Buoyant added and subtracted in revision

Among other significant changes the word buoyant was added in revision of the August 1852 dialogue in Scenes Beyond the Western Border between the narrating Captain of U. S. Dragoons and "Frank," his imaginary friend. As revised in Part II of Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857), the narrator feels "buoyant and bitter," elevated in spirit by the "wild mountain air" near Devil's Gate and the South Pass of the Rockies.

"I am only in a mood; buoyant and bitter; tameless as the Arab coursing his native desert; free as yonder soaring eagle! it's this wild mountain air!"

Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857) page 355

The 1852 passage had "wild mountain air" but not buoyant:

Southern Literary Messenger
August 1852

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.”

C. “And get the best of it! Ah! my good friend, let this wild mountain air have fair play; let us with the desert's freedom joyously flout convention and opinion—upstart usurpers!—let us make mocking sport of the prosaic solemnity of ignorant prejudice;—let us shoot popguns at least, against the solid bulwarks where folly and selfishness sit enthroned!" 

F. “Then fire away!—though hang me if I know what you mean.”

Scenes Beyond the Western Border - August 1852 

https://books.google.com/books?id=-AkNAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA508&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

In the original version of Melville's short story "Benito Cereno," buoyant occurs in the November 1855 issue of Putnam's Monthly Magazine:

"Possibly, the vexation might have been something different, were it not for the buoyant confidence inspired by the breeze."

https://books.google.com/books?id=i_FIAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA472&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

But the book version in The Piazza Tales (1856) replaces buoyant with brisk, thus:

"Possibly, the vexation might have been something different, were it not for the brisk confidence inspired by the breeze."

https://archive.org/details/piazztales00melvrich/page/222/mode/2up

Both usages link the elevated, "buoyant" mood to an experience of fresh air: sea "breeze" in the magazine version of "Benito Cereno"; and "wild mountain air" in Scenes and Adventures in the Army. 

Related posts:

• Why can't you forget the past?
  https://dragooned.blogspot.com/2012/06/why-cant-you-forget-past.html 

• the mind gets morbid
  https://dragooned.blogspot.com/2011/06/mind-gets-morbid.html

• Human fiends
  https://dragooned.blogspot.com/2019/02/human-fiends.html
  
  
• Deleted in revision
  https://dragooned.blogspot.com/2014/04/deleted-in-revision.html

Deleting "as of a"; adding direful and Titanic

Suddenly, with  a crash, as of a mountain of rock torn asunder....  --May 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

Revisions to the May 1853 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" in the Southern Literary Messenger include deletion of the simile introduced with the expression, "as of a...." Cutting "as of a" transforms the metaphorical "mountain of rock" into literal "rocks," vividly re-figured after revision as "Titanic."

But suddenly, with a direful crash amid the Titanic rocks....  --Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Also added in revision, along with "Titanic": the adjective "direful" that describes the "crash" which has been made a more immediate and literal, less metaphorical sound, by deleting "as of a." Deleted or added, the verbal elements of this fascinating revision site are all exampled in Herman Melville's writing. The words direful and Titanic feature with particular significance in Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852), respectively.

AS OF A

And now, loud above the roar of the sea, was suddenly heard a sharp, splintering sound, as of a Norway woodman felling a pine in the forest.  --Mardi: And A Voyage Thither

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

DIREFUL
The word direful occurs 10x in Moby-Dick; or The Whale for example:

white curds of the whale's direful wrath --Moby Dick

Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; --The Town-Ho's Story

That direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary recluseness.--Ahab's Leg

and once in Pierre; or, The Ambiguities:

 not entirely untempered to human nature are the most direful blasts of Fate. 

TITANIC
4x in Pierre; or The Ambiguities

a fearful pile of Titanic bricks 

 this Inferno of his Titanic vision.

the mountain once called Delectable, but now styled Titanic.

