The Wordsworthian Inheritance of Melville's
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THE WORDSWORTHIAN INHERITANCE OF MELVILLE’S POETICS by Cory R. Goehring B.A., Washington and Jefferson College, 2000 M.A., University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 2004 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2010 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Cory R. Goehring It was defended on May 19, 2010 and approved by Nancy Glazener, Associate Professor, English Marah Gubar, Associate Professor, English Fred Evans, Professor, Philosophy Jonathan Arac, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, English ii Copyright © by Cory R. Goehring 2010 iii THE WORDSWORTHIAN INHERITANCE OF MELVILLE’S POETICS Cory R. Goehring, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2010 It has become commonplace among both Melville and Wordsworth critics to recognize a basic ambiguity or contradictoriness in each artist’s writing. In this project, I find the roots of that tension in each artist’s concept of the imagination and the process of poetic creation. More importantly, I find that Melville’s concept of art, as reflected in his magnum opus Moby-Dick and substantiated in his poetry, reveals a basic affinity with Wordsworth’s Imagination. Specifically, my project traces the lingering elements of Wordsworth’s concept of the poetic process in Melville’s writing, particularly focusing on two important and complex relationships in that creative process: 1) the implicit paradox of activity and passivity in a poetics that assumes at its heart inspiration, and Wordsworth’s particular devotion to preserving rather than reconciling that paradox; and 2) the role of society in a creative process that seeks to privilege individual genius while ensuring the social efficacy of the workings of that genius. Here emerging at the center of my study—not surprisingly—is an engagement with The Whale, in which I offer a reading of Moby-Dick as a text that, at least in part, is occupied with the process and position of the artist. In paying particular attention to the evidence of a close relationship with Wordsworth in Melville’s conception of art, I am not as interested in the question of literary influence as I am in demonstrating that Melville struggled with many of the same questions regarding art and creation that are evident in Wordsworth’s own writing. In seeking connections between iv Melville’s literature, particularly his poetry, and Wordsworth, my transcontinental project reveals a concern with the role of the artist in society—a question of the responsibility of the artist that is importantly enduring, despite the years and distance between the writers. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .................................................................................................................................. VII 1.0 ‘THE PURSUIT OF POETRY UNDER DIFFICULTIES’: MELVILLE’S WORDSWORTHIAN HERITAGE ............................................................................................ 1 2.0 ‘THE COMPONENT PARTS OF A CREATURE’: THE LEGACY OF INSPIRATION IN WORDSWORTH’S CONCEPT OF THE IMAGINATION ................ 28 3.0 THE PURSUIT OF THE WHALE: THE WORDSWORTHIAN POET IN MOBY-DICK ................................................................................................................................ 76 4.0 MEANING FROM DISUNITY: POETIC CREATION FOR MELVILLE ...... 119 5.0 CLAREL AS SPIRITUAL “EXCURSION” AND POETIC TEXT .................... 162 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 214 vi PREFACE This dissertation represents the culmination of years of thought and study, much coming under the direction of many encouraging and provoking professors. The germ of the study, ten years in the past, can be traced to my senior seminar work as an undergraduate under the direction of Professor Kenneth Mason, Jr., at Washington and Jefferson College. Since that time, I have been able to work through some of the pertinent issues discussed in this dissertation while taking classes directed by Professor Paul Bové, Professor Troy Boone, and Professor Jonathan Arac at the University of Pittsburgh—many thanks for their direction and encouragement. Also, I would like to thank Professor Virginia Jackson of Tufts University and Professor Tara Robbins Fee of Washington and Jefferson College for reading and commenting upon the work in progress. I especially acknowledge my committee members for their constant encouragement and critical assistance—I am thankful to Professor Nancy Glazener and Professor Marah Gubar for their continued support. I also am deeply indebted to Professor Fred Evans, of Duquesne University, for answering a call and serving on my committee. And the work simply