the mountain prison

"In Pierre the mountain replaces the whale as the central image of materiality, and rocks and stones rather than lines and ropes define the threatening environment in which man is imprisoned.  ...the mountain in Pierre is the mute, material other...."
--Edgar A. Dryden, Melville's Thematics of Form

"Pierre also seems to resemble Enceladus with the mountain thrown down upon him. "
--Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker, Reading Melville's Pierre

 March 1853, Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

My watch is lonely and fearfully silent;— every where a voiceless desert, and mountains like prison-walls; and thus—

"I live and die unheard
With a most voiceless thought."

Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger (March 1853): 157

Revised as follows in Scenes and Adventures in the Army (386-7):

Are these wild mountains impassable barriers, that must prison all sympathy from earthly communion? In vain, in vain! Dull tyrant space wears its stoniest frown;—there is no whisper of life or motion in the air; the elements but echo a human sigh; and thus,

"I live and die unheard
With a most voiceless thought." 

The quoted poetry is from Byron, naturally:
Canto III of  
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

still more on the self-reflexive narrator and scenes of writing

As hinted previously here and here, Edgar A. Dryden's take on the self-reflexive narrator in Melville's Pierre, "brooding over the problems of his craft and linking the meaning of his story to the methods which produce it" (Melville's Thematics of Form, 118) wonderfully describes the narrating "Captain of U. S. Dragoons" and the obsession with problems of narratology in 'Scenes Beyond the Western Border."  

Elizabeth Renker also has critically examined Melville's preoccupation with the "scene of writing."  In Strike through the Mask and her essay on "Unreadability in The Confidence-Man," Renker explores Melville's frequent references to the problems and physical processes of composition as they relate to his characteristic philosophical concern with the pursuit of ideal Truth, always in tension with material necessities and limitations.

Turns out Dryden and Renker on Melville go a long way towards explaining the essential purpose and overarching theme (IDEAL vs REAL) of the dialogues in 'Scenes Beyond the Western Border" between the narrator and his imaginary friend, first named "Frank" in the August 1852 installment.

Previous posts gave examples of the ongoing preoccupation with writing problems, but now I'm wondering, is there any installment in the whole series that does not feature at least one "scene of writing"?  I would guess there must be one at least in every episode.  Am I right?

Let's look and see, checking for at least one "scene of writing":

1. June 1851, big check.  Spectacularly, this opening installment is all about the scene of writing.  The narrator explicitly wishes to befriend one ideal reader.  Indeed, the first incarnation of the "Imaginary Friend" is this ideal reader, personified as the narrator's traveling companion "on the prairie."  Later on in the series, the friendly reader becomes "friend critic" who, when criticizing the narrative in progress, sounds more and more like Herman Melville's critical friend Evert Duyckinck.  Scenes of writing here include very material references to the physical processes of making books, and the advantage of publishing editions with illustrations: 

The idea of publishing a book is terrible; no military reputation could stand it; we, who of all things seek distinction, should be most careful how we mingle with the vulgar herd of--book makers! But if some kind friend should ever introduce thus my unamended scribblings to the world, I warn him not to trust them only to letter press; let one art help out another; not one in a thousand can venture in the guise of "cheap literature" of the day; unless indeed, it be a newspaper extra (subscribed for in advance).  There is virtue in fair wide margins, and pictorial embellishment.

2. September 1851 Plagiarism, Dickens, Irving and inkstands, books, newspapers, magazines, political pamphlet, etc. etc. Another big check!

3. December 1851  Monster check.  Narrator invokes and begins to commune with "IDEAL" realm; then when interrupted by his complaining friend, the narrator reluctantly yields to the critic's demand for realism:

"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. "

 4. January 1852
First line:  "If I can write with gloves, here goes!"  In a tent after supper, the friend "stirs a toddy, reading with difficulty a crabbed manuscript." In other words, reading the narrative in progress. Well, that was easy. Check.

