"There is something in the idea of grandeur with which these high plains inspire me, that I cannot fully understand." --Scenes Beyond the Western Border - August 1852; deleted in revision, not in the book version of this passage as published in Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857), page 361.
"... yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood." --Moby-Dick chapter 42, The Whiteness of the Whale.
"WHALES—a word, which, in the popular
sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness." --Moby-Dick chapter 32, Cetology
In revision of the August 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, "I cannot fully understand" at the end of a sentence:
"There is something in the idea of grandeur with which these high plains inspire me, that I cannot fully understand."
Scenes Beyond the Western Border - August 1852
was changed to "I cannot tell why..." at the start of a new sentence:
"I cannot tell why,—but even with the snow-peaks in view, it seemed the summit of the earth."
"Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly...."
--Moby-Dick, Loomings
Compare too (while we're at it) this part, deleted in revision:
the idea of grandeur with which these high plains inspire me
with a similar collocation in Moby-Dick of abstract noun (here horror; there grandeur) plus "with which" plus "inspire":
the peculiar horror with which he seemed to inspire
the rest of the herd
The highlighted line by C. in this prairie dialogue from the August 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border was deleted in revision and does not appear in the 1857 book version.
F. "Is it not the impression of massiveness, which the extent of the level shape adds to the effect of height?
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."
C.—"Perhaps a nervous fit—from your strong coffee?"
... the fact was, his nerves could not stand it; in the course of his courtly career, he had drunk too much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had smoked altogether too many Havannas.
F.—"Now, listen to the song of that bird; it will soothe your nerves."
C.—"Nerves! It is medicine to the mind!—it comes like a message of love!"
The book version of this invented prairie dialogue drops all reference to nerves and coffee.
July 7th.—But now, "the morn is up again," 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.
"Delicate, indeed!"
Friend.—I believe this the very Valley of Acheron! in fact I had bad dreams,—of midnight incantations,— infernal revels.
"Pshaw! it was a calm and beautiful night; and never shone the stars through purer air, into the dark mountain vale. Listen to that sweet bird! it is piping now of some dream of love." --Scenes and Adventures in the Army
HERMAN MELVILLE'S PIERRE (first published at the end of July 1852):
Not his refined, courtly, loving, equable mother, Pierre felt, could unreservedly, and like a heaven's heroine, meet the shock of his extraordinary emergency, and applaud, to his heart's echo, a sublime resolve, whose execution should call down the astonishment and the jeers of the world.
"... does not that involve for thee unending misery? And my truthful soul would echo—Unending misery!" --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities
MARCH 1853 - SCENES BEYOND THE WESTERN BORDER, reprinted in Part II of Scenes and Adventures in the Army (subtitle: "Romance of Military Life"; working title: "Fragments of a Military Life"):
Oh, Yillah, Yillah! All the woods repeat the sound, the wild, wild
woods of my wild soul. Yillah! Yillah! cry the small strange voices
in me, and evermore, and far and deep, they echo on. --Mardi: And a Voyage Thither - Volume 1
Revisions to the May 1853 episode of Scenes Beyond the Western Border included deletion of the simile comparing a loud "crash" of thunder to the sound of splitting rock. The deleted figure begins with the formula, "as of a..."; thus:
".. as of a mountain of rock torn asunder."
Southern Literary Messenger - May 1853
In Pierre (1852) Melville poetically describes the Egyptian monument to Memnon that in ancient times made a musical sound when first struck by sunlight every morning. Melville's Memnon passage includes a close parallel to the deleted simile in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border." Using the same "as of a..." formula, Melville in Pierre compares the sound once emitted from the stone monument to the sound of a breaking harp-string:
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
Both similes begin with as + of + a; both employ a form of sunder:
The example from "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" does not appear in the 1857 book version.
MAY 1853
The storm which had followed the higher range, was now in our front; sporting as with fierce joy, amid the mountain tops. Suddenly, with a crash, as of a mountain of rock torn asunder,
lightning revealed through a vista of black and magnificently wild
array of clouds, Mount Pike,—splendent with the glare, but simple,
serene, sublime amid the chaos of elemental war. Like a fata morgana,
turned to stone. --May 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border
1857
But the storm which had followed the higher range, now came sweeping on, sporting as with fierce joy amid the mountain tops; and here, and there, and far, the spectral peaks seemed rising to the capricious gleams, and many-voiced Echo swelled the glorious diapason. Sport and music of the Gods!—O! it was joy unspeakable, to stand thus on the very throne of the storm, whilst its fierce wings hurtled the mountains around,—and the wanton thunderbolts made the elements to tremble! But suddenly, with a direful crash amid the Titanic rocks, there came a wondrous glare, that revealed through a vista of the black array of clouds, Mount Pike, splendent, sublime, serene, amid the chaotic war!—like a Fata Morgana, turned to stone. --Scenes and Adventures in the Army
Also deleted: the adjective elemental, lost in revision of "chaos of elemental war" to "chaotic war."
The deleted idea of warfare among the elements occurs also in Melville's Pierre, with reference to the Fountain of Enceladus. Melville figures it as "elemental rivalry," in this instance between water and volcanic fire. In the Enceladus Grove at the Palace of Versailles, the water spouting from the mouth of the fallen Titan figuratively battles the fire that Enceladus supposedly breathed, being buried under Mount Etna. Melville in Pierre is comparing a local rock formation dubbed "Enceladus" to Gaspard Marsy's Versailles sculpture of Enceladus,
"from whose still twisted mouth for sixty feet the waters yet upgush, in elemental rivalry with those Etna flames, of old asserted to be the malicious breath of the borne-down giant...." --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities
Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own. --Moby-Dick, The Blanket (1851)
One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar’s bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshlyretained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears newly arrived from foreign parts. Moby-Dick, The Grand Armada
In the example above from the Grand Armada chapter of Moby-Dick, comparison with Melville's source shows definitely that retain is Melville's word--one of his own contributions, added during creative revision of the borrowed passage in Frederick Debell Bennett's A Whaling Voyage Round the Globe (Volume 2, pages 167-8), along with vivid figures also not Bennett's: the "reticule"; "Tartar's bow"; and "baby's ears."
When the substance is gone, men cling to the shadow. Places once set apart to lofty purposes, still retainthe name of that loftiness, even when converted to the meanest uses. It would seem, as if forced by imperative Fate to renounce the reality of the romantic and lofty, the people of the present would fain make a compromise by retaining some purely imaginative remainder....--Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (1852)
"... it was a marvel how, under such circumstances, these hands retained their spotlessness." --The Confidence-Man
For ye who green or grayretain
Childhood's illusion, or but feign;
As bride and suite let pass a bier—
So pass the coming canto here. --Clarel Part 2 Canto 35, Prelusive
Scenes Beyond the Western Border Southern Literary Messenger 19 - August 1853
C.—"Well, well,—I wrote what pleased myself; and,—another object I have, which I did not mention: with scarce a book to read, if one did not write, I fancy the beef and pork and beans would in time form a coating round his brain,—turn it all perhaps to thick and solid skull! How is it with you, Frank? Does yours retain a slight softness?"
For these Tapparians have no brains. In lieu, they carry in one corner of their craniums, a drop or two of attar of roses; charily used, the supply being small. They are the victims of two incurable maladies: stone in the heart, and ossification of the head.