could not have been done without the unfaltering optimism and invaluable guidance of Professor Jonathan Arac—thank you immensely. And most especially, to my wife, who not only makes my work possible but is my greatest source of inspiration—I dedicate this, with my love, to you, Erica. vii 1.0 ‘THE PURSUIT OF POETRY UNDER DIFFICULTIES’: MELVILLE’S WORDSWORTHIAN HERITAGE In 1977, Thomas F. Heffernan urged a critical examination of the relationship between Melville and Wordsworth by publishing the results of his study of Melville’s annotations of Wordsworth’s poetry.1 Prior to this, only a handful of academics had offered arguments linking the two authors. This belatedness can be accounted for in several ways. When it comes to literary influences and predecessors, Melville scholars (rightly) concentrated on other, more visible figures, such as those directly connected to Melville by his own hand, like Shakespeare and Hawthorne,2 or those logically inferred from the his position in contemporary culture, such 1 Thomas F. Heffernan, "Melville and Wordsworth," American Literature 49, no. 3 (1977). The edition Melville annotated was The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Together With a Description of the Country of the Lakes in the North of England, Now First Published with His Works, edited by Henry Reed (Philadelphia: James Kay, Jun. And Brother; Boston: James Munroe and Company; Pittsburgh, C.H. Kay & Co.; 1839). This volume follows Wordsworth’s preference for his collected poetry in arranging the titles under categories such as “Poems Referring to the Period of Childhood,” “Juvenile Pieces,” “Poems Founded on the Affections,” “Poems of the Fancy,” and “Poems of the Imagination.” 2 I refer, of course, to Melville’s review entitled “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” which is perhaps the primary document outside of his fiction or poetry in which a student of Melville’s may look to find some notion of his theory of art. In the commonly accepted lore of Melville scholarship, his review of Hawthorne is considered central not only by demonstrating his appreciation of Shakespeare and Hawthorne, and thereby providing a glimpse into his vision of art, but also by evidencing his own altered course as artist in the modified development of his magnum opus, Moby-Dick, as a consequence of his friendship with Hawthorne: see, for example, Leon Howard, Herman Melville: A Biography (Berkley and Los Angeles 1951), 168-177; this view is challenged, however, by Jerome M. Loving, "Melville's Pardonable Sin," The New England Quarterly 47, no. 2 (June 1974). For Moby-Dick’s indebtedness to Shakespeare, see Charles Olson, Call Me Ishmael (New York,: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947). 1 as Emerson. But the late discovery of Melville’s annotated edition of Wordsworth’s poetry provided some concrete evidence on which to base scholarly conclusions—it pulled such academic work from the realm of mere “conjecture,”3 and provided scholars with a firmer footing to draw conclusions from their observations.4 Nonetheless, some conjecturing regarding the relationship between Melville and Wordsworth was natural, considering Wordsworth’s prominence and reputation.5 Critics recognized, of course, the allusion to Wordsworth in White-Jacket (1850): As may readily be imagined, the business of writing verse is a very different thing on the gun-deck of a frigate, from what the gentle and sequestered Wordsworth found it at placid Rydal Mount in Westmoreland. In a frigate, you can not sit down and meander off your sonnets, when the full heart prompts; but only, when more important duties permit: such as bracing round the yards, or reefing top-sails fore and aft.6 3 Heffernan, "Melville and Wordsworth," 338. 4 In 1973, a few years before Heffernan published his study, Maxine Moore lamented the lack of firm evidence linking Melville to Wordsworth: ‘That the name of one of England’s most influential writers, William Wordsworth, does not figure prominently in Herman Melville’s overt references prior to 1855 probably accounts for the fact that no study has been made of Wordsworth’s influence on Melville,” Maxine Moore, "Melville's Pierre and Wordsworth: Intimations of Immortality," New Letters 39, no. Summer (1973): 89. 5 On the centrality of Wordsworth to the poetical reception in America, Christopher Durer states, “Following the 1820s, the English Romantic who became the new center of critical attention in the United States was Wordsworth,” Christopher S. Durer, Herman Melville, Romantic and Prophet : A Study of His Romantic Sensibility and His Relationship to European Romantics (Fredericton, N.B., Canada: York Press, 1996), 11. See also William Charvat, The Origins of American Critical Thought, 1810-1835 (Philadelphia: University