The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlow's Epic

5 Yumiko KOIZUMI

The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlow’s Epic: A Paradoxical Reading of The Columbiad (1807)

n The Power of Sympathy (1789), the first American novel written by William Hill Brown, a character named Harrington left the following I lines behind: “Sympathy unites, whom Fate divides” (181). This clearly shows that Brown sees in sympathy the power of unification of divided things. In addition, when another character, Mrs. Holms, reports “finishing [Joel] Barlowʼs Vision of Columbus” and finding “the beauties of the author” (96; italics original), it is revealed that Brownʼs literary taste resonates with Barlowʼs. Yet, Barlow in The Columbiad (1807), the revised version of The Vision of Columbus (1787), wonders, “why to sympathy for guidance fly,” saying “[h]er [sympathyʼs] aids [are] uncertain” (VIII, ll. 331-32). In brief, Brown and Barlow belonged to the same society, shared similar literary taste, but differed in the extent to which they could believe in the power of sympathy; still, it is clear that both were drawn to it. The idea of sympathy is thus one key means of grasping post-Revolutionary American literature. For The Columibad, critics have long focused on Barlowʼs grandiosity as a sign of failure.1 More recently, however, his “Pan-American shot,” which “draws the reader ever upward until all of North and South America are seen as one land mass ordained by Nature to be one western hemisphere, one New World,” has attracted attention (McWilliams 57). Ralph Bauer notes that Books II and III,

The Journal of the American Literature Society of Japan, No. 16, February 2018. Ⓒ 2018 by The American Literature Society of Japan 6 Yumiko KOIZUMI which focus on Manco Capac, the first Inca prince on South America, are not “digressions from the main narrative” (Dowling 115), but are the “center to his epic” (Bauer 206). Eric Wertheimer brings to the forefront Barlowʼs “double situation as post-colonial/colonist” to consider the significance of Manco Capac in a contemporary context (54). This Pan-American frame sheds light on Manco Capac and his covert ties with George Washington while hiding his nemesis, Zamor. An examination of Zamor will lead us to an unnoticed paradox in Joel Barlowʼs The Columbiad. To this end, this essay first pays attention to Zamor and his transformation during Barlowʼs revisions. Second, Zamorʼs roots are scrutinized along with Voltaireʼs Alzire (1736), Helen Maria Williamsʼ Peru (1784) and Olympe de Gougesʼ Zamore and Mirza (1783/84). Then, the ways in which Barlow deals with slavery are analyzed in terms of sympathy, followed by discussion of how his poetics of sympathy is situated at the crossroads between the Founding Fathersʼ politics and sentimental fictionistsʼ rhetoric. Finally, this essay deciphers the multi- layered figure of Zamor.

1. The Acts of Revision Scholars have repeatedly examined the disparities between The Vision and The Columbiad.2 In addition, Arthur L. Ford discusses the significance of the 1793 edition of The Vision published in Paris (69). Based upon this research, this paper uses the 1793 edition of The Vision and the 1807 edition of The Columbiad.3 The cultural context of textual modifications is mentioned so that the previously unnoticed ﬁgure of Zamor makes sense. Before exploring Zamor, however, it is useful to confirm the link between Manco Capac (Book III) and Washington (Book V). To borrow Steven Blakemoreʼs term, they represent “the good two American ʻracesʼ” (131). In their speech, both men feature the phrases “move/rise to vengeance” (III, l. 577 / V, l. 737) and “conquer or die” (III, l. 580 / V, l. 742) and cry to their soldiers, “the in- fant dies” (III, l. 580 / V, l. 738) unless they enact vengeance. As Bauer points out, “the Inca past becomes Americaʼs Classical Antiquity” (219). One could say that Manco Capac and Zamor represent a conflict between “Americaʼs Classical Antiquity” and savagery. The formerʼs people worship the sun as a god and his family has a sacred white garment, while the latterʼs allied tribes idolize animals, such as tigers, vultures, and condors, and masquerade as The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlowʼs Epic 7 their gods. Further, the former forbids human sacriﬁce, while the latter maintains it. After Manco Capac conquers Zamor and eliminates this conflict, peace is possible. In light of the Revolutionary War and the tie of Washington and Manco Capac, Bauer goes so far as to claim a link between the British and Zamorʼs tribes (220). While Manco Capac is Americanized, Zamor is Indianized by Barlowʼs revisions.4 Given the fact that Manco Capac and Zamor in South America can be referred to as “Indian,”5 the phrase the “Indianization of Zamor” might sound tautological. Yet, The Columbiad reinforces the Indian-ness of Zamor more than The Vision. Through the revision, Zamor is changed from an ordinary “leader” into the more Indian-like “chieftain” and from a “savage” into a “sachem”:6

a) Zamor, the leader of the tyger-band . . . . (The Vision III, l. 443; emphasis added) aʼ) Zamor, the chieftain of the Tyger-band . . . . (The Columbiad III, l. 439; emphasis added) b) The savage [Zamor] ceasʼd; the chiefs of every race . . . . (The Vision III, l. 467; emphasis added) bʼ) The sachem [Zamor] ceasʼd; the chiefs of every race . . . . (The Columbiad III, l. 463; emphasis added)

