慕知音：梅爾維爾《克萊柔》中對男性情誼的渴望 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士論文. 政治大立指導教授：施堂模先生 ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Advisor: Thomas Sellari. 慕知音：梅爾維爾《克萊柔》中對男性情誼的渴望. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. Yearning for a Friend: the Desire for Male Intimacy in Melville’s Clarel. Ch. engchi. i n U. 研究生：童小偉 Name: Tong, Xiaowei 中華民國 106 年 11 月 November, 2017. v.

(2) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v.

(3) Yearning for a Friend: the Desire for Male Intimacy in Melville’s Clarel. 立. Master 治Thesis 政A Presented to 大 Department of English,. ‧ 國. 學. National Chengchi University. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. by Tong, Xiaowei November, 2017.




(7) To those who yearn for a friend. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iii. i n U. v.

(8) Acknowledgements The completion of this thesis in due time is impossible without the kind encouragement and the useful advice from my advisor Dr. Thomas J. Sellari, a faculty member of department of English of National Chengchi University. My gratitude to him is endless. My thanks also go to other professors who taught me during my graduate. 政治大. study. They are not only academically accomplished, but also caring for their students.. 立. Finally, I want to thank my mother for her love and support.. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iv. i n U. v.

(9) Table of Contents. Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. IV Chinese Abstract ...................................................................................................... VI English Abstract ..................................................................................................... VII Chapter 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1. 治政大 About Male Intimacy .......................................................................................... 5 立 The Problem ..................................................................................................... 11 Introduction to the Text ....................................................................................... 1. ‧ 國. 學. 2. Literature Review ............................................................................................. 13 3. Clarel and Celio ............................................................................................... 17. ‧. “Wandering Eye-beams” ................................................................................... 17. sit. y. Nat. “Still I Yearn” ................................................................................................... 20. io. er. 4. Clarel and Vine ................................................................................................. 27 “The Soul’s Caress” .......................................................................................... 27. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. “An Insuperable Gulf” ...................................................................................... 31. engchi. 5. The Problem of Sex .......................................................................................... 39 “This Sexless Bound in Sex”............................................................................. 39 “That Other Love” ............................................................................................ 42 6.The Crossroads of Decision ............................................................................... 49 “Amigo” ............................................................................................................ 49 “How Sore He Yearns” ..................................................................................... 56 7. Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 61 Works Cited ............................................................................................................. 67. v.


(11) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文提要. 論文名稱：慕知音：梅爾維爾《克萊柔》中對男性情誼的渴望指導教授：施堂模研究生：. 童小偉. 立. 論文提要内容：. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. 本文重在分析梅爾維爾的史詩《克萊柔：聖地朝聖之詩》中表現的對男性情誼的渴望。男性情誼是男性間一種深刻的友誼。從心理以及精神層面來看，. ‧. 渴望這種情誼與男同性愛類似，但是前者是無關情欲的。舉個例子，《白鯨記》. y. Nat. er. io. sit. 中以實瑪利對魁魁格的感情就更適合稱作男性情誼而非男同性愛。本文認爲，克萊柔對西利歐（Celio）和薠（Vine）的渴慕純粹是精神上的渴慕，而他對那. al. n. v i n Ch 個對那個里昂青年（the Lyonese)卻毫無渴慕之情可言。這個觀點跟很多學者前 engchi U 輩們的觀點不同，他們認爲克萊柔對男性的情是跟性欲望沾邊的。本文指出，他們之所以得出這種結論是由於沒有從整體上去把握這首詩。他們抓住了一些模糊的表述，卻忽略了這些表述與上下文的關係。本文對這首詩的分析會格外注意它的完整性。同時，本文也會借助一些文本外的材料，比如艾默生的文章、霍桑的小説、梅爾維爾的通信以及他另外一首詩《歡會之後》(“After the Pleasure Party”)。本文的論述主要分爲四個部分，大致跟這首詩的四個部分吻合。 vi.

(12) Abstract This paper discusses the desire for male intimacy in Melville’s epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Male intimacy is intense friendship, the desire for which partakes of spiritual and psychological aspects of homosexual desires but differs from them in that it is not sexual. As an indicative instance, the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg is more appropriately called “male intimacy” than. 政治大. “the homosexual.” This paper argues that Clarel’s yearning for Celio and Vine is. 立. purely spiritual and that the Lyonese is not an object of desire for Clarel. This view is. ‧ 國. 學. a challenge to many earlier critics’ belief that Clarel’s spiritual pursuit is tinged with. ‧. eroticism. Their belief, as this paper will demonstrate, results from a limited reading. sit. y. Nat. of the poem. That is, they insist on some ambiguous statements without enough. n. al. er. io. regard to the context. This paper attempts to read Clarel closely and comprehensively.. i n U. v. It will resort to some external texts, such as Emerson’s writings, Hawthorne’s novels,. Ch. engchi. and Melville’s correspondence, as well as his poem “After the Pleasure Party.” The body of this paper matches the structure of the poem: the four chapters correspond respectively to its four parts.. vii.

(13) Chapter One Introduction Introduction to the Text Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876) is Melville’s last published work of significant length and his major effort as a poet. Running nearly. 政治大 debates, the book may seem 立 intimidating for any serious reader who intends to open it 18,000 lines, with its often craggy syntax, profuse allusions, and relentless religious. ‧ 國. 學. and soporific for those who have already done so for the first time. But upon repeated reading, despite the long, unsavory experience of grappling with Melville’s profound. ‧. intellect, when the author’s vision becomes clearer in mind, some readers might be. y. Nat. er. io. sit. able to derive insight or even pleasure from it. This kind of pleasure is not for everyone. When it occurs, it stems from the pleasant surprise of discovering a kindred. al. n. v i n C h for a coterie ofUlike-minded searchers, not the spirit in its lines, which were written engchi general readership; as Melville told James Billson in a letter, Clarel is a poem “eminently adapted for unpopularity” that may “intimidate or allure” (Kenny 92). This explains partly why of Melville’s major works it has “suffered most from undeserved oblivion” (Bezanson 505).. The poem comprises four parts, each part with forty or so cantos, set in places Melville visited in 1856—a circular tour from Jerusalem all the way down to the Dead Sea, then to the Greek monastery Mar Saba, and finally passing Bethlehem back to 1.

(14) Jerusalem. What Melville saw during this tour disappointed him. The barren, dusty, rocky landscape, exactly the reverse of God’s promised land of milk and honey, prefigured all the uncomfortableness of travel; Christianity seemed quite eclipsed in the Holy Land, which was then under Islamic control. The bitterness the poet might well have felt finds thorough expression in his poetics. The poem’s language is predominantly bland, sometimes ungainly, and occasionally mellifluous and beautiful. It is in irregularly rhymed iambic tetrameter.. 政治大 possibly have kept so tight a scheme 立 interesting through thousands of lines” (569). In This is an “odd” choice, Walter Bezanson remarks, for no English writer “could. ‧ 國. 學. order to maintain the mechanics of meter and rhyme, Melville does “violence” to the language by ripping, cutting, and jamming, but fails to demonstrate skillfulness in. ‧. doing so (567). Some poetic “defects” censured by earlier critics, however, are seen as. y. Nat. er. io. sit. strategies by later critics. For instance, his yoking the archaic to the contemporary is meant to represent a modern crisis in an antiquarian setting and the collision between. al. n. v i n C h fails to “realizeUfully a style based on the two worlds (567-68). But, again, Melville engchi interplay of harmony and dissonance” (568).. Clarel begins with the eponymous American theology student’s arriving in the Holy Land hoping to reaffirm his wavering religious faith. However, his doubt is not relieved but aggravated as he sees the abject state of Jerusalem. Then he goes “beyond the walls” of the city hoping to find some lingering “breath” of Jesus in Judea (1.6). There he meets Nehemiah, an elderly man and a fervent distributor of tracts, who, detecting Clarel’s quandary, offers to serve as his guide to visit those biblical sites in 2.

