from enthusiasm to illusion

Speaking of things deleted in revision of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," the vanished reference to 2 Samuel 1:26 is one of the most remarkable. The deleted biblical quotation reverberates powerfully in Melville's Clarel, as hinted in two earlier posts on passing the love of women and David and Jonathan on the prairie. 

The prairie dialogue containing "passing the love of women" appeared in the August 1852 installment. As numerous changes to the original text make clear, this exceedingly rich dialogue received a good deal of scrutiny in revision for the 1857 book version. 

Another word dropped in revision of the August 1852 dialogue which appears in Melville's Pierre (published at the end of July 1852) is "enthusiasm."  Advocating an idealistic, Platonic view of soul-love, the Captain thinks it "better to cherish enthusiasm" than face for long the harshest realities of material existence.  The revised book version replaces "enthusiasm" with "illusion."

Cherish enthusiasm? That's pretty much the job description for Melville's hero, the "young enthusiast" Pierre. Enthusiasm! Nancy Craig Simmons counts 35 instances of the word ENTHUSIAST in some form or other in Pierre the book. See "Why an Enthusiast?: Melville's Pierre and the Problem of the Imagination" in ESQ 33.3 (1987): 146-67.

Though a champion for enthusiasm, Pierre nevertheless feels distracted by

"insinuated misgivings as to the ultimate utilitarian advisability of the enthusiast resolution that was his."  (Pierre)

The problem of holding to noble ideals in a cold cruel world that C. and F. talk over on the prairie also confronts Melville's "young enthusiast." Frank is a genial version of the devil of skepticism who torments Pierre:

to him the Evil One propounded the possibility of the mere moonshine of all his self-renouncing Enthusiasm. The Evil One hooted at him, and called him a fool.  (Pierre)

Why the revision from enthusiasm to illusion?  Possibly the change aims to clarify the alternatives, emphasizing the quixotic heroism of maintaining fidelity to a physically impossible ideal.  Enthusiasm might, after all, be well placed if there really are such things as eternal friendship and true love.  According to the revised version, it would be better to believe a lie, illusion, than acknowledge as truth the monstrous claim that love is just a mask for lust and selfishness.

August 1852:

C. "But who lives, who may not be wounded through another!—Then so be it! let us treat the whole world as it has done us, and—forget it! I dare say, nay, I am sure, that beyond some family ties, there is not upon the wide earth a heart in sympathy with our good or ill; whose even beat would be as much disturbed, were this wild sod to cover us forever, as at the most ephemeral of the trifling cares which make up their petty lives."

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! O! better to cherish enthusiasm, (despite the sneers and ridicule of cold, calculating woman;) better, (as it would become) a blind heroism of credulity! Ay, a heroism of policy, —like that of the great Cortez, who burnt, unread, the proofs of a conspiracy, rather than embrace damning doubt."
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852); and with significant revisions in Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

1857 book version:

"But who lives, who may not be wounded through another!—Then so be it! let us treat the whole world as it has done us, and—forget it! I dare say, that beyond some family ties, there is not upon the wide earth a heart in sympathy with our good or ill; whose even beat would be as much disturbed, were this wild sod to cover us forever, as at the most ephemeral of the trifling cares which make up their petty lives."

Friend.—At last you have struck a chord that answers as to the touch of truth! And as for love, 'tis but the poet's wildest fancy,—or passion's thin disguise: it soon tires; or, lasts so long as interests bind.

"Too bad! too bad!—I say it is the divinity within us! warmed indeed by heaven-bestowed beauty, and humanity's other noblest attributes,—but clinging to immortality with earnest hope.

"There is a pure soul love,—a deathless friendship, which all life's trials and worldly baseness cannot soil or sap.

"If that were truth, better never to look into her Medusa face; better to cherish illusion: blind credulity would be heroism! ay,—and policy,—like that of the great Cortez, who burnt the proofs of a conspiracy, rather than foster damning doubt."

