Wisdom and Woe

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When Melville visited the Italian peninsula in 1857, it was still a collection of states, including the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Papal States, and Tuscany. But it was only four years away from achieving its centuries-long quest for unity and independence, and the geopolitical situation was obviously intensifying.

The Revolutions of 1848 had failed but were not forgotten. Bourbon police controlled the movements of foreigners (including subjects of other Italian states) using checkpoints and detailed inquiries into their names, nationalities, itineraries, social status, purpose, friends, and family. Melville experienced this vexation first-hand.

As a "Grand Tourist," he kept a daily journal of his impressions, many of which inform his later writings. The trip, funded by his father-in-law from an advance on his wife's inheritance, was intended to relieve his "morbid state of mind" following the commercial failure of Pierre (1852) and critical reviews questioning his sanity. But at Pausilippo (lit. "the place that makes pain cease") he wrote: "found not the cessation which the name expresses." And again at the "Grotto of the Sybil" (the alleged entryway to the Roman underworld): "What in God’s name were such places made for, why? Surely man is a strange animal. Diving into the bowels of the earth rather than building up towards the sky. How clear an indication that he sought darkness rather than light."

For this meetup, we will read selections from Melville's "Journal of a Visit to Europe and the Levant" (February 12 to April 14).

Note: This meetup will be recorded for private use.

Journal of a Visit to Italy:

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A few months before his death in 1891, Melville privately published a 25-print run of poetry, titled Timoleon. The penultimate section, "Fruit of Travel Long Ago," consists of 18 poems inspired by his Grand Tour through Italy, Greece, and Egypt (presented in reverse chronological order from which he visited them). As the poems reach successively backwards through memory, they criss-cross time and space, reflecting on history, culture, and the meaning of art.

Significantly, Timoleon is dedicated "to my countryman, Elihu Vedder." Vedder, like Melville, was born in New York City. In 1857 (coincident with Melville's Grand Tour), he travelled to Italy to complete his training as a painter, where he was deeply influenced by the Macchiaioli: a movement of artist-revolutionaries who not only rebelled against Italy's established (foreign-dominated) political regime, but also against its academic (foreign-dominated) artistic conventions. Vedder returned to New York City to begin his artistic career, but by 1866 he resettled permanently in Rome.

Melville admired Vedder's paintings for decades, but the two--described as "kindred spirits" by Charles C. Eldredge--apparently never met. Seeing Melville's dedication, Vedder wrote his gratitude that "my art has gained me so many friends--even if unknown to me," but (like kindred spirits Clarel and Celio) the estrangement was unreconciled: Melville died before receiving the letter.

Whereas Timoleon's travel is "long ago" (and "far away"), its dedication defiantly declares the intimacy of a shared home near-at-heart. This, perhaps more than the poetry itself, is an Ishmael-wanderer's hoped-for "fruit." But the sense of repose anticipated in the collection's finale is held in suspense, for "Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? .... the secret of our paternity lies in [the] grave, and we must there to learn it." (Moby-Dick, 114)

For this meetup, we will read the last half of Melville's Timoleon: "Fruit of Travel Long Ago" and "L'Envoi."

Note: This meetup will be recorded for private use.

Timoleon:

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Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (Herman Melville, 1876) is one of the longest poems in American literature: four parts, 150 cantos, and stretching to almost 18,000 lines. It has been called a contender for "The Great American Poem," a precursor of The Waste Land, and Melville's "obsessive, psycho-religious quest."

It tells the story of Clarel, an American divinity student experiencing a crisis of faith, as he follows a Biblical itinerary through the Holy Land. As he meets ancient landmarks and new acquaintances, he is haunted by theological questions and existential doubts.

One of the more enigmatic figures that Clarel encounters is Celio: a handsome but deformed young Italian, borne of his home's political climate, whose own crisis of faith has left him embittered and defiant. Without so much as speaking to one another, Clarel senses that Celio is "a second self" whose fate is somehow mysteriously related to his own.

According to Walter Bezanson, Celio represents "the cost of rebellion, the killing pain, and loneliness of dissent." Stan Goldman argues that Celio's "heretical outcries actually reflect a deep faith of the kind found in Old Testament types such as Job, whose questioning of God's ways, in particular the Deus absconditus, constitutes a kind of faith."

For this meetup, we will read selections from Clarel, Part 1:

• Cantos 11-16
• Cantos 18-20
• Canto 40

Important context: Canto 11 opens with Clarel (aka, "the student," "the pilgrim") and his earliest companion (Nehemiah, aka "the guide," "the meek one") when they first stumble upon Celio (aka, "the unknown one," "the stranger").

Note: This meetup will be recorded for private use.

Clarel: