Herman Melville's Typee: a Melancholy Look at Civilization And

Herman Melville’s Typee: 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 criticism 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, Herman Melville’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 contemporary 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 companion, 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 Mardi), 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 perspective. 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 Benito Cereno, connecting it to Schopenhauer’s pessimism and the social context of the time. In the article “Melville’s Clarel,” she claims that the eponymous character is modeled on the traditional iconography of the melancholic. William Engel offers an interpreta- tion of The Encantadas 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 melancholy 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 melancholy 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 melancholy 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 melancholy 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 melancholy 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).

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