Even after Pierre, Melville continued to grapple with the old problem of enthusiasm and illusion. In similar language, Melville's poem "The Enthusiast" imagines a champion like the dragoon captain's crazy hero of credulity, steadfastly blind to worldly baseness, the rule of self-interest:

Shall hearts that beat no base retreat
  In youth’s magnanimous years—
Ignoble hold it, if discreet
  When interest tames to fears;
Shall spirits that worship light
  Perfidious deem its sacred glow,
  Recant, and trudge where worldlings go,
Conform and own them right?

(Poetry Archives)

The first part of Clarel offers Nehemiah as this kind of hero, a crazy "saint" who clings to illusion:

The saint in fond illusion went,
Dream mixed with legend and event;  (Clarel 1.10)

And that lady astronomer, Urania in Melville's poem "After the Pleasure Party," she came to acknowledge the value of illusion, too late:

“And yet, ah yet, scarce ill I reigned,

Through self-illusion self-sustained,

When now—enlightened, undeceived—

What gain I, barrenly bereaved!  (Poetry Foundation)

Antony and Cleopatra on the prairie

By chance it came to pass that when Annatoo's first virgin bloom had departed, leaving nothing but a lusty frame and a lustier soul, Samoa, the Navigator, had fallen desperately in love with her. And thinking the lady to his mind, being brave like himself, and doubtless well adapted to the vicissitudes of matrimony at sea, he meditated suicide—I would have said, wedlock—and the twain became one. And some time after, in capacity of wife, Annatoo the dame, accompanied in the brigantine, Samoa her lord. Now, as Antony flew to the refuse embraces of Caesar, so Samoa solaced himself in the arms of this discarded fair one. And the sequel was the same. For not harder the life Cleopatra led my fine frank friend, poor Mark, than Queen Annatoo did lead this captive of her bow and her spear. But all in good time.  (Mardi)

Ha! In Mardi Melville called Mark Antony "my fine frank friend"; in the August 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, the narrating Captain of U. S. Dragoons quotes extensively from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in dialogue with his imaginary friend, Frank. So-named for the first time ("here comes Frank again") a bit later in this same August 1852 episode.

C. " ... But our quiet discussion of trout and buffalo steak, was a good introduction to repose and a pipe.

"How beautifully those light clouds float along from the east, wafted by the gentle airs that just give music to the leaves over head. Ye far wanderers! are ye messengers from that busy world? If so, pass on; and those white summits—those representatives of Nature's simplicity, will receive you quite unmoved!

"What is the world to us? Not much more than we to them!

'Let the wide arch of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.'" 

F. Ah! but Anthony thus spoke under the excitement of a powerful passion."

C. "Most sapient, true; for does he not soon add,

'Now for the love of Love, and her soft hours,
Let's not confound the time with conference harsh:
There's not a minute of our lives should stretch
Without some pleasure now.' 

"I rather think there is nothing worth living for beside Love, Music and War."

F. —"And a pipe! for what content, you heathen, does it not appear to give you. And the beauty of this sparkling, but calm morning is something to live for, and gratefully too."

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852; and Scenes and Adventures, with interesting changes including deletion of "Anthony" and "sapient" and demotion of "Frank" to anonymous "Friend.")

Antony's enamored surrender to Love at the start of Antony and Cleopatra is not checked or otherwise marked in Melville's Shakespeare set, although Cleopatra's preceding line ("Antony will be himself") is. Melville knew this play well, as the markings make clear. In a chapter on "The Legacy of Britain," Robin Grey points out:

Scholars have noted the frequency of Melville’s “borrowings” from an array of dramas. Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear were most heavily marked.  (A Companion to Herman Melville, ed. Wyn Kelley)

Melville's Marginalia Online shows the markings and annotations in Melville's set of Shakespeare, including the marginalia in volume 6 with Antony and Cleopatra.

Another of Melville's references to Antony and Cleopatra:

Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked he is. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck.
(Moby-Dick)

Deleted in revision

Here are seven (at least) specific things deleted in revision of the magazine series "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853) that appear in known writings by Herman Melville. Four of the seven deleted expressions occur in Pierre (1852), two in Moby-Dick (1851), and one in "Benito Cereno" (1855).

DECEMBER 1851

Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger 17 - December 1851

Among other things deleted in revision:

1. "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." --December 1851 - Scenes Beyond the Western Border

The sentence with "the Reality I think is too darkly, coldly real" does not appear in the 1857 book version:


 but the idea and words are present in Melville's Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (1852):

 "But imagination utterly failed him here; the reality was too real for him...."

Also deleted in revision of the December 1851 installment:

2.  "Thou knowest not what thou hast done."

Moby-Dick, chapter 119 - The Candles: "Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. "

More deleted expressions, not in the 1857 book version, that also appear in Moby-Dick:

• "Now, —I feel that we are on the earth."
  Moby-Dick chapter 135, The Chase—Third Day "Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief."; " —and I feel now like a billow that’s all one crested comb, Starbuck."
• "mark" (Moby-Dick features 12+ instances of mark as a verb in the second person.)
• "old-fashioned" (occurs 7x in Moby-Dick)

AUGUST 1852

"Ah! my good friend, let this wild mountain air have fair play; let us with the desert's freedom joyously float convention and opinion—upstart usurpers!"
--August 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border 

3. "fair play" has been deleted in revision; the expression does not appear in the 1857 book version but is present in Moby-Dick (1851):

Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. --Moby-Dick - The Quarter-Deck

MARCH 1853

"It may result from our profession, that the mind has these fits of morbid activity, as if to revenge itself for seasons of neglect." --March 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border 

4. "morbid" with "the mind" in context of inactivity, words deleted in revision, not found in the 1857 book version but present in known writing by Melville:

"Well, well; these long calms have a morbid effect on the mind, I've often heard, though I never believed it before." --Benito Cereno in Putnam's Monthly Magazine (November 1855); and The Piazza Tales (1856).

5. "calmness" and "desolation" with a form of brood have been deleted in revision; these words do not appear in the 1857 book version:

F.—"And what was there remarkable in my natural calmness?"

C.—"It was never so! There was a brooding desolation around that could penetrate a sleeping soul!  --March 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

but are present in known writings by Melville:

"All the while, her preternatural calmness sometimes seems only made to cover the intensest struggle in her bosom." --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities

"Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say—here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these."  --Moby-Dick, The Chapel  

As shown in another post, other elements that appear in Pierre were also cut or changed in revision of the same March 1853 passage on silence, specifically the expressions

6.  "fearful" and "never so" Neither occurs in the 1857 book version, where "full of awe" replaces both "awful" AND "fearful."

 F.—"And what was there remarkable in my natural calmness?"

C.—"It was never so! There was a brooding desolation around that could penetrate a sleeping soul!—There is a re-action of extraordinary excitement,—such as ours of yesterday—that has a power over me which renders a profound silence awful—of all else, fearful! Silence! Then, every sentient of my soul has ears, in which air spirits supernaturally whisper distracting, sonorous thoughts:— in darkness, with long unrest, it verges madness...." --March 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

"Pierre," said Isabel, "this silence is unnatural, is fearful. The forests are never so still."
-- Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities

MAY 1853

7. "towns" Reference to sights and insights not perceivable "in cities and towns" has been deleted in revision. The word towns does not appear in the 1857 book version

July 25th.—Last night I was moody and sleepless, and so witnessed several sublime and beautiful changes of weather and sky; such as, indeed, many scarcely notice, and few in houses observe,—as in cities and towns they rarely can.... --May 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border 

but is present in Melville's Pierre (1852):

"there came into the mind of Pierre, thoughts and fancies never imbibed within the gates of towns; but only given forth by the atmosphere of primeval forests...." --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities  

 Related posts:

• from enthusiasm to illusion
• of a pleasant evening
• calmness, natural and preturnatural
• silence, fearful, never so 
• scoffer

calmness, natural and preternatural

Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916), Portrait of Ida, the Artist's Wife, 1898.
via SMK Statens Museum for Kunst - National Gallery of Denmark

preternatural
adj.

