What we’re about
"Wisdom and Woe" is a philosophy and literature discussion group dedicated to exploring the world, work, life, and times of Herman Melville and the 19th century Romantic movement. We will read and discuss topics related to:
- Works of Herman Melville: Moby-Dick, Clarel, Bartleby the Scrivener, Billy Budd, the Confidence Man, Mardi, reviews, correspondence, etc.
- Themes and affinities: whales, cannibals, shipwrecks, theodicy, narcissism, exile, freedom, slavery, redemption, democracy, law, orientalism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, psychology, mythology, etc.
- Influences and sources: the Bible, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Milton, Cervantes, Dante, Emerson, Kant, Plato, Romanticism, Stoicism, etc.
- Legacy and impact: adaptations, derivations, artworks, analysis, criticism, etc.
- And more
The group is free and open to anybody with an interest in learning and growing by "diving deeper" (as Hawthorne once said of his conversations with Melville) into "time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters."
"There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces."
(Moby-Dick, chapter 96)
"Though wisdom be wedded to woe, though the way thereto is by tears, yet all ends in a shout." (Mardi, chapter 2.79)
"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." (Ecclesiastes 7:4)
![[Series] Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants cover photo](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/8/d/e/c/event_514896332.webp "[Series] Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants")
NOTE: This page is intended as a thematic overview of the meetups in the series, but is not itself a meetup. To RSVP, please see the individual events as they are announced on the Wisdom and Woe calendar.
Clothing is protective of health and hygiene, but it is also ornamental, communicative of wealth, status, political ideals, emotional states, group membership, and personal identity. It can be expressive or repressive of one's inner life (via disguise, compulsory uniforms, sumptuary laws, etc.). It functions symbolically not only to distinguish one's relationship with society, but as synecdoche for society itself.
In the 19th century, dandyism promoted extravagant costume and opulent lifestyles closely associated with aristocracy. Dandies provided a surprisingly consistent foil for Melville's satire, while scantily-clad Polynesians dramatized his philosophy of austere egalitarianism, ala Thoreau, Tolstoy, and others.
According to Baudelaire, the dandy's slogan is "To live and die before a mirror." But according to Melville, what Narcissus fatally sees there is "the ungraspable phantom of life" (Moby-Dick, 1).
The sacred and profane aspects of ceremonial clothing were treated by Melville in "The Whiteness of the Whale" and "The Cassock" chapters of Moby-Dick, respectively. For Edward Carpenter, clothing's spiritual significance was in its ability to stifle both body and soul: "one might almost as well be in one's coffin as in the stiff layers of buckram-like clothing commonly worn nowadays.... Eleven layers between him and God! .... Who could be inspired under all this weight of tailordom?"
Political revolutions and counter-revolutions can manifest sartorially, as in White-Jacket's fictionalized "Rebellion of the Beards." The psychologist J.C. Flügel protested the so-called "Great Male Renunciation" that stigmatized colorful menswear, while (ironically) also prophesying a more enlightened "nude future." His views were lobbied by the "Men's Dress Reform Party" and the "Sunlight League"--the latter of which euphemistically promoted nudity as "helio-therapy." (While reminiscent of later Women's Liberation protests, there were no rumors of a Bonfire of the Unmentionables.)
This series will explore society and individuality, formal and feral.
Series schedule:
- A Discourse Upon the Origin of Inequality - Rousseau - 5/19
- The Theory of the Leisure Class - Veblen - 5/26
- Of Dandyism and of George Brummell - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly - 6/2
- Typee: A Peep At Polynesian Life - 6/9, 6/16, 6/23
- Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas - 6/30, 7/7, 7/14
- Totem and Taboo - Freud - 7/21
- Letters to His Son - Lord Chesterfield - 7/28
- Don Juan - Lord Byron - 8/4
- D'Orsay; or, The Complete Dandy - W. Teignmouth Shore - 8/11
- Henrietta Temple - Benjamin Disraeli - 8/18
- Pierre; or, The Ambiguities - 8/25, 9/1, 9/8, 9/15
- Movie night: "Pola X" - 9/22
- The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge - Carlos Castaneda - 9/29
- A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift - 10/6
- Sartor Resartus - Thomas Carlyle - 10/13, 10/20
- The Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope - 10/24 [Thu]
- Dandy Doodles - 10/27
- The Sea Lady - H.G. Wells - 11/3
- The Book of Job - 11/10
- Cinderella [Thu] - 11/14
- The Women of Trachis - Sophocles - 11/17
- John Rutherford, The White Chief - George Lillie Craik - 11/24
- A Fringe of Leaves - Patrick White - 12/1, 12/8, 12/15
- White Shadows in the South Seas - Frederick O'Brien - 12/22, 12/29
- White Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War - 1/5, 1/12, 1/19, 1/26
- The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - 2/2, 2/9, 2/23
- The Monastery - Walter Scott - 3/2, 3/16
- Movie night: "White Shadows in the South Seas" & "Fig Leaves" - 3/9
- The Overcoat - Gogol; Master and Man - Tolstoy - 3/23
- The Rebel - Camus - 3/30, 4/6
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey - 4/13, 4/20
- The Trembling of a Leaf - W. Somerset Maugham - 4/27, 5/4
- Murat - Alexandre Dumas [Thu] - 5/8
- Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) - 5/11
- On Revolution - Hannah Arendt - 5/18, 5/25
- Movie night: "Beau Travail" - 6/1
- Red Jacket - John N. Hubbard - 6/8
- The Scarlett Letter - Hawthorne - 6/15, 6/22
- Melville: Fashioning in Modernity - Stephen Matterson - 6/29, 7/6
- Pacifism and Rebellion in the Writings of Herman Melville - John Bernstein - 7/13
Trivia:
- Nathaniel Hawthorne once noted that Melville was "a little heterodox in the matter of clean linen."