(15) and around Jerusalem. On their way Clarel sees a young man with a beautiful head but a hunched back. He forms a spiritual tie with him at first sight. This young man is Celio, an Italian sent to Franciscan Convent in Jerusalem. He is a skeptic and has been somehow tortured by his disbelief. After they exchange looks, the two young men very much want to see each other again. But upon a second chance meeting, Clarel, “shy” and “unsure,” balks as he does in the first meeting (1.15). Clarel will rue his hesitation because Celio dies a few days later before they could have a chance to talk.. 政治大 journal, where he finds立 thoughts of “A second self” (1.19).. Informed of Celio’s death, Clarel “gets at items of the dead,” among which is a. ‧ 國. 學. Through Nehemiah, Clarel comes to know a Jewish girl named Ruth and gradually falls in love with her. Ruth’s father Nathan is an American whose Christian. ‧. faith crumbles after he goes through a series of misfortunes. After he falls in love with. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Ruth’s mother, Agar, he converts to Judaism. Believing that Judah’s “return” to “her prime” is nearing, he takes his family to Israel, zealously hoping to “reinstate the Holy. al. n. v i n C builds huts on the barren land” through labor (1.17). He h e n g c h i U land outside Jerusalem and. tills it. But his dream is finally devastated by hostile Arabs who burn his huts and take his life. Now Clarel hurries to convey his condolences to Ruth and his mother but only finds himself barred by Jewish custom from the dead man’s house. Having hesitated for a while, he at last decides to embark on a pilgrimage and expects to marry Ruth after his return. Nehemiah goes with him, along with two other men he has met lately—Vine and Rolf. Here concludes part one. The three other parts narrate the pilgrimage. The plot of these parts is more 3.

(16) insipid than that of the first part, for it is more about what they see and what they say than what they do. So what do they do? In brief, a group of pilgrims, including the four above, pass the Siddim plain, the Dead Sea, Mar Saba, and Bethlehem under the guidance and protection of some armed Oriental men. During the tour, they meet various people as the scene shifts and their group reforms as fellow travelers depart and others join. The most intensive interactions between the pilgrims themselves and between the pilgrims and the people they meet are conducted primarily through long. 政治大 nature, etc. There are also silent 立musings, sung ballads and so forth that may be. conversational confrontations about religious alignment, attitudes of life, human. ‧ 國. 學. telling. Besides these, the text is filled with psychological interrogations, descriptions of landscapes, Melvillean digressions, and trivial verbal exchanges.. ‧. The plot concludes with Clarel’s arriving at the suburb of Jerusalem only to find. y. Nat. er. io. sit. a group of Jews about to bury the corpses of Ruth and Agar. His dream of love evaporates. Already left by his companions, the dejected Clarel wanders alone and. al. n. v i n Ch finally vanishes in the city. As with Moby-Dick, supplies to Clarel an e n gMelville chi U. epilogue, in which, in a consolatory tone, the narrator encourages Clarel to take heart that he may “emerge” from “the last whelming sea” and “prove death but routs life into victory” (4.35). Clarel deals with “good and evil, tragedy and happiness, democracy and independence, death and immortality, faith and science, progress, art, love, sex, and God” (Kenny 71). At its core is the question of faith. Broadly speaking, faith can mean much more than belief in God. For Djalea, the Arabic guide, faith is belief in 4.

(17) Allah; for Margoth, the geologist, faith is belief in science; for the hedonistic characters, faith could mean simply carpe diem. Faith is about what people live for. Since people have different attitudes toward life, they certainly may have different faiths and different degrees of faith. Also, faith may change or diminish through experience. It is exactly such a kaleidoscope of colliding faiths that lend the poem its intensity. For Clarel, his wavering faith in God is only the surface of the problem. What. 政治大 comes to the Holy Land立 in search of God, but what he finds is the harsh realities of. underlies it is the question of how to live when faith is gone. A theology student, he. ‧ 國. 學. life. “The desert’s subtle air” is to purge “bookish vapors” from his soul and make him bend in awe of “nature’s influx of control” (1.1). Nathan, Nehemiah, Mortmain,. ‧. Agath, Ungar, and others with their own deplorable fates are all living lessons that life. y. Nat. er. io. sit. is not lenient. In the face of life’s cruelty, Clarel must learn how to confront it. Vincent Kenny enumerates eight such ways, or “alternatives,” each represented by. al. n. v i n C U representatives are “teachers” one character or several similarhcharacters. e n g cBut h ithese who “cannot really teach” (151). Either they have their own problems or their solution is too simplistic for a person so earnest as Clarel. Finally, he has to endure “a continuation of sorrow” “heroically and alone” (10). About Male Intimacy Clarel with its immense scope welcomes a wealth of perspectives. This thesis will approach it through the lens of the desire for male intimacy, or, to be precise, the desire for intimacy between two men. First of all, the term male intimacy must be 5.

(18) defined. It is pointless to define this term in its general sense, for individuals have different expectations of an intimate relationship, and even an individual’s expectation of it sometimes varies, depending on who the other one in the relationship is. Therefore, I narrow down the term by placing it in the context of Melville’s oeuvre. The yearning for friendship is one motif in Melville’s novels. In these novels, we sometimes read that a character desires to befriend someone who is often good-. 政治大 character has been noting Nord, 立a “tall, spare, upright figure,” “exceedingly reserved,” looking, reserved, or marked by loneliness. In White-Jacket, for example, the title. ‧ 國. 學. and well read. By mere observation of Nord’s appearance, White-Jacket, concluding that he is “a reader of good books” and “an earnest thinker,” “yearn[s]” to know him. ‧. (400-01). In Moby-Dick, similarly, Ishmael feels immediately “interested” in. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Bulkington, noting that he keeps “aloof” and “sober” among his hilarious companion sailors with unhappy “reminiscences” floating in “the deep shadow of his eyes” (29).. al. n. v i n C novel is of course U The more famous example in the sameh e n g c h i Ishmael’s befriending. Queequeg. When Ishmael notices that the “comely” savage fares quite alone but peacefully, he feels “mysteriously drawn towards him” and determines to “try [the] pagan friend” (56). These are examples of intuitional yearning for friendship. Melville himself may have wondered “how unerringly a man pitches upon a spirit, any way akin to his own” (WJ 389). When it comes to Clarel, that yearning becomes more salient than ever. It lasts almost throughout the poem, involving pairs of characters. More importantly, it registers turbulent emotions and prevailing frustrations. Clarel’s 6.

