacket)

That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space. Wonder interlocks with wonder; and then the confounding feeling comes. No cause have we to fancy, that a horse, a dog, a fowl, ever stand transfixed beneath yon skyey load of majesty. But our soul's arches underfit into its; and so, prevent the upper arch from falling on us with unsustainable inscrutableness. "Explain ye my deeper mystery," said the shepherd Chaldean king, smiting his breast, lying on his back upon the plain; "and then, I will bestow all my wonderings upon ye, ye stately stars!"  (Pierre)

living by the light of philosophy, refracted

Did I dream ?—Had I slumbered at my post ?—I did dream.

And why not tell my dream?—Life is little better; nay, it is little different. We wander at most in the dark—stumbling on temptations,—walking on the thorns of passions; or in an awful, but obscure light, refracted by the cloudy medium of philosophy.

Scenes Beyond the Western Border and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Spoken by Babbalanja, a "speculative, moralizing philosopher":

"The mystery of mysteries is still a mystery....Oh, my lord, I am in darkness, and no broad blaze comes down to flood me. The rays that come to me are but faint cross lights, mazing the obscurity wherein I live."  (Mardi)

walls to sympathy

Sleep on, my Friend! Though I would question you if I could, in this dark hour, if sympathy may ever pass the mysterious boundary of dream-land;—if that deathlike seeming calm were of careless oblivion,—or of some divine despair....
 

Are these wild mountains impassable barriers [1853:  "mountains like prison-walls"], that must prison all sympathy from earthly communion?  (Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

"When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness!"  (Moby-Dick)

going down to posterity

"... dumb beasts prefer death to slavery!  Liberty lost, they can die without the excitement of the world's applause, or hopes of a grateful posterity!"  (March 1853)

Melville on Cooper:

"He was a great, robust-souled man, all whose merits are not even yet fully appreciated.  But a grateful posterity will take the best of Care of Fenimore Cooper."  (December 1851)

 Melville on Melville:

My dear Sir, they begin to patronize. All Fame is patronage. Let me be infamous: there is no patronage in that. What “reputation” H.M. has is horrible. Think of it ! To go down to posterity is bad enough, any way; but to go down as a “man who lived among the cannibals”! When I speak of posterity, in reference to myself, I only mean the babies who will probably be born in the moment immediately ensuing upon my giving up the ghost. I shall go down to some of them, in all likelihood. Typee will be given to them, perhaps, with their gingerbread. 
(Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, early May 1851)

riddle, cipher, mask

Looking closer at the criticism of G. P. R. James quoted in the last post, we can't help but notice how trenchantly our Captain of U. S. Dragoons breaks down the plot and characters in the novel by Melville's neighbor. And how all the key terms are exampled in Melville's writings.

"The hero is a lad of seventeen; old enough to fall in love, and but little else. St. Medard is a mere abstraction, De Langy a cipher, Artonne a riddle, Monsieur L. a man in a mask who puts himself in the way sufficiently to give some interesting trouble and help out the plot." --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger 18 (January 1852): 49; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army. Spelled "cypher" in the 1852 magazine version; "cipher" in the 1857 book version.

LAD OF

"... a lad of about sixteen" (Redburn)

"...a lad of Pierre's own age." (Pierre)

ABSTRACTION

"...far from furnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate…” (Moby-Dick)

“I keep my love for it in the lasting condition of an untried abstraction.” (The Confidence-Man)

A RIDDLE

"His ruminations were a riddle." (Mardi)

“Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold.” (Moby-Dick)

"thou wert a riddle to me…” (Pierre)

“In short, the entire ship is a riddle.” (The Confidence-Man)

A CIPHER (CYPHER)

“The captain—a mere cipher—was an invalid in his cabin;” (Omoo)

“that man, to others, too often proves a cipher.” (Mardi)

“He who on all hands passes for a cypher today, if at all remembered hereafter, will be sure to pass for the same.” (Mardi)

IN A MASK

“In a mask, he dodges me.” (Mardi)

“I am the Vailed Persian Prophet; I, the man in the iron mask; I, Junius.” (Mardi)

has a problem with the artificial plot twists and tidy resolutions of popular novels

UPDATE: As shown here, all the key terms in the Captain's trenchant critique of G. P. R. James are (surprise!) well exampled Melville's known writings.

