Memnon and Mount Pike

Revisions to the May 1853 episode of Scenes Beyond the Western Border included deletion of the simile comparing a loud "crash" of thunder to the sound of splitting rock. The deleted figure begins with the formula, "as of a..."; thus:

".. as of a mountain of rock torn asunder."

Southern Literary Messenger - May 1853

In Pierre (1852) Melville poetically describes the Egyptian monument to Memnon that in ancient times made a musical sound when first struck by sunlight every morning. Melville's Memnon passage includes a close parallel to the deleted simile in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border." Using the same "as of a..." formula, Melville in Pierre compares the sound once emitted from the stone monument to the sound of a breaking harp-string:

Touched by the breath of the bereaved Aurora, every sunrise that statue gave forth a mournful broken sound, as of a harp-string suddenly sundered, being too harshly wound. --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities

 Both similes begin with as + of + a; both employ a form of sunder:

as of a harp-string suddenly sundered (Pierre)

as of a mountain of rock torn asunder (Scenes Beyond the Western Border)

The example from "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" does not appear in the 1857 book version.

MAY 1853

The storm which had followed the higher range, was now in our front; sporting as with fierce joy, amid the mountain tops. Suddenly, with a crash, as of a mountain of rock torn asunder, lightning revealed through a vista of black and magnificently wild array of clouds, Mount Pike,—splendent with the glare, but simple, serene, sublime amid the chaos of elemental war. Like a fata morgana, turned to stone. --May 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

1857

But the storm which had followed the higher range, now came sweeping on, sporting as with fierce joy amid the mountain tops; and here, and there, and far, the spectral peaks seemed rising to the capricious gleams, and many-voiced Echo swelled the glorious diapason. Sport and music of the Gods!—O! it was joy unspeakable, to stand thus on the very throne of the storm, whilst its fierce wings hurtled the mountains around,—and the wanton thunderbolts made the elements to tremble! But suddenly, with a direful crash amid the Titanic rocks, there came a wondrous glare, that revealed through a vista of the black array of clouds, Mount Pike, splendent, sublime, serene, amid the chaotic war!—like a Fata Morgana, turned to stone. --Scenes and Adventures in the Army

 Also deleted: the adjective elemental, lost in revision of "chaos of elemental war" to "chaotic war."

The deleted idea of warfare among the elements occurs also in Melville's Pierre, with reference to the Fountain of Enceladus. Melville figures it as "elemental rivalry," in this instance between water and volcanic fire. In the Enceladus Grove at the Palace of Versailles, the water spouting from the mouth of the fallen Titan figuratively battles the fire that Enceladus supposedly breathed, being buried under Mount Etna. Melville in Pierre is comparing a local rock formation dubbed "Enceladus" to Gaspard Marsy's Versailles sculpture of Enceladus,

"from whose still twisted mouth for sixty feet the waters yet upgush, in elemental rivalry with those Etna flames, of old asserted to be the malicious breath of the borne-down giant...." --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities

Related post:

• Deleting as of a

Rewriting the Sweetwater, August 1852

Photo by Tom Rea via WyoHistory

This is only a sample of the extensive rewrite inspired by Philip St George Cooke's 1845 description in Sketches of the Great West of the "coquetting" Sweetwater. The rewrite, including added dialogue between the narrator and his imaginary prairie friend "Frank," runs through two installments of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852 and September 1852. Here I want to isolate a few of the elements added in revision.

From Cooke's 1845 Sketches of the Great West:

The beautiful Sweetwater, pure as the ice from which it flows over golden (mica) sands, seems carefully to avoid a blue range of fir-clad mountains, which bounds its wide valley at the south, and cleaves to the primitive rocks―

From "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," August 1852 installment:

... certain it is, this merry little river, whose sparkling waters often demurely purl over golden sands, this very coquette of all the mountain offspring, if it ever approaches the fir-clad mountains of soft, inviting blue, turns suddenly back; leaves, too, the grassy bed of the valley, and cleaves to the stern rocks....

"beautiful" revised to "merry little"
"a kind of merry little walk" --Melville's January 20, 1845 letter to his sister, Kate 

sparkling added: a favorite adjective to describe water in Melville's writing, for example: 

"streams of sparkling water" --Encantadas Sketch Fourth 

"flows" changed to "demurely purl"

"Down each of these little valleys
flows a clear stream, here and there assuming the form of a
slender cascade, then stealing invisibly along until it burst upon
the sight again in larger and more noisy waterfalls, and at last
demurely wanders along to the sea." --Typee

"watered by purling brooks"  --Typee, chapter 2

grassy added

Oh, grassy glades! --Moby-Dick, The Gilder  

the grassy billows --John Marr 

"primitive" revised to "stern" 

"... some stern thing of antediluvian art." --Herman Melville's Pierre

Melville's use of "stern" with "antediluvian' in the Enceladus chapter from Pierre makes a fascinating association in view of the revision from "primitive rocks" to "stern rocks" in Scenes Beyond the Western Border. Melville's narrator also is describing remarkable rocks, and one in particular named "Enceladus" after the ancient Titan. Melville's expression "stern thing of antediluvian art" involves the same mental or conceptual association of "primitive" and "stern" evident in the 1852 revision.

In mid field again you paused among the recumbent sphinx-like shapes thrown off from the rocky steep. You paused; fixed by a form defiant, a form of awfulness. You saw Enceladus the Titan, the most potent of all the giants, writhing from out the imprisoning earth;—turbaned with up-born moss he writhed; still, though armless, resisting with his whole striving trunk, the Pelion and the Ossa hurled back at him ;—turbaned with upborn moss he writhed; still turning his unconquerable front toward that majestic mount eternally in vain assailed by him, and which, when it had stormed him off, had heaved his undoffable incubus upon him, and deridingly left him there to bay out his ineffectual howl. 

To Pierre this wondrous shape had always been a thing of interest, though hitherto all its latent significance had never fully and intelligibly smitten him. In his earlier boyhood a strolling company of young collegian pedestrians had chanced to light upon the rock; and, struck with its remarkableness, had brought a score of picks and spades, and dug round it to unearth it, and find whether indeed it were a demoniac freak of nature, or some stern thing of antediluvian art.

Image Credit: Stone Structures

his sentence-ending howl

In the mock tragedy "Cub," the captive bear cub turns defiant and frightens onlookers with his fierce "howl" of protest:

"... he came to life in a manner that might very well have been criticized as an overdone piece of stage-effect,—but that in fact, the spectators were much moved, and gave full credit to the dangerous passion of his howl.

Scenes Beyond the Western Border, (March 1853): 159 and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857), 390

Verbally ("his howl") and thematically (imprisoned hero protests), the narrative from "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" replicates the situation of Enceladus the Titan in Melville's Pierre (1852).  In Pierre Melville's "form defiant" is a half-buried hillside boulder that looks like the defeated giant Enceladus, "writhing from out the imprisoning earth":

—turbaned with upborn moss he writhed; still turning his unconquerable front toward that majestic mount eternally—in vain assailed by him, and which, when it had stormed him off, had heaved his undoffable incubus upon him, and deridingly left him there to bay out his ineffectual howl. -- Pierre

Ooh! Meditating on these sentence-ending howls along with the playful use in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" of language from negative reviews of Pierre (demonstrated here and here and here), not forgetting Harrison Hayford on Melville's Prisoners, I am about ready to declare victory and go home.