More hyphenated compound modifiers

Kurt Stegmüller, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

As everybody knows, the use of  "participial modifiers" and "hyphenated compounds" is typical of Melville's prose in Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852). Citing Walter E. Bezanson on "Moby-Dick: Document, Drama, Dream" (Companion to Melville Studies) and Warner Berthoff on The Example of Melville, the Wikipedia entry for Herman Melville highlights these elements as important, even defining features of Melville's writing style:

Melville's early works were "increasingly baroque"^[87] in style, and with Moby-Dick Melville's vocabulary had grown superabundant. Bezanson calls it an "immensely varied style."^[87] Three characteristic uses of language can be recognized. First, the exaggerated repetition of words, as in the series "pitiable," "pity," "pitied," and "piteous" (Ch. 81, "The Pequod Meets the Virgin"). A second typical device is the use of unusual adjective-noun combinations, as in "concentrating brow" and "immaculate manliness" (Ch. 26, "Knights and Squires").^[88] A third characteristic is the presence of a participial modifier to emphasize and to reinforce the already established expectations of the reader, as the words "preluding" and "foreshadowing" ("so still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene...", "In this foreshadowing interval...").^[89] After the hyphenated compounds of Pierre, words and phrases became less exploratory and less provocative. Instead of providing a lead "into possible meanings and openings-out of the material at hand," the style now served "to crystallize governing impressions."
--Wikipedia/Herman Melville 

Our previous Dragooned post on compound modifiers compared the parallel constructions of "all-forbidding quadrangle" in Melville's Pierre and "world-forbidding battlements" in the September 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border." In the same grammatical vein, many more hyphenated compounds (most with participial -ing forms) occur in Scenes and Adventures in the Army--especially in Part II, first published in 1851-1853 as "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."

These are the ones I have found so far:

1. every heaven-born hue --Scenes and Adventures p64

2. ever-restless youth --Scenes and Adventures p67

 3. ever-varying policy  --Scenes and Adventures p196

4. self-forgetting, thou --December 1851

5. sky-reflecting waters  --January 1852

6. a worn and well-singed rug  --April 1852

7. the spirit-striving chase --April 1852 [hyphen added in book version]

8.  a light dust-bearing breeze  --June 1852

9.  ever varying and fantastic beauties  --June 1852 (no hyphen)

 10. A false and self-consuming fire!  --July 1852

11. gentlemanly and mild-looking man  --July 1852
(hyphen added in revised book version)

12.  the spirit-stirring chase 
--July 1852 (no hyphen in magazine version; added in revision to book version)

13.  ever-heaving surge  --September 1852

14. snow-shining spire  --September 1852

15. river-feeding rain  --September 1852

16. fire-created and blasted, but icy throne!  --September 1852

17. blanket-enduring mornings and evenings 
--September 1852

 18. never-conquered Indians  --September 1852

(please don't forget world-forbidding battlements  --September 1852)

19. cinder-scattering clouds --March 1853

20.  only and all-sufficient revelations  --May 1853 [compounds with all- are frequent in Melville's Pierre, including "all-sufficing income"]

21. Heaven-bestowed key  --May 1853

22-23. many white-robed fair,— the far-reaching couples
--May 1853

24. far-echoing solemn thunders [--May 1853; "thunders" changed to "voice" in book version: revised to "far-echoing voice"]

25. heaven-descended attributes  --May 1853 [deleted in the book version; compare "heaven-begotten Christ" and the "heaven-aspiring, but still not wholly earth-emancipated mood" of Melville's Pierre in Pierre.]

26. cold cloud-attracting and condensing mountain-tops
--August 1853 [here the compound modifier apparently was misunderstood, resulting in typographical error: corrected with hyphen in the book version, Scenes and Adventures, 413]

27. desolation-loving vegetables --August 1853 [compare "utter night-desolation" and "all-desolating" in Melville's Pierre.]

28. — the poor dollar-dealing sinners
(only occurs in book version, Scenes and Adventures p355; added in revision of August 1852 dialogue)

29.  ever-heaving bosom --Scenes and Adventures, p65 ["ever" only occurs in the book version, where "ever-heaving bosom" replaces "sullen heaving bosom" from previous two magazine versions (1835 Military and Naval Magazine and July 1842 Southern Literary Messenger).]

