Herman Melville’s : A Melancholy Look at Civilization and its Other

Federico Bellini

ABSTRACT

Melancholy is a distinctive feature of many of Melville’s characters, apparent from his first book, Typee. In this autobiographical novel, both the narrator and his companion are repre- sented as melancholy, a feature belonging to the romantic stereotype of the restless outsider. In this article, I intend to show how Melville creatively used this stereotype in Typee to present a detached and critical view of Western society. However, it is the inability of the melancholy subject to identify with the monotonous lifestyle of the Marquesas Islands that avoids reducing the book to a mere antimodern pamphlet. Melancholy appears simultaneously as a product of Western culture and modernity and as a privileged point of departure for a constructive criti- cism of it, affording a perspective that will prove fruitful not only in this book but also in Mel- ville’s subsequent works.

In spite of its apparent simplicity, Typee, ’s first published book, is an extremely complicated textual artifact, “part autobiography, part anthropology, part travelogue, part adventure story, [and] part social criticism” (Otter 15). In particular, “its status as fiction or as history” has been a topic of discussion since the publication of the novel (Samson 276), with many contempo- rary reviewers wondering how much of the narrative was actually a product of the imagination of the writer (Higgins and Parker; Anderson). Contemporary readers questioned the veracity of the book, on the grounds of both the strangeness of the adventures told in it and the writing skills shown by the author. It seemed unlikely, especially to British readers, that a sailor could write in such lively and skillful prose as Melville’s (Howard 293-94). The fascination that this book still exerts on its readers stems precisely from its unique combination of anthropological investi- gation and social criticism on the one hand and literary skills and adventurousness on the other. In the present article, I consider one aspect of the book that concerns both these dimensions, namely the role played by melancholy in the characterization of the two protagonists. In the presentation of both the narrator and his com- panion, the author resorts to the topos of the melancholy outsider, a formula that also characterizes several of Melville’s later protagonists. However, melancholy is not merely a part of the characterization of the protagonists; it also embodies an existential attitude that offers a detached and critical perspective of both Western society and its native Other. In this sense, melancholy is seen concurrently as a product of Western culture and capitalist modernity and as a vantage point from which to observe Western culture and conduct a constructive criticism that differs from simple escapist rejection. 6 Federico Bellini

The importance of the theme of melancholy in many of Melville’s works has long been recognized. Scholars, notably including Matthiessen, have noticed the crucial influence of the Anatomy of Melancholy on Melville’s works (especially after ), and references to Burton’s masterpiece have been collected and variously analyzed (see Wright and Sealts). Moreover, critics have attempted to interpret specific occurrences of melancholy from a more comprehensive perspec- tive. Branka Arsic has dedicated considerable effort to an innovative interpreta- tion sub specie melancholiae of Melville’s “Bartleby” in the eclectic study Passive Constitutions, or 7 ½ Times Bartleby. In The Highpriest of Pessimism, Christa Buschendorf offers an analysis of melancholy in , connecting it to Schopenhauer’s pessimism and the social context of the time. In the article “Melville’s ,” she claims that the eponymous character is modeled on the traditional iconography of the melancholic. William Engel offers an interpreta- tion of qualifying the specific melancholy character of Melville’s landscapes. Breitwieser, in the introduction to National Melancholy, includes Mo- by-Dick in his variegated account of the connection between feelings of mourn- ing and melancholy and national sentiments. Paliwoda’s analysis of the theme of boredom at some points overlaps that of melancholy. In addition to these studies, scholars—Neal Tolchin and Paul McCarthy, among others—have highlighted how the theme of mental illness was relevant in the lives and histories of Melville and his family as much as in his works: Melville himself is known to have suffered from “nervous diseases,” and Newton Arvin goes so far as to detect the “germs of schizophrenic detachment” in Melville’s psyche (243).

