and finished in Pierre, was a sloughing away of labels, nicknames,
party war-cries, habits, conventions, and acceptances; it was,
necessarily, a prelude to that building up of a new ego, a surer and
more central, a social and participating self, which is the task of
our own time for both men and communities. Melville was crippled in
the work of reconstruction by a hiatus in his own career, which was
followed and made final by the social hiatus of the Civil War: though
he sought to carry the work further in Clarel, one cannot pretend that
he did anything but give a hint of this mended psyche, this more richly
integrated self: one of his last poems, The Lake of Pontoosuce, perhaps
approaches nearer to the goal than any other work of his. Had he built
up that ego, his vision might have fully complemented Whitman’s--land
and sea, day and night, sunlight and shadow, triumph and tragedy. That
union was latent: it is for us to effect it. It is useless, however,
to speculate upon what might have been. The accidents that befell
Melville, as he rounded his own Cape Horn, were part of that malign
doom he himself pictured in Moby-Dick, and they do not affect the
essence of his work. Whatever Melville’s life was, his art in Moby-Dick
exhibits that integration and synthesis which we seek. Through his art,
he escaped the barren destiny of his living: he embraced Life; and we
who now follow where his lonely courage led him embrace it, too. This
embrace was a fertile one; and in each generation it will bring forth
its own progeny. The day of Herman Melville’s vision is now in the
beginning. It hangs like a cloud over the horizon at dawn; and as the
sun rises, it will become more radiant, and more a part of the living
day.
NOTE ON BOOKS
The complete and definitive edition of Melville’s works is that
published by Constable and Company, London, 1923-1924. With the
exception of Israel Potter, The Confidence Man, Pierre, and the
various volumes of verse, all of Melville’s work can now be obtained
in contemporary popular editions. Mr. Raymond Weaver’s edition of
The Shorter Novels of Herman Melville (Horace Liveright, 1928) and
Mr. Henry Chapin’s edition of the Appletree Table and Other Sketches
and of John Marr and Other Poems (Princeton University Press, 1922)
make almost all of Melville’s significant minor work available. Mr.
Meade Minnegrode’s Some Personal Letters of Herman Melville and a
Bibliography contains extracts from some of Melville’s Letters to
Evert Duyckinck. The bibliography covers in detail all of Melville’s
writings, giving both American and English first editions. The first
biography of Herman Melville was that of Mr. Raymond Weaver: Herman
Melville, Mariner and Mystic (Doran, 1921). Mr. John Freeman’s brief
critical biography belongs to the new English Men of Letters Series
(Macmillan, 1926); Mr. Freeman has the distinction of being the first
to deal patiently and critically with Melville’s poetry. Various other
volumes on Herman Melville are now in course of preparation. Among the
critics whose studies of Melville have contributed to his revival and
to a proper evaluation of his work I would mention especially Mr. Frank
Jewett Mather, Jr., Miss Viola Meynell, Mr. Percy Boynton, Mr. J. W. N.
Sullivan, Mr. E. L. Grant Watson, and, not least, Mr. Van Wyck Brooks.
INDEX
Acushnet, ship list, 43
Adams, Henry, chaos and purposelessness pictured by, 360
Adjustment, fallacious interpretation of, 313-344
Adler, Dr., 120
Adolescent purity, 216
After the Pleasure Party, 274
Ahab, Captain, 161 ff.