Of course, the term “savage” is also linked to the image of an Indian, but the word “sachem” is ﬁrst used in The Columbiad (III, ll. 231, 413, 424, and 676)7; Barlow deliberately adds it to the revised version. Further, in the last scene in which Zamor is defeated by Manco Capac, the revision transforms Zamor from a “savage” into a “monster”:

c) Insult me not with tombs; the savage [Zamor] cried . . . . (The Vision III, l. 829; emphasis added) cʼ) Insult me not with tombs! the monster [Zamor] cried . . . . (The Columbiad III, l. 839; emphasis added)

In brief, Manco Capac is Americanized (similar to Washington), while Zamor is Indianized and alienated (similar to a monster) by the revisions. It is easy to identify a “cultural paradox” between “noble savage” and “red devil” (Conger 8 Yumiko KOIZUMI

559), and questions regarding Barlowʼs attitude toward Native Americans.8 Yet, this essay poses a different question: How is the transﬁguration of Zamor contex- tualized in the post-revolutionary period? To grapple with this question, it is helpful to investigate Zamorʼs roots.

2. In Search of Zamor’s Roots It is well known that Barlow owes a great deal of the information in Books II and III to Paul Rycaultʼs translation of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vegaʼs Comentarios reales de los incas (1607; 1688) and William Robertsonʼs The History of America (1777).9 However, while Manco Capac is clearly inspired by Vegaʼs and Robertsonʼs works, Zamor may not be. Zunder mentions Voltaireʼs “Zama” in Alzire, ou les Américains (220-21), I would add Peru, a Poem in Six Cantos (1784), which was written by one of Barlowʼs friends in Europe, Helen Maria Williams, and features a Peruvian bard named Zamor. When Williams was writing Peru, both sides of the Atlantic were paying close attention to an event in South America: Tupac Amaru II, the leader of the Andean peasantry, led a revolt against Spanish colonial rule from 1780 through 1782 (Leask 140). In America, The Connecticut Courant (Mar. 12, 1782) and The Pennsylvania Gazette (Jan. 2, 1782) reported the revolt (Wertheimer 89). This period overlaps with Barlowʼs revisions: he first finished The Vision in 1779 and expanded Book II of the 1779 draft after 1782, especially the part focusing on Manco Capac and Zamor (Zunder 202-03). According to Tichi, in 1792 his London publishers suggested that Barlow cut Books II and III, but he did not (133-34); this episode implies that Barlow knew that the names of Zamor and Manco Capac would appeal to British audiences.10 Zamore and Mirza (1783/84), written by French feminist Olympe de Gouges, may also have impacted how Barlow depicted Zamor. The titular Zamore is shown as an educated Indian slave who kills his overseer after the overseer assaults Zamoreʼs beloved Mirza. The plot deals with the inequality of slavery, prompting tolerance and sympathy. It is unclear whether Barlow knew of Gougesʼ Zamore and Mirza when he published The Vision in 1787.11 Yet, it is highly possible that during his stay in Europe (1788-1805), he became familiar with it because both Barlow and Gouges were linked with Jacques Pierre Brissot, one of the leading members of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks (1789-93), which argued against slavery and the slave trade. Gouges supported the Society, and Brissot also The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlowʼs Epic 9 defended Gouges in an article of Le Patriote français (Oct. 15, 1789) (Blanc 91- 94). According to Buel, Barlow became acquainted with Brissot in 1789, began translating Brissotʼs Nouveau Voyage dans les États Unis in 1791, and eventually wrote about Brissotʼs execution (112, 137, and 177). In light of the specific attention Barlow gives slavery in The Columbiad, Barlow, Brissot, and Gouges were deeply connected to each other. The figure of Zamor thus transcends the limits of an ordinary Peruvian through his exchanges in Europe. In short, Barlowʼs Zamor comes from Voltaireʼs Alzire and Williamsʼ Peru and goes through Gougesʼ Zamore and Mirza, ending up with the figure of a slave. Later, in fact, Zamor represents a “black” slave. William Lloyd Garrison, the founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833-70), issued a monthly childrenʼs magazine, The Slaveʼs Friend (1836-38), which contained a story of two black slaves entitled “Zamor and Hinda” (vol. 3, no. 10, c. 1836). It is, thus, too simplistic to reduce the multi-layered figure of Zamor into a mere representation of savagery or the British. Rather, we must deal with the puzzle of Zamor, that is, his racial continuum as a Peruvian, an Asian, and a black slave. To this end, it is necessary to consider Barlowʼs attitude toward slavery.

3. “Enslaved My Tribes!”: A Critique of Slavery Barlowʼs awareness of slavery was evident in a phrase found in his commence- ment poem at Yale, The Prospect of Peace (1778).12 Later, two people who had an impact on his opinion of slavery during his stay in Europe were Joseph Johnson and Mary Wollstonecraft, who became acquainted with Barlow in 1791 (Buel 140). Johnson invited Wollstonecraft to serve as a reviewer for his periodical, The Analytical Review, and her reviews reﬂected her interest in the abolition debate (Ferguson 91). Barlowʼs attitude toward slavery can be seen in his 1803 letter to Alexander Wolcott regarding the Louisiana Purchase. Buel observes that Barlow “realized that the acquisition of Louisiana could perpetuate racial slavery” and “argued vigorously against it” (271). Although Barlowʼs attitude toward slavery did not yet stand out in The Vision, he came to speak out against it in The Columbiad as a result. In Book VIII, Atlas, “[g]reat brother guardian of old Africʼs clime” (l. 194), blames Hesper for maintaining slavery in America, repeating “[e]nslave my tribes!” four times (ll. 212, 215, 223, and 235). If Hesper keeps slaves, Atlas will enact “[a] vengeance that shall shake the worldʼs deep frame” (l. 265). After Atlas disappears, the poet 10 Yumiko KOIZUMI