“A strange wayward being”: Tommo and Toby as Melancholy Characters

The representation of melancholy in Typee has thus far been disregarded by scholars. This is surprising, considering that in this novel one finds Meville’s pro- totypical representation of a melancholy character trying to get away from his despondency by starting on an adventure, a recurrent motif throughout Melville’s oeuvre. In Moby-Dick, for example, Ishmael embarks in order to avoid being overwhelmed by “Hypos”; the melancholy narrator of “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!” tries to get over his gloomy mood by walking across the region in search of an “extraordinary rooster”; Clarel—much like Melville himself—travels to the Holy Land to calm, without success, his doubts and his depression. In Typee, this proto- typical role is played by both the narrator and Toby, the companion with whom he jumps ship. Undoubtedly, in later works, Melville’s representation of melancholy is richer in shades of meaning and part of a more complicated symbolic system than it is in Typee. Nonetheless, in his first book Melville gives proof of being con- scious of the traditional representation of melancholy, as well as of his intention to interpret melancholy as both the symptom of the crisis of the modern world and the grounds for a possible critical response to it. Reading the first portrayal of Toby in chapter five of the novel from this point of view is enlightening, as it is clearly modeled on the stereotype of the melan- choly romantic character. Toby is presented while “leaning over the bulwarks, Herman Melville’s Typee 7 apparently plunged in a profound reverie” (31), in an attitude that suggests deep dejection and pensiveness:

His naturally dark complexion had been deepened by exposure to the tropical sun, and a mass of jetty locks clustered about his temples, and threw a darker shade into his large black eyes. He was a strange wayward being, moody, fitful, and melancholy—at times almost morose. He had a quick and fiery temper, too, which, when thoroughly roused, transported him into a state bordering on delirium [...] but these paroxysms seldom oc- curred, and in them my bighearted shipmate vented the bile which more calm-tempered individuals get rid of by a continual pettishness at trivial annoyances. [...] No one ever saw Toby laugh; I mean, in the hearty abandonment of broad-mouthed mirth. He did smile sometimes, it is true; and there was a good deal of dry, sarcastic humor about him, which told the more from the imperturbable gravity of his tone and manner. (32) Every single detail of this portrait would have led a physician of the time to diag- nose Toby with “hypochondria,” that is, melancholy. He is said to be morose, lone- ly, prone to fanciful daydreaming and uncontrolled fits of temper, and detached from the communal world of his society. Even his physical description shows a residue of the ancient traditional representation of the melancholic type, with his dark complexion recalling the motif of the “black face,” ascribable to an excess of black humor. As Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl show in their seminal book Saturn and Melancholy, the melancholy subjects “were by the ancients reckoned swarthy and black of countenance” (290). The reference to the character’s need to “vent the bile”—that is, the black bile, the melas khole—further proves the point. Finally, his “dry and sarcastic humor” is another stereotypical feature of the mel- ancholy character and corresponds with the critical but detached attitude toward the world typically associated with it—embodied, for example, by the persona of Democritus Junior adopted by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy. It is Toby’s palpable melancholy that convinces the narrator that he is a good candidate with whom to share his mutinous project: He recognizes in the melan- choly sailor a fellow soul, coming from a similar background and having a similar character and worldview, someone who shares his doubts about carrying on the voyage on the Dolly and who could prove a good companion in a dangerous flight. Both Toby and the narrator clearly belong to that same “class of rovers” who come from “a different sphere of life” and “go rambling over the world as if pursued by some mysterious fate they cannot possibly elude” (32). They are romantic melan- choly souls, looking for that sense of adventure they cannot find in their everyday bourgeois life on land and so embarking on this journey to cure their “hypos.” This comes as no surprise, for traveling has long been considered the best remedy against melancholy: Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl have shown that belief in the therapeutic power of travel dates back to the very origin of the concept of melan- choly in antiquity when “prescribing travel as a means of distraction [was] typical” (45 n. 113). Robert Burton, an expert on melancholy if ever there was one, con- tended that “[there is] no better physic for a melancholy man than change of air, and variety of places, to travel abroad and see fashions” (335); Ishmael seems to be aware of this when he ascribes his decision to take a break from his life in New York and start an adventurous voyage on a whaler to his desire to try to “driv[e] off the spleen” (3). 8 Federico Bellini