Alcott, Bronson, 66
Alma, 99
Ambiguities, Melville’s experiences of, 210;
Emerson’s expression of, 216
Ambition, Melville’s secret, 347
American Aloe on Exhibition, The, 345
American folk-arts, 45
American psyche, broken, 229
American society, in 1819, 9;
in 1844, 63;
economic conflict, 63;
question of one and many, 63;
slavery and industrialism, 64;
intrusion of new habits of living, 64;
contrast of vital and mechanical, provincial and metropolitan, 66;
in 1860, 293;
loss of form, 293;
wastefulness of industrialism in, 294
Anglo-American Literature and Manners, 74
Anticipation of modern science, Melville’s, 99
Appletree Table, The, 236
Arrowhead, 136
Articles of War, 355
Arts, as means of salvation, 318
Attica, comparison with North Atlantic states, 65
Azzageddi, Melville’s demon, 102
Babbalanja, 95
Barney, 21
Bartleby the Scrivener, 236-239
Battle Pieces and Other Aspects of the War, 303-305
Beddoes, 179
Bell-Tower, 236
Benito Cereno, 244-246
Bentley, 123
Beowulf, 194
Berkshires, 135
Billson, James, 334
Billy Budd, 337, 353-356
Birth, 16
Bitterness of life, 309
Blackness, Melville’s, 233-235
Blake, William, 335
Boynton, Percy, 181, 194
Bridegroom Dick, 337
Broadhall, 135
Brooks, Van Wyck, 110, 194
Bryant, William Cullen, 12
Bullen, Frank, 147
Camoëns, 58
Captain Claret, 59
Captain Riga, 29, 36
Captains, The Two, 290
Centenary Committee, 333
Chapin, Henry, 369
Chaplain Mudge, 44
Charity, 249, 253
Chase, Jack, 57
Chasles, M. Philarète, 74
Children, Melville’s, plight of, 287;
fate of Malcolm and Stanwix, 288
Christianity, Melville’s respect for, 103;
his repugnance toward, 320
Chronometricals and Horologicals, 214
Civil War, the, a dividing point, 291;
attempt to preserve ideological framework by, 292;
symbolizes disruption, 293;
described by Whitman, 297
Claggart, causeless evil in, 354
Clarel, 307-324
Coan, Titus Munson, 259
Cock-a-doodle-do, 236
Cologne, 128
Colonel J. Bunkum, 337
Confidence, lack of, 248
Confidence Man, The, 247-255
Consular post, Melville’s efforts to secure, 235, 289
Contempt, Melville’s, for contemporaries, 233
Convictions, conflict of, 301
Cousins, their condescension and Melville’s resentment, 75
Critic, The, 3
Critics, their condemnation of Mardi, 105;
misconception of Melville, 106
Crystal Palace Exhibition, 188
Culture, new, 361
Customs Office, an asylum, 329
Daggoo, 165
Dana, Richard Henry, 40
Dark Ages of Democracy, 327
Death, biological terminus, 359;
spiritual significance, 359
Death, Herman Melville’s, 357
Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser, 36
De Quincey, 127
Derwent, 311
Dilemma as writer, 221
Dominora, 97
Dowden, quoted, 234
Duke of Rutland, 129
Duyckinck, Evert, 73;
expurgates Typee, 76;
introduces Melville to literary world, 79;
Lowell’s characterization of, 80;
correspondence with Melville, 140 ff.
Duyckinck, George, 79
Duyckincks, The, Whitman’s opinion of, 80
Edens, authentic, 339
Emerson, Lectures on the Times, 65;
defended by Melville, 140;
absence of shadows in, 141
Encantadas, The, or Enchanted Isles, 239-240
England, first impression of, 33;
return to, 119 ff.;
depth and triviality of, 124, 125
Enthusiast, The, 342
Eternity, 98
Ethan Brand, criticism of Melville in, 145
European observations, 273-274
Evil, discovery in Mardi, 96, 246
Fact, respect for in nineteenth-century literature, 192;
in Moby-Dick, 192
Faith, animal, 324
Fantasies, usable and unusable, 233
Father Mapple, 159-160
Father Taylor, prototype of Father Mapple, 44
Fayaway, Melville’s companion, 49, 52
Fiddler, The, 259
Flask, 164
Flogging, Melville’s influence on abolition of, 117
Forms, world of, 359
Forster, E. M., 209
Free verse, in Pierre, 181
Gansevoort Hotel, 329
Gansevoort Market, 329
Gansevoorts, 11
Glendinning, Mrs., 203
Golden Day, The, 141
Goodman, Frank, 250
Grand Armada, 171
Greene, Richard Tobias, 73
Haglets, The, 342
Harper’s, 135, 235
Hautia, symbol of sensual bliss, 51;
her attractiveness in Typee, 51
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, first effect on Melville, 137;
likeness to Rembrandt, 138,