Barlow confesses as follows:

You scorn the Titanʼs [Atlasʼ] threat; nor shall I strain The power of pathos in a task so vain As Africʼs wrongs to sing; for what avails To harp for you these known familiar tales? To tongue mute misery, and re-rack the soul With crimes oft copied from that bloody scroll Where Slavery pens her woe; tho tis but there We learn the weight that mortal life can bear. (VIII, ll. 319-26; emphasis added)

Barlowʼs method of dealing with slavery is threefold: 1) the reliance on tales; 2) the talesʼ physical effect on the audience; and 3) the distance from sympathy. First, we can see his mistrust of tales: “for what avails / To harp for you there known familiar tales?” (ll. 321-22; emphasis added). However, the poet comes to believe again in “the bloody scroll” (l. 324), that is, tales about slavery, because from it, “[w]e learn the weight that mortal life can bear” (l. 326; emphasis added). The term “weight” may be related to physical reactions to the tales, which might “startle still the accustomʼd ear,” “shake the nerve” and “[m]elt every heart” (ll. 327-29; emphasis added). Hence, Barlow demands that slavesʼ bodies synchronize with readersʼ bodies through the tales, as doing so will “break the barbarous chain” (l. 330). Notably, in the above quotation Barlow refers to himself as “I” for the ﬁrst time, an unusual characteristic of The Columbiad. Given the basic structures utilized by Columbus (the reader) and Hesper (the poet or narrator), as Pearce suggests (64), the arrival of Barlow as “I” breaks these structures and creates a new space for the reader and the poet to be referred to as “you and I,” ﬁnally leading to the use of the pronoun “we.” Referring to readers as “you” and later including them in “we” creates a community not only between slaves and readers but also between slaves, readers, and the poet. However, synchronization differs from sympathy:

But why to sympathy for guidance ﬂy, (Her aids uncertain and of scant supply) when your own self-excited sense affords The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlowʼs Epic 11

a guide more sure, and every sense accords? (VIII, ll. 331-34; emphasis added)

Sympathy is considered less certain than a “self-excited sense.” Further, the rhyme of “affords and accords” stresses the self-excited senseʼs effect of uniting “every sense,” implying that sympathy does not lead to unity, but discord. Yet, one could easily argue that Barlow uses sympathy as his contemporary, the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, deﬁnes it: a “fellow feeling” (10) that is elicited “when we place ourselves in the situation of another man, and view it, as it were, with his eyes and from his station” (109-10). In fact, the ways in which Barlow depicts the captured Americans in British prison ships at Wallabout Bay during the Revolutionary War (Book VI) and the black slaves (Book VIII) are so similar that Americans feel required to put themselves in the place of slaves. Both groups are placed in “dungeon(s)” (VI, l. 34 / VIII, l. 255) and suffer “hot contagion” (VI, l. 54 / VIII, l. 259). In addition, the couplet “breath and death” is present in the following lines referring to Americans and to slaves:

a) But as the infected mass [the prisoners] resign their breath, She [the prison ship] keeps with joy the register of death. (VI, ll. 63-64; emphasis added) b) Sucks hot contagion with his [the slaveʼs] quivering breath, And, rackʼd with rending torture, sinks in death. (VIII, ll. 259-60; emphasis added)

Furthermore, Blakemore notes that the line “[t]hy sons perchance! whom Barbaryʼs coast can tell” (VIII, l. 239; emphasis added) relates to Barlowʼs mission to release American captives in Algiers from 1795 through 1797 (231-33).13 Slavery is simulated for the audience by conjuring up images of captives in Wallabout and Algiers; thus, we can see the effect of sympathy in Barlowʼs text. If so, it is necessary to situate in the post-revolutionary political climate Barlowʼs implication that sympathy is a channel for discord. He is, of course, not the only person dealing with sympathy─the Founding Fathers and sentimental fiction writers also discussed it. 12 Yumiko KOIZUMI