5. April 1852  Friend complains of the narrator's "lamer flight" of poetic fancy that "nearly spoiled" his plain and simple description.  Picture perfect illustration of idealism in tension with materialism, couched in a problem of narrative method:  "I supposed frost and starved horses...would have tempered you to the philosophy of a very materialist."  Another scene has the narrator challenged by his friend to romanticize a prairie wedding:  "I'll wager my meerschaum to those Sioux moccasins, that you make a goose-quill flight of it yet."  The narrator accepts:  "hand me the ink-horn."  Beautiful!  Oh, and check.

6.  May 1852 Dreary realities of march "enough to evaporate an ocean of romance" according to the imaginary friend, who criticizes the narrator for sleeping on the job:  "rapt, past all observation."  Check.

7. June 1852
Checkeroo.

I. F. "... I see you have been making copious notes?"

C. "Yes: do you apprehend that any effort of enthusiasm can add embellishment to the subject?"

This June 1852 number features a surprising scene of writing in which the narrator confesses to writing poetry in secret.  He admits his imaginary friend almost caught him at it, and now at the close of this installment the narrator shares his first three stanzas, quatrains, with the reader:

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.

8.  July 1852
"How do you succeed with your diary now?"  Astronomical incandescent check.  This is also the dialogue giving the narrator's view of his best audience:

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!

9.  August 1852 

"As for myself, with my pipe and pen, and my plum bush—my occupation appears." 

Narrator greeted by his realist friend, now for the first time and hereafter named "Frank," as "most industrious of scribblers" and teased, yet again, as a romantic dreamer.  Huge check.

10.  September 1852  Rant on popular appetite for foreign writers and subjects, along the way lamenting the lack of international copyright.  Huh?

... as a titled and private [hirsute in 1857 correction] foreigner is the exclusive pet of us republicans,—so America is a subject that can in no way excite, interest or tickle us, but through foreign malevolence and ignorance, or the delightful praise of cockney condescension. If the book be European, and larded with sonorous titles, treat of antiquities, (venerable in guide books,)—of the sterreotyped romance of ruins, converted by a prurient imagination from dens of robbers to seats of chivalry, and abodes of beauty,—then, all success to it!

Check please.

11.  March 1853  Even before Cub, a tragedy in three acts we have a scene of writing that depicts the narrator journaling under a tree:

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."

 Check and check.

12.  May 1853
Even before the Dantean fairy dance and unconventional defense of Byron's audacity, a scene of writing you don't want to miss happens when Frank catches the narrator of making a prose poem of the river and trees:

F.—" Hillo! what are you about? Writing in tune with the merry cotton wood leaves? You will have to frankly confess you have invented a new style."

 Triple check.

13.  August 1853 The series ends like it began, all wrapped up in problems of writing, with poetical ideals and art in tension with and often frustrated by materialist pressures of "the real."  Challenged by Frank the narrator insists, "I scribble by no rule" and claims he has been "experimenting."

Check and mate.

Here Frank came in.

"I saw you wandering off, at sundown; have you been attempting a photograph of the calm scene?"

C.—" Ah! no bantering now—there is a dreamy art of more pretension still;—that would paint the heart;—that would fix the wandering thought;—that would delve for discoveries in the deep mine of man's nature!

"But I have been writing, Frank, something for your especial approval; I have been setting forth grim realities,—and most philosophically. I did strike at last, but most naturally and truly, a little vein of—"

F.— "—Poetry, perhaps? by the merest accident in the world."

C.—"Nature is poetry! For what are sunsets often gorgeously beautiful, or delicately lovely, beyond all representation? For what, the endless variety, the exquisite combination of resplendent colours, of tints and hues of beauty in flowers and birds? Not for utility, Frank, but to soften our hearts—to refine and elevate our thoughts. Poetry is Worship!"

F.—"Well, let me hear your specimen of 'grim reality.' If you could only realize the charm of simplicity! For poetry I generally go to Job, David, or Isaiah."

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 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."

F.—"And a rather singular acquaintance will the old gentleman make! Pray why then did you trouble yourself with the dry abstract of our daily doings?"