But now at last since the very blood in his body had in vain rebelled against his Titanic soul;

Such was the wild scenery—the Mount of Titans,

Related post:

• Memnon and Mount Pike

summer mornings, unwanted in revision

Here's something I need to add to the catalog of words or phrases that appear in Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) or Pierre (1852) and the 1851-1853 magazine series "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" but were later deleted or somehow revised out of the book version, Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857). Previous Dragooned posts listing similarly deleted items are

• five things deleted in revision

• from enthusiasm to illusion

• of a pleasant evening, and chronometry

Looking harder at revisions to the May 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, I see the expression "summer mornings" does not appear in the 1857 book version.

May 1853:

"But, as in summer mornings when birds sweetly sing, and rosy mists add beauty to the fair prospect, the sun rises to give a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green,—so, always to such happy scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!"  --May 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border 

No exemplary "summer mornings" appear after revision. Instead of multiple "summer mornings," we get the single representative "summer dawn," now (with the help of "rosy" transplanted from the earlier expression "rosy mists") a "rosy summer dawn":

The rosy summer dawn is lovely, and sweetly the birds sing in its praise;—but lo! the sun appears, and gives a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green;—so, always to such pleasant scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!   --Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Revised out of the May 1853 text, the unwanted reference to "summer mornings" occurs in the first sentence of Melville's Pierre, first published in August 1852.

THERE are some strange summer mornings in the country, when he who is but a sojourner from the city shall early walk forth into the fields, and be wonder-smitten with the trance-like aspect of the green and golden world. Not a flower stirs; the trees forget to wave; the grass itself seems to have ceased to grow; and all Nature, as if suddenly become conscious of her own profound mystery, and feeling no refuge from it but silence, sinks into this wonderful and indescribable repose.  --Pierre, or, The Ambiguities

But as in...—so,...!

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!  --Moby-Dick, The Lee Shore

"But, as in summer mornings when birds sweetly sing, and rosy mists add beauty to the fair prospect, the sun rises to give a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green,—so, always to such happy scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!"  --May 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

Look at this, will you? The nifty parallelism nearly vanishes in revision:

The rosy summer dawn is lovely, and sweetly the birds sing in its praise;—but lo! the sun appears, and gives a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green;—so, always to such pleasant scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!   --Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Although the "so" clause remains in the book version, the distinctive sentence-starter "But as in" has been eliminated. After revision, the formerly dependent first clause is now independent.

Yikes!

Image Credit: ewallpapers-hub.com

locomotive bipeds and state-room sailors

Image Credit: Steamboat Times

Point is, they should quit whining:

At the foot of these rapids was a passenger barge in tow of a steam keel-boat, with about twenty passengers, who had already waited some two weeks with Turkish resignation, for fate, or higher water, to forward them on their journey. Genius of railroads! spirit of a travelling age! Think, ye eastern locomotive bipeds, who, spirited over the earth at the rate of 600 miles a day, snarl at the grievous detention of a minute,—think of this, and learn moderation.

--Notes and Reminiscences No. 3 (Army and Navy Chronicle / July 23, 1840); and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (June 1842; 1857)

Deleted from the first page of Typee:

Oh! ye state-room sailors, who make so much ado about a fourteen-days’ passage across the Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking champaign punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little cabinets of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with nothing to disturb you but “ those good-for-nothing tars, shouting and tramping over head,”—what would ye say to our six months out of sight of land?

Cut by Melville along with many other expurgations, the passage above does not appear in the Revised American edition of Typee. On the likely reason for this particular deletion, Bryan C. Short observes:

Removal of the “state-room sailors” passage dispels an early belligerence out of tune with Tommo’s narrative personality in the rest of the work. --Bryan C. Short, "The Author at the Time": Tommo and Melville's Self-Discovery in Typee.