4. At the Crossroads of the Founding Fathers and Sentimental Fictionists Richard Godbeer has demonstrated the ways in which George Washington and Thomas Jefferson affirm “the notion of an affective republic” that “politicized sentiment and sympathy as a basis for constructive identification and collaboration between citizens” (156). Such a sentiment is also seen in John Winthropʼs “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630): he sees sensibleness and sympathy as chan- nels to connect each member as a whole body (community).14 It is thus remarkable that in eighteenth-century New England, a couple of lines were intertwined. One line can be traced to Adam Smithʼs The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). According to Elliott, the Scottish philosophersʼ works were introduced in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New Haven in the late eighteenth century; at Yale, Presidents Thomas Clapp and Ezra Stiles taught Lord Kamesʼ Elements of Criticism (1762), James Beattieʼs Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1771), and Hugh Blaireʼs Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783) (30-35). It is safe to conjecture that, through these works, students at Yale including Barlow had a chance to consider the theory of sympathy. Another line is essential to sentimental fiction on both sides of the Atlantic, though particularly in America. Such fiction includes William Hill Brownʼs The Power of Sympathy (1789), Susanna Rowsonʼs Charlotte Temple (1791), and Hannah Fosterʼs The Coquette (1797). Given the fact that Barlow graduated from Yale and drank “deep from the fountain of sentimental fiction” (Fliegelman 136), it is appropriate to put him at the crossroads of these two lines. His poetics of sympathy could not come into light without these two connections, but what matters is that he departed from them because for him sympathy is a channel for discord. To grasp his poetics of sympathy more precisely, the following discussion primarily locates Barlowʼs roots and life in eighteenth-century Connecticut, and then, focuses on the imagery of the “scaly nation” in light of the “fundamental paradox of sympathy” (Boudreau 9). Barlow was a core member of the Connecticut Wits, which was centered at Yale. Through this circle, in 1786, Barlow co-wrote The Anarchiad (1786-87) with David Humphreys, Lemuel Hopkins, and John Trumbull. This notorious mock epic brought about the appellation “Hartford Wits” (later, “Connecticut Wits”). Barlowʼs engagement in this circle implies that he shared political and religious taste with his Yale friends: “Protestant-Federalism” (Ford 7). Indeed, The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlowʼs Epic 13 without the help of Yale tutors, Joseph Buckminster and Timothy Dwight, The Vision could not have been composed. Yet, unlike the other Wits, Barlow was born and bred as a poor boy. His birthplace, a Redding farmhouse, was far from the “New England Brahminism that might have been seen in the homes of Trumbull, Dwight, and Humphreys” (Howard 133). Fortunately, Barlowʼs literary gift charmed Pastor Bartlett of Redding, who helped him enter Moorʼs School, Dartmouth, and later, Yale. His parentsʼ death and his subsequent inheritance allowed him to lead his college life. Yet, financial issues discouraged him from pursuing a masterʼs degree and becoming a tutor; he was forced to work at the school to make ends meet. He confessed that he was “yet at a loss for an employment for life and unhappy in that suspense” (a letter to Noah Webster, Jan. 30, 1779; qtd. in Zunder 66). Nonethe- less, Barlow left for France as an agent for the Scioto Company in 1788 and later made much money there; he “died a rich man” at last (Buel 367).15 It is thus reasonable for Woodress to compare Barlow to Benjamin Franklin and Horatio Alger because of his rise “from a humble background to fortune” (24). Woodress calls Barlowʼs life “a Yankeeʼs odyssey” (17). Barlowʼs roots and life inspired John Dos Passos to write “Citizen Barlow of the Republic of the World” in The Ground We Stand On (1941). What matters here is that the time he spent unemployed allowed him to interact with Ruth Baldwin (his future wife), Elizabeth Stiles (a daughter of Ezra Stiles), and Elizabeth Whitman. Barlow says, “I spend every evening in Ladiesʼ company” (qtd. in Woodress 62). Among them, Elizabeth Whitman was a good correspondent and inspired him to keep writing his epic; it was she who asked Dwight to help Barlow finish the 1779 draft of The Vision (Zunder 82); Buckminster, who also helped Barlow write his poem, was her suitor, and thus one could guess that Whit- man helped connect Barlow and Buckminster. The Vision could not have been written without Dwight and Buckminster, and they would not have helped had it not been for Whitman. Unfortunately, Barlow was parted from her on July 25, 1788, when “she died in a tavern, seduced and abandoned” (Davidson 222). Her tragic death is repeatedly told in The Power of Sympathy, Charlotte Temple, and The Coquette. The relationship between Barlow and Whitman suggests that The Vision (later The Columbiad) and The Power of Sympathy have something in common in post- revolutionary Connecticut. From this angle, the lines of Harringtonʼs poem in the 14 Yumiko KOIZUMI last page of The Power of Sympathy take on a new meaning:

Here rest their [Harringtonʼs and Harrietʼs] heads, consignʼd to parent earth, Who to one common father owʼd their birth; Unknown this union─Nature still presides, And Sympathy unites, whom Fate divides. (181; emphasis added)

The phrase “one common father” illuminates the tragedy and the term “father” primarily refers to Mr. Harrington. However, because The Power of Sympathy was published in the post-revolutionary period, the “father” can be interpreted as England as well. From this perspective, in the line “Sympathy unites, whom Fate divides,” what the verb “divide” divides can be interpreted as either Harrington and Harriet or America and England. Because the present tense of “divide” is used, it is implied that the division remains for both couples of lovers and nations. It is through the imagery of the “scaly nation” that we can see the poetics of sympathy in The Columbiad depart from The Power of Sympathy. This imagery not only functions to unite divided things like The Power of Sympathy but also casts a doubt on its power. The “scaly nation,” needless to say, means a school of fish. Barlow uses this imagery four times in relation to four locales: 1) the Allegany (IV, ll. 359-64), 2) the Potowmak (IV, ll. 561-68), 3) Wallabout (VI, ll. 27-78), and 4) Brazil (VIII, ll. 467-78). These regions are scattered both in geographical terms and in the books of The Columbiad (IV, VI, and VIII). Yet, tracing the streams of the Allegany and the “Potowmak” brings into light the view that the regions of the east and the west and of the north and the south are chan- neled, respectively, and the scaly nation in Brazil necessitates the Pan-American shot─North and South America as one land mass. Further, by paying critical attention to the selection of the noun “nation,” we discover Barlowʼs hidden national theme: each nation is scattered and unconnected with the others at first glance, but, gathering together them foregrounds Barlowʼs poetic design of the “united states” that was politically and regionally disentangled in the post- revolutionary period. From this angle, it is suggestive that the three schools of fish lead playful and productive lives: “scaly nations here their gambols led” (IV, l. 364; emphasis added); “round his loins the scaly nations play” (IV, l. 566); and “[p]rolific waves the scaly nations trace” (VIII, l. 469; emphasis added). These lines, particularly The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlowʼs Epic 15 the noun “gambol” (“a bout of energetic playful activity,” OED, 2.a.) and the adjective “prolific” (“[t]ending to cause or promote abundant production, OED, 1.), provoke energetic productivity based on circulation. These scaly nations, in this sense, illustrate the positive prospect of future America. However, there is the “fundamental paradox of sympathy” (Boudreau 9), as the streams bring about not only progression but also degeneration. The third scaly nation in Wallabout must deal with the risk that its inhabitants will “[c]atch the contagion, sicken, gasp and die” (VI, l. 78); such tragedy appears to support Barlowʼs view that sympathy sometimes becomes a channel for dissolution. Kristin Boudreau points out that sympathy constitutes both “a cure and a violation” (9). In this view, the following quotation is notable. Wallabout Bay, where the third scaly nation is located, is where the place British prison ships anchored during the Revolutionary War,16 and the ocean was polluted by the “slaughtered crews”:

Green Oceanʼs self, that oft his wave renews, That drinks whole ﬂeets with all their slaughterʼd crews, That laves, that puriﬁes the earth and sky, Yet neʼer before resignʼd his natural dye, Here purples, blushes for the race he bore To rob and ravage this unconquerʼd shore; The scaly nations, as they travel by, Catch the contagion, sicken, gasp and die. (VI, ll. 71-78; emphasis added)

The Green Ocean is able to “purify” the earth and sky and never “resignʼd his natural dye.” Nonetheless, he blushes and turns purple; it means that contamination goes beyond his power of circulation to purify. Apparently, the Green Ocean blushes only because of the prison shipʼs shameful acts. Yet, in light of the stress on the Oceanʼs purity and the verb “blush,” one can interpret that his skin is infected, that is, physically invaded. Further, since the prison ship is described as a black goddess, Blakemore claims that Barlow “discredits the ʻmother countryʼ by equating her with rape, castration, and venereal infection” (156). In other words, the above quotation reveals the fear not only of captivity on ships but also of adultery by her. Harrington suffers as a result of his fatherʼs affair and fears incest, while the Green Ocean endures his motherʼs rape. Once the Green Ocean is raped, 16 Yumiko KOIZUMI the scaly nation that lives there cannot help but become embroiled in the same abuse. To sum up, first, without his Connecticut brothers and sisters, Barlow could not compose The Vision and The Columbiad, and from these connections he learned the founding fathersʼ politics and the sentimental fictionistsʼ rhetoric on the theory of sympathy; although he is generally thought to become detached from his Yale friends after staying in Europe, Barlow still refers to Trumbull, Dwight, and Humphreys in The Columbiad (ll. 663, 673, and 685). Second, since The Power of Sympathy depicts a fatherʼs adultery and The Columibiad represents a motherʼs rape, these two works are resonated with each other in a sense. Yet, the divide between them lies in the extent to which they could rely on the power of sympathy: the former still believes in it in that Brown can make Harrington leave behind the still-hopeful lines “Sympathy unites” (181), while the latter doubts it as a carrier of contamination in that Barlow makes the third nation entangled in despair by the British ship. Or, if we make much of the continuity with the national parent (Britain), Brown leaves behind a room for a minor link with the national father, while Barlow warns for being liked with the national mother. This act of denial of the mother turns out to be one aspect of his poetics of sympathy; given his poetics of sympathy based on its fundamental paradox, it is proper that the three scaly nations represent progression on one hand, but the third scaly nation signals degeneration on the other hand. If this latter sense of danger could reflect the situations not only during the American Revolution but also during the French Revolution, paying attention to Zamor again during the French Revolution is quite profitable.