Melancholy as a Critique of Western Modernity

Nonetheless, if on the one hand melancholy is an idiosyncratic peculiarity of the characters, an aspect of their way of being, on the other it is presented as the symptom of their dissatisfaction with life in modern Western society. As a conse- quence, their attempts to cure themselves from melancholy by means of adventure and a “change of air” also express their will to look for an alternative life. In this sense the two characters perfectly embody an ethical interpretation of the expe- rience of melancholy that, even though in some respects anticipated during the Renaissance, is typically modern. The authors of Saturn and Melancholy identify Kant as the initiator of this interpretation, in the way he endowed the melancholy character “with the stamp of the sublime” and interpreted “every trait of melan- choly as the expression of a great moral consciousness.” In this way, they claim, the melancholic became “the possessor of an ideal of freedom” and the “sadness without cause” came to be considered as the proof of “his possession of a moral scale which destroyed personal happiness by the merciless revelation of his own and others’ worthlessness” (122). The Kantian image of the melancholic as “stern judge of himself and of the others” but at the same time “not seldom weary both of himself and of the world” (123) was pivotal in the transformation of the “fash- ionable melancholy” typical of seventeenth-century sentimentalism into the nine- teenth-century view of the melancholy subject as a self-conscious critic of society. The representation of melancholy in Typee perfectly mirrors this modern di- mension of melancholy, as it combines the experience of existential weariness with the expression of an “ideal of freedom” and a criticism of the contemporary world. The first few chapters of the novel can be read as the allegorical represen- tation of the contrast between the modern Western world and the world of the Typees constructed to highlight the defects of the former. The novel opens with a description of the way the crew of the Dolly, the whaler on which the narrator is serving as sailor, is badly treated by the captain and forced to undergo an almost unbearable period of hardship. In the description of the deplorable state of the ship after six months of uninterrupted cruising, the narrator focuses almost obses- sively on the absence of any sign of natural life on board. Stuck between “the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else,” the ship has run out of all fresh provi- sions. The “glorious bunches of bananas,” the “delicious orange,” even the yams are gone, and the diet of the crew is reduced to salted meat and biscuit. The crew craves “a refreshing glimpse of one blade of grass—for a snuff at the fragrance of a handful of the loamy earth” (3), for the sight of a fresher green than that of the paint inside the bulwarks, which is such a “vile and sickly hue, as if nothing bear- ing even the semblance of verdure could flourish this weary way from land” (4). The Dolly, with its lack of any form of natural life and the intensive work re- quired from the crew, becomes the allegory of the mechanized modern world, de- voted to a relentless process of production and to the expansion of its dominion. The economic endeavor of the ship will not stop until all the available resources have been deployed and consumed: The only living nonhuman being left on the ship is a rooster called Pedro, emaciated and molting; the sailors, who lament the ab- sence of life on the ship, almost paradoxically wish the rooster soon dead, knowing Herman Melville’s Typee 9 that “the captain will never point the ship for the land so long as he has in anticipa- tion a mess of fresh meat” (4). The sacrifice of Pedro does indeed finally convince the captain that it is time to head for the coast and “see the living earth again” (4). In the “eighteen or twenty days” it takes the Dolly to get to the Marquesas, the crew finally enjoys an interruption from their work. They have a “delightful, lazy, languid time” that forebodes the experience of the two protagonists in the valley (9). Such suspension from the work routine corresponds with a general rebirth of the whole surrounding world. The sea and the sky between which the Dolly was “stuck” gradually fill with life and action. Shoals of flying fish leap out of the water and “fall the next moment like a shower of silver into the air,” while “the superb albicore, with his glittering sides” moves along the ship, whales spout against the horizon, and sharks glide by. As they get closer to land, the sky becomes as popu- lated as the sea: “[S]creaming and whirling in spiral tracks, [sea-fowl] accompany the vessel” and “man-of war’s hawks” hover in circles over them, harbingers of the approaching land (10). Once they get into the bay of Nukuheva, the beauty of the landscape, the tem- porary suspension of work, and the restock of fresh fruit and vegetables finally un- veil the existence of a possible alternative to the oppressive life aboard the Dolly. On the one hand, the ship and the modern world it represents are both based on the imperative of productiveness; on the other, the inaccessible valley of the na- tives embodys an idealized premodern world free from work and constrictions. The harbor, physically placed between these two settings, allegorically represents the friction between the two worlds they embody. It symbolizes the colonization of the South Seas by Western countries looking for