Washington Irving's very fluid text

As we saw last time around, our extraordinarily literary Captain of U. S. Dragoons digs wide margins. Now let's look at how the same imagery of book production is immediately extended, in the same opening installment (June 1851), to describe the work of one particular writer, Washington Irving. Irving's fine writing is a river of text "flowing through broad margins" like "a crystal streamlet purling through shady groves." Book margins become banks of a river. This text-as-stream metaphor exploits multiple senses of the word margin that Wyn Kelley talked about in her 2012 presentation at MIT, margin as space on a page, as "ground immediately adjacent to a river or body of water; a river bank, a shore, etc. (OED)," and (especially in view of the series title "Beyond the Western Border") as a physical and metaphysical border or boundary. To illustrate the beautiful and natural fluidity of Irving's prose, the Captain quotes from memory a sentence in Knickerbocker's History of New York. Here is the passage as it appeared in the first installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border":

They have spared Irving, his writings, flowing through broad margins of letter press; to what can we compare them, but to a crystal streamlet purling through flowery savannahs and sweet shady groves; and anon delving into cave-like clefts,—romantic recesses, where, of old, the fairies sought shelter from the glare of day. "And the smooth surface of the Bay presented a polished mirror in which Nature saw herself and smiled." Were I an eastern monarch,—who had stuffed the mouths of poets with sugar and gold—how could I have rewarded such a writer?  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, June 1851

The Captain's admiring quotation from Irving is only slightly off. In Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York, the temporarily peaceful scene is New York Harbor, pictured during the narrator's stroll on The Battery:

It was one of those rich autumnal days, which heaven particularly bestows upon the beauteous island of Mannahata and its vicinity—not a floating cloud obscured the azure firmament—the sun, rolling in glorious splendour through his ethereal course, seemed to expand his honest Dutch countenance into an unusual expression of benevolence, as he smiled his evening salutation upon a city, which he delights to visit with his most bounteous beams—the very winds seemed to hold in their breaths in mute attention, lest they should ruffle the tranquillity of the hour—and the waveless bosom of the bay presented a polished mirror, in which nature beheld herself and smiled.—The standard of our city, reserved like a choice handkerchief, for days of gala, hung motionless on the flag staff, which forms the handle to a gigantic churn; and even the tremulous leaves of the poplar and the aspen, ceased to vibrate to the breath of heaven. Every thing seemed to acquiesce in the profound repose of nature. --A History of New York

But getting back to the prairie: the 1857 book version of the tribute to Irving further extends the river metaphor. After revision, Irving's "writings" as they were plainly referred to in the June 1851 text, are now "liquid sentences":

They have spared Irving: his liquid sentences flowing through glittering margins of fairest typography,—to what can we compare them, but to a crystal streamlet purling amid flowery savannas and sweet shady groves; and anon delving into cave-like clefts,—romantic recesses, where, of old, the fairies sought shelter from the glare of day. "And the smooth surface of the Bay presented a polished mirror in which Nature saw herself and smiled." Were I an Eastern monarch,—who had stuffed the mouths of poets with sugar and gold—how could I have rewarded such a writer?  --Scenes and Adventures in the Army

In other revisions to the June 1851 text, "broad margins" have become "glittering margins"; and the mention of "letter press" has been dropped in favor of "fairest typography." That word glittering, by the way, is a favorite of Melville's and potentially significant as a handy tool of revision. Melville likes the adjective so much he inserts "glittering" into his paraphrase of Trumbull's pamphlet biography Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel Potter.

Trumbull's original:

"This proved a very profitable trip, as I very soon disposed of every article at an advance of more than two hundred per cent . . . ."  --Life and Remarkable Adventures

Melville's rewrite:

"This Canadian trip proved highly successful. Selling his glittering goods at a great advance . . . ."  --Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile

In both versions of the prairie tribute to Irving, the controlling metaphor of Irving's writing as a gently winding river or "streamlet" of words closely echoes the passage in Redburn (1849) where Melville's narrator Wellingborough describes the sweet singing of his London friend and now shipmate Harry Bolton:

His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person like his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through the words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by pied and pansied margins.
--Melville's Redburn

In Redburn, Harry treated Wellingborough to The Banks of the Blue Moselle.

Yow! John Bryant, who wrote the book on The Fluid Text, and invented the Revision Narrative, and somewhere devotes a whole chapter to The Example of Irving, should love this one.