to Shakespeare, 138;
first meeting with Melville, 142;
last meeting, 262-265
Hawthorne, Sophia, characterization of Melville, 143
Herzen, Alexander, 91, 315
Hiatus, in Melville’s emotional development, 218;
in his career, 291
Highlander, The, 28, 32
Human values, sweeping away of, 319
Humiliation, effect of, 31
Humour, of desperation, 169;
Melville’s perpetual sense of, 290
I and My Chimney, 236
Ideal life, fantastic notions of, 65
Ideality, embodied in animal instincts, 352
Illness, Melville’s, 224-225
Imaginative synthesis, Moby-Dick as, 170-171
Industrialism, as end in itself, 65;
wastefulness of, 294;
bleak efficiency and blindness to humane purpose, 319
Inheritance, 336
Innocents Abroad, 328
Insanity, looseness of term, 231;
biographer’s difficulty, 231;
Melville’s interpretation of, 231-232;
relationship with art, 232-233
Institutions, upheaval in 1848, 91;
savage parody of in Mardi, 91
Instrumentation of Moby-Dick, 182
Irving, Washington, 139
Isabel, 202
Israel Potter, 240-242
Jack Gentian, 337
Jackson, 29;
Melville pities, 235
Jehovah, birth of idea of, 271
Jewish literature, Melville’s sympathies with, 320
Jimmy Rose, 259
Jocularity, infirmity of, 283, 290-291
John Brown, 297
John Marr, 338
Jokes, family’s indifference to, 332
Journals, Melville’s, to England and the Continent, 119-131;
to Constantinople and the Holy Land, 261-273
Jung, 194
Juvenile Total Abstinence Association, 29
Kinship with Thoreau, 112
Kory-Kory, manservant, 47
Lake of Pontoosuce, The, 349-350
Lawrence, D. H., 194
Leisure, Melville’s high opinion of, 332
Lenin, 316
Life, implication of ideal ends, 189;
as more than living, 190;
stultification in vacuous dreams, 316
Life, naïve joy in, 49;
sinister meanings of, 124;
shadow of death on, 129
Libellous criticism, 106
Lightning Rod Man, The, 236
Literary method, Melville’s conception, 212
Literary World, The, 79
Lockhart, 125
Lombardo, 102
London, greyness of, 124;
depression of, 126
Londoners, 123
Lucy, 202
MacMechan, Archibald, 337
Man of the World, The, 290
Manhattan literati, 79
Mardi, characterization of, 93-101
Mark Twain, 328
Marquesas, 46-55
Marquis de Grandvin, 337
Masefield, John, 110
Material civilization, lopsidedness of, 361
Mather, F. J., Jr., 241
Mechanical arts, menace of their perfection, 318
Media, 95
Mehevi, King of Typees, 47
Melville, Allan, brother of Herman, 66
Melville, Allan, father of Herman Melville, characteristics, 13, 14;
knowledge of Europe, 15;
marriage, 14;
traveller, 21;
death, 23
Melville, Elizabeth (Shaw), marries Herman, 86;
as housekeeper, 136;
strain of relationship with Herman, 287;
receives affectionate dedication of Weeds and Wildings, 344
Melville, Gansevoort, 25, 67, 80
Melville, Herman, his family, 11-14;
birth, 17;
birthplace, 17;
early impressions, 17;
starved of affection, 18;
moved to Bleecker Street, 18;
melancholy situation, 19;
relatives, 20;
influence of Manhattan, 21;
ambitions, 22;
father’s death in 1832, 23;
fixation of father’s image, 24;
struggle for existence, 25-26;
Grand Tour, 27;
an infant Ishmael, 28;
bitterness of youth, 28;
disappointment in Liverpool, 33;
exploration of city, 34;
first view of misery and degradation, 34-35;
essential education, 35;
return to Lansingburgh, 36;
slow growth, 36;
early sexual life, 36-37;
first literary effusions, 37-38;
beginning of self-consciousness, 39;
preparation for literature, 38;
attraction to sea, 40;
departure from New Bedford, 41;
leaves ship at Nukuheva, 46;
lives among Typees, 47-52;
is rescued by the Julia, 52;
makes friends with Dr. Long Ghost, 52;
participates in mutiny, 53;
is confined in British jail, 54;
becomes a rover, 54-55;
enjoys idle life, 55;
works in Honolulu, 55;
becomes sick of adventure, 56;
ships on U. S. Frigate, United States, 56;
homeward bound, 56-62;
discovers abuses in Navy, 57;
makes friends with Jack Chase, 57;
is influenced in literary taste by ship’s library, 57-58;
is condemned to flogging, 58;
has impulse to assault Captain, 58;
resents “massacre of beards,” 59;
falls from yard-arm, 59-60;
beginning of manhood, 61;