C.—" Thank-ye for solving—in your complimentary way—a question of my own! I will tell you: I am convinced that written descriptions, not only from carelessness or design, but from inherent imperfection, invariably paint very feebly; and from consciousness of this, are dashed with discoloured exaggerations; they deceive more than they enlighten the imaginations of those who are unable to apply the convictions and the tests of some experience; you perceive, then, that I was experimenting?"

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

more brooding over writing problems

I mean, there's plenty more where that came from.  Like this dialogue between the Captain and his Imaginary Friend (yep) from June 1852:

Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger (June 1852): 413

The close of the above exchange, giving C's sense of his preferred audience, was selected to serve for the epigraph to Scenes and Adventures in the Army:

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!

brooding over the problems of his craft--which is writing

"Here [in Pierre], as in Moby-Dick, the action of the plot is subservient to the activities of a self reflexive narrator at the time of writing.  His methodological metaphors form a special area around the events of the story where the writer sits brooding over the problems of his craft and linking the meaning of his story to the methods which produce it." --Edgar Dryden, Melville's Thematics of Form: The Great Art of Telling the Truth (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968) page 118.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

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—.'" 
-- December 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

* * *

I. F.  "Never was there such an escape! In fact you.did not quite escape, and nearly spoiled your honest but faint description of natural beauties by a lamer flight. Your 'almost happiness!' and 'burden,' of life did you mean? for I never saw one lighter mounted on a finer horse! But I really congratulate you on arriving so safely in a sober 'camp' in the midst of this very flat earth"
-- April 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

* * *

I. F. "... I see you have been making copious notes?"

C. "Yes: do you apprehend that any effort of enthusiasm can add embellishment to the subject?"

I. F. "I must confess, not. There are natural beauties; such as the colouring of sky and cloud, which painter or poet scarce dare attempt to express; nevertheless, there may be in the effort an ill done—an apparent straining for effect, which may deceive a reader into the suspicion of exaggeration." 
-- June 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

 * * *

As for myself, with my pipe and 
pen, and my plum bush — my occupation appears. No- 
thing disturbs me, but that a luckless brood of magpies 
inhabit my plum bush. Heavens! how they chatter! ...

But here comes Frank again: well, rest is evidently not a time for dull narrative.

F.  "Most industrious of scribblers, I give you good evening!  How charming, for a change, is our old friend, Siesta!  I hope the beautiful nymphs of this happy valley, if they suffice you, hovered over your dreams.  But, in truth, I think you dream all day, when no wild bull is a-foot. Hast thou, most favored mortal, tempted an Egeria from her sacred fountain and grove to meet thee, where others groan in very spirit, in the hot and dusty stony barrens?"

C.  You are quite overpowering!  Your dreams surely were spirituous.  But a truce to day-dreams; light as they are, the whole world granteth them not a foundation spot!"

--August 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

 * * *

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."
--March 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border

 * * *

Here Frank came in.

"I saw you wandering off, at sundown; have you been attempting a photograph of the calm scene?"

C.—" Ah! no bantering now—there is a dreamy art of more pretension still;—that would paint the heart;—that would fix the wandering thought;—that would delve for discoveries in the deep mine of man's nature!

"But I have been writing, Frank, something for your especial approval; I have been setting forth grim realities,—and most philosophically. I did strike at last, but most naturally and truly, a little vein of—"

F.— "—Poetry, perhaps? by the merest accident in the world."

C.—"Nature is poetry! For what are sunsets often gorgeously beautiful, or delicately lovely, beyond all representation? For what, the endless variety, the exquisite combination of resplendent colours, of tints and hues of beauty in flowers and birds? Not for utility, Frank, but to soften our hearts—to refine and elevate our thoughts. Poetry is Worship!"

F.—"Well, let me hear your specimen of 'grim reality.' If you could only realize the charm of simplicity! For poetry I generally go to Job, David, or Isaiah."

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 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."

F.—"And a rather singular acquaintance will the old gentleman make! Pray why then did you trouble yourself with the dry abstract of our daily doings?"