Diedrich Knickerbocker, drawing by Felix O. C. Darley

Related posts:

• More on margins, above and below
  https://dragooned.blogspot.com/2014/10/more-on-margins-above-and-below.html

• Wide margins and pictorial embellishment
  https://dragooned.blogspot.com/2014/09/wide-margins-and-pictorial-embellishment.html

you fly from me (in extravagant imagery and metaphors of love)

Another item for the list of things deleted in revision of Scenes Beyond the Western Border but appearing in Melville's Pierre. Several bits later deleted in revision are from the August 1852 installment, which appeared almost simultaneously with Pierre, first published at the end of July 1852.

Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

C. " Beauty! I worship beauty! I enjoy it in the tiny flower—it absorbs me in the bright spring landscape, where Nature has kindly played the artist, or in the sunset clouds which methinks good angels paint in heaven's own colours; it enchants me in smiling eyes and lips wreathing their divine intelligence with a halo of love!" 

F. "Bravo!" 

C. "Thus love at last, as love at first—all absorbing—feeding upon music,—sporting with war;—love, the link of earth to heaven,—love is all in all!" 

(F. "He must have been reading Saint John!") 

C. "The beauty, then, which now soothes me momentarily, is but a sweet minister to the soul—to which absence is the doomed evil, but space immaterial—and leads it with a melancholy joy, to the imaginative communion of love."

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." 
(August 1852)

 Melville's Pierre:

"Fie, now, Pierre; why should ye youths always swear when ye love!"

"Because in us love is profane, since it mortally reaches toward the heaven in ye!"

"There thou fly'st again, Pierre; thou art always circumventing me so...." (Pierre, 1852)

In the 1857 book version, instead of the line about flying off into extravagant fancies, the Captain's imaginary friend says this:

Friend. — You are a monomaniac, by Jove! incapable of argument, or even conversation. 

" I detest argument! it is the favorite resort of fools, to convince — themselves."

of a pleasant evening

Add this, "of a pleasant _______ evening" to the list of things deleted in revision of Scenes Beyond the Western Border that appear in Pierre.  Along with the embrace of enthusiasm.

August 1852:

C. " ... You will allow me at least, on your own recommendation to note the fact in my journal?" 

F. " Of course; but with becoming modesty. It is enough to ruffle one, to have such a long word thrust at him, of a pleasant summer evening, and a thousand miles from a library." 

C. "But, good heavens! do not condemn a word for its length. Paleontology is an almost poetical triumph, which throws an attractive grace over the sterility of geognostic investigations and symbols on the human tombs, which throw beams of startling light over the obscurity of fabulous antiquity,—so when we discover the traces or remains of existing, or the extinct life of the old world, their natural tombs—the fossil rocks—are monuments on which Time thus records their relative ages. It is a beautiful chronometry of the earth's surface!"  (Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852)

Pierre (1852):

On some distant business, with a farmer-tenant, he had been absent from the mansion during the best part of the day, and had but just come home, early of a pleasant moonlight evening, when Dates delivered a message to him from his mother, begging him to come for her about half-past seven that night to Miss Llanyllyn's cottage, in order to accompany her thence to that of the two Miss Pennies.  (Pierre)

While we're at it, let's add "chronometry" as well, also deleted in revision of Scenes Beyond the Western Border for the 1857 book:

Friend.—I am decidedly non-committal; but it is enough to ruffle one, to have such a long word thrust at him, amid all the charm of a complete laisser aller in a glorious wilderness, a thousand miles from all the schools of pedantic, groping, and guessing philosophy.

"But, good heavens! do not condemn a word for its length. Paleontology is an almost poetical triumph, which throws an attractive grace over the sterility of geognostic investigation. As we eagerly decipher the inscriptions and symbols on the human tombs, which throw beams of startling light over the obscurity of fabulous antiquity;—so, when we discover the traces or remains of the extinct life of the old world, their natural tombs—the fossil rocks—are monuments by which Time thus records their relative ages."

Friend. —Allow me then a few years of devotion to the study of the analysis of primitive zoology and botany, and I will then, if possible, give you my speculations with all the boldness of poetical science upon the formation and age of the continent—all by the light of your chronological, fossiliferous, infernal shell!
(Scenes and Adventures in the Army 360)

See, no more reference to chronometry after revision. Plenty of references to chronometry in Pierre, however, once Melville introduces and begins to describe the damaged pamphlet of Plotinus Plinlimmon titled CHRONOMETRICALS AND HOROLOGICALS.