1. Out of or being beyond the normal course of nature; differing from the natural.
2. Surpassing the normal or usual; extraordinary.
3. Transcending the natural or material order; supernatural.

---

In Melville's Pierre (1852), the "preternatural calmness" of Isabel is a mask for inner turmoil:

The girl sits steadily sewing; neither she nor her two companions speak. Her eyes are mostly upon her work; but now and then a very close observer would notice that she furtively lifts them, and moves them sideways and timidly toward Pierre; and then, still more furtively and timidly toward his lady mother, further off. All the while, her preternatural calmness sometimes seems only made to cover the intensest struggle in her bosom.  --Pierre

When Scenes Beyond the Western Border resumes in March 1853 after a five-month hiatus, the "natural calmness" of Frank becomes the subject of debate. The very naturalness (even during sleep!) is disputed by the narrator, who regards the calm exterior of his imaginary friend as uncanny, extraordinary, beyond the normal or usual:

F.—"And what was there remarkable in my natural calmness?"

C.—"It was never so! There was a brooding desolation around that could penetrate a sleeping soul! --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, March 1853

The above exchange about "natural calmness" was eventually deleted in revision. In the 1857 book version, the narrator's imaginary friend wakes up cranky after a night of bad dreams. The nightmare that was originally associated with "C." as narrator gets transferred to the imaginary friend--now called "Friend" instead of "Frank." So after revision, the roles are reversed.  Now it is the narrator who represents natural calmness when he cheerfully insists, "it was a calm and beautiful night."

The line with "natural calmness" was cut. And "F." for Frank, that was cut, too.

Also deleted, C's report of "brooding desolation." Yow!

"... ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. --Moby-Dick (The Chapel)

To the brooding soul of the now desolate Israel, so strange a sight roused a supernatural suspicion.  --Israel Potter

sunsets in poetry and prose, and prose-poetry

Oh my! So much to ponder in the June 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border. After several fascinating exchanges, like this one, the final dialogue ends with a poem.  When our narrator the Captain humorously contrasts his own trial verses with the tedious account of a beautiful sunset by his "prosaic" Imaginary Friend (!!!), he is referring back to this earlier description: 

"I was as much struck by the sunset, or rather with the strangeness of its apparent renewal after almost darkness, which the clouds must have occasioned, when they broke away—but it was at the North—what a startling but calm beauty and splendour of colouring appeared; and how long it lasted!"

Notice the odd insistence on calmness,"startling but calm." Some other time I will have to check and see how often the critical Friend advocates or is associated with "calm." For now, here is the poetic tribute to sunset from Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

My old friend has been patient to-night; but I trembled lest he should discover the verses, at which his coming surprised me! And with all his prosaic affectation, he had nearly forestalled them by his tribute to the close of this day, which indeed might, all together, have inspired a buffalo. And if so afraid of his ridicule, how shall I venture to record them? Well, three verses may be overlooked, as it is a first offence.

The sun set in clouds ;—but this glorious day
Parts not in gloom; the thick veil is riven—
And river and sky in lovely array,
Are radiant now with the light of heaven.

Like an aurora, or the flashing trace
Of an angel's flight, to the utmost north
The glory shines: unwilling to deface
The Beautiful, Night hovers o'er the earth.

Gently the chamelion colors fade,—
Slowly ascending to the zenith's height:—
'Till lingering darkness buries all in shade,
And light and beauty bid the world good night.

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, June 1852; and Scenes and Adventures) 

A few more in the same vein:

West, West! West, West! ... Hive of all sunsets! ...

