"Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye insult me. It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he's bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and start my soul-bolts, but I'll—I'll—yes, I'll swallow a live goat with all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured son of a wooden gun—a straight wake with ye!" --Moby-Dick, Ch 16 The Ship
I.F. "Ah! gazing at the stars? The three mortal hours we passed on the
verge of the table land, whilst the guide sought a clew to this strange
labyrinth of hills, or mountains—"
C. "And found it, much thanks to the buffalo, and the aid of their paths—"
I. F. "Were enough, with an empty stomach, to evaporate an ocean of romance."
C. "Considering, too, how dry it was; we had not drank for thirteen hours."
I.F. "Considering, too, you slipped off alone to the island yesterday,
and 'fell asleep;' but as I verily believe, only dreamed; for, in our
silent ride to overtake the regiment, you were still rapt, past all
observation." --May 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Love me she doth, thought Pierre, but how? Loveth she me with the love past all understanding? --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities
Those
must have been hard gales, Don Benito."
"Past all speech," cringed the Spaniard. --Benito Cereno
The beginning of Typee displays another of Melville's techniques, what can be called promiscuous apostrophe. He begins by addressing the reader directly, fades into soliloquy, and in subsequent paragraphs addresses the rooster, another sailor, and the "poor old ship" itself. The impression created is of a voice ready to fix on any imaginable auditor. --Bryan C. Short on Melville's Self-Discovery in Typee
Oh reader! "gentle" or not,—I care not a whit,—so you are honest—I will tell you a secret. I write not to be read, and I swear never even to transcribe for your benefit, unless I change my mind. All I want is a good listener; I want to converse with you; and if you are absolutely dumb, why I will sometimes answer for you.
But "Oh reader!" only makes one apostrophe—when does it get promiscuous? From the same first chapter:
Oh, wide and flat,—shall I say "stale and unprofitable"—prairies! ...
Oh, gentle Herald [Mercury], that I could fly with thee!
Oh! ye hypocrites,—demagogues....
"Friend," thought I ....
Oh Truth!
Oh Sirius! thou brightest and nearest sun;
"Immortal man, brave General ———."
Oh Steam!
All these occur in quick succession, right at the start of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."
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.
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:
Mortgage is certain to prove in the general, what the word signifies, a death-gage to the property upon which it is fastened, and to the prosperity of the man who allows it to be fastened upon his estate. --Melville's Marginalia Online
This book is inscribed in ink on the front flyleaf: "H Melville. / Pittsfield July 16, 1850" According to the Documentary Note on this volume at Melville's Marginalia Online, Melville
made notes on the verso of the rear flyleaf that indicate he consulted A Historythroughout the 1850s, using it as a source for Israel Potter and "The Apple-Tree Table."
Prairie near the Mouth of the St. Peters - Buffalo Hunt / Seth Eastman, 1846-8
Image Credit: Minnesota Historical Society
This unerring and deadly shot after so long and pertinacious a pursuit, gave him credit with us all; until at last, we came up; and there surely lay the bull: but, strange to say, no scrutiny could discover a wound!—and soon the marvel was, how he had lived so long; he had only closed a longstanding mortgage to the crows;—the ardent hunter was not there to dispute possession! --June 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army
I'm not claiming Field's History of Berkshire inspired "mortgage to the crows," which phrase gets one (and only one?) other hit via Google Books. But Melville had the burden of mortgage on his mind after privately borrowing $2050 from T. D. Stewart in May 1851, on top of his remaining debt for the Arrowhead farm. In his essay "Damned by Dollars" (first published in the 2nd Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick; revised and condensed in the 2nd Norton Critical Edition of The Confidence-Man) Hershel Parker examines the details of Melville's financial difficulties and their impact on his writing.
Here's a related gem from the second volume of Parker's Melville biography:
What with Maria's daily reproaches for his religious lapses, Hope's and the younger Shaws' carping criticism of his lost reputation, what with his enormous debts and his defaulting on a payment on 1 May [1852], what with the failure of The Whale and Moby-Dick after publication and the humiliating American contract for Pierre and no English contract for it at all, Melville chose to escape as best he could: he went outdoors into the Berkshire spring. --Herman Melville: A Biography, V2.110
That buffalo hunter with his pertinacious pursuit sounds kind of like a prairie Ahab.
