the South Seas in the Holy Land

The South Seas in the Holy Land

June 7, 2009

The trajectory of Herman Melville's chosen subjects at first seems odd. With Typee and continuing on to Moby Dick he mines his own experiences at sea. We then move on to some Americanist works like Pierre or the fascinating novel The Confidence Man. When Melville settles into poetry he produces a volume of Civil War poetry and then composes his great epic poem Clarel, which is set in the Holy Land. It would seem that we are about as far away from the South Seas as possible. But in fact the South Seas are present throughout Clarel..

The simile has been a feature of the epic since Homer. In the hands of a master the simile works to break up the narrative pull and infuses the poem with something like lyric breakouts. In Homer the battles become waves beating on the surf and the armies squadrons of bees. In Clarel, which is landscape oriented to begin with, the similes help to get the mind of the reader out of the dusty and hot trails of the Holy Land. Melville chooses to present inset sea scenes.. which have enough specificity to convince the reader that they are drawn from intimate knowledge of life at sea.

Some examples of these sea similes:

(Like ship-boy at mast-head alone)
[1.18.41]

As when upon a misty shore
The watchful seaman marks a light
Blurred by the fog, uncertain quite;
And thereto instant turns the glass
And studies it, and thinks it o'er
By compass: Is't the cape we pass?
[3.2.59-64]

At night upon the darkling main
To ship return with muffled sound
The rowers without comment vain—
The messmate overboard not found...
[3.6.1-4]

Such freshening redolence divine
As mariners upon the brine
Inhale, when barren beach they pass
By night...
[3.15.37-40]

It is a strange sensation to be wandering in the imagination through dry landscapes of the Holy Land, only to find oneself pushed out to the open sea.. and imagining the experience of passing an uninhabited island at night. By the end of Clarel I came to accept this as an effective use of the epic simile.

There are two more lengthy references to Melville's Polynesian experience, as exemplified in Typee. In both of these cases the South Seas serve to reinforce the symbol system that supports the book. In canto 2.10 Cain is likened to a savage, and the character Rolfe likens Cain's planned altar to ones found "on far island-chains." We are reminded, perhaps, that when Melville was describing the Marquesas Islands he was re-writing and re-thinking the biblical narratives of Genesis. And now when he is in the land of those biblical narratives, it is fitting that he draw into his work the world where he found these biblical tropes living on.

The second reference I find more significant. In Bethlehem Rolfe recalls the South Seas:

"For me," Rolfe said,
"From Bethlehem here my musings reach
Yes—frankly—to Tahiti's beach."
[4.18.34-6]

It is again the kind of mental leap that makes Melville so breathtaking at times. The liberal Derwent responds with our own surprise at the distance his comrade's mind has traveled, and Rolfe explains:

That vine-wreathed urn of Ver, in sea
Of halcyons, where no tides do flow
Or ebb, but waves bide peacefully
At brim, by beach where palm trees grow
That sheltered Omai's olive race—
Tahiti should have been the place
For Christ in advent.
[4.18.39-45]

As this thought plays out, another character speculates that perhaps God had sent Jesus to be born in the land most representing faction and strife. But the point stands that the natural home for Jesus and what he represents would have been an island in the South Seas. And conversely maybe Jesus represents the South Seas coming to rest awkwardly in the heart of the Old World? In any case, we again see Melville tying his earlier career and fascinations to the elaborate faith-drama that is Clarel.