5. The Art of Couplets Once upon a time, “Zamor . . . was brought from Bengal when [he was] quite a child” and later became “the favorite page” of Madam du Barry, Louis XVʼs “beau- tiful marchioness”; Zamor was educated, baptized, well-clothed, and “permitted to take any liberty whatever” (Lenotre 134-35). However, after the French Revolu- tion broke out, Zamor became a traitor. When Madam du Barry was under arrest, “he [Zamor] was called as a witness when she appeared before the revolutionary tribunal” and he “gave evidence against her” (135-36). According to Christopher L. Miller, in spite of being “from Bengal,” Zamor was widely referred to as “le nègre de la du Barry”; and, Gouges, the author of Zamore and Mirza, “took the The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlowʼs Epic 17 name of her slave-hero from this real-life Zamor” (123). The roots of Barlowʼs Zamor is thus traced to the real-life Zamor through Gougesʼ Zamore; and “Zamor” comes to represent not only a black individual but also a traitor after the French Revolution. Thus, one could conclude that Barlow had to reduce the racial continuum into the Indian Zamor with nouns like “chieftain,” “sachem,” and “monster,” to avoid the association between emancipation and treason that the real Zamor embodied. By eliminating the black aspect of Zamor, the story of Manco Capac and Zamor becomes stable as an American epic about Americaʼs classical antiquity and the savage “red devil” that is destined to perish (Conger 559). But, if this conclusion is too simple, it is required to investigate the more complex crossroads of Barlow (the poet), the multi-layered figure of Zamor (the content), and the rhymed couplets (the form), which lead to the post-Revolutionary American epic. What matters first is that Barlowʼs attempt to create the American epic involves emancipation and transgression. In Book I of The Columbiad, he writes “invocation” after the tradition of the epic, but then, he shows his attempt to create a new kind of epic: “Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee [Freedom]” (l. 30; emphasis added). If the invoked “Freedom” represents freedom from miracles in the Bible and Muses in epics, such as The Iliad or The Aeneid, we find here one aspect of Barlowʼs “genuinely ʻnewʼ epic” that leads to Song of Myself, The Cantos, The Bridge, and Paterson (Pearce 60-61).17 Yet, it brings about another problem as well. According to Elliott, Barlow is “losing the depth of mythic meaning” through the revisions between The Vision and The Columbiad (117). Indeed, losing such meaning and providential guidance, the poet comes to explore the “void.” For instance, the line “Deluge the air and cloud the face of heaven” (The Vision III, l. 384; emphasis added) is changed into the line “Deluge the air and choke the void of heaven” (The Columbiad III, l. 382; emphasis added); or, the phrase “Stretchʼd the wide heavʼns” (The Vision VII, l. 4; emphasis added) is changed into the phrase “Stretchʼd the dim void” (The Columbiad VIII, l. 4; emphasis added). It is easy to regard this image of void as negative. Yet, we can consider that this void results from the invocation of “Freedom” which is free from miracles, Muses, or prede- termined plots, in terms of the structure without the central, traditional authority; this structure enables the poet to write the American epic. But, if we pay critical attention to the idea of freedom linked with the “negative” image of void, it suggests that Barlow recognized that his concept of freedom cannot help but 18 Yumiko KOIZUMI contain the possibility of transgression. Thus, that Barlow attempted to eliminate the black aspect of Zamor is not only because the real Zamor added the aspect of a black traitor to Barlowʼs Zamor, but also because the multi-figures Zamor (the content) represented the bad consequence of Barlowʼs own theory of freedom against the poetʼs will. It is thus essential that the battle between Manco Capac and Zamor is not easily settled as that between Americaʼs classical antiquity and the “red devil”; likewise, Barlow (the poet) and Zamor (the content) remain unsettled on the text of the American epic, The Columbiad. Further, if, after the two revolutions, Barlow needed to manage the representation of Zamor more than before, Zamorʼs final scene is noteworthy:

Thus pourʼd the vengeful chief [Zamor] his fainting breath, And lost his utterance in the gasp of death. (The Columbiad III, ll. 853-54; emphasis added)

Since the couplet “breath and death” is also used to describe the captives in the prison ships (Book VI) and in the slave ships (Book VIII), it reminds us that Zamor is also a captive in Peru, South America. But, in light of Zamorʼs emancipation, transgression, and multi-layered representation, it is more appropriate to consider that Barlow is forced to put the couplet “breath and death” as shackles on Zamorʼs hands and feet. The form of rhymed couplet Barlow uses throughout the nearly 10,000 lines of The Columbiad is, of course, the traditional way for the epic Barlow learned from Alexander Pope in particular; in this sense, The Columbiad may not be classified as a “genuinely new epic” like Song of Myself, The Cantos, The Bridge, and Paterson. Yet, when Barlow exploits the Popean art of couplets for the shackling of Zamorʼs hands and feet in his own way, this old way makes a difference: the containment of potential defiance. Recalling that his poetics of sympathy involves the act of denial of the mother, the imagery of the scaly nation, and the rhetoric of progression and degeneration, Barlowʼs prospect of productivity could not come into light without destructive scenes. Indeed, Barlow sees in “the black Prison Shipʼs expanding womb” a place where “[i]mpested thousands, quick and dead, entomb” (VI, ll. 35-36; emphasis added). The couplet, “womb and entomb,” suggests the self-destructive birth of The Columbiad. In the post- Revolutionary period, the transfiguration of Zamor is a story of the battle between The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlowʼs Epic 19 the multi-layered Zamor and the author Barlow. Still, Zamorʼs defiance werlaps with Barlowʼs aspiration for the American epic, too. Zamor is thus the paradox of Joel Barlowʼs The Columbiad.

