Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

by George Frein

Essay

In the summer of 1850, on the most famous picnic in American literary history, Herman Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne and argued with Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Holmes said that English literature was superior to anything written in America. Melville disagreed. He thought Americans should “praise and glorify” their writers. The next day he found the evidence he needed when he read Hawthorne’s new book, Mosses from an Old Manse. Here, he said, was the near equal to Shakespeare! And soon, he predicted, an American writer would even surpass Shakespeare. He didn't say so, but he was thinking of himself and the book he was then writing, Moby-Dick.

By the time of the picnic, Melville had written five books. The first, Typee, was an account of his adventures living with a cannibal tribe in the South Pacific. It was well written and well received. His second book, Omoo, was a successful sequel. A third book, Mardi, was a commercial failure. Then, married and in need of cash, Melville sat down at his desk in the summer of 1849 and wrote two books: Redburn, about his experience in the merchant marine, and White Jacket, about his time on a Navy frigate. He said they were just “two jobs done for money.”

But, Redburn and White Jacket were better than he thought. More importantly, they gave him a way to challenge Shakespeare.

In White Jacket, Melville told of officers who behaved like incompetent aristocrats. But below the officer rank he found skilled seamen of every kind: carpenters, coopers, farmers, doctors, blacksmiths, cooks, tinkers, tailors, rope-makers. The ship, he said, was “a city afloat.”

Redburn, the other 1849 book, was based on Melville’s experience on a merchant ship. The ship took cotton to Liverpool and returned with immigrants looking for work in America. He argued: “If they can get here, they have God’s right to come . . . for the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world.” He then put the story of America into one sentence: “We are not a nation, so much as a world.”

After meeting Hawthorne, after his argument with Holmes, after writing Redburn and White Jacket, Melville was ready to write Moby-Dick, and, with it, try to surpass Shakespeare.

But how?

By the power of inspiration!

Shakespeare wrote in the tradition which held that to write great literature one had to write about great people, namely kings and aristocrats. The problem for Melville was that America had no aristocrats, only ordinary working people.

But, working people were Melville’s inspiration. In Moby-Dick, he wrote, not about what he called the dignity of “kings and robes,” but about the dignity that comes from work. He wrote: “Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike, that democratic dignity which on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!” Melville made no apology for writing about those he called “mariners, renegades, and castaways.” In his mind they had all the dignity needed for powerful, inspiring literature.

Resources for Youth

Melville, Herman. Typee, a Peep at Polynesian Life. Northwestern UP, 1968.

(Middle school students and older please note, contains a few adult themes.)

George Frein

George Frein, Ph.D., is a humanities scholar inspired to perform at Chautauqua. What inspires him? Historical characters who still have lots to say. Dr. Seuss inspires George to say, “Oh, the places you’ll go!” Henry Adams − the historian who once visited Greeley, Colorado −inspires George to quote him saying, “One competent woman is worth ten men; and one incompetent woman is worth five.” Carl Jung gets George to overcome his introversion and go out on stage and act the extrovert. Mark Twain inspires George to make people laugh till it hurts by reminding them about the slavery that brought on the Civil War, and the racism of Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the Westward Movement. Father De Smet inspires George to find hope for settlers and heartbreak for Indians in the old West. Now, Herman Melville inspires George to go to sea and to take all the landlubbers in Greeley with him on a whaling voyage they will never forget.

Bullet Points

Homer and Shakespeare wrote about kings, nobles, and aristocrats. With great persons like Agamemnon and Lear it was possible to make great literature. It was Herman Melville who proved that great literature could be written about people he called “mariners, renegades, and castaways.” Melville ranks up there with the likes of Homer and Shakespeare because he found a way to show that ordinary sailors, for instance, had all the dignity of any noble, even any king.

Most people try to read Herman Melville’s great novel, MobyDick , when they are too young, before they have had any significant work experience. MobyDick is a book about hard work, dangerous, backbreaking work. Then, if people give it another try, later in life, they know it is a serious classic and so they read it with the reverence due to a great book. The result is they miss the outrageous humor of the first 22 chapters and miss much of the book’s meaning.
Herman Melville’s books are as influential today as they were when they were first written. For example, his fourth book Redburn, His First Voyage (1849), is about a merchant ship that brings immigrants to America. Melville writes: “Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive it, with the one only thought that it they can get here, they have God’s right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world . . .” Melville includes this great boast, “America is not so much a nation as a world.”

Quotes

In his sea books Melville wrote:

“Sailors are the only class of men who now-a-days see anything like stirring adventure. . .” --Typee

“ . . . sailors belong to no nation . . .” --Omoo

“Homer . . . Shakespeare . . . Milton . . . In me, many worthies recline, and converse. I list to St. Paul . . . Montaigne . . . Julian the Apostate . . . Augustine . . . Thomas-a-Kempis . . . Zeno . . . Plato . . . Virgil . . .” --Mardi

“Settled by people of all nations . . . we are not a nation so much as a world.” --Redburn

“Oh, shipmates and world-mates . . . the worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would . . . Let us never forget, life is a voyage that’s homeward-bound.” --White Jacket

“Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul . . . I account it high time to get to sea . . . and let the ocean work its magic in my soul.” --Moby-Dick

“The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor . . .” --Billy Budd, Sailor

Timeline

1839     Unable to find work on land, Melville joins the crew of a merchant ship and sails to Liverpool and back.

1841    He sails as a common seaman on the whaleship Acushnet.

1842    Melville jumps ship in the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific.

1843    After sailing on to Hawaii, he joins the U. S. Navy and sails for home on a warship.

1844    Home, Melville tells sea stories and soon begins to write them down. They pour out of him: Typee (1846); Omoo (1847); Mardi (1848); Redburn (1849); White Jacket (1850); Moby-Dick (1851). His sea tales are followed by novels, short stories, and poetry, only some having to do with the sea. Billy Budd (1924), a posthumous sea novel sparks the Melville revival that still goes on today.

High Plains Chautauqua