lands at Boston, 62;
writes Typee, 67;
habit of documentation, 69;
accuracy, 70;
effect of censorship on, 77;
successful author, 78;
writes Omoo, 81;
marries Elizabeth Shaw, 86;
honeymoon, 87;
daily routine, 87-89;
has weak eyes, 88;
writes Mardi, 91;
tightening of domestic responsibility, 108;
necessity for potboilers, 108;
writes Redburn, 108;
writes White-Jacket, 114;
goes to Europe, 119;
becomes acquainted with English society, 122;
steady growth and development, 131;
return to America, 131;
moves to Arrowhead, 136;
meets Hawthorne, 142;
correspondence with, 144 ff.;
discovers Hawthorne’s sentiments, 147;
apprenticeship over, 150;
intensity of effort in Moby-Dick, 151;
ruin of eyesight, 152;
feeling of desolation, 154;
is damned by dollars, 155;
contempt of fame, 155;
swift development, 156;
exaltation and terror from Moby-Dick, 156;
situation after Moby-Dick, 196;
culmination of powers, 197;
disclosure of weaknesses, 196;
his wilful defiance, 199;
mood of defeat, 200;
betrays himself in Pierre, 218;
terrific pressure leads to retreat of, 220;
dilemmas as writer, 107, 220;
anticipation of defeat, 221;
failure to mature in marriage, 222;
draws near spiritual Cape Horn, 223;
alienation from humanity, 227;
scorn of critics, 228;
Timonism, 230;
meets successive misfortunes, 235, 236;
weakened health, 236;
writes Piazza Tales, 236;
Israel Potter, and The Confidence Man, 236-255;
recoils from painful experience, 259;
goes on voyage to Holy Land, 261;
visits Hawthorne in England, 261;
discusses withdrawal from literature, 263;
fails to renew friendship, 265;
sails for Near East, 265;
explores Constantinople, 267, and Cairo, 270;
has passionate encounter in Italy, 274-281;
returns home, 1857, 281;
seeks to gain living in lecture lyceum, 282;
voyage to San Francisco in 1860, 284;
longing for Elizabeth, 286;
commonplaceness as father, 287;
sells Arrowhead, meets carriage accident, moves to New York, 289;
interest in Civil War, 292-303;
eventual disillusion, 303;
withdraws from literary struggle, 306;
gets inspectorship in Customs House, 307;
writes Clarel, 307-308;
is indifferent to “recognition,” 333;
is released from Customs House, 336;
resumes literary work and writes Billy Budd, 337;
publishes John Marr, 338;
publishes Timoleon, 342;
writes Weeds and Wildings, 344;
expresses warmth of love for Elizabeth, 345;
finds peace, 351;
expresses ultimate resignation in Billy Budd, 357;
death, 357
Melville, Malcolm, 92
Melville, Maria, mother of Herman Melville, comparison with Mrs.
Glendinning, 14
Melville, Stanwix, 287
Melville, Thomas, ambition to become sailor, 67
Men-about-literature, 333
Metcalf, Eleanor Melville, v
Milton, 191
Minnigerode, Meade, 285
Misinterpretation of Melville, 224
Missionaries, 74
Moby-Dick, writing of, 147-157;
summary of, 158-176;
criticism of, 176-195;
symphonic quality, 182;
organic conception of, 182;
its meaning as story of sea, 183;
as parable of evil, 184;
as tragedy of man, 187;
as contrast of practical and ideal life, 188
Modern vision of life, 194
Mohi, 95
Monody (to Hawthorne), 265
Mortmain, 310
Murray, Dr. Henry A., Jr., vi
Murray, John, 73
Mythology, Moby-Dick as first modern, 193
Nathan, 310
Nature, oneness with, 351;
paints like a harlot, 352
New York, in 1819, 15-16;
after Civil War, 326;
its brutality, 327
New Bedford, centre of whaling industry, 42, 158
No Trust, 249
O’Brien, Fitz-James, 198
Olympians, English, 124
Omoo, 81-84
Orthodox illusions, Melville’s rejection of, 324-325
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, 191
Palestine, effect on Melville, 309
Paradise of Bachelors, 130, 236
Paradox of morality, 216
Passion, reawakening in Italy, 275;
frustration, 276-281
Parrington, Vernon, 199
Peace, Melville’s ultimate, 357
Pequod, The, 161
Personal disappointment and bitterness, 109;
an Ishmael, 109
Physical characteristics, Melville’s, 119
Physical weakness, 225
Piazza Tales, The, 243
Pictures, Melville’s favourite, 130, 336
Pierre, 196-206
Pilgrims, Melville’s and Chaucer’s, 311-312
Pip, 170
Pittsfield, 135, 341