opportunities to expand their commercial and military dominion. The harbor is indeed something of a metas- tasis of the Western world within the heart of the South Sea, the violent installa- tion of an autonomous commercial base whose only interaction with the natives is based on minimizing any form of contact if not for exploiting the local workforce. The narrator expands extensively on the tragic effects of the friction between the two worlds. The text of the first edition of Typee is strewn with surprisingly stark critiques of Western civilization and its “civilized barbarity” against the in- habitants of the Marquesas (125). The narrator complains about the “enormi- ties perpetrated in the South Sea upon some of the inoffensive islanders” (26). Melville criticizes the infractions of “the rights of humanity” committed by the colonizers (17), and the clumsy and often brutal attempts of the missionaries to convert the inhabitants of the islands to Christianity. These passages were consid- ered so offensive by some of the public, and in particular by the supporters of the missioners in the South Sea, that Melville was forced to expunge many of them in the second edition of the book. As has been convincingly shown by Nicolas Lawrence, the narrator’s representation of this colonization informs the radical “counter-imperial subtext” of the book (68), which indirectly criticizes American expansionism of the time. Thus Melville merges concrete and contingent political issues with a more general allegorical reflection on the essence of civilization and its problems. The direct confrontation with a possible alternative to the modern world trig- gers the protagonist’s desire to break free from the ship and its oppressive situa- 10 Federico Bellini tion. He is aware that the temporary reprieve from work and from the vexations of the captain will end as soon as the Dolly leaves the bay, and the pristine life of the inhabitants of the island seems a much better alternative. The compari- son between the two cultures is portrayed in a paradigmatic scene early in the novel. The narrator happens to be on land to witness the meeting of the French admiral—the representative of the army that has recently taken possession of the island—with the king of a village. On the one side stands the barely dressed old patriarch, whose “gigantic frame retained all its original magnitude and grandeur of appearance”; on the other stands the “polished, splendid Frenchman,” exhibit- ing upon his person “all the paraphernalia of his naval rank” (29). The narrator meditates on the “immeasurable distance” separating the two characters and the two cultures they represent. The Frenchman is “the result of long centuries of civilization and refinement, which have gradually converted the mere creature into the semblance of all that is elevated and grand”; by contrast, the king of the village embodies the whole civilization of the Marquesas, which, “after a lapse of the same period, has not advanced one step in the career of improvement.” The narrator, after having observed the scene, wonders whether “after all … insensible as he is to a thousand wants, and removed from the harassing cares, may not the savage be the happier man of the two” (29). While the highest representatives of the two cultures have their “ceremoni- ous interview,” their respective groups merge to form a “picturesque grouping of the mingled throng of soldiery and natives.” The narrator, by contrast, sits aside, holding a bunch of bananas “of which I occasionally partook while making the aforesaid philosophical reflection” (29). This is an emblematic representation of a solitary and meditative tendency, the predisposition to see things from a distance and at an angle that is a typical feature of Melville’s melancholy characters—in particular Ishmael (Bellini). This unique feature distinguishes the narrator from the rest of the crew; it is the reason that, despite the democratic distribution of the mistreatment, no other crew members, apart from the equally melancholy Toby, seem to consider escaping or refusing to conform. Toby’s and the narrator’s acute sensitivity make them outsiders in the closed world of the ship. From the privi- leged vantage point offered by their outsider status they understand how desolate life on the ship—and in the Western world—is, and consequently they accept the risk of diving into a different world in the hope of finding something better. They decide to run away, and the narrator extensively explains the facts that, to his eyes, legitimize this unlawful act. The parodic use of legalese to justify their flight expresses the bureaucratic essence of their oppression, mirroring the lack of hu- man compassion and common sense in the captain’s way of dealing with the crew: In numberless instances had not only the implied but the specified conditions of the ar- ticles [of the contract signed on entering aboard the Dolly] been violated on the part of the ship in which I served. The usage on board of [the Dolly] was tyrannical. The sick had been inhumanly neglected; the provisions had been doled out in scanty allowance; and the cruises were unreasonably protracted. The captain was the author of these abuses; it was in vain to think that he would either remedy them or alter his conduct, which was ar- bitrary and violent in the extreme. His prompt reply to all complaints and remonstrances was—the butt end of a handspike, so convincingly administered as effectually to silence the aggrieved party. (21) Herman Melville’s Typee 11