30. heaven-bestowed beauty --Scenes and Adventures p364 (occurs only in the book version, in revised dialogue from the August 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border.)

31. crowd-created and encouraged pleasures  --Scenes and Adventures p65; occurs only in the book version.

 Honorable Mentions from May 1853 :

gala-gloss to all surroundings
glaring ball-room mockery

Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger Volume 18 - September 1852

The September 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" displays at least six hyphenated compounds, the most of any single installment in the series. The next biggest cluster (at least five instances) appears in May 1853. As noted already, such hyphenated compounds prominently contribute to the mannerist style (sometimes termed rococo) of Melville's Pierre, first published in August 1852.

Impressive as the September 1852 group is (for example "snow-shining spire" and "world-forbidding battlements"), I love the May 1853 instances best of all, in particular those employed in describing the fantastic scene adapted from Dante's Paradise:

...the many white-robed fair,— the far-reaching couples, floating in that fairy dance, revolving,—like the moon around the sun, in circling circles.

Then again, dollar-dealing sinners is hard to top, something added later in revision of the August 1852 dialogue.

compound modifiers with "forbidding"

First published within a month of each other, and both texts conjoin "forbidding" with the idea of desolation, with the image of an empty, desolate physical location: 

He held the artless, angelical letter in his unrealizing hand; he started, and gazed round his room, and out at the window, commanding the bare, desolate, all-forbidding quadrangle, and then asked himself whether this was the place that an angel should choose for its visit to earth. -- Herman Melville, Pierre (August 1852) 

I was joined, after our frugal supper of dried meat, at the watch-fire of the bivouac, by my friend Frank, who came, I suppose, to while a dull hour; but to give him his due, he brought up some coffee, and we made in tin cups refreshing and strong sleep-dispelling draughts.

"Heaven knows," he said, "why guards should watch in this valley of desolation, with world-forbidding battlements; we might sleep a month, safe from aught save grizzly bears."  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, September 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 378

Speaking of compound adjectives with hyphens, you probably noticed another one in the example above from the September 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border":

sleep-dispelling draughts

Melville's Pierre is notable for its idiosyncratic and poet-revealing grammar of compound modifiers, such as when the hero proclaims himself to Isabel "thy leapingly-acknowledging brother!" The example of "all-forbidding" occurs immediately after the reading of Lucy Tartan's letter to Pierre in which she promises to keep silent about their love

"till we meet where the ever-interrupting and ever-marring world can not and shall not come." -- Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities 

Also exemplified in Melville's Pierre is the use of compound modifiers with world as the first term. To the unique metaphor of mountains as "world-forbidding battlements" in Scenes Beyond the Western Border, compare:

• world-disdaining counsel

• world-infamous sister

• wide-world-coldness

Related post:

• more hyphenated compound modifiers
  https://dragooned.blogspot.com/2015/02/more-hyphenated-compound-modifiers.html

self-consuming fire

Fire
William Blake

These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.  

--Herman Melville - Moby-Dick (1851)

Guide me, gird me, guard me, this day, ye sovereign powers! Bind me in bonds I can not break; remove all sinister allurings from me; eternally this day deface in me the detested and distorted images of all the convenient lies and duty-subterfuges of the diving and ducking moralities of this earth. Fill me with consuming fire for them; to my life's muzzle, cram me with your own intent. Let no world-syren come to sing to me this day, and wheedle from me my undauntedness.  -- Herman Melville, Pierre (1852)

 "I. F. Ay! it is a fire that consumes; and sometimes burns to ashes the hearts and hopes of proud men..."  -- July 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

The "fire that consumes" got revised to "false and self-consuming fire" in the book version of the July 1852 dialogue:

— A false and self-consuming fire! that sometimes burns to ashes the hearts and hopes of proud men...--Scenes and Adventures in the Army, page 333. 

I. F. in the July 1852 version stands for "Imaginary Friend." In the next installment, August 1852, the Imaginary Friend is named "Frank." In the 1857 book version, all references to the Imaginary Friend have been deleted and "Frank" is just called "Friend."

Has something to say about feudal estates being founded on theft

Image Credit: Allgäuer Seenland

Examples below are both from 1852, and the context in both is book publishing!

Concerning the draught for the title-page, it must be confessed, that on seeing the imposing enumeration of his titles—long and magnificent as those preceding the proclamations of some German Prince ("Hereditary Lord of the back-yard of Crantz Jacobi; Undoubted Proprietor by Seizure of the bedstead of the late Widow Van Lorn; Heir Apparent to the Bankrupt Bakery of Fletz and Flitz; Residuary Legatee of the Confiscated Pin-Money of the Late Dowager Dunker; &c. &c. &c.") Pierre could not entirely repress a momentary feeling of elation.   --Herman Melville, Pierre (August 1852)

If the book be European, and larded with sonorous titles,—treat of antiquities, (venerable in guide books,)—of the stereotyped 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!  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, September 1852

Oh, Life!

Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,—as wild, untutored things are forced to feed—Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human
in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, ye blessed influences!  --Moby-Dick, Dusk

Oh, Life! thou unsought mystery, that springs from nothingness, to grasp at Eternity. Eternity! Awful shadow! incomprehensible Dread! On whose black threshold the spirit shrinks shuddering, — till Hope comes, — like the star in the east.

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

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.

Hamlet on the Prairie

Cub, a Tragedy in Three Acts 

In crossing the Platte this morning, the grizzly bear cub came on the scene in his final act.

It will be remembered by the patient and attentive future reader of this dry and methodical narrative, that its first appearance on any stage, was in "high" tragedy—that the first act embraced an unusual amount of sanguinary incident—that an innocent brother, (or sister,) being ruthlessly slain, and the baffled lady-mother left (unceremoniously) full of towering and demonstrative rage,— the imprisoned hero himself sank overwhelmed,—or in a well-acted counterfeit of death, (and was borne off, remember, on a "real" horse). That in the next act, (and three acts shall do for the tragedy of my bear,—originally they had but one,—but that was at the sacrifice of a goat,) 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.

To-day, then,—for I scorn anachronism— was performed the final act. The stage (wagon) was on "real water." Enraged at his wrongs, his losses, and his galling chain, the "robustious beast" acted in a ridiculous and unbearable manner; aye, ''tore his passion to tatters, to very rags,"—splinters; the stage (wagon) could not hold him: and finally in despair, he "imitated humanity so abominably," as to throw himself headlong, and so drown—or hang himself: (the author cannot decide which—even after a post mortem examination;—and so leaves the decision of this important point to the commentators).

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, Southern Literary Messenger 19 (March 1853): 159
and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857), 390

Along with borrowed words from Herman Melville's Pierre, and borrowed words from the negative review of  Pierre in the New York Herald, and borrowed words from the negative review of Pierre in the New York Literary World, the mock tragedy of the grizzly bear cub explicitly quotes the advice of Hamlet to the players in Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

Breaking all the usual aesthetic rules, even Hamlet's, the uncontrollable cub remains defiant to the end.

ACT III SCENE II	A hall in the castle.
[Enter HAMLET and Players]
HAMLET	Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
	you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
	as many of your players do, I had as lief the
	town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
	too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;	5
	for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
	the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
	a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
	offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
	periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to	10
	very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
	for the most part are capable of nothing but
	inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
	a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
	out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.	15
First Player	I warrant your honour.
HAMLET	Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
	be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
	word to the action; with this special observance o'erstep not
	the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is	20
	from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
	first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
	mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
	scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
	the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,	25
	or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
	laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
	censure of the which one must in your allowance
	o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
	players that I have seen play, and heard others	30
	praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
	that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
	the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
	strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
	nature's journeymen had made men and not made them	35
	well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
First Player	I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us,
	sir.
HAMLET	O, reform it altogether. And let those that play
	your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;	40
	for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to
	set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
	too; though, in the mean time, some necessary
	question of the play be then to be considered:
	that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition	45
	in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.
[Exeunt Players]

--HAMLET, ACT III SCENE II