Never, never land

"Ah! how very doleful is that plaint! Never, never the doleful!"

--from Scenes Beyond the Western Border (August 1852); and (slightly revised) in Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger 18 (August 1852): 506

The revised 1857 version switches prepositions in and with: calm "with which" revised to calm "in which"; "in fairy creations" then becomes "with fairy creations."

It is near midnight. Silence reigns in the desert; but now and then come the cries of wolves from the mountains. They give an almost supernatural tone to these solemn solitudes. The repose which twenty hours of excitement and toil demand, is banished. Hark! how they howl! Be grandly dreary, and ye will be attuned to the heart! Yes, never better to a sentimental girl the gentlest breathings of an AEolian harp. Ah! how very doleful is that plaint! Never, never, the doleful! Give me the placid calm in which the soul may revel with fairy creations, adorned by all the flowers of thought—or proud action, the storm of wild and passionate will. The gilded and painted memory, or fierce oblivion.

MOBY-DICK (1851)

“Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck; “never, never wilt thou capture him, old man—  --Chapter 134, The Chase—Second Day.

PIERRE (1852)

Then, swear to me, dear Pierre, that thou wilt never keep a secret from me—no, never, never;—swear!" 1852 first edition, page 49

 Nay, nay, groaned Pierre, never, never, could such syllables be one instant tolerated by her. --page 120

And Pierre felt that never, never would he be able to embrace Isabel with the mere brotherly embrace; --page 193

In the same passage from Scenes Beyond the Western Border (August 1852) with "Never, never", the figurative AEolian harp communicates a "plaint" described as "doleful"; in Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (first published at the end of July 1852), Isabel's guitar voices her "melancholy plaints":

But the wonderful melodiousness of her grief had touched the secret monochord within his breast, by an apparent magic, precisely similar to that which had moved the stringed tongue of her guitar to respond to the heart-strings of her own melancholy plaints.  --Page 234

THE PIAZZA (1856)

"Oh, sir," tears starting in her eyes, "the first time I looked out of this window, I said 'never, never shall I weary of this.'"  --first story in Melville's The Piazza Tales

Is anything so beautiful as unbounded faith?

"As full of unquestioning and unfaltering faith in him, the girl sat motionless and heard him out. Then silently rose, and turned her boundlessly confiding brow to him. He kissed it thrice, and without another syllable left the place."

-- Herman Melville, Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (1852). 

 

 C.— "Is anything so beautiful as unbounded faith?"

F.— "Listen! that's 'to horse.'"

C.— "Answer me then!"

F.— "Pshaw!—Of course it's beautiful; or rather, sublime."

C.— "It is the very attribute of human love!"

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger Volume 19, March 1853; and  

Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857 and 1859) page 387.

music and women's rights

Nancy Fredricks on music in Melville's Pierre (1852):

Pierre's enthusiasm for that which lies beyond representation is figured in his devotion to the marginalized Isabel.  …

The poet Pierre’s devotion to Isabel the musician allegorizes a valorization of the nonrepresentational art of music by the literary artist.  In return for Pierre’s devotion, Isabel bestows on him “blessings that are imageless to all mortal fancying.”  “Not mere sounds of common words,” she tells him, “but inmost tones of my heart’s deepest melodies should now be audible to thee.”  When Isabel sings and plays her guitar, Pierre responds by valorizing music over language:  “Any—all words are thine, words and worlds with all their containings shall be slaves to thee.”  “For where the deepest words end,” the narrator tells us, “there music begins with its supersensuous and all-confounding intimations.”

... Isabel’s status as an illegitimate, orphaned, impoverished woman in a patriarchal society situates her on the margins or frame of representation….By valorizing music in Pierre, Melville gives voice to those excluded from the structures of representation.  
(Melville's Art of Democracy)

Meanwhile, in prairie dialogues with his Imaginary Friend, the "Captain of U. S. Dragoons" eloquently advocates for "downtrodden woman" (June 1852) and valorizes music as "the divine art" (May 1853).

 C. —"Labour and depravity are our curse: but blessings too are the high faculties of the soul: among which are poetic fancies,— perception of the beautiful, —romantic yearnings, which were given for cultivation; they elevate man's mind, and

 'Make his heart a spirit-' 

"In cherishing these heaven-descended attributes, we can oft forget that we are animals too.

"Thus Music, whose source and power are in these faculties, is the divine art. If art it be, since the first words spoken by woman upon earth,—as often now,—were rapturous music!"

"Scenes Beyond the Western Border," May 1853
and, with significant revisions, Scenes and Adventures in the Army

 I. F. " Heaven help you of your mood! I give it up."

C. " My mood? I was never in a more sober mood; I feel as cool and practical as any downtrodden woman."

I. F. "Then your antitheses are rather overpowering!"

C. "Yes, he that will follow where truth may lead, may ever startle; I am still at my theme. I attack this semi-civilization, which halts when woman is only no longer like these brutish squaws; and with the help of the faithful drudge herself, builds up a conventional system which defies the powers of human reason; nay, with an infernal perversity, resists the very light of heaven.  But it is a law that we ever seek happiness. 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," June 1852;
and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

silence, fearful, never so

 Herman Melville, Pierre, or The Ambiguities (1852):

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

 "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" in the Southern Literary Messenger Volume 19 (March 1853) page 157:

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..."

Note:  the line with "never so" disappears from this dialogue in Scenes and Adventures in the Army.  Also missing are the words awful and fearful ("fearful" in the revised version becomes "fearfully," thus:  "My watch is lonely and fearfully silent").