(19) sympathetic encounter with Celio ends in pathos. Similarly, his feeling toward Vine turns tragic as a result of Vine’s reserve and insensibility. Furthermore, Clarel’s feeling toward men is not represented exclusively among men, but in a constant, sometimes violent struggle with his feeling toward women. At this point, one ought to ask if it is still proper to name that yearning the desire for friendship. Especially when it is set as an antithesis of desire for women, a modern reader may suspect that it is homosexual.. 政治大 relation to the yearning立 in question. However, if Melville does convey in his works In fact, “friendship” and “homosexuality” have been widely used by critics in. ‧ 國. 學. one consistent thought concerning one man’s desire toward another (which I do believe), it is not right to call it sometimes the desire for friendship and other times. ‧. homosexual desire. Therefore, it is necessary to coin a new term that will ensure a. y. Nat. er. io. sit. consistent analysis of Melville’s texts. I call it the desire for male intimacy. This term is distinct from friendship and homosexuality, and it will remove some of the. n. al. Ch. engchi. problems that the other two terms incur.. i n U. v. First, male intimacy should be distinguished from male homosexual love. In many cases of literary criticism, the use of “homo-sexual/erotic” is notoriously controversial. It is partly the result of the superficial reasoning that to apply “homosexuality” to texts written before that word came into common currency is anachronism. Behind this reasoning is Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s right observation: “the differences between the homosexuality ‘we know today’ and previous arrangements of same-sex relations may be so profound and so integrally rooted in 7.

(20) other cultural differences that there may be no continuous, defining essence of ‘homosexuality’ to be known” (44). Against Sedgwick, Caleb Crain argues for the “essentialism” that has become “unfashionable” (Sympathy 151). He believes that since there are people naturally romantically attracted to their own sex “now,” there were such people “then.” The divergence of views seems deeply rooted and irreconcilable. Whoever is right, critics, whether under Sedgwick’s influence or not, do use “homosexual” and words of its kinds to categorize characters or feelings in. 政治大 Though convenient, this could 立 be dangerously misleading.. earlier literature which resemble homosexuality somewhat in its modern sense.. ‧ 國. 學. However one may define it, the word “homosexual” is inextricable from “sex” (not gender). Robert Martin explains his use of “homosexual” thus:. ‧. … if I say that Melville expresses homosexual feelings, I am referring to. y. Nat. er. io. sit. desires and not practices. The great majority of people who feel themselves to be predominantly homosexual encounter such feelings long before they. al. n. v i n C h some may neverUtranslate these feelings may encounter any practices (and engchi into acts). (13) Martin presents a possible process, in which what defines the homosexual may develop from embryonic feelings—the homosexual desire—to future. consummation—the homosexual practice. Although he has earlier explained away the indication of sexual practice from “homosexual” by insisting on its symmetrical use with “heterosexual,” his explanation here still includes the potential of sexual practice in the term. As Martin’s plural use of “desires” already betrays, homosexual desire is 8.

(21) potentially a plurality of desires. To be direct, that desire could be purely sexual, not sexual, or somewhat sexual. It varies according to culture and personal preference. With this variance, it is sometimes highly inappropriate to use “homosexual” and terms of its kinds to categorize men’s feelings for men in analyses, as is in the case of Clarel. The descriptive term “male intimacy” is thus a safer choice. Second, male intimacy should not be identified with friendship. Male intimacy stipulates a closed relationship within one gender and two persons, while friendship. 政治大 gender. Besides, friendship 立 spans a spectrum of mutual feelings, in Emerson’s words, suggests an open relationship that may accept more than two persons irrespective of. ‧ 國. 學. that range from “the highest degree of passionate love” to “the lowest degree of good will.” The spectrum is so broad that it is apparently too ambiguous to address an issue. ‧. so definite as male intimacy, which resides on the high end of this spectrum.. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Furthermore, compared with the congenial warmth of “intimacy,” the too-often abused word “friend” seems politely cold. Thoreau writes, “to say that a man is your. al. n. v i n C h than this, that heUis not your enemy” (226). In daily Friend, means commonly no more engchi use, “friend” often means mere acquaintance, or better, companion. “Friendship” has thus degenerated with the convenient, familiar use of “friend.” In Clarel, the approximately 100 times of calling a person “friend” (or in the plural) are merely polite addresses. Then, one contradiction seems to exist in the title of this paper. If male intimacy is so different from friendship, how do they coexist there? The answer: “yearning” has already defined the nature of the “friend” as someone rare, for no one needs to take trouble to yearn for an easily attainable friendship. 9.

(22) In sum, male intimacy is intense friendship, the desire for which partakes of spiritual and psychological aspects of homosexual desires but differs from them in that it is not sexual. I use this term for the analysis of Clarel, but it may also apply to analyses of other works that feature intense friendships, which are sometimes read as indications of homosexuality. For instance, in The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night, the two Antonios’ yearning for their respective friend could be called a desire for male intimacy. Admittedly, male intimacy is sometimes the outcome of. 政治大 representations that might be associated 立 with sodomy, a serious crime, they reduced “homosexual desires” self-censored by authors: since they could not risk. ‧ 國. 學. them to the extent they thought acceptable to the society. But we are often uncertain to what extent “homosexual desires” were compromised in texts. What we read are. ‧. tantalizing relics of desires. The problem is that some take these compromised desires. y. Nat. er. io. sit. to be homosexual. This could be caused by a lacuna in our vocabulary for these desires. When a modern reader reads about Antonio’s love for Bassanio, which he. al. n. v i n C h be, he will probably finds more romantic than friendship should e n g c h i U identify it as. homosexual love because he has no exact word for it. Then his subjective knowledge of homosexual men, who, as he might define them, are sexually attracted to men, will merge with his knowledge of Antonio. However, if the same reader had lived in the 19th century earlier, he would probably not see Antonio as latently homosexual, because “homosexual” was not in his vocabulary. This contradiction shows the ambiguity of those compromised desires. The concept of male intimacy is intended to remove this ambiguity and fill our epistemological lacuna in understanding these 10.

(23) desires. The Problem In Clarel, there are quite a few cantos devoted to representing Clarel’s desire for male intimacy. This desire has often been misread as homosexual or homoerotic, but, interestingly, it is identified at different points of the poem. That is to say, among critics who hold that Clarel has been sexually attracted by men, there are already divided opinions—the same passage could be read as indicative of homosexuality by. 政治大 epistemological problem 立I have broached in the last section, but also the difficulty of some while it is read not so by others. This confusion suggests not only the. ‧ 國. 學. reading Clarel. There are two major ways in which the poem has been misread. First, the text itself is literally misunderstood. This is conceivable because Melville’s. ‧. allusions, imprecise diction, and uneven syntax could pose a problem even for. y. Nat. er. io. sit. experienced readers. Second, the poem is not read as a whole. Some heed only a certain section of a canto without regarding the context of the canto, and some focus. al. n. v i n C considering how they on one or a few cantos without h e n g c h i U are relevant to other cantos. This kind of misreading is also conceivable because Melville has dispersed the poem’s relevant episodes over its immense scope. These faults could lead a reader to read homosexuality into Clarel. Or it could be the other way around: the reader acquires that false impression in the first reading, in which details are most likely to be ignored, and in re-readings that first impression prevents him from noticing details that contradict it. Paying special care to these faults, this paper strives to offer a comprehensive 11.