Plotinus Plinlimmon, 215
Political institutions, Melville’s misgivings over, 295
Post-bellum America, 343
Primal world, Melville’s consciousness of, 353
Progress, its illusory nature, 313-314
Prose-sketches, 337
Provincial society, 9;
its economic foundations, 10;
mixture of nationalities, 10;
reality of family, 11;
idealized in Pierre, 13;
destruction, 292
Psychological truth, in Pierre, 211
Pyramids, the, effect on Melville, 271
Queequeg, 160
Rama, 330
Rammon, Introduction to, quoted, 323
Realism, 5
Recoil from black experience, 255
Redburn, 108-114
Refugee, The, 290
Rembrandt, 336
Resignation, on point of, 259
Retarding environment, 345
Return of the Sire de Nesle, 90
Revolutionary betterment, psychological problem of, 316
Rip Van Winkle, Melville’s addition to, 353
Rolfe, 310
Rose Garden, The, 348
Rumour of Melville’s insanity, 224
Ruskin, John, in praise of war, 359
Russell, W. Clark, 334
Ruth, 310
Ryder, Albert Pinkham, 335
Sailors, hard life, 30;
monotony of pleasures, 31
Salvator R. Tarnmoor, pseudonym for H. M., 239
Satire, perfection in White-Jacket, 116;
in The Confidence Man, 253
Science, Melville’s utilization of, 163
Sea Poems, 334, 340
Seaman’s Bethel, 43
Serenia, 99
Sermon on the Mount, 195
Sexual feud, 277
Shakespeare, William, Melville’s discovery of in maturity, 138;
Messianic likeness for Melville, 138
Shaw, Lemuel, inheritance left by, 336
Significance, Melville’s, 361-368
Slavery, Melville’s attitude towards, 296;
Hawthorne’s attitude, 297
Smith, J. E. A., testimony on Melville, 341
Society, immoral practices of, 111
Social observation, Melville’s, 314-316
Starbuck, 164
Stedman, Arthur, 358
Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 327
Stewart, Miss Caroline, v
Stoddard, R. H., 329
Surgeon Cuticle, his operation, 116
Synthesis, foreshadowed by Melville, 362
Taboo, its caprices, 50;
effect of sexual, 78
Taji, 94-101
Tartarus of Maids, The, 64, 236
Tashtego, 165
Thomas, Mrs. Frances, v
Thomson, James, 334
Thoreau, experiment at Walden, 65
Thy Aim, Thy Aim?, 348
Timonism, 233
Toby, 72;
story of, 74
Tragic sense of life, the, 358
Transcendentalists, satire on, 213
Travels, to Liverpool, 29;
to London, 119;
to Paris, 127;
to Liverpool (1856), 261;
to Greece, 265;
to Constantinople, 267;
to Cairo, 270;
to Jerusalem, 272;
through Europe, 273;
to California, 284
Turner, 336
Twenty-sixth Street, 104 East, 328
Two Years Before the Mast, effect on Melville, 40
Typee, 68-76
Typees, their cannibalism, 47;
customs, 48;
superiority to Western Civilization, 48;
their beauty, 49;
pleasures of their life, 49;
Melville’s escape from, 52
Ulver, Delly, 203
Unconscious, discovery of the, 102
Universe, acceptance of, 351;
false metaphysical separation of, 352
Vedder, Elihu, 334
Vere, Captain the Honorable Edward Fairfax, 354
Versification, Melville’s weakness in, 303, 320
Vice and Virtue, 217
Victorian confidence, 318
Vine, 310
Vision, wholeness of, 368
Vivenza, 97
Vivia, 205
War, its anomalous nature, 298;
its arousal of Melville, 298-302
as image of Melville’s life, 299
Watson, E. L. G., 369
Weaver, Raymond, v, 344
Weeds and Wildings, 344
Wendell, Barrett, 80
Whale, first effect on Melville, 41;
a New Bedford memory, 42;
as symbol, 162;
as natural history, 162, 163
Whale ship, Melville’s College, 46
Whaling implements, 45
White, as symbol of elemental truth, 168
White-Jacket, 114-118
Whitehead, A. N., 191
White Whale, incarnation of malicious agencies, 166;
symbol of external universe, 167;
Ahab’s defiance of, 167
Whitman, Walt, 4, 5
Woman, her absence in Melville’s work, 201
Woodberry, George, 80
Work, dignity of, 332
Wulf, Uncle John de, 20
Yillah, 94;
symbol of spiritual quest, 51;
beckons Melville, 52
Yoomy, 95
Young Goodman Brown, 203
[Transcriber’s note: Italics are rendered with _underscores_. Small
capitals, when used as emphasis, are shown with +plus signs+.
A small number of spelling corrections were made (“ultilizes/utilizes”,
“Mappie’s/Mapple’s”, “closses/closes”). Inconsistent hyphenation (e.g.,
“whale-boat” vs. “whaleboat”) has been retained.]