... From dawn till eve, the bright, bright days sped on, chased by the gloomy nights; and, in glory dying, lent their luster to the starry skies. So, long the radiant dolphins fly before the sable sharks but seized, and torn in flames — die, burning:— their last splendor left, in sparkling scales that float along the sea. (Mardi)

"...a bug like the sparkle of a glorious sunset" (The Apple-Tree Table)

"A glorious, softly glorious, and most gracious evening, which seemed plainly a tongue to all humanity, saying: I go down in beauty to rise in joy; Love reigns throughout all worlds that sunsets visit..." (Pierre, 1852)

quick-witted valets

My quick-witted attendant [Kory-Kory] fully appreciated the compliment I was paying to the costume of his race, and began more sedulously to arrange the folds of the one only garment which remained to me.  (Typee)

I. F. ... "Did you ever remark that his valets are often the most intelligent and quickwitted of his characters?" (Scenes Beyond the Western Border, January 1852)

The Captain's Imaginary Friend is talking about valets in the novels of G. P. R. James, specifically Jean Marais in The False Heir.

Strange to say, the servant's name is misspelled Marois in both the magazine and book version.

all the ills

There was on board our ship, among the emigrant passengers, a rich-cheeked, chestnut-haired Italian boy, arrayed in a faded, olive-hued velvet jacket, and tattered trowsers rolled up to his knee. He was not above fifteen years of age; but in the twilight pensiveness of his full morning eyes, there seemed to sleep experiences so sad and various, that his days must have seemed to him years. It was not an eye like Harry's tho' Harry's was large and womanly. It shone with a soft and spiritual radiance, like a moist star in a tropic sky; and spoke of humility, deep-seated thoughtfulness, yet a careless endurance of all the ills of life.

The head was if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow reminded you of a classic vase, piled up with Falernian foliage.

From the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any lady's arm; so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace. His whole figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might have ripened into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies steal in infancy; such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went among the poor and outcast, for subjects wherewith to captivate the eyes of rank and wealth; such a boy, as only Andalusian beggars are, full of poetry, gushing from every rent.

Carlo was his name; a poor and friendless son of earth, who had no sire; and on life's ocean was swept along, as spoon-drift in a gale.
(Redburn)

I address not then, the shallow or hurried worldling; but the friendly one, who in the calm intervals from worldly cares, grants me the aid of a quiet and thoughtful,—and if it may be,—a poetic mood!

Ay de Mi ! Our life is a sad struggle;—our material nature with its base cravings,—its cares for animal comforts, and all the ills of the flesh, preys upon and tethers the soul, which yearns for the Beautiful, the Noble, the Exalted;—essays to soar in that sphere, whose types are the bright stars of Heaven! Or, clings to that electric chain of Love which binds humanity—and in the olden Time drew down angels!
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, July 1852)

drooping flowers, figuratively speaking

Prostrate here and there over the bones of Donjalolo's sires, the royal bacchanals lay slumbering till noon.

"Which are the deadest?" said Babbalanja, peeping in, "the live kings, or the dead ones?"

But the former were drooping flowers sought to be revived by watering....
(Mardi)

There are times thus, on the dullest march,and in the dullest life elsewhere, —when, as by accident, a general excitement comes, as the sudden whirlwind when the sun is reigning with the calmest tyranny; delightfully refreshing, like a shower to drooping flowers, they give our souls new spirit and power to rise from the moral drought of routine and dull material life. 

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, July 1852; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

innocence before tyrants

Well, I mean that fanatics, hypocrites, and malicious gossips generally rule society : sometimes under the cloak of religion, sometimes as envious, presumptuous censors, they intimidate the true and innocent, who resist not, nor despise, — but slavishly cower before their unblushing falsehood....

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 355)

The imputation of tyranny is no great stretch from "intimidate" and "slavishly cower." In the book version, the synoptic Table of Contents describes this section as "Tyranny of Society and Fashion."

Like an icicle-dagger, Goneril at once stabbed and froze; so at least they said; and when she saw frankness and innocence tyrannized into sad nervousness under her spell, according to the same authority, inly she chewed her blue clay, and you could mark that she chuckled.  (The Confidence-man)