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University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, North America English Language and Literature 1972 The Mystery of Iniquity: Melville as Poet, 1857–1891 William H. Shurr University of Tennessee Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Shurr, William H., "The Mystery of Iniquity: Melville as Poet, 1857–1891" (1972). Literature in English, North America. 32. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/32 THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY South Atlantic Modern Language Association A ward Study This page intentionally left blank THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY Melville as Poet, 1857-1891 WILLIAM H. SHURR The University Press of Kentucky Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 70-190535 Copyright© 1972 by The University Press of Kentucky A statewide cooperative scholarly publishing agency serving Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506 ISBN: 978-0-8131-5484-8 for Georgia Grey This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION 1 I. BATTLE-PIECES 11 II. CLAREL: THE STATIC ELEMENTS 45 III. CLAREL: THE DYNAMICS OF THE SYMBOL 77 IV. JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS 125 V. TIMOLEON, ETC. 149 VI. WEEDS AND WILDINGS 181 VII. THE BURGUNDY CLUB SKETCHES AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 205 VIII. THE ART OF POETRY AND BILLY BUDD 239 NOTES 263 BIBLIOGRAPHY 275 INDEX 281 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the directors and staffs of the Houghton and Widener Libraries of Harvard University for the use of the Melville manuscripts and related materials and for their courteous assistance. I must also thank the director and staff of the Louis Round Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina for their cooperation with my research. Professors Richard H. Fogle and C. Carroll Hollis of the University of North Carolina and Professor George C. Connor of the University of Tennessee (Chattanooga) have read parts of the manuscript, and I have benefited from their comments. Professor Robert C. Ryan of Boston University interrupted his own editorial work on the Melville poetry manuscripts to share his immense knowledge of them with me. His generous offer to read my book in typescript has added to the accuracy and, I hope, to the clarity of the final result. Mrs. McKay, mother of the present owner of Arrowhead, was at home when I was in the Berkshires in pursuit of Melville's spirit. The request would have been extraordinary-to see the inside of a private home-but her offer preceded it. Her enthusiasm for the famous chim­ ney, the room where Melville wrote, the view of Saddle-Back Mountain, made the afternoon glow with an almost mystical brightness. I would also like to record my gratitude to the University of Chat­ tanooga Foundation for two generous grants enabling me to carry on my study of Melville. For careful secretarial work I would like to thank Miss Donna Weaver, Miss Sandra Poe, and Mrs. Peter McGraw. In writing this book I have been constantly aware of the work of Melville scholars who have gone before me, specifically those who are listed in the Bibliography with which this work concludes. I hope that I have been scrupulous enough in acknowledging their work in my text and notes. I should particularly like to thank Howard P. Vincent and Walter E. Bezanson for permission to use their editions of the collected poems and Clarel respectively as my basic texts. The portrait of Herman Melville by Joseph Oriel Eaton is reproduced on the jacket by kind per­ mission of the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University. Finally, the book could not have been written without the shared enthusiasm of my wife, to whom it is dedicated. Missionary Ridge Spring, 1972 This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION His works trace a spiritual experience of unequaled intensity. Albert Camus, "Herman Melville" The fight of all fights is to write. Mardi This page intentionally left blank OuR UNDERSTANDING of Herman Melville rests at the mo­ ment at a peculiar stage of incompleteness. Nearly all the critical atten­ tion given to him has been concentrated on one decade of his literary life. The fierce energy that produced ten such works of fiction in eleven years is among the most impressive accomplishments in American let­ ters, but even the casual student of American literature must be puzzled to learn that there were three and a half decades left, that Melville continued to write and publish during these years, and that-as one scholar has pointed out-there was more poetry published than even a professional poet like T. S. Eliot produced in a lifetime.1 Encouraged then by the knowledge that here is quantity at least, one may find his pursuit aided by the various editions prepared by Walter E. Bezanson, Hennig Cohen, Howard P. Vincent, and Robert Penn Warren. But otherwise, the few existing treatments of Melville's poetry mostly tend to disappoint. A typical commentary will be subsidiary to a study of Melville's fiction; it will begin with a few items brought forward for praise and end quickly with the admission that, finally, Melville was no poet, that he never mastered the craft, and that the poetry is mostly em­ barrassing or unreadable. The present book is based on the conviction that such judgments have been made too hastily and that not enough study, even of a de­ scriptive kind, has yet been devoted to Melville's poetry. From a purely theoretical point of view one would expect the later work of a writer's career to be more mature, considered, developed. Such a view in the case of Melville has been hindered by the widely held theory of "the long decline." At the same time those who hold this theory will often admit that the later writings are complex and difficult. It is possible that there may be a contradiction here. As Mel­ ville grows older and becomes more and more isolated it can be con­ sidered a logical development for his evaluation of the world to become more complex and, therefore, more difficult. But this may be anything but a long decline or sign of debilitated genius. The fault, in other words, may be not so much with the writer as with his readers. This is hypothesis, of course, and the following chapters are an extended test of that hypothesis. The external events of Melville's life during the years he was writing poetry may be told quickly. In 1856-1857, at the age of thirty-seven, Melville was traveling alone through Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Holy Land. Money for the trip had been spared only with difficulty, since the family was in financial straits. There were four children be- 4 § Introduction § tween the ages of two and eight; income from his books was down; and farming in the Berkshires was a marginal enterprise at best. While he was traveling, the last work of fiction he was to publish, The Confidence­ Man, was with the printer. Nathaniel Hawthorne, American consul at Liverpool, was overseeing the British publication of the book, after recording his last depressing remarks on Melville after their conversa­ tion on the dunes nearby. When Melville returned from this trip, with an important notebook filled with jottings, he was to spend the next three winters traveling the difficult lecture circuit, hardly regaling lyceum enthusiasts with his one-nighters on Roman statuary, the South Seas, and his journeys. At the same time he was writing poetry. When the opportunity arose in 186o for him to cruise around the world with his ship captain brother Tom, he left a collection, to be called simply Poems. His wife, his brother Allan, and Evert Duyckinck were left with detailed instructions on how it was to appear. As it was, no publisher could be found for a volume of poems that probably included, in some version, "The Berg," "The Maldive Shark," and some of the travel poems that would later go into Timoleon. The next year another disappointment occurred when he failed to get a consular appointment to Florence, although in the course of the attempt he managed to shake hands with the new presi­ dent, Lincoln. In October of 1863 the family home, Arrowhead, had to be sold and the Melvilles moved to New York in order to economize. These were the Civil War years, and Melville's thought and emotions were intensely involved in the conflict. Battle-Pieces, his first book of poetry, was pub­ lished in 1866 as its author was just turning forty-seven. That same winter he began his job as a New York customs inspector, at four badly needed dollars a day. He was to work at this for nineteen years, until he was sixty-six. His first few years as customs inspector were full of dark shadows. His health was better, but there were deaths of close family members. The worst of these was the self-inflicted death of his eighteen-year-old son Malcolm, in 1867. Two years later his other son left home to wander aimlessly for seventeen years, financially always hopeful yet never successful, dying in 1886 in a San Francisco hospital.

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