C.—" Thank-ye for solving—in your complimentary way—a question of my own! I will tell you: I am convinced that written descriptions, not only from carelessness or design, but from inherent imperfection, invariably paint very feebly; and from consciousness of this, are dashed with discoloured exaggerations; they deceive more than they enlighten the imaginations of those who are unable to apply the convictions and the tests of some experience; you perceive, then, that I was experimenting?"

-- August 1853, final installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

inkstands

"Whenever he wrote of literature, Melville tended to write about the process of writing in general, and his own in particular."

--Frederick Busch on "Melville's Mail" in A Dangerous Profession: A Book About the Writing Life (St. Martin's Press, 1998). 

"And D'Israeli, the younger, the sparkler! whose first book is his best and is immortal. I read, an odd volume of Vivian Grey every year.

"And Lever!—the bright coiner—so they say—of other men's ore!

"And Cooper! the American Scott, who still more than his model, wrote his brain as dry as a broken ink stand! 

-- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, September 1851

... I hope I shall never write such a book again -- Tho' when a poor devil writes with duns all round him, & looking over the back of his chair -- & perching on his pen & diving in his inkstand -- like the devils about St: Anthony -- what can you expect of that poor devil? -- What but a beggarly Redburn! --Letter to Evert Duyckinck, December 14 1849 

"Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand!"   -- Moby-Dick quoted by Gina McKnight

"... those treacherous plague-spots of indigence—videlicet, blots from the inkstand;"
-- Pierre: Or, The Ambiguities

 "The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether too energetic. There was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand. All his blots upon my documents, were dropped there after twelve o'clock, meridian."  -- Bartleby, the Scrivener in Putnam's Monthly for November 1853

amigo mio

Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker on the break between Herman Melville and Evert Duyckinck in early 1852: 

"Only a dramatic personal confrontation just at this time, a meeting in which Duyckinck told Melville that he could not recommend the work to any publisher, seems adequate to account for the anger Melville displayed toward his friend in what he inserted into his manuscript a week or so into January."

"... Duyckinck's blunt condemnation of Pierre is the most likely cause of Melville's apparent decision not even to try to find another publisher for his manuscript."
(Reading Melville's Pierre 147)

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!   (April 1852)

"I. F." stands for "Imaginary Friend," later in this same installment also called "friend critic."   Just now the Captain is feeling abandoned, deserted again by a friend

"on the eve of a snowstorm." 

the moral of the story

"Beyond any doubt Duyckinck considered Pierre immoral:  we know that from the review he later wrote of the expanded version that the Harpers published."
Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker, Reading Melville's Pierre, 147

"The most immoral moral of the story, if it has any moral at all, seems to be the impracticability of virtue..."
(Review of Melville's Pierre in Duyckincks' Literary World, August 21, 1852)

 My tragedy is all true,—and if not quite serious, has, as is proper, its moral;—but rather, as I have alluded to the primitive tragedy, let that " future reader" here imagine the entry of Chorus, and their song to Freedom! That dumb beasts prefer death to slavery! Liberty lost, they can die without the excitement of the world's applause, or hopes of a grateful posterity! (It is not possible, I think, that the cub could have known that I would immortalize him.)
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," March 1853)

Below, the whole mockudrama as it originally appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger for March 1853.  This installment begins with a new and unique feature, a subheading with synopses of major episodes in italics.  The subheading shows that with the series winding down, the writer is getting ready to make a book of it, experimenting with italicized synopses for the table of contents.  The tale of the captured grizzly cub burlesques Greek tragedy and Shakespeare's Hamlet, while at the same time—as shown here—mimicking the vocabulary used in the hurtful review of Pierre in the New York Herald (September 18, 1852).  In the 1853 subheading, this incredible episode is titled:   Cub, a tragedy in three acts; same title appears in the table of contents for the 1857 book version, only with initial capital letters and without the italics:  Cub, a Tragedy in Three Acts.

Cub, a tragedy in three acts
March 1853

So there is a moral, after all.  And YOW what a moral!