JULIAN HAWTHORNE AND LEONARD LEMMON: HERMAN MELVILLE:
AN EARLY SEA-NOVELIST.
FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE
(BOSTON), 1892
Herman Melville (1819-1891). Forty years ago, few American
authors had so wide
a reputation as Melville, whose books of sea-adventure, part fact
and part fancy, were
read and praised in England quite as much and as warmly as in
this country. Not to have
read Typee and Omoo was not to have made the
acquaintance
of the most entertaining and novel current literature: and those
who take them up to-day
find their charm and interest almost unimpaired. The leading
sea-novelist of the present
day has acknowledged Melville as his master; and there is no
doubt that he possessed not
only exhaustive technical knowledge of his chosen field, but that
his talent for exploiting it
amounted to genius. The main substance of his books is plainly
founded on fact: but the
facts are so judiciously selected as to produce the effect of
art, while the flavoring of
fiction is so artfully introduced as to seem like fact. All the
stories are told in the first
person, and there is a fascination and mystery in the narrator's
personality that much
enhances the interest of the tale. But Melville's imagination has
a tendency to wildness
and metaphysical extravagance; and when he trusted to it alone,
he becomes difficult and
sometimes repulsive. There seems, also, to be a background of
gloom in his nature,
making itself felt even in the midst of his sunshine: and now and
then his speculations and
rhapsodies have a tinge almost of insanity. Typee and
Omoo
are stories of adventure in the Pacific archipelago, as is also
Mardi, but the
latter merges into a quasi-symbolic analysis of human life,
perplexing to the general reader,
though the splendor and poetic beauty of the descriptions win his
admiration.
Redburn is the narrative of a voyage to Liverpool before
the mast, in an
American clipper, and is a model of simplicity and
impressiveness: White
Jacket describes life on an American man-of-war, and
overflows with humor,
character, adventure and absorbing pictures of a kind of
existence which has now ceased
forever to exist. Moby Dick, or the Whale takes up the
whole subject of
whaling, as practised in the '30's and '40's, and is, if
anything, more interesting and
valuable than White Jacket; the scenes are grouped about
a wildly romantic
and original plot, concerned with the chase round the world of an
enormous white whale --
Moby Dick -- by a sea-captain who has previously lost a limb in a
conflict with the
monster, and has sworn revenge. This is the most powerful of
Melville's books; it was
also the last of any literary importance. Pierre, or The
Ambiguities is a
repulsive, insane and impossible romance, in which the sea has no
part, and one or two
later books need not be mentioned. But Melville's position in
literature is secure and
solitary: he surpasses Cooper, when Cooper writes of the sea; and
no subsequent writer
has even challenged a comparison with him on that element.
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