(24) reading of all of the passages relevant to Clarel’s feelings for men, which have been so far separately or superficially treated. Meanwhile, some useful external texts will be cautiously resorted to. These mainly include Melville’s letters to Hawthorne, Hawthorne’s novels, and Melville’s poem “After the Pleasure Party,” a poem as commonly misread as Clarel. Finally, I suggest that Clarel represents the eponymous character’s yearning for male intimacy—a pure spiritual love for men—his despair at the unattainability of such a love, and the pain caused by his struggle between the. 政治大. choices of a bitter life devoted to spiritual pursuit and an easier life reconciled to. 立. human nature.. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 12. i n U. v.

(25) Chapter Two Literature Review For the first half of the 140 years since its publication, Clarel remained obscure, until Walter Bezanson’s groundbreaking dissertation of 1943 began to bring it more scholarly attention. The 1970s saw a growing interest. Melville scholars have. 政治大 the abundance of dimensions 立 the poem affords and the quantity of studies conducted. maintained this interest in recent years, but there still exists a disproportion between. ‧ 國. 學. This is especially so, considering Melville’s stature in American literature. Therefore, this poem demands further exploration.. ‧. The study of Clarel’s desire for men also began in 1943 with Bezanson’s seminal. y. Nat. er. io. sit. dissertation, which draws a link between the character Vine and Nathanial Hawthorne. Bezanson suspects that Melville wrote Clarel “as an opportunity to brood privately. al. n. v i n Ch U most in his own life” (596). It and at length over the man [Hawthorne] e n gwho c hhadi meant is this link that has triggered scholars’ interests in the discussion of “homosexuality” in Clarel. Bezanson’s theory is as innovative as it is convincing. Thirty years later, Charles N. Watson, Jr. searched through Hawthorne’s novels and found more evidence that consolidate this theory. Critics hereafter would frequently draw from it while discussing the Clarel-Vine relationship. Another source of influence is Nina Baym’s study of the erotic motif in Clarel. She analyzes Clarel’s “mystery,” a conflict in its two “distinct but interrelated 13.

(26) aspects”—“the traditional conflict between sacred and profane love” and “a less traditional opposition derived from the first between heterosexual and homosexual love” (317). She describes the “action” of Clarel with a simple structure—“Clarel’s meeting with, rejection of, and final—futile—return to Ruth” (319). First, the JudeoChristian misogyny deeply rooted in western man’s nature, as is exemplified by Mortmain, deflects Clarel from his pursuit of heterosexual love (Ruth), which, inevitably alloyed with carnal desires, hinders salvation. Then Clarel takes recourse to. 政治大 clay” and that there is also “a physical 立 dimension to homosexual love,” he converts homosexuality and celibacy. After he realizes that celibacy “originates in a fear of. ‧ 國. 學. again to heterosexuality (323-24). Despite her incisiveness, Baym is wrong on several points. She overstates Clarel’s psychological rupture with Ruth. Clarel never has the. ‧. “desire to escape” from Ruth (322). Mortmain’s misogyny does not characterize. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Clarel. Although heterosexual love is challenged by rigorous spiritual pursuit at some points, Clarel’s love for Ruth is unchanged throughout. He misses her all along the. al. n. v i n C h Baym’s rejection-and-return journey (2.17.45-46, 2.29.160, 3.30.3-4). structure is engchi U. more expedient than tenable. Another of Baym’s mistakes, the most fatal one, is to admit Clarel’s realization of “a physical dimension to homosexual love” (324). The reason she gives is odd, merely that Clarel feels moved by Vine’s beauty (324). One’s appreciation of a man’s outward beauty certainly does not indicate his consciousness of being sexually attracted to him. Moreover, by focusing on what she thinks is erotic, Baym ignores the apparently non-erotic, such as Clarel’s relationship with Celio, which resembles the Clarel-Vine relationship in terms of passionate feelings. 14.

(27) Watson seems to be the first to link Melville’s poem “After the Pleasure Party” with Clarel. This is an achievement, for this poem indeed has great value to the understanding of Clarel. It is a pity, however, that he only mentions it in passing at the end of his essay. A few years later, Warren Rosenberg brought up this link again, but, like Watson, he afforded only a brief and problematic reading of “After the Pleasure Party,” a poem requiring careful analysis. He concludes that “Melville is finally acknowledging the sexual component in the epistemological quest” (73). Then he. 政治大. refers to Clarel, arguing much in the wake of Baym without contributing any new. 立. insight.. ‧ 國. 學. Robert Milder reads Clarel in light of Plato’s Symposium. While he is aware that “sexual desire is nonexistent or has been suppressed or sublimated” in an authentic. ‧. Platonic love relationship, he is uncertain about whether such a kind of love, when set. y. Nat. er. io. sit. in the nineteenth-century American context, is free from conscious or unconscious sexual desires (124). No wonder he draws an ambiguous conclusion: “Clarel may be a. al. n. v i n C h homosexual; heUmay be a naïf or a fastidious Platonic idealist; he may be a latent engchi. ascetic” (145). As ambiguous is his reading of “After the Pleasure Party.” I believe that Melville’s poems are less ambiguous than Milder has contended. How could it be possible, one might ask, that an author, at the conclusive stage of his life, and in a conclusive work, should betray so much inconclusiveness, as if some matters were still in too chaotic a state to be settled? If Melville had an express idea, however obscurely it is communicated, it is a scholar’s responsibility to reveal it.. 15.


(29) Chapter Three Clarel and Celio “Wandering Eye-beams” In 1839, Thoreau sent Emerson a poem titled “Sympathy” which the latter read and praised as the “loftiest” and “purest strain” that has “yet pealed from this unpoetic. 政治大 toward a newly acquainted 立 boy, to whom he ascribes beauty and virtue. As if his love American forest” (Crain Sympathy 202). In this poem, Thoreau reflects on his love. ‧ 國. 學. were profane or dangerous, paradoxically, he writes: “I might have loved him, / had I loved him less” (260). Then the poet laments his beloved boy’s physical absence from. ‧. him, but emphasizes at the end that his love is essentially the love of the boy’s virtue. y. Nat. er. io. sit. rather than that of his beauty. “Distance” only prevents him from sighting the boy’s beauty, which he regards as “the empty husk,” but what remains in his hands is “the. al. n. v i n C h Thinking this way, wheat and kernel,” namely virtue. e n g c h i U he is able to reconcile himself to his loss, for he and the boy shall still be “truest acquaintances” knowing a “sympathy” most “rare.” This poem was later included in the “Wednesday” part of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, a part devoted to the discussion of friendship. The kind of friendship he was interested in is of course not merely common friendship; it is a relationship founded on “sympathy.” The making of such a friendship is not the outcome of deliberate approach; it is a natural process, as Thoreau writes: Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, 17.

(30) and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail. Even speech, at first, necessarily has nothing to do with it; but it follows after silence, as the buds in the graft do not put forth into leaves till long after the graft has taken. It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act. We are all Mussulmen and fatalists in this respect. (269) If speech does not avail, one may wonder, then, how a pair of friends come to each other in the first place, and how they exchange their sympathy. Thoreau does not. 政治大. answer. He only went so far to say that “the language of friendship is meanings,” “an. 立. intelligence above language” (273).. ‧ 國. 學. “My friends come to me unsought” (E 162). Emerson’s 1841 essay “Friendship” has a similar ring to Thoreau’s A Week. In the very beginning of his essay, Emerson. ‧. invites the reader to feel the permeating “fine ether” of love—the unspoken. y. Nat. er. io. sit. “kindness” of people around us: “Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth” (159). “Wandering eye-beams” become a language, the medium. al. n. v i n Ch through which “human affection” is transmitted. i Uwas not totally new. It e n gThis c hidea. came from Emerson’s 1838 lecture “The Heart.” For Emerson, the Heart possesses a collective significance: “The Heart is […] a community of nature which really does bind all men into a consciousness of one brotherhood” (EL 283). Interestingly, the general love of mankind should first take effect in the personal sphere. The universal Heart can be attested in a small incident—“the look between man and man.” Emerson believes that the “meeting of the eyes” is a “perfect” way of communication that transcends “speech and action.” He proceeds to write, “We look into the eyes to know 18.