Extracts:
- "But do these buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King." (Billy Budd, Sailor, 21)
- "... if yonder Emperor and I were to strip and jump overboard for a bath, it would be hard telling which was of the blood royal when we should once be in the water." (White-Jacket, 56)
- "... one's dress was legislated upon, to the last warp and woof. All girdles must be so many inches in length, and with such a number of tassels in front. For a violation of this ordinance, before the face of all Mardi, the most dutiful of sons would cut the most affectionate of fathers." (Mardi, 2.23)
- "People may say what they will about the taste evinced by our fashionable ladies in dress. Their jewels, their feathers, their silks, and their furbelows, would have sunk into utter insignificance beside the exquisite simplicity of attire adopted by the nymphs of the vale on this festive occasion. I should like to have seen a gallery of coronation beauties, at Westminster Abbey, confronted for a moment by this band of island girls; their stiffness, formality, and affectation, contrasted with the artless vivacity and unconcealed natural graces of these savage maidens. It would be the Venus de' Medici placed beside a milliner's doll." (Typee, 22)
- "Give me my grandfather's old ... cane, with the gold-loaded top—a cane that, like the musket of General Washington's father and the broadsword of William Wallace, would break down the back of the switch-carrying dandies of these spindle-shank days; give me his broad-breasted vest, coming bravely down over the hips, and furnished with two strong-boxes of pockets to keep guineas in; toss this toppling cylinder of a beaver overboard, and give me my grandfather's gallant, gable-ended, cocked hat." (White-Jacket, 76)
- "“All is vanity.” All." (Moby-Dick, 96)
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- On Revolution - Hannah Arendt (week 2)Link visible for attendees
Hannah Arendt was one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. In On Revolution (1963), she offers a philosophical analysis of political revolutions and their transformative power on society. Comparing the French and American Revolutions, in particular, she investigates their different objectives, approaches, and outcomes, their relationship to violence, and dedication to freedom. In transitioning from uprising to orderly nation building, she argues, a movement must preserve "the lost treasure of revolution": a core spirit of public happiness or welfare founded in freedom and equality.
Arendt makes her case by developing a reading of Billy Budd in which Melville's story is an allegory for the public realm and what it means to be a citizen in the world. What does it mean for there to be goodness beyond virtue and evil beyond vice? What's the difference between political, moral, and legal judgment?
Schedule:
- Week 1 (May 18): Chapters 1-3
- Week 2 (May 25): Chapters 4-6
On Revolution:
Supplemental:
Extracts:
- "... the poet but embodies in verse those exaltations of sentiment that... the opportunity being given, vitalizes into acts." (Billy Budd, 4)
This meetup is part of the series Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- Movie night: "Beau Travail"Link visible for attendees
"Beau Travail" (1999) is ranked #7 in the 2022 BFI Sight and Sound critic's poll of the 250 Greatest Films of All Time. This loose adaptation of Herman Melville's Billy Budd reimagines "the handsome sailor" as a modern-day member of the French Foreign Legion.
A striking new recruit (Grégoire Colin) joins a military outpost in Djibouti, gaining the admiration of his regiment and the ire of his sergeant (Denis Lavant). Using sensual imagery and an operatic score by Benjamin Britten, director Claire Denis explores issues of identity and belonging in a crucible of military discipline, masculinity, and jealousy.
Runtime: 1h 32m. In French with English subtitles.
This meetup will consist of a live viewing, accompanied by discussion and analysis.