The passage parodies Locke’s argument in his second Treatise on Government in favor of the legitimacy of rebellion in case of tyranny: “[I]f a long train of Abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way make the [tyrannical] de- sign visible to the People, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going; ‘tis not to be wonder’d that they should then rouze them- selves” in order to avoid being oppressed under a regime that is “much worse than the state of Nature or pure Anarchy” (II, XIX, par. 225). A return to the “state of Nature” in order to escape Western modernity—together with its worship for work, its forgetfulness of the natural world, and the melancholy it engenders—is indeed what the narrator attempts, and he will have the chance to prove firsthand that Locke and Rousseau were correct in claiming, against Hobbes, that such a state is really not as chaotic and dangerous as one might think.

Melancholy in the Happy Valley

The successful flight, although dangerous, seems at first to work as a cure against melancholy. As soon as the two are on shore, they abandon their moody attitude and become active and motivated in the difficult attempt to make their way through the island. Toby, in particular, appears surprisingly active and care- free, and with “fearless confidence” he convinces the protagonist not to be over- come by the many difficulties they meet. “Nothing indeed appeared to depress or intimidate this intrepid fellow,” says the narrator, who cannot “avoid a thousand times congratulating myself upon having such a companion in an enterprise like the present” (62). The enthusiasm expressed by Toby, so starkly contradicting his previous temper, confirms the opinion that adventure is the best way to get out of the self-referential dimension of melancholy, and the challenge transforms the two moody sailors into reckless adventurers. When the two runaways eventually reach the valley of the Typees, they con- front a world that is narratively constructed as the exact opposite of what they had experienced on the ship. Work is no longer required because the valley almost spontaneously offers what is needed for the humble lifestyle of the inhabitants. Although not allowed to leave, they are treated like guests and peers, and no longer are they oppressed by hierarchy. No more are they forced to live in the sexually repressed male-only environment of the ship. Now they enter a society in which erotic pleasures are apparently easily accessible—an aspect that titillated the curiosity of the readers of the time and was very likely one of the main causes of the success of the book (Oliviero, 3; Delbanco, 71). Life among the Typees seems to be proof of the existence of an earthly Paradise: The quiet life of the in- habitants, the flourishing nature, and the beauty of the idyllic valley all show what the Western world has lost by exchanging innocence for civic life. Closed within the luxuriant green walls of the “Happy Valley,” the narrator feels like “beyond those heights there was nought but a world of care and anxiety” (124), and he sinks “insensibly into that kind of apathy which ensues after some violent out- break of despair” (123). He thus learns how to appreciate the enjoyments of life offered by the “primitive state of society,” which are “few and simple, [but] spread 12 Federico Bellini over a great extent, and are unalloyed,” whereas civilization “for every advantage that she imparts, holds a hundreds evils in reserve” (124). Nevertheless, Toby and Tommo, the name that the narrator adopts among the Typees, do not manage to fully adapt to this new heavenly context, and soon they begin to suffer in a world where they do not belong. In spite of the radical change from life on the ship, the two characters—and in particular the narrator after his companion manages to flee—again fall prey to melancholy and dark moods. Tommo himself wonders how it is that despite “the numberless proofs of kindness and respect which [he] received from the natives of the valley,” his mind could still be “consumed by the most dismal forebodings, and have remained a prey to the profoundest melancholy” (118). Like when he was aboard the ship, he is not in control of his own life, being in the hands of people who, despite being “kind and respectful,” are nonetheless “nothing better than a set of savages” (118). More- over, his sore leg, injured while escaping the ship, causes him pain during most of his time on the island, thus making his stay less pleasurable and the prospect of going back to civilization more difficult. It is worth noting that the lame leg is one of the most important traditional attributes of Saturn, the God of melancholy, so that this detail can be integrated within the constellation of melancholy that traverses the whole novel. D. H. Lawrence highlighted that the fact that “his leg, that would never heal in the paradise of Typee, [begins] quickly to get well” (132) once he leaves the valley is a symbol of Melville’s incapacity to “go back to the savages” (130), that is, to consider life among the Typees as a real alternative to “civilization.” While on the ship, the protagonist attributed his melancholy to the situation on board; similarly, Tommo attributes his aboulia and “melancholy