(31) if this other form is another self; and the eyes will not lie, but they give a faithful confession what inhabitant is there” (283). The universal Heart seems to have endowed each individual heart with the ability to recognize its kindred through eyebeams. This remarkable phenomenon of transmitting sympathy through eye contact is not rare in general human experience. It is traceable in various literatures. Here are two examples of it from non-English literatures. In “Shao Siming” (少司命) from The. 政治大滿堂兮美人，忽獨與余兮目成。立. Nine Songs,1 the speaker says:. ‧ 國. 學. The hall is full of beauties;. But suddenly his eyes are locked with mine and with mine alone. 2. ‧. Shao Siming is paying special attention to the speaker, who is probably one beauty. y. Nat. er. io. sit. among many present in the hall. Why special attention the speaker alone? One might suspect that it is not the speaker’s beauty, but some unnamed trait, that distinguishes. al. n. v i n C Shao Siming has the speaker from other beauties.hAs e n g c h i U grasped her unnamed or. unnamable feature, the speaker may have understood Shao Siming the same way, so their eyes involuntarily lock. Another example comes from Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice: Seltsamer, heikler ist nichts als das Verhältnis von Menschen, die sich nur mit. The Nine Songs is one collection of verses in Chu Ci, an anthology of poetry during the Warring States Period (ca. 500-200 BCE) of China. 2 This is my translation, with reference to Arthur Waley’s in The Nine Songs: A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1956). He translates the two lines as: “The hall is full of lovely girls; / But suddenly it is me he eyes and me alone” (41). His translation of “目成” deprives the word of its connotation of mutuality, involuntariness, and consummation. 1. 19.

(32) den Augen kennen,—die täglich, ja stündlich einander begegnen, beobachten und dabei den Schein gleichgültiger Fremdheit grußlos und wortlos aufrecht zu halten durch Sittenzwang oder eigene Grille genötigt sind. (97-98). There is nothing more strange and delicate than the relationship between men who know each other only through eyes, —who daily, yes, hourly encounter, pay attention to each other, but still, out of the constriction of manners or personal whim, retain the appearance of indifferent strangers who neither. 政治大 Mann is describing a situation,立 where two persons, each constantly paying the other greet nor speak.3. ‧ 國. 學. attention and desirous to know the other, are both unwilling to act because of the requirements of manners or their psychological resistance to gratuitous. ‧. acquaintanceships.. y. Nat. er. io. sit. The two examples given above find an analogous expression in the first part of Clarel. Clarel and Celio are able to feel a strong sympathy with glances, but they. al. n. v i n C U the initiative to make an finally cannot know each other becausehneither e n gofcthem h i takes advance. It is impossible to know whether Melville had Emerson and Thoreau in mind when he designed the plot of Part 1, but he did read Thoreau’s A Week and Emerson’s essays and other works.4 “Still I Yearn” Celio is a tragic figure. Having gone through a series of frustrations (“love, arms,. This is my own translation. Melville read A Week in 1850, Emerson’s Representative Men: Seven Lectures in 1850, his essays in 1862, and The Conduct of life in 1870. See Sealts’s Melville’s Reading, pp.175-6 and 222. In “Behavior” in The Conduct of Life, Emerson mentions the “ocular dialect” (180). 3 4. 20.

(33) courts”) in Rome and “counting Rome’s tradition naught,” he is bent on finding “some other world” (1.12). “This world clean fails me: still I yearn,” he cries. He comes to Judah “in the hope of extracting some new talisman from Judah’s ancient secret,” but “here he is only more ravished by doubt” (Bezanson 618). One day he comes across Clarel, whom “he well might own” as a “brother” in a spiritual bond at the first sight (1.11). He “hovers” as if to speak, but turns away before the “embarrassed” Clarel “made recognition.” The few seconds of their meeting are. 政治大 Mutely for moment, 立 face met face:. memorable:. ‧ 國. 學. But more perchance between the two Was interchanged than e’en may pass. Nat. y. ‧. In many a worded interview. (1.11.53-56). er. io. sit. Then Clarel feels “impressed” with a “novel sympathy” and would like to “renew” the “encounter.” When they have the luck to meet again, Clarel balks once again. This. al. n. v i n C h (“the proud one U time, Celio feels deeply wounded e n g c h i [Clarel] with a look … which the other [Celio] scarce might brook / In recollection”). After this missed chance, Clarel, in hope of a third meeting, says in heart that he shall never hesitate again. However, the dream of their third meeting is never going to come true. Clarel manages to learn Celio’s name, but Celio is already gone from his abode. On a sleepless night, Clarel hears a cry for the dead from afar and has a strong foreboding that the dead one is Celio: Such passion! —But have hearts forgot 21.

(34) That ties may form where words be not? The spiritual sympathy Transcends the social. Which appears In that presentiment, may be, Of Clarel’s inquietude of fears Proved just. (1.19.1-6). “Putting all else by,” he hurries to dead Celio and somehow obtains his journal where. 政治大 afterlife. Later, Clarel come to 立 Celio’s tomb, where he seems to hear Celio’s. he finds a “second self” (1.19.20-26). Celio’s death causes Clarel to muse on the. ‧ 國. 學. “petition”: “Remember me! For all life’s din / Let not my memory be drowned” (1.40.25-26). Here ends this plot line.. ‧. Normal as it is for one to signal some indefinite meaning through eye contact,. y. Nat. er. io. sit. the way such great passion has been aroused between Celio and Clarel is inscrutable. However, the poem does not aim to represent real life. It is a “spiritual. al. n. v i n C U “wandering eye-beams” autobiography,” as Kenny calls it in thehtitle e nofghiscbook. h i The are a symbol for one’s spiritual quest. Clarel searches for truth on the Holy Land; he looks around, but what does he see? A radical divergence of faith, decrepit remains of Christianity, and undeserved misfortune for the devout. Even Nehemiah, his guide, the one pure and meek as a lamb, is not free from preposterous fanaticism. Instead of seeing truth, Clarel’s eye-beams light on Celio, a downright apostate. Although they are as opposite as “acid” and “alkali”—the former marked by “disbelief” whereas the latter by “belief,” they are both “earnest,” “unworldly yearners” just like Melville 22.