Supplemental:
- Trailer
- Deconstructing Masculinity video essay
This meetup is part of the series Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- Red Jacket - John N. HubbardLink visible for attendees
Sagoyewatha, aka Red Jacket (1758-1830), was a native American diplomat and orator who became involved in the American Revolution as both sides were vying for the alliance of the powerful Iroquois Confederacy. For his services, the British awarded him a highly embroidered red coat, from which he derived his distinctive look and English moniker. After the war, he continued to play a prominent role in negotiations with the new U.S. government, for which George Washington awarded him a peace medal (with which he is also proudly pictured).
As an orator, he spoke of pacifism and tolerance, against the sale of Indian lands and the encroachment of European religion and culture, and in defense of native American sovereignty. He refused to speak English, but his rousing words were translated and widely read in early 19th-century America, proving the aptness of his Seneca name (lit. "He Keeps Them Awake").
In one famous speech, he told a Christian missionary, "We do not wish to destroy your religion, or take it from you, we only want to enjoy our own." Author Ronald Wright describes this speech as "one of the best ever given to Christianity's claims," asking: "Which mentality... is the more primitive: that which believes itself to have a patent on truth or that which pleads for cultural diversity, for tolerance, for mutual respect?"
Nevertheless, his reputation suffered harm through a bitter political rivalry with the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant. John Hubbard wrote an early biography, Red Jacket (1886), that attempts to rebalance the historical record with "a more charitable construction" of its subject.
Red Jacket:
Supplemental:
- Red Jacket poem by Fitz-Greene Halleck
- Red Jacket (from Aloft) poem by Walt Whitman
Trivia:
- In an 1850 "notice of new books" in The Dollar Magazine, a reviewer mistakenly used the title Red Jacket to announce the publication of Melville's novel White-Jacket. The reviewer goes on to describe the work as "Rather garmentary in its tendency, but on the whole creditable. We would prefer a little more Orphic utterance, poetical insight, and universal sympathy, but are not disposed to be hypercritical." (And apparently neither was the copy editor.)
Extracts:
- "When I think of Pocahontas, I am ready to love Indians. Then there’s Massasoit, and Philip of Mount Hope, and Tecumseh, and Red-Jacket, and Logan—all heroes; and there’s the Five Nations, and Araucanians—federations and communities of heroes." (Confidence-Man, 25)
- "... in the Revolutionary War his grandfather had for several months defended a rude but all-important stockaded fort, against the repeated combined assaults of Indians, Tories, and Regulars. From before that fort, the gentlemanly, but murderous half-breed, Brandt, had fled, but had survived to dine with General Glendinning, in the amicable times which followed that vindictive war." (Pierre, 1.1)
- "But yet more astray, he will, upon provocation—say, at some story of perfidy or brutal behaviour—incontinently rap out an expletive, startling to the ladies as Brandt's flourished tomahawk at the London masked ball long ago." ("Portrait of a Gentleman")
This meetup is part of the series Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne (week 1)Link visible for attendees
The Scarlet Letter (1850) is a cornerstone of American literature. Through Hawthorne's intricate blend of psychological insight, symbolism, and societal critique, it captures and defines the essence of early America and early American literature, respectively.
In 17th-century Puritan Massachusetts, Hester Prynne must bear the dual burdens of secret love and public shame. She is forced to wear a scarlet letter "A" as punishment for adultery, but few realize the depths to which her fate is bound to that of the community which seeks to deny her.
The novel probes the collision of stark moral codes and the raw complexities of the human heart, sin and punishment, heroism and hypocrisy, individuality and society. It is "a psychological romance" wherein the heart is "anatomized, carefully, elaborately, and with striking poetic and dramatic power" (Evert Duyckinck); and a "perfect work of the American imagination" (D. H. Lawrence).
Schedule:
- Week 1 (June 15): Chapters I-X
- Week 2 (June 22): Chapters XI-XXIV
The Scarlet Letter: ~190pp
- Gutenberg
- Archive
- Google Books
- Librivox 9h25m
Extracts:
- "... I have thus far omitted all mention of his “Twice Told Tales,” and “Scarlet Letter.” Both are excellent, but full of such manifold, strange and diffusive beauties, that time would all but fail me, to point the half of them out. But there are things in those two books, which, had they been written in England a century ago, Nathaniel Hawthorne had utterly displaced many of the bright names we now revere on authority." ("Hawthorne and His Mosses")
- "... this ineffable folly, Pierre, brands thee in the forehead for an unaccountable infatuate!" (Pierre, 9.4)
- "... only three of them ever got back to the ship again, and one with his face damaged for life, for the cursed heathens tattooed a broad patch clean across his figure head." (Typee, 5)
- "The whole system of tattooing was, I found, connected with their religion; and it was evident, therefore, that they were resolved to make a convert of me.... Like the still more important system of the 'Taboo', it always appeared inexplicable to me." (Typee, 30)
This meetup is part of the series Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