In January 1852, a "Captain of U. S. Dragoons" criticizes The False Heir by G. P. R. James, then Herman Melville's Berkshire neighbor:

The hero is a lad of seventeen; old enough to fall in love, and but little else. St. Medard is a mere abstraction, De Langy a cipher, Artonne a riddle, Monsieur L. a man in a mask who puts himself in the way sufficiently to give some interesting trouble and help out the plot. In the most commonplace manner, he has thrown the hero and favorite characters into difficulties for the transparent object of a final triumph; he disinherits the hero, shipwrecks his best friend, St. Medard; confines Artonne in prison for murder, and last, not least, sends his best-drawn character, Marois, to the galleys!"

Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger 18 (January 1852): 49; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

In Pierre (1852), Melville likewise faults popular novels for too-tidy conclusions:

Like all youths, Pierre had conned his novel-lessons; had read more novels than most persons of his years; but their false, inverted attempts at systematizing eternally unsystemizable elements; their audacious, intermeddling impotency, in trying to unravel, and spread out, and classify, the more thin than gossamer threads which make up the complex web of life; these things over Pierre had no power now. Straight through their helpless miserableness he pierced; the one sensational truth in him, transfixed like beetles all the speculative lies in them. He saw that human life doth truly come from that, which all men are agreed to call by the name of God; and that it partakes of the unravelable inscrutableness of God. By infallible presentiment he saw, that not always doth life's beginning gloom conclude in gladness; that wedding-bells peal not ever in the last scene of life's fifth act; that while the countless tribes of common novels laboriously spin vails of mystery, only to complacently clear them up at last; and while the countless tribe of common dramas do but repeat the same; yet the profounder emanations of the human mind, intended to illustrate all that can be humanly known of human life; these never unravel their own intricacies, and have no proper endings; but in imperfect, unanticipated, and disappointing sequels (as mutilated stumps), hurry to abrupt intermergings with the eternal tides of time and fate.  --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities

welcome as

* * Blessed IDEAL! rosy realm! Welcome resort of sad and weary souls! welcome, as to the fainting and lost way-farer, struggling with darkness and perils, the rising sun revealing prospects of relief and enjoyment! 
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger 17, December 1851)

 Revised in the 1857 book version, as follows:

* * Blessed IDEAL! rosy realm! Welcome resort of sad and weary souls! welcome, as to the fainting, lost wayfarer, struggling in darkness, the rising sun.
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

 "....welcome as wine and olives after dinner."  (The Confidence-Man)

"Ay, welcome as the drums
Of marching allies unto men
Beleagured...."  (Clarel)

I keep the word "Welcome" all the time in my mouth, so as to be ready on the instant when you cross the threshold.  (Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)

laughs and smiles, contrasted

C.   "....Strange, that laughter, man's lowest attribute, is distinctive; while the smile, which seems borrowed from Heaven, and which can confer rapturous joy, if not happiness, is shared, I think, in a slight degree by brutes." 
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger, June 1852); and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

"True, it is said that a man may smile, and smile, and smile, and be a villain; but it is not said that a man may laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and be one, is it, Charlie?"

"Ha, ha, ha!—no no, no no."  (The Confidence-Man)

double-refined

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—.'"  (Scenes Beyond the Western Border, December 1851)

 Revised in the 1857 book as follows:

Friend. — Nay, stick to the surface now; only "to the d — l" with your double-refined poetry and romance.  (Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

  

I. F.  "There are noble minds, who would pronounce much of that extravagant—
too double-refined for any application."  (June 1852)

"Drop Tacitus. His subtlety is falsity, To him, in his double-refined anatomy of human nature, is well applied the Scripture saying--'There is a subtle man, and the same is deceived.' Drop Tacitus. Come, now, let me throw the book overboard."  (The Confidence-Man)

like knights of old

"... but would you, like the knights of old, convert love into worship; do you advocate the blind devotion which led to violence and bloodshed?"  

C.  "No: you mistake a concomitant for a cause; the redeeming virtue of those ages was this romantic devotion, but tinctured of course, with prevailing rudeness and crime. Love, always powerful, was ennobled and purified by martial Romance; and thus allied, was successful against barbarism. Worn out by change, Romance is gone; but Poetry, its vital element, is left; and its refined spirit alone can save love from materialism and degradation, and elevate its objects, so that man can bow with respectful devotion."

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

"... each mate or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer,  (Moby-Dick)

OF THE CRUSADERS

When sighting first the towers afar
Which girt the object of the war
And votive march—the Saviour's Tomb,
What made the red-cross knights so shy?
And wherefore did they doff the plume
And baldrick, kneel in dust, and sigh?

Hardly it serves to quote Voltaire
And say they were freebooters—hence,
Incapable of awe or sense
Pathetic; no, for man is heir
To complex moods; and in that age
Belief devout and bandit rage
Frequent were joined; and e'en to-day
At shrines on the Calabrian steep—
Not insincere while feelings sway—
The brigand halts to adore, to weep.
Grant then the worst—is all romance
Which claims that the crusader's glance
Was blurred by tears?

(Clarel 1.4)

moods and tenses

"Candid! Would you prefer discussing 'sacred fountains and groves?' "

Friend.—That, ingrate, was only to flatter a little, for once, your humor, your "mood,"—which, in all its tenses, I should call the doubtful.
(Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

"In the Missionary College at Lahainaluna, on Maui, one of the Sandwich Islands, I saw a tabular exhibition of a Hawaiian verb, conjugated through all its moods and tenses. It covered the side of a considerable apartment, and I doubt whether Sir William Jones himself would not have despaired of mastering it."  (Typee)

"Each conjugation will I curb,
All moods and tenses of the verb...."  (Clarel 2.3)

quirk of repeating speech

Yow! Here we see how a peculiar habit of Britspeak was cleverly identified in a prairie critique of The False Heir by G.P.R. James, then subsequently exploited by Melville in "Israel Potter" (1854) as a characteristic mannerism in the speeches of King George III:

I[maginary]. F[riend].—"James has an extraordinary habit of making his spokesmen repeat the first sentence of their speeches, thus—I don't know, sir; I don't know, sir,— That's a pity—that's a pity!' Since I have noticed it, it always makes me nervous!"
-- Scenes Beyond the Western Border in the Southern Literary Messenger Volume 18, January 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

Waiting a moment, till the man was out of hearing, the king again turned upon Israel.

"Were you at Bunker Hill?—that bloody Bunker Hill —eh, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Fought like a devil—like a very devil, I suppose?”

"Yes, sir."

"Helped flog—helped flog my soldiers?”

"Yes, sir; but very sorry to do it."

"Eh?—eh?—how's that?"

"I took it to be my sad duty, sir."

"Very much mistaken—very much mistaken, indeed. Why do ye sir me?—eh? I'm your king—your king."

"Sir," said Israel firmly, but with deep respect, "I have no king."

-- "Israel Potter" in Putnam's Monthly Magazine for August, 1854.

respect for women the test of nobility

I[maginary]. F[riend]. “All must observe that the noblest, and in general the most eminent men, evince the highest regard for women; that a profound and deferential respect for them is the first characteristic of a perfect gentleman.”
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

“… and if the degree of consideration in which the ever-adorable sex is held by the men be—as the philosophers affirm—a just criterion of the degree of refinement among a people, then I may truly pronounce the Typees to be as polished a community as ever the sun shone upon. … Nowhere are the ladies more assiduously courted; nowhere are they better appreciated as the contributors to our highest enjoyments; and nowhere are they more sensible of their power.”  (Typee)

UPDATE:  For the whole prairie dialogue on social injustices to women, see here.  For another instance in Melville's writings of the same theme, check out the pseudo-biographical sketch of the "Marquis de Grandvin" from the so-called "Burgundy Club" manuscript:

Not invariably running the risk of incurring dark clouds from their lords, the dames and sisters of the Benedicks of the clubs, at their balls and parties, cast upon the Marquis that kindled merry glance which, according to the old French epic whose theme is Roncesvalles, the ladies bestowed upon Roland; not alone smitten by the fame and taken with the person of that noble accredited nephew of Charlemagne, but rightly inferring him to be not more of a David against the Saracen than a champion against still more flagitious infidels, impugners of the sex.
(The Marquis de Grandvin)

 * * *

“How generally in society, with the audacious, but seldom denied claim to civilization, do men, (alas! uneducated,) like savages, look upon them and treat them as drudges; laborers in their service and ministers to their pleasure."
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

“Far different from their condition among many rude nations, where the women are made to perform all the work while their ungallant lords and masters lie buried in sloth….” (Typee)

against dogmas

The North Fork, Glacier National Park
(David Restivo, NPS)

"And it is this free desert air alone, that emboldens me in the search, to question the dogmas which society holds so precious."  (Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

"No; the superstitions and dogmas concerning Sin had not laid their withering maxims upon our hearts."  (White-Jacket)

" 'In respect of the universe, mankind is but a sect,' saith Diloro; 'and first principles but dogmas.'"  (Mardi)

"A dogma! truly, which should be thrown to the dogs...."  (Mardi)