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Unreasonable Pursuits: Moby-Dick
The reasonableness of most pursuits is arguable, especially pursuits carried, consciously or unconsciously, as affronts to reasonableness. In the arts, but not just in the arts, these reasonableness-challenging pursuits tend to lead far from certainty. The mighty and the ones who like to appear mighty or who don’t know any better, suggest trusting, an advise that has kept many in foolish voyages from which they never returned. The prudent and the cowards suggest retreating and the results of this advise are plain to see.
It is not easy to be a good judge of time and circumstance, which is what is called for here. The following are excerpts from contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick and from a note on Melville’s death (from www.melville.org, a useful website). I find it interesting to read these from a distance of 150 years, which we don’t (usually) have in our own pursuits.
The more careful, therefore, should he [Herman Melville] be to maintain the fame he so rapidly acquired, and not waste his strength on such purposeless and unequal doings as these rambling volumes about spermaceti whales. —London Literary Gazette, December 6, 1851
In all other aspects, the book is sad stuff, dull and dreary, or ridiculous. Mr. Melville's Quakers are the wretchedest dolts and drivellers, and his Mad Captain ... is a monstrous bore. —Charleston Southern Quarterly Review, January 1852
We have no intention of quoting any passages just now from Moby Dick…But if there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville's. —New York United States Magazine and Democratic Review, January 1852
It is strange how he persists—and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before—in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.— Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notebook Entry, November 20, 1856
The sum and substance of our fault-finding with Herman Melville is this. He has indulged himself in a trick of metaphysical and morbid meditations until he has almost perverted his fine mind from its healthy productive tendencies.—Fitz-James O’Brien: Our Authors and Authorship, Melville and Curtis. In Putnam’s Monthly Magazine (New York), April 1857
Herman Melville, one of the most original and virile of American literary men, died at his home on Twenty-sixth street, New York, a few days ago, at the age of 72. He had long been forgotten, and was no doubt unknown to the most of those who are reading the magazine literature and the novels of the day. Nevertheless, it is probable that no work of imagination more powerful and often poetic has been written by an American than Melville's romance of Moby Dick; or the Whale, published just 40 years ago […] Certainly it is hard to find a more wonderful book than this Moby Dick, and it ought to be read by this generation, amid whose feeble mental food, furnished by the small realists and fantasts of the day, it would appear as Hercules among the pygmies, or as Moby Dick himself among a school of minnows.—Springfield, Massachusetts Republican, October 4, 1891
It is not easy to be a good judge of time and circumstance, which is what is called for here. The following are excerpts from contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick and from a note on Melville’s death (from www.melville.org, a useful website). I find it interesting to read these from a distance of 150 years, which we don’t (usually) have in our own pursuits.
The more careful, therefore, should he [Herman Melville] be to maintain the fame he so rapidly acquired, and not waste his strength on such purposeless and unequal doings as these rambling volumes about spermaceti whales. —London Literary Gazette, December 6, 1851
In all other aspects, the book is sad stuff, dull and dreary, or ridiculous. Mr. Melville's Quakers are the wretchedest dolts and drivellers, and his Mad Captain ... is a monstrous bore. —Charleston Southern Quarterly Review, January 1852
We have no intention of quoting any passages just now from Moby Dick…But if there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville's. —New York United States Magazine and Democratic Review, January 1852
It is strange how he persists—and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before—in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.— Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notebook Entry, November 20, 1856
The sum and substance of our fault-finding with Herman Melville is this. He has indulged himself in a trick of metaphysical and morbid meditations until he has almost perverted his fine mind from its healthy productive tendencies.—Fitz-James O’Brien: Our Authors and Authorship, Melville and Curtis. In Putnam’s Monthly Magazine (New York), April 1857
Herman Melville, one of the most original and virile of American literary men, died at his home on Twenty-sixth street, New York, a few days ago, at the age of 72. He had long been forgotten, and was no doubt unknown to the most of those who are reading the magazine literature and the novels of the day. Nevertheless, it is probable that no work of imagination more powerful and often poetic has been written by an American than Melville's romance of Moby Dick; or the Whale, published just 40 years ago […] Certainly it is hard to find a more wonderful book than this Moby Dick, and it ought to be read by this generation, amid whose feeble mental food, furnished by the small realists and fantasts of the day, it would appear as Hercules among the pygmies, or as Moby Dick himself among a school of minnows.—Springfield, Massachusetts Republican, October 4, 1891
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posted by EMC at
6:37 AM
3 Comments:
And yet it is so common in human nature to pursuit things that have very little payoffs, such as the lottery or religion.
Another random copy came my way and so I have embarked yet again and this time through I am struck by the erudition. I had recalled that as hidden, but it's all over the place and deliberately showy, almost in the way Eliot is, and willful. Also, how very like Melville's is the mock heroical tone and humor of Mark Twain, which I suppose is well known but hadn;t hit me in the head before.
With the fashion for "creativity" that seems to saturate every corner of our existence, Meliville's example is a strong rebuke to "innovation" that masquerades as the authentically creative. The very absurdity of the question, "is Melville creative?" reveals that "being creative" today is merely slavish capitulation to fashion. Melville's example is that authentic artistic practice--authentic 'creativity'--often requires a fast from contemporary respectability.
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