"Bacon's brains were mere watch-maker's brains; but Christ was a chronometer; and the most exquisitely adjusted and exact one, and the least affected by all terrestrial jarrings, of any that have ever come to us." 

(from Plinlimmon's pamphlet-lecture on Chronometricals and Horologicals in Pierre)

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)

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

With happy something: revising the start of Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Revisions reveal the writer's choices and perhaps something of the writer's creative process. Choosing this over that word, phrase, grammatical construction may show on occasion a distinctive bit of one's identity--or personality, or persona.

Here now, some good things from the comparison of three beginnings to Scenes and Adventures in the Army.  The latest is the 1857 book version, where the writer took some pains to revise the language of the 1842 magazine version in the Southern Literary Messenger, which had already been revised from the 1840 version of a differently titled magazine series in a different magazine, the Army and Navy Chronicle.

Check this out, from what originally was the second paragraph.  Here's the 1840 version. Those interesting asterisks mean something has already been left out, cut.  What was cut, I wonder? 

The stage was at the door. * * *. Relieved from those sorrowful partings which harrow the soul, but can scarce touch the sympathies of elastic youth and inexperience, I enjoyed the rapid motion of the coach, always exhilarating, but which was then fast severing me, perhaps forever, from my best friends, and all the familiar scenes of childhood.  (1840 Notes and Reminiscences)

Then we have the 1842 magazine version. In revision the writer or editor suppresses a few symptoms of juvenile wordiness, replacing the idea of torture in "harrow the soul" with more neutral "pains"; and deleting the word "inexperience" as redundant.  But the 1842 version still keeps the asterisks!  

The stage was at the door. * * *. Relieved from those sorrowful partings, from the pains of which elastic youth recovers so soon, I enjoyed the rapid motion of the coach, always exhilarating, but which was then fast severing me, perhaps forever, from friends, and all the familiar scenes of childhood.  (1842 Scenes and Adventures in the Arm)

https://books.google.com/books?id=KepEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA405&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

Thirdly, the 1857 book version.  Asterisks are gone, removing now any evidence that something was cut from the manuscript, before even the first 1840 printing. In 1857 it is deemed desirable to specify "stage-coach," instead of only "stage."

By 1857 the writer has learned, too, that one-sentence paragraphs improve readability.

And in a nifty trick of compressed subordination, "over" eliminates the need for "relieved from."  More compression: "pains" gone, recognizing possibly they are implied in "sorrowful," yet also postponing and re-assigning them to others, hurting family members whose "hearts" are newly understood to have "trembled painfully."  And will you look at this? With improved subordination, you really don't need all these words: "of which elastic youth recovers so soon." No, you revise the second clause to just say "with happy elasticity":

The stage-coach was at the door.

Those sorrowful partings over, with happy elasticity, I was soon enjoying the rapid motion of the coach--always exhilarating--but then severing me from the safe haven of home affections, and hearts which trembled painfully as I was thus launched on life's perilous voyage.  (1857 book)

 Who talks like that?

  Ah God! may Time with happy haste

  Bring wail and triumph to a waste,

    And war be done;   

(Donelson, from Battle-Pieces by Herman Melville)

Finally, the nautical metaphor was also added in revision of the 1842 magazine version of Scenes and Adventures in the Army, itself a revision of the 1840 Notes and Reminiscences of An Officer of the Army.  This nautical metaphor, I mean, figuring (at the beginning of the memoir) home as secure port ("safe haven"), adult life as a hazardous journey at sea: "launched on life's perilous voyage."

...one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.  (Moby-Dick)

Shared at Juxta Commons, Revising Scenes Beyond the Western Border

A portion of the December 1851 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" was extensively revised for the 1857 book, Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

To view the texts side by side and see the changes, go to Revising Scenes Beyond the Western Border at Juxta Commons.