(35) himself (1.12.148, 1.15.56, 1.1.107, 1.12.60, 3.1.14). For both, Judah is apparently not a place they expect to see, but in this barren land (literally and metaphorically) they would have found solace, or even the meaning of life, if they had been able to pledge themselves as soul mates. Melville employs sea images to suggest this point. The sea partakes of the desolation of the Palestinian desert. Clarel and Celio are lonely ships navigating on such a hopeless sea. They are “torn” in the “same gale” of doubt; their exchange of glances is the ships’ mutual signaling of distress in the night (1.13.1-4).. 政治大 irrecoverable distance; 立 it is spotted as a “speck” that “wanes and wanes in waxing. Unfortunately, when the day dawns, one ship (Celio) has already passed and is at an. ‧ 國. 學. day” (1.15.88).. For Celio, to claim spiritual sympathy with Clarel could be his last hope for his. ‧. disillusioned life, but Clarel’s unresponsiveness gives him the death blow. Despite. y. Nat. er. io. sit. this fact, his death is less the result of Clarel’s fault than that of life’s “crosspurposes” (1.40). Rather than teaching the lesson that one should seize every. al. n. v i n C the coming of a soulUmate, Celio’s tragedy asserts that opportunity to open himself to h engchi life itself is a tragedy. Men live the life of Tantalus: yearnings can hardly be satisfied. For Clarel, Celio’s death is a transcendental experience. Clarel does not seem saddened; there are not such descriptions in the text. He comes to Celio’s grave not to shed a tear; this is a symbolic visit. The petition Clarel seems to hear (“Remember me! For all life’s din / Let not my memory be drowned”) comes from his own heart. The remembrance of Celio is the remembrance of his fortitude to “brave / All that questions on that primal ground / Laid bare by faith’s receding wave” (1.19.27-29). 23.

(36) Whatever “life’s din” could be, Clarel now has the resolution not to relent in his spiritual pursuit, just as Celio would not. Even though they remain strangers, even though they are “held apart” by life, Clarel is eventually able to feel that the Celio is “less strange” and “less distant,” for he has born his virtue in his heart. Like Thoreau and his beloved boy, they have become the “truest acquaintances.” Clarel’s desire for Celio is entwined with his love for Ruth. It is on his way searching for Celio that he comes to the Wall of Wail, where he sees Ruth for the first. 政治大 about Ruth’s destiny under her立 monomaniac father, these thoughts are “strangely. time and feels enamored of her (1.16). In the night of that day, when he is thinking. ‧ 國. 學. underrun” by “Celio’s image.” Clarel cannot find Celio in person, so the latter appears hauntingly “in the spiritual part” (1.18). Dennis Berthold avers that this episode. ‧. indicates Clarel’s sexual confusion (he earlier suggests that the relationship between. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Clarel and Celio could be homoerotic) (354-55). This is impossible. Whether for Celio or for Ruth, there is not the slightest suggestion that Clarel’s longing is erotic.. al. n. v i n C h the spiritual quality Melville has more than once highlighted e n g c h i U of the bond between. Clarel and Celio. Such spiritual affinity does not exist between Clarel and Ruth, but Clarel’s love for Ruth is not less innocent. Ruth is compared to a “temple dove” (1.16.168). Clarel perceives in her “unfeigned truth” and “harmonies,” traits promising that “Paradise is possible.” From Ruth and Agar (Ruth’s mother), the divinity student knows for the first time “what charm to woman may belong” (1.39.21). They afford familial warmth young Clarel was bereft of. Interestingly, this canto—“Clarel and Ruth”—is followed by “The Mounds” (Clarel going to Celio’s 24.

(37) grave). When Clarel lingers at the cemetery where Celio is buried, the night falling in, Rolf says: “Come, move we ere the gate they quit, / And we be shut out here with these / Who never shall reenter it” (1.40.80-82). The “gate” refers to the gate of Jerusalem; “these” are these buried. Rolf’s words have a particular symbolic meaning for Clarel. Clarel should leave the dead (Celio) before he is shut out of the city where his love is living. It seems to mean: give up your spiritual yearning, possess Ruth, and lead the life which common people would live. But Clarel will prove inexorable in. 政治大 character—Vine. Again,立 we shall see how life will frustrate his desire for male. this respect. His unfulfilled sympathy with Celio he will try to fulfill with another. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. io. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. intimacy.. Ch. engchi. 25. i n U. v.


(39) Chapter Four Clarel and Vine “The Soul’s Caress” Soon after the death of Celio, Clarel’s yearning turns toward Vine, a “richly fair” middle-aged American man he meets at the Sepulcher of Kings (1.28.42). This time,. 政治大 along the pilgrimage. However, 立 Vine will “refute Clarel’s yearning for. there seems to be ample chance for a communion, for Vine will accompany Clarel. ‧ 國. 學. intersubjectivity” the way “Clarel had rejected Celio’s” (Peña 452). As with Celio, Clarel is able to “exchange quick sympathy” with Vine and make a “bond,” but this. ‧. bond will turn out to be Clarel’s wishful thinking (1.28.134-37). Vine’s cloistral. y. Nat. er. io. sit. character (“His virgin soul communed with men / But thro’ the wicket”) is an obstacle to the establishment of an intimate relationship (1.29.44-45). On their first meeting,. al. n. v i n C h by his countryman Vine, knowing himself “discerned” e n g c h i U Clarel, politely makes a. “salute” before he turns away as “one who would keep separate” (1.28.47-50). At the garden of Gethsemane, Clarel wistfully “turned toward Vine” and “would have spoken,” but Vine is “rapt” in “remoteness” (1.30.28-32). The narrator asks, “Would Vine disclaim / All sympathy the youth might share?” Vine’s secludedness seems to result from his painful past, which the author conceals completely from the reader. He is taciturn for most of the time. Sometimes he looks overshadowed (1.31.85, 2.22.145, 2.27.113). In Clarel’s fantasy, Vine and Rolf could make a “pair” and have “cordial 27.

(40) contact” with their respective “exceptional natures,” the former’s reserve contrasted with the latter’s frankness. It is strange that he should think so; perhaps he is projecting on Rolf his own wish to make a pair with Vine. The narrator deems this thinking as naïve and “vain.” Even “average” people, “social” as they are, “seldom truly meet”—they “close like halves of apple,” so how could it happen with “the rarer” kind of person (1.31.42-57)? Clarel gives Rolf credit for his forcible screeds, yet he is more “allured” to Vine’s silence, which is “suggestive” of “choicer treasure”. 政治大 Clarel’s passion for Vine culminates 立 in Part 2 Canto 27. By the River Jordan, at a. (1.31.289-90).. ‧ 國. 學. bower-like cloistered place, when Vine’s secludedness seems temporarily dissolved, Clarel takes the opportunity to be alone with Vine. Toward Vine he leans, “half laid,”. ‧. as if he had understood Vine’s “overture.” While Vine is engrossed in his speech,. y. Nat. er. io. sit. which is a rare case, Clarel, “surprised” at Vine’s rare flow of words, is not really listening. Vine’s beauty has charmed him:. n. al. Pure as the rain. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Which diamondeth with lucid grain, The white swan in the April hours Floating between two sunny showers Upon the lake, while buds unroll; So pure, so virginal in shrine Of true unworldliness looked Vine. (2.27.57-63) Overwhelmed by Vine’s “virginal” purity and “true unworldliness,” Clarel cannot but 28.

(41) yearn: “… now but for communion true / And close … / Give me thyself!” Vine, not noticing, proceeds with his speech. Clarel’s emotion surges to the highpoint: … How pleasant in another Such sallies, or in thee, if said After confidings that should wed Our souls in one: —Ah, call me brother!— So feminine his passionate mood. 政治大 All else rejected 立or withstood. (2.27.104-10) Which, long as hungering unfed,. ‧ 國. 學. Now Clarel cannot withhold his passion any longer. Regardless of consequence, Clarel says something, some “inklings,” supposedly an indirect profession of love, but. ‧. immediately “a shadow” draws over Vine, who appears to be annoyed. Clarel now. y. Nat. Lives none can help ye; that believe.. n. al. Ch. engchi. Art thou the first soul tried by doubt?. er. io. sit. plunges into a psychological drama. He imagines Vine rebuking him:. i n U. v. Shalt prove the last? Go, live it out. But for the fonder dream of love In man toward man—the soul’s caress— The negatives of flesh should prove Analogies of non-cordialness In spirit. (2.27.121-28) This drama reveals Clarel’s unspoken appeal. If allowed, he would confide to Vine his 29.

(42) agony of doubt for spiritual support; he would assert an affinity between their souls. This drama also reflects Clarel’s anxiety. His earlier attempt to approach Vine is met with impenetrability on Vine’s part; now, to suddenly lay bare his smoldering feelings, Clarel may well fear a more sever rebuff. This canto presents the most dramatic scene of male intimacy in Clarel, so dramatic that some critics have unsurprisingly read homoeroticism into it. Hershel Parker writes in passing that Clarel’s yearning is “sexually tinged” (104). Ilana. 政治大 “give me thyself” and “so feminine 立 his passionate mood” could have sexual. Pardes, similarly, says briefly that “homoerotic attraction” is at play (226). The lines. ‧ 國. 學. innuendos, had not the narrator emphasized that the desired “caress” and wedding are souls’ not bodies’. “Give me thyself” might be an imploration for Vine’s “confidings”. ‧. rather than his body. The word “feminine” indicates weakness and softness, as Clarel. y. Nat. passivity or orientation. Charles Watson contends that:. al. er. io. sit. is now emotionally invulnerable, but it has nothing to do with Clarel’s sexual. n. v i n C a spirit of divinity, U Clarel … though fired with h e n g c h i has a containing vessel of clay. To be sure, the literature of religious mysticism is replete with examples of spiritual ecstasy expressed in erotic imagery; but after a certain point one is entitled to ask whether the spiritual elements have begun to be dominated by the physical. Surely it is some such question that startles Vine into drawing back at the crucial moment. (399). Watson may have misread the text to think that Clarel’s “suspicious” emotion “startles” Vine, for Vine does not “draw back.” He is at best pretending not to hear 30.

(43) Clarel. The “shadow” over Vine is perhaps not caused by Clarel’s “inklings,” because Vine seems too absorbed in his own thoughts and speech to notice “anything happening at all”; Clarel and Vine are very likely “talking past each other” (Parker 105). This canto represents not only the desire for male intimacy, but more importantly the frustration of this desire. One may understand Clarel’s desire and frustration in tandem with Melville’s, in the light of Bezanson’s ingenious theory that Vine is. 政治大. Hawthorne. This will help to explain why Clarel’s feeling for Vine is not erotic. “An Insuperable Gulf”. 立. ‧ 國. 學. In 1850, Melville lived only a few miles away from Hawthorne. In July of that year, Melville had the chance to be acquainted with Hawthorne at an outdoor party. ‧. organized by his neighbor Mrs. J. R. Morewood (Howard 155). Their. y. Nat. er. io. sit. acquaintanceship developed as Melville paid the promised visit to Hawthorne in September. He stayed with Hawthorne’s family for four days and Mrs. Hawthorne had. al. n. v i n C h did not suspectUthat it was Melville who wrote a good opinion of him. The couple engchi “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” an anonymous review appearing in August, which. “represented the most enthusiastic praise Hawthorne’s work had yet received” (160). That is to say, Melville already had extraordinary admiration for Hawthorne before his visit (though it is uncertain to what extent it was for Hawthorne’s works and to what extent it was for Hawthorne the person), and apparently he was not so imprudent to display it fully during his visit. But his concealed emotions, which probably increased with his ongoing communications with Hawthorne, were to be revealed in 31.

(44) his letters. In early May 1851, he wrote to Hawthorne: If ever, my dear Hawthorne, in the eternal times that are to come, you and I shall sit down in Paradise, in some little shady corner by ourselves; and if we shall by any means be able to smuggle a basket of champagne there (I won’t believe in a Temperance Heaven), and if we shall then cross our celestial legs in the celestial grass that is forever tropical, and strike our glasses and our heads together, till both musically ring in concert,—then, O my dear fellow-. 政治大 now so distress us,—when 立 all the earth shall be but a reminiscence, yea, its mortal, how shall we pleasantly discourse of all the things manifold which. ‧ 國. 學. final dissolution an antiquity. (MD 539). Envisioning an afterlife of his friendship with Hawthorne, Melville moves into. ‧. paradise the earthly scene of their warm, careless tête-à-tête. Their striking of heads is. y. Nat. er. io. sit. a gesture not only of physical closeness but of spiritual congeniality. This scene illustrates Melville’s dream of ideal male intimacy. On November 17, Melville wrote. al. n. v i n C h response to Hawthorne’s Hawthorne another letter, an enthusiastic having understood engchi U his Moby-Dick. It is marked by such great passion that Melville himself is “doubtful” of his “sanity” in writing thus: Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? … I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling…. You did not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled the book—and that you praised. Was it 32.

(45) not so? You were archangel enough to despise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul. Once you hugged the ugly Socrates because you saw the flame in the mouth, and heard the rushing of the demon,—the familiar,—and recognized the sound; for you have heard it in your own solitudes. (MD 54546) By “this infinite fraternity of feeling,” Melville is claiming Hawthorne as a spiritual brother: “Your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God’s” (MD 545).. 政治大 thought” that informs Moby-Dick. 立 As the “wandering eye-beams,” but more realistic, He is ecstatic to know that Hawthorne has understood and praised the “pervading. ‧ 國. 學. Moby-Dick is a medium, through which Melville intends to communicate his soul. Now that he has attained Hawthorne’s sympathy, he feels “content” and “a sense of. ‧. er. io. sit. Nat. Hawthorne’s “embrace” of his soul in this letter.. y. unspeakable security.” He lifts his last reserve, if there be any left, to crave. “This was the first and last time he signed only his first name to someone other. al. n. v i n C h Watson, who goes than a member of his family,” notes e n g c h i U on to suggest that the over-. abundant feelings of this letter might have caused “discomfort” or even “dismay” on Hawthorne’s part, so that he did not correspond with Melville again until July of 1852 (388-89). However, as Watson himself admits, some critics doubt the existence of such an estrangement between the two authors, and their arguments are also convincing (380-81). If there was indeed an estrangement, then the often quoted poem “Monody” is probably Melville’s reflection on his relationship with Hawthorne: To have known him, to have loved him, 33.

(46) After loneness long; And then to be estranged in life, And neither in the wrong; And now for death to set his seal— Ease me, a little ease, my song!. By wintry hills his hermit-mound. 政治大 And houseless there the 立snow-bird flits The sheeted snow-drifts drape,. ‧ 國. 學. Beneath the fir-tree’s crape: Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine. Nat. y. ‧. That hid the shyest grape. (PP 276). er. io. sit. In the second stanza, “cloistral vine,” symbolic of Hawthorne, is directly associative with the character Vine, who is dubbed “the recluse” (1.29). Even there was not an. al. n. v i n C h suggestive ofUHawthorne’s works. The estrangement, Clarel is nevertheless strongly engchi bower-like setting of Canto 27 in Part 2—“As were Venetian slats between, / […] a leafy screen, / Luxurious there in umbrage thrown”—resembles Coverdale’s hermitage in Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance.5 Hawthorne describes it thus: It was a kind of leafy cave, high upward into the air, among the midmost branches of a white-pine tree. A wild grapevine, of unusual size and luxuriance, had twined and twisted itself up into the tree, and, after wreathing. 5. Watson has also discerned this resemblance (398).. 34.