reverie” and despondency to the indolent life he is forced to live among the Typees, which makes him “regardless of everything around” (104). His melancholy aboard the ship was triggered by the excess of work required, incertitude about the future, and general mistreatment. In Typee, it is the lack of work, the sameness of daily life, and even the generous accessibility of natural and sexual pleasures that act as the trigger. The initial curiosity for and excitement about life among the Typees are gradually superseded by dejection. The narrator is crushed by the general monotony and sloth that permeate the valley, in which day after day the same actions are repeated and nothing ever seems to happen. “Nothing can be more uniform and undiversified than the life of the Typees,” tells the narrator: for them, “one tranquil day of ease and happiness follows another in quiet succession,” such that “the history of a day is the history of a life” (149). The sense of the passing of time vanishes, and the narrator loses “all knowledge of the days of the week” (xiv), sinking into monotony and never-changing sameness. The access to “plenty moee-moee (sleep)—plenty ki-ki (eat)—plenty whihenee (young girls)” (241), in the words of one of the natives trying to convince him he should be better content with staying, is not enough to make Tommo happy. At the end of chapter twenty-nine, the character’s distress and incapacity to adapt to the situation is summed up in a deeply symbolic image. He praises the numerous birds that fly over the valley of Typee, and whose colorful plumage is “purple and azure, crimson and white, black and gold; with bills of every tint:— Herman Melville’s Typee 13 bright bloody-red, jet black, and ivory white” (215). The beauty of these animals, though, does not cheer him up: On the contrary, the birds further weigh down his melancholy because, despite being pleasurable to the eyes with their bright colors, they do not sing, since “the spell of dumbness is upon them all!” (215). As he recalls “the sight of these birds, generally the ministers of gladness, always op- pressed me with melancholy,” and as they look down upon him from the foliage he is “almost inclined to fancy that they knew they were gazing upon a stranger, and that they commiserated my fate” (216). The beautiful but silent birds symbolize the narrator’s deep fascination for the culture of the Typees, while at the same time expressing his inability to actu- ally be in communication with them. Such a frustrating feeling of estrangement has roots much deeper than the obvious difficulty to speak the local language. It has to do with the incapacity of the narrator to get free from the burden of civilization, in spite of his criticisms of Western culture and praise of the beauties of “savage” life. This is clearly represented in a famous passage from chapter thirty. After having described in the usual lighthearted and ironic way the practice of tattooing among the Typees, the narrator recounts how on one occasion, having approached one of the “artists” of the valley with the intent of closely studying his work, he was made the object of the intense will of the latter to exercise his skills on Tommo’s skin. The scene quickly degenerates into a sort of slapstick skit: The narrator, “horrified at the bare thought of being rendered hideous for life if the wretch were to execute his purpose” (218), is forced to flee from the “indomitable artist,” who overenthusiastically rejoices at the prospect of “engrafting his tattooing upon my white skin,” and runs after Tommo men- acingly brandishing his implements (219). In many other cases, he displays an extraordinary tolerance and open-mindedness for the habits of the Typees, even stretching so far as to almost legitimize cannibalism. It is thus surprising for the reader to encounter such virulent disrespect for facial tattoos. He is afraid that he would “never more … have the face to return to my countrymen, even should an opportunity offer” (219). The risk of being “made a convert” and losing one’s “face” by being integrated indelibly into a community is the ultimate fear for the melancholy subject, who would lose his status as outsider by being identified as part of one specific community (220). Despite all the ways in which the Typees seem comparatively superior to the Western world, Tommo cannot adapt to their culture and paradoxically struggles to get back to that society that he had starkly criticized. As a consequence, his mel- ancholy grows worse, nurtured by the monotonous life among the Typees. What is extremely relevant at this point is how the lethargic rhythms and the absence of work that cause Tommo’s melancholy are exactly the same reasons why the Typees are supposedly safe from all the disorders typical of the Western world, first among them melancholy: In this secluded abode of happiness there were no cross old women, no cruel stepdames, no withered spinsters, no love-sick maidens, no sour old bachelors, no inattentive hus- bands, no melancholy young men, no blubbering youngsters, and no squalling brats. All was mirth, fun, and high good humor. Blue devils, hypochondria, and doleful dumps, went and hid themselves among the nooks and crannies of the rocks. (126) 14 Federico Bellini