Notes An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 13th autumn conference of the Kanto Branch of the English Literary Society of Japan at Ferris University on 12 No- vember 2016. 1 For a negative response to The Columbiad, see Tyler 167-68, Woodress 86, and McWilliams 63. 2 For a criticism of the differences between The Vision and The Columbiad, see Parrington lxi-lxii, Dowling 4, and Elliott 117. 3 Given the fact that the second volume of The Works of Joel Barlow (SFR, 1970) contains the 1825 version of The Columbiad and includes the passage “with the last corrections of the author” on the cover, the 1825 version could be the primary focus of this study. However, this essay basically uses the 1793 and 1807 versions because the differences between the 1793 and 1807 versions are remarkable, and those between the 1807 and 1825 versions are limited to orthography: for instance, the verb ending “d” is changed to “t” (“wishʼd” [I, l. 18] to “wisht” [I, l. 18]); “ph” are changed to “f” (“gulph” [I, l. 220] to “gulf” [I, l. 220]); the prefix “en” is changed to “in” (“enclosed” [II, l. 272] to “inclosed” [II. l. 268]); “ou” are changed to “o” (“mould” [IV, l. 348] to “mold” [IV, l. 348]); “ough” are changed to “ow” (“plough” [V, l. 297] to “plow” [V, l. 295]); and “gh” are omitted (“straightens” [V, l. 649] to “straitens” [V, l. 647]). These changes are based on Barlowʼs opinion regarding orthography; he writes in the “Postscript” that “[o]ur language is constantly and rapidly improving. . . . [we] will follow a closer definition and more accurate use of words, with a stricter attention to their orthography (the 1807 version 445, the 1825 version 435). 4 In this essay, the verbs “Americanize” and “Indianize” are used in terms of “myth-making,” in line with Slotkin. In the context of the study of the myth of America, he notes that these terms were used by the colonists to refer to “their [the American Indiansʼ] ways of living, farming, hunting, and fighting in order to survive in the Indianʼs worlds.” He then points out that “it seems important to question whether our national experience has ʻAmericanizedʼ or ʻIndianizedʼ us, or whether we are simply an idiosyn- cratic offshoot of English civilization” (6). 5 The term “Indian” refers to “[a] member of the aboriginal peoples of (any part 20 Yumiko KOIZUMI of) the Americas” (OED, 2.a.). This paper uses the term “Native American” except in the context of Indianization, when the term “Indian” is used. 6 The term “chieftain” means not only “[t]he head of a body of men, of an organi- zation, state, town, party, office, etc.” (OED, 1.), but also “[t]he chief of a clan or tribe” (OED, 3.). The close connection between “chieftain” or “chief ” and Native Americans is noted in Alexander Popeʼs Windsor-Forest: “[w]hile naked Youth and painted Chiefs admire / Our speech, our Colour, and our strange Attire” (ll. 403-04; emphasis added). The term “sachem” refers to “[t]he supreme head or chief of some American Indian tribes” (OED, 1.). According to the OED, “sachem” is more closely related to Native Americans than “chieftain” or “chief.” 7 In the revision between 1793 and 1807, the term “sachem” replaces the following nouns: “[t]he wondering chief replyʼd” (l. 233) is changed to “[t]he sachem proud replied” (l. 231); “oʼer his shaggy brow” (l. 413) is changed to “oʼer the sachemʼs brow” (l. 413); “when the squadrons tread” (l. 424) is changed to “when the sachems tread” (l. 424); and “from his grasping hand” (l. 674) is changed to “from the sachemʼs hand” (l. 676). 8 Barlow suggests a distinction between Mancoʼs and Zamorʼs origins: Hellespont (II, l. 149) and Asia (II, l. 174). 9 For Barlowʼs indebtedness to Vega and Robertson, see Zunder 220 and Bauer 203-32. 10 Robert Southey and Mary Wollstonecraft appreciated The Vision, the description of Manco in particular; Leask suggests that Southey first attempted to identify his “Madoc” with Barlowʼs Manco Capac (139-41). 11 Zamore and Mirza was written in 1783 / 1784 and submitted to the Comédie Française in 1784; because the play was delayed for years, Gouges published it in 1788; it was then performed at the Comédie Française in 1789 (Miller 111-16). 12 Barlow writes: “Africʼs unhappy children, now no more / Shall feel the cruel chains they felt before, / But every State in this just mean agree, / To bless mankind, and set thʼ oppressed free” (The Prospect of Peace ll. 81-84) 13 For an examination of the link between Barlowʼs description of the prison ships and of the Middle Passage, see Blakemore 158. 14 Winthrop says that “[t]his sensibleness and sympathy of each otherʼs conditions will necessarily infuse into each part a native desire and endeavor to strengthen, defend, preserve and comfort the other” and they “shall find in the histories of the church in all ages, the sweet sympathy of affections which was in the members of this body one The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlowʼs Epic 21 towards another, their cheerfulness in serving and suffering together” (96-97). According to him, sympathy thus functions to keep community in terms of the effects “to strengthen, defend, preserve and comfort the other”; in other words, sympathy turns out to be a channel to connect each part or “member” as a whole “body” in Winthropʼs text. 15 According to Buel, “[t]he inventory of his [Barlowʼs] estate . . . listed well over $100,000 in banks, canal, and manufacturing stock, plus title to extensive western lands” (367). 16 Barlow writes in the note that he consulted with Elias Boodinot, who was in charge of negotiation with the British army to release American captives, and he mentions a prison ship called the Jersey (“Note No. 37” 423-24). The history of the prison ships in New York is traced to the possession of New York (Sept. 15, 1776) and the capture of Fort Washington (Nov. 16, 1776); “William Howe had at least 5000 prisoners,” but “[t]o contain such a vast number of prisoners, the ordinary places of confine- ment were insufficient”; they were then sent to the prison ships (Onderdonk 207-11). Lossing states that “the name of ʻHellʼ for the Jersey was a proper synonym” (867). 17 Pearce puts Barlowʼs The Columbiad at the dawn of the American epic that leads to Song of Myself, The Cantos, The Bridge, and Paterson because of his “impossible task ─ writing an epic without the sort of linear, form-endowing narrative argument which takes its substance and its very life from the hero, the supra-human being, at its center” (61).

Works Cited Barlow, Joel. The Columbiad. A Poem. Fry and Kammerer, 1807. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/columbiadpoem00barl. ───. The Columbiad. A Poem. Joseph Milligan, 1825. The Works of Joel Barlow, introduction by William K. Bottorff, and Arthur L. Ford, vol. 2, Scholarsʼ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1970, pp. 371-866. ───. The Prospect of Peace. A Poetical Composition, Delivered in Yale-College, at the Public Examination, of the Candidates for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts. Thomas and Samuel Green, 1778. The Works of Joel Barlow, introduction by William K. Bottorff, and Arthur L. Ford, vol. 1, Scholarsʼ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1970, pp. 1-12. ───. The Vision of Columbus; A Poem in Nine Books. Hudson and Goodwin, 1787. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/visioncolumbusa00barlgoog. 22 Yumiko KOIZUMI

───. The Vision of Columbus. A Poem, in Nine Books. Barrois, Senior, Quai des Augustins and R. Thomson, 1793. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/bub_gb_j52_ qa15kM0C. Barnes, Elizabeth. States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel. Columbian UP, 1997. Bauer, Ralph. “Colonial Discourse and Early American Literary History: Ercilla, The Inca Garcilaso, and Joel Barlowʼs Conception of a New World Epic.” Early American Literature, vol. 30, no. 3, 1995, pp. 203-32. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25057026. Blakemore, Steven. Joel Barlowʼs Columbiad: A Bicentennial Reading. U of Tennessee P, 2007. Blanc, Olivier. Marie-Olympe de Gouges: Des droits de la femme à la guillotine. 1981. Tallandier, 2014. Boudreau, Kristin. Sympathy in American Literature: American Sentiments from Jeffer- son to the Jameses. UP of Florida, 2002. Brown, William Hill. The Power of Sympathy. 1789. Edited by William S. Kable. Ohio State UP, 1969. Buel, Richard. Joel Barlow: American Citizen in a Revolutionary World. Johns Hopkins UP, 2011. Conger, Danielle E. “Toward a Native American Nationalism: Joel Barlowʼs The Vision of Columbus.” New England Quarterly, vol. 72, no. 4, 1999, pp. 558-76. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/366828. Davidson, Cathy N. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. 1986. Expanded ed., Oxford UP, 2004. Dowling, William C. Poetry and Ideology in Revolutionary Connecticut. U of Georgia P, 1990. Elliott, Emory. Revolutionary Writers: Literature and Authority in the New Republic, 1725-1810. Oxford UP, 1982. Ferguson, Moira. “Mary Wollstonecraft and the Problematic of Slavery.” Mary Woll- stonecraft and 200 Years of Feminisms, edited by Eileen Janes Yeo, Rivers Oram, 1997, pp. 89-103. Fliegelman, Jay. Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800. Cambridge UP, 1982. Ford, Arthur L. Joel Barlow. Twayne, 1971. Godbeer, Richard. The Overﬂowing of Friendship: Love between Men and the Creation of the American Republic. Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. The Poetics of Sympathy in Joel Barlowʼs Epic 23

Howard, Leon. The Connecticut Wits. U of Chicago P, 1943. Leask, Nigel. “Southeyʼs Madoc: Reimagining the Conquest of America.” Robert South- ey and the Contexts of English Romanticism, edited by Lynda Pratt, Ashgate, 2006, pp. 133-50. Lenotre, G. (Théodore Gosselin). Romances of the French Revolution. Vol. 1, W. Heinemann, 1908. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/romancesoffrench01lenouoft. Lossing, Benson John. “Supplement IV: British Prisons and Prison Ships.” The Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution, vol. 2, Harper & Brothers, 1852, pp. 864-67. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/pictorialfieldb06lossgoog. McWilliams, John P. Jr. The American Epic: Transforming a Genre, 1770-1860. Cam- bridge UP, 1989. Miller, Christopher L. “Olympe de Gouges, Earwitness to the Ills of America.” The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade, Duke UP, 2008, pp. 109-40. Onderdonk, Henry. “Incidents of the British Prisons and Prison Ships.” Revolutionary Incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties, Leavitt, 1849, pp. 207-50. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/revolutionaryinc00onde. Parrington, Vernon Louis. “Introduction.” The Connecticut Wits, edited by Vernon Louis Parrington, 1954, Thomas Crowell, 1969, pp. xxiii-lxii. Dos Passos, John. “Citizen Barlow of the Republic of the World.” The Ground We Stand on: Some Examples from the History of a Political Creed, Houghton Mifflin, 1941, pp. 256-380. Pearce, Roy Harvey. “The Long View: An American Epic.” The Continuity of American Poetry, Princeton UP, 1961, pp. 59-136. Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860. U of Oklahoma P, 1973. Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 1759. Edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Clarendon, 1976. Tichi, Cecelia. New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature from the Puritans through Whitman. Yale UP, 1979. Tyler, Moses Coit. “The Literary Strivings of Mr. Joel Barlow.” Three Men of Letters, G.P. Putnamʼs Son, 1895, pp. 131-80. Wertheimer, Eric. Imagined Empires: Incas, Aztecs, and the New World of American Literature, 1771-1876. Cambridge UP, 1999. Winthrop, John. “A Model of Christian Charity.” 1630. The Norton Anthology of Ameri- 24 Yumiko KOIZUMI

can Literature, edited by Nina Baym, shorter 8th ed., vol. 1, Norton, 2012, pp. 91- 102. Woodress, James. A Yankeeʼs Odyssey: The Life of Joel Barlow. J. B. Lippincott, 1958. Zunder, Theodore Albert. The Early Days of Joel Barlow: A Connecticut Wit, Yale Graduate, Editor, Lawyer, and Poet Chaplain During the Revolutionary War; His Life and Works from 1754 to 1787. 1934. Archon, 1969.