By Herman Melville, 1924
The approach is certainly not modern, with leisurely and
sometimes convoluted sentences that make me think of Henry James. But the irony
and comic exaggerations take Melville beyond James to, in places, a style more
like that of Charles Dickens. And the variety of tales in this collection was
unexpected, from the metaphorical character studies in Billy Budd and Bartleby,
to the horror of Benito Cereno, the Encantadas travelogue and then the comical Lightning-Rod
Man.
With the great variety, the one relative constant is the joy
that Melville seems to have in the written language and the pleasure it brought
me as a reader. He plays with words and language, even in a somber story like
Billy Budd, in a way that suggests he wants to entertain the reader on more
than one level. A reader in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
of course, with a smaller publishing output and fewer activities competing for
entertainment time, could take the time for literary games. I won’t say that I
stopped to work out the allusions in every sentence, but I did enjoy slowing
down and reading the book of the pleasure of the prose. I don’t want it to
sound like the stories are tediously dense; it is merely that they reward a
slower contemplative read.
Melville brings an interesting variety of social themes into
his stories. Billy Budd, for example, is an allegory of innocence destroyed by
war. Billy is set up by a superior officer on a British ship that is
technically in a war zone. Because of a stutter, he is unable to defend
himself, and naval regulations require his hanging. Melville points out that he
could have been saved, but the ship’s captain, while reluctant, feels he has to
carry out the regulations to the letter to impose crew discipline. This is
absurd and horrific as everyone can see, but Billy becomes an innocent victim
of the logic of war. It’s also a touching story of a sympathetic character and
Melville leaves the reader with a sense of loss.
The Encantadas series is also an interesting read, an exotic
travelogue with atmospheric descriptions of the islands and the stories of its
few inhabitants. It’s curious that Melville never went to the islands, but
simply rewrote stories he found in other publications, although he writes very
convincingly in the first person. It appears that he was less interested in
inventing stories than in putting them to language and engaging the reader. As
a meditation on the hard struggles to survive in the islands, Melville reflects
that we are all in an existential struggle – a theme that remains relevant for
modern readers.
Benito Cereno runs as a horror story of its time, like a
movie about unsuspecting travellers checking into a murderous town. Set on a
ship in an isolated cove, I imagine the story would be quite chilling for
nineteenth century readers who could see themselves defenseless at sea and
becoming increasingly fearful as they slowly come to realize that they are facing
a vicious opponent. Unfortunately, for a modern reader, the grotesque racist characterizations
of the African crew they are facing make it hard to empathize. In fact, my
sympathies tended to be with the Africans, which I think is not what Melville
intended.
Next to these, the smaller pieces, The Piazza, The Lightning-Rod
Man and The Bell Tower, are a bit lighter although equally enjoyable. The
Lightening Rod Man is quite funny, reminding me of a parody advertisement of a
television huckster, had Melville known what such a thing is. All in all, this
was an enjoyable collection, and a reminder to slow down and just enjoy the
prose even if the story line itself is far from anything we would encounter in
modern life.