“[B]lue devils, hypochondria, and doleful dumps”—these three phrases, all pe- riphrases for melancholy, further stress by means of redundancy the importance of the theme in the novel. However, why is this “secluded abode of happiness” unable to bring peace of mind to Tommo or, for that matter, to Melville? Because Paradise, when it is lost, is lost forever: Life in Eden is livable only for those who originally belong there, while those who enter it from the outside are doomed to feel out of place. In the world he had left behind it was the rigid hierarchy, the exhausting work, and the all-male society that had forced the narrator to feel de- pressed; here, abundance without variety, sympathy without communication, and eros without romance fascinate Tommo without winning him over, and he is thus forced to run away back to his world. The melancholy sailor who was an outsider in the civil society of the ship is even more so among the “cannibals.” He is, as it were, suspended between the two worlds and cannot adhere to either. In Typee, melancholy thus comes to signify a form of incurable cosmic dissatisfaction which entails an inability to adapt to the world and a will to flee from it. It is a form of typically Romantic restlessness, and these characters adhere completely to the topos of the Romantic wander- ers that “go rambling over the world as if pursued by some mysterious fate they cannot possibly elude” (32). In Typee the author does not distance himself from these characters and shows an overall positive attitude toward them and toward melancholy. Nonetheless, Melville does not simply stick to the use of a cliché or to the adaptation of an older form of representation; rather, he uses melancholy in a strikingly original way, taking advantage of the unique perspective offered by the melancholic subject. Being so detached from his context, suspended between the Western culture and the Typees, Tommo (as the alter ego of Melville) provides a unique point of view regarding both the society of the Typees and his own. On the one hand, melancholy allows a more critical perspective on one’s own culture; on the other, it grants a more friendly and openminded perspective on the world of the “other,” which still does not coincide with uncritical praise.

Breaking out of the melancholy deadlock

Thus, one can see from his first work how the theme of melancholy and cul- tural criticism are tightly knitted in Melville’s works; however, this relationship is more complex than it may look. If the melancholy subject offers a partially neutral point of view on the crisis and the contradictions of the Western world, it represents at the same time the effect or, as it were, the symptom of such crisis. Consequently, the possibility to “cure” or overcome melancholy also provides the opportunity to move beyond the crisis. In the case of Typee, the opportu- nity offered by a confrontation with the radically different culture of the Typee, who are immune to melancholy, ends in failure. The impossibility of Tommo uprooting himself from his world and settling in the new context reveals that the utopian idea of moving back to Eden is no longer an option. There is no actual communication between the melancholy characters and the Typees, despite the fact that the inhabitants are highly sympathetic towards them. The world of the Herman Melville’s Typee 15 valley, even though it is presented as a description of Melville’s autobiographical experiences, is represented as some sort of impossible “other,” because the nar- rator heavily relies on clichés of the exotic locus amoenus in the construction of the narrative world. Banerjee uses the concept of “ethnic ventriloquism” to show that Melville never really lets the natives speak for themselves, so that even “the critical obser- vations are devoid of traces of native agency” (209). This is due to the fact that the narrator himself never really identifies with them but always looks at them, as it were, from the outside. As a consequence, the world of the Typees never really appears as a viable alternative to the Western world and its melancholy charac- ters. On the contrary, in the first lines ofOmoo— the sequel to Typee written in the wake of the success of the first novel—one sees how the nostalgia produced by the encounter with that always-already-lost Paradise only worsens the melancholy of the subject. The protagonist has just been released and is safe aboard the ship that is going to take him back to the civilized world, “with home and friends once more in prospect.” But, already, he feels “weighed down by a melancholy that could not be shaken off. It was the thought of never more seeing those, who, not- withstanding their desire to retain me a captive, had, upon the whole, treated me so kindly” (7). The critical point of view of the melancholy subject, enhanced by the awareness of the nonviability of the escapist flight to the lost Paradise, opens the arena for the criticism of modernity that Melville will continue, in a far more radical form, in his subsequent books. This process reaches its apex in Moby-Dick (Bellini), which represents the transformation of the romantic melancholy reverie that affects Ishmael as a character at the beginning of the narration into the pro- ductive and self-creative power of narration mastered by Ishmael as the narrator. Ishmael resists the escapist temptation to overcome the melancholy of the modern world by “going native” and, through a close experience of mortality and a con- frontation with the discipline of self-narration, finally succeeds in “driving off the spleen” and finding a balance between criticism and comprehension, earnestness and irony, solitude and belonging.

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