Zounds! how did I miss this before? I guess the focus on margins and their multiple meanings last time around kept me from seeing a fine instance of text-as-flowing-river in one of Melville's letters to Hawthorne. Writing in reply to a letter from Hawthorne, Melville compared his friend's recent "long" letter to a flowing river, specifically the Housatonic:
"My dear Hawthorne: This is not a letter, or even a note, but merely a passing word said to you over your garden gate. I thank you for your easy-flowing long letter (received yesterday) which flowed through me, and refreshed all my meadows, as the Housatonic—opposite me—does in reality." --Melville's Correspondence, N-N ed. p199
Living then at Arrowhead, Melville identified himself with his natural surroundings. Melville figures himself as the land, the margin, and Hawthorne's writing as a river that runs through him. Hawthorne's river of a letter metaphorically flows through and revives Melville like the Housatonic flows through and nourishes the actual physical "meadows" of Berkshire. Melville wrote that now lost thing to Hawthorne on Tuesday, July 22, 1851. Less than two months before, the first installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" appeared in the Richmond Southern Literary Messenger, including this thoroughly Melvillean comparison of Washington Irving's writings to a river:
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. --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, June 1851
There's more on the passage from "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" in the earlier Dragooned post on Washington Irving's very fluid text. On the same theme also check out
In the last episode of the series (August 1853), Frank again proves himself the Mohi of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border." A fictional character in Melville's Mardi, Mohi a.k.a. Braid-Beard is the historian who explores strange islands in company with the narrator Taji, King Media, Babbalanja the philosopher and Yoomy the youthful minstrel. The previous Dragooned post on being sung/talked to sleep showed Frank's criticizing the writing-in-progress by the narrator, like Mohi's criticizing the song of Yoomy right after its performance. Mohi says he wants what Frank "luxuriously" gets in being put to sleep by the narrative performance of a traveling companion. All that happened in the September 1852 and March 1853 installments of what is supposed to be the 1845 journal of the actual historical march by U. S. Dragoons to the Rocky Mountains and back. (6:10--Remember Alice? This is a song about Alice.) The final August 1853 installment features an extended dialogue on narrative aesthetics, with a strong claim by the narrator for the deeper aesthetic and spiritual truths of poetry over the merely factual depiction of "grim realities." Aiming to please Frank by writing of "grim realities," the narrator found "a little vein" of poetry anyhow. Frank certainly would have preferred "grim realities" if the narrator could only have managed a plain, "simple narrative" of facts. Likewise Melville's Mohi favors, in the words of Yoomy, "mangled realities" over imaginative fictions.
Upon this presumptuous interference, Mohi looked highly offended; and nervously twitching his beard, uttered something invidious about frippery young poetasters being too full of silly imaginings to tell a plain tale.
Said Yoomy, in reply, adjusting his turban, “ Old Mohi, let us not clash. I honor your calling; but, with submission, your chronicles are more wild than my cantos. I deal in pure conceits of my own; which have a shapeliness and a unity, however unsubstantial; but you, Braid Beard, deal in mangled realities. In all your chapters, you yourself grope in the dark. Much truth is not in thee, historian. --Mardi; and a voyage thither vol. 1
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! [1857 version gives the word "simplicity" in italics for added emphasis, thus: "That 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 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army
Reading in Mardi about the reception of Yoomy's song THE SONG, I noticed how Yoomy's critic Mohi craves being sung to sleep, a state of existence that Yoomy regards as "luxurious":
“Then, minstrel, you shall sing me to sleep every night, especially with that song of Marlena; it is soporific as the airs of Nora-Bamma.”
“Mean you, old man, that my lines, setting forth the luxurious repose to be enjoyed hereafter, are composed with such skill, that the description begets the reality; or would you ironically suggest, that the song is a sleepy thing itself?” --Mardi; And a Voyage Thither vol. 2 chapter 103
Interesting parallels to Melville's notion of eternal sleep as a "luxurious" state of repose and the idea of being put to sleep by one's traveling companion may be found in a revision to the original dialogue in the March 1853 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."
Original magazine version:
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 Scenes Beyond the Western Border:
1857 revision:
July 7th.—But now, "the morn is up again" [Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage], and we have marched many miles fasting, and have been attracted over the turbid river by the sight of grass, and have stopped and breakfasted under some cotton-woods; and in their shade my pipe and pencil are struggling for exclusive attention;—but pipe has it!—for here comes my sympathetic companion of the night, looking as discontented as if he had not been luxuriously talked to sleep.
"What's the matter?"
Friend.—O, confound the bivouac! the dew or frost has got into my joints.
Although added later in revision of the 1851-3 magazine series, the narrator's sense that his friend ("Frank" in the original magazine version) had been talked to sleep accords perfectly with the end of the previous installment. In the September 1852 number, Frank had asked for a plain tale of military adventure. The narrator obliged with a story of the Florida Seminole wars that put Frank to sleep.
When I reached the wood, I found they had charged through a camp, whence every soul fled to a near swamp: while they were entangled there, I ascertained that these fugitives were Seminoles of an earlier migration; and soon drew out my skirmishers—not without some captures. Our spirits were all up; and returning to the prairie, I made other combinations—managed by signals—armed its hills and groves; we over-run many miles of country, and made numerous prisoners, giving but one sabre wound.
But —
"——I will not tire
With long recital of the rest." [Byron, Mazeppa 20]
It was dark again when we returned to the Illinois. Frank! he was sound asleep!
