on civilization

Review of Typee in Graham's Magazine (May 1846):

[Mr. Melville] writes of what he has seen con amore, and at times almost loses his loyalty to civilization and the Anglo-Saxon race.... "The white civilized man," he considers to be entitled, in point of "remorseless cruelty," to the dubious honor of being " the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth."  So far he seems to think sailors and missionaries have carried little to the barbarous nations which have come under his notice, but disease, starvation and death.

"As a philanthropist in general, and a friend to the Polynesians in particular, I hope that these Edens of the South Seas, blessed with fertile soils and peopled with happy natives, many being yet uncontaminated by the contact of civilization, will long remain unspoiled in their simplicity, beauty, and purity. And as for annexation, I beg to offer up an earnest prayer—and I entreat all present and all Christians to join me in it—that the banns of that union should be forbidden until we have found for ourselves a civilization morally, mentally, and physically higher than one which has culminated in almshouses, prisons, and hospitals.'  (Close of Melville's 1859 lecture on "The South Seas," as reconstructed by Merton M. Sealts, Jr. in Melville as Lecturer)

 "Civilization ever advances sword in hand, with poisons, pestilence and crime in her train."

("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," May 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

supernal

"... there must exist some greatly inferior spirits; so insignificant, comparatively, as to be overlooked by the supernal powers; and through them it must be, that we are thus grievously annoyed.  At any rate; such a theory would supply a hiatus in my system of metaphysics."  (Mardi)

O! spirit ministers, are ye hovering near, radiant with 
pity divine, on guardian errands, to touch with hope the 
sinking hearts of myriad men? And can no mortal eye 
behold thy subtilty supernal? 
(Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

invoked in vain

Your marbles in the temple stand--
Yourselves as stony, and invoked in vain?  ("Timoleon")

"In vain, in vain!  Dull tyrant space wears its stoniest frown...."
(Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

Truth as Medusa, 1852

F.  "At last you have struck a chord that answers as to the touch of truth!  And as for love, I know none better than that of the she-bear for her cub; and that lasts, and is returned, just so long as circumstance and interest bind."

C.  "O! my friend!  Is there not then a pure soul-love, a deathless friendship, 'passing the love of women,' which all life's trials and the world's baseness cannot soil or sap? If that be truth, 'twere better never to look into her Medusa face!" 
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," August 1852) and, with interesting, substantial revisions, in Scenes and Adventures in the Army.)

Henceforth I will know nothing but Truth; glad Truth, or sad Truth; I will know what is....Thou Black Knight, that with visor down, thus confrontest me, and mockest at me; Lo! I strike through thy helm, and will see thy face, be it Gorgon!  ... From all idols, I tear all veils; henceforth I will see the hidden things; and live right out in my own hidden life!—Now I feel that nothing but Truth can move me so. (Pierre, 1852)

Watcher's Soliloquy

via Cass Gilbert - While Out Riding

"In the context of Melville's later work, however, the meditation ["Babbalanja Solus" in Mardi] prefigures dramatic soliloquies that take place before an unresponsive, "dumb" object...." --John Wenke, Melville's Muse (Kent State University Press, 1995) page 53.

"My watch is lonely and fearfully silent;— every where a voiceless desert, and mountains like prison-walls...." --March 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border 

from segment titled "A night watch in the mountains, and a dialogue thereon"; revised in the 1857 book Scenes and Adventures in the Army to "Watcher's Soliloquy."

"you call that abstraction, the real?"

"In the person of Media, however, Melville resorts to another kind of putative authority. Media repeatedly asserts the utter worthlessness of philosophical discourse. In playing the role of demigod, he takes a stand above the swirl of Babbalanja's incessant pondering and frequently advises him to give up such runaway speculations." 

-- John Wenke, Melville's Muse: Literary Creation & the Forms of Philosophical Fiction (Kent State University Press, 1995) pages 65-66. 

In "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," the Captain's imaginary friend Frank plays Media to the Captain's Babbalanja:

C. "Amigo Mio! Didn't you desert me on the eve of a snow storm, like many another friend of so honest mouthing! And is a touch of poetry a bad companion in difficulty and trial? Never a bit; it was the boon of a God—Wisdom was ever feminine."

I. F.  "Phew! The fit is on! Sorry I said a word! I supposed frost and starved horses—the sight of poor women to-day trudging the weary road—the driving poor beef instead of the spirit striving [1857: spirit-stirring] chase, would have tempered you to the philosophy of a very materialist, (male or female)."  -- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, April 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857) page 286.

* * *

F.  "When I have you committed, fairly pinned in contradiction, you fly off into a maze of extravagant fancies, where I should be lost as well if I followed."  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger Volume 18 (August 1852) page 508.

 F.  "Well! what care we in this honest wilderness! Care for nothing you cannot help, is the sum of my philosophy."  -- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852.

F.  "Bah!  your modern geognosy is a humbug!  or, too deep at least, for a wandering dragoon." -- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852, page 509.

But now, “the morn is up again,”—and we have marched many miles fasting, and have been attracted through a turbid river by the sight of grass, and have stopped for breakfast under some cotton woods,—and in their shade I am scribbling with a pencil—

F.—“Yes, and fine work you are making of it!  The day should commence with the morning, and the brighter the better; not with the nightmare of a sleeper, who should have watched.” 

-- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger Volume 19, March 1853, page 157.

* * *

I read to him my day’s experiences.  He listened impatiently; and at last broke out—

“You are incorrigible!  Do you call that abstraction, the real?”

C.—Surely it has a mournfully same, and daily reality!”

F.—“And how easily by a mere turn of expression, you could have given it the interest of a simple narrative!”

C.—“Well, I’m too indolent; for, if I commenced, I might imagine myself bound to keep it up; and I scribble by no rule, and with no object but pastime; and, to compare in some future day the old with the new tone of mind."  

-- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1853; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

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!

Jesus and flowers

Even he who in the pastoral hours,
Abroad in fields, and cheered by flowers,
Announced a heaven's unclouded days;  (Clarel 1.13)

Even by the road we traveled late
Came Jesus from Jerusalem,
Who pleased him so in fields and bowers,
Yes, crowned with thorns, still loved the flowers? 
(Clarel 2.6)

He comes; the lilies blow!  (Clarel 3.6)

F.—With what strange complacency does the mass of even the "educated," ignore the charming mysteries of botany! They may be surprised into admiration of a fine flower; but it is a mere sensation;

—"the smallest part
Exceeds the narrow visions of their minds." 

C.—"And they lose half the beauty, which, such is their perfection, they reveal only to minute examination.
 "Did you ever reflect how enthusiastic an admiration for them, is expressed in the language, 'Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these!'"

F.—The lily!—the queen of flowers! And yet, all the world admire them. Are they not generally personified?—credited with a language?

C.—"The language of flowers! —The language of admiration and of love, rather. Charming symbols indeed!—most eloquent offerings!" 

Scenes Beyond the Western Border (August 1853); and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

books as friends

Walter E. Bezanson on Melville's reading and marginalia:

"The markings and annotations which he made in many of his books provide a rich index to his complexity of mind and temperament....Clearly he read in part for companionship.  He sat down among his books as among friends...."  (Hendricks House Clarel, xxviii)

 "Oh, my books! my favorite authors, how I miss you!"

("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger, September 1851); and Scenes and Adventures in the Army