(47) the entanglement of its tendrils around almost every bough, had caught hold of three or four neighboring trees, and married the whole clump with a perfectly inextricable knot of polygamy. (718) This is a place where Coverdale would like to “spend a honeymoon” and where he admits no guest, since Hollingsworth, with whom he could “think of sharing all,” has failed him. Coverdale’s hermitage bowered with vine is naturally reminiscent of the name “Vine.” In view of this connection, Vine’s admitting Clarel into his bower. 政治大 In addition, Clarel立 contains quite a few allusions to The Marble Faun,. implies a potential union of the two characters, or even the two authors.. ‧ 國. 學. Hawthorne’s other novel written after he had met Melville. 6 The first occurs in Part 2 Canto 21. Derwent asks Rolf’s opinion about the “Dancing Faun,” the “Faun with. ‧. Grapes.” Rolf answers that they are “fine mellow marbles” partaking of “cordial joy”. y. Nat. er. io. sit. enjoyed “when life was innocent and free.” Rolf’s description exactly matches the character of Donatello, whose resemblance to a marble faun launches the first. al. n. v i n C h Then, in CantoU7, Part 3, Melville associates conversation in Hawthorne’s story. engchi Vine’s anguished look with Beatrice Cenci’s countenance in Guido’s painting, a significant artistic work in Hawthorne’s novel. Another allusion is hidden in Vine’s ditty: “The rose-leaves, see, disbanded be— / Blowing, about me blowing; / But on the death-bed of the rose / My amaranths are growing” (3.14.35-8). Melville uses the symbol of amaranth in relation to the disillusionment of love. In The Marble Faun, flower of the same kind of plant is a symbol of love: “On the sculptor’s side, the. Watson found in both Melville’s and Hawthorne’s works a pattern of advance-and-rebuff relationship that resembles their own (389). 6. 35.

(48) amaranthine flower was already in full blow” (1163). The most important allusion to The Marble Faun is already cited above: “The negatives of flesh should prove / Analogies of non-cordialness / In spirit.” These lines are virtually a paraphrase of Kenyon’s7 implausible argument: I am a man, and between man and man there is always an insuperable gulf. They can never quite grasp each other’s hands; and therefore man never derives any intimate help, any heart sustenance, from his brother man, but. 政治大 How did this finds its way into立 Clarel? The immediate hypothesis is that Hawthorne from woman,—his mother, his sister, or his wife. (1089). ‧ 國. 學. slyly expressed through Kenyon his true feelings—“an insuperable gulf”—about Melville’s advance, and Melville, when reading the novel, was sensitive enough to. ‧. catch Hawthorne’s meaning. A few years later, when Melville took Clarel as a chance. y. Nat. er. io. sit. to reflect on his relationship with Hawthorne, he transplanted to the poem his trauma of being rejected by Hawthorne as Clarel’s fear of Vine’s rejection. If Kenyon really. al. n. v i n C h then it follows that says what Hawthorne meant for Melville, e n g c h i U Melville’s advance, besides being self-professedly spiritual (as it is indicated his letters), was also. regarded so by Hawthorne. The reason is simple. For Hawthorne, the “insuperable gulf” is at once physical and spiritual, but he is assuming the physical impossibility in order to prove the spiritual impossibility. That is to say, if he was really uncomfortable with Melville’s passionate letter or any other advance, it was only a spiritual concern—he took for granted that men’s bodies naturally repel each other.. Kenyon is the protagonist in The Marble Faun, as Coverdale in The Blithedale Romance, whom Watson identifies as a “Hawthorne-like” character (397-98). 7. 36.

(49) As it is shown above, the Melville-Hawthorne relation is analogous to the ClarelVine relation. The argument I made about Melville’s advance will reinforce my point that Clarel’s feeling toward Vine is not erotic. Actually this argument hardly need reinforcement since Clarel himself has made it clear that what he yearns is “the soul’s caress”; he is not worrying about “the negatives of flesh” but about the “noncordialness / in spirit” they may cause. But there are critics, as I have mentioned in the last section, who focus so much on words and phrases suggestive of eroticism. 政治大 profession, and those who 立suspect an ambiguity in that profession.. (“passionate,” “feminine,” “Give me thyself”) as to ignore Clare’s spiritual. ‧ 國. 學. At the end of this chapter, I have a few words on the causes of Clarel’s frustration of desire. Besides Vine’s possible disbelief in spiritual sympathy, his. ‧. psychological remoteness is also “an insuperable gulf” for Clarel. In Part 3 Canto 7,. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Clarel sights Vine wearing an agonized look alone in a cave, as if crying. He wonders to see an eruptive emotion overpowering Vine, who is wont to maintain his reserve. al. n. v i n C h to solicit Vine’s and grace. Now it is a good occasion e n g c h i U confiding, but this time Clarel does not make an advance. “No more need dream of winning Vine,” he thinks, “Or coming at his mystery” (36-37). His earlier failure to win Vine’s confidence might have dissuaded him from another attempt. He sighs: O, lives which languish in the shade, Puzzle and tease us, or upbraid; What noteless confidant, may be, Withholds the talisman, the key! (3.7.38-41) 37.

(50) Again, as in the case of Celio, “life’s cross-purposes” are in action. There is the kind of person who allure with a quiet, but self-tormenting nature, yet he would rather suffer and wither alone than admit others, even those of his own kind, to his heart’s chamber, and acknowledge their help by sharing his sorrow. While Vine belongs to this kind, Clarel is of the opposite. He yearns to open himself to Vine, with whom he has intuited a sympathy, in order that he may acquire Vine’s confidence in return.8 Such opposition is one of the “Collisions of men’s destinies” (3.27.179). Although. 政治大 does not weaken. The poem I am 立going to introduce in the next chapter portrays a Clarel’s hope for male intimacy so far has largely diminished, his conviction of it. ‧. ‧ 國. succumb.. 學. similar character, who fails to fulfill the spiritual quest and suffers for it, but does not. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Clarel seeks man’s sympathy against Francis Bacon’s teaching. “Cor ne edito; Eat not the Heart. […] Those that want Frends to open themselves unto, are Canniballs of their owne Hearts,” thus wrote Francis Bacon in his essay on friendship (110-11). Melville noted this down “on the flyleaf of a volume of Shakespeare” among other notes that would become materials for Moby-Dick (Crain Sympathy 184) 8. 38.

(51) Chapter Five The Problem of Sex “This Sexless Bound in Sex” Melville’s “After the Pleasure Party,” of uncertain date, is extraordinary for its outspoken sexuality. In this poem, Urania, a female astronomer, feels her sexual desire. 政治大 prowess cannot help her立 win the man she loves from a sweet country girl. The sudden awakened by jealousy after her long years of cloistered intellectual life. Her scientific. ‧ 國. 學. disillusionment of her pure aspiration makes her angrily ashamed. Scholars such as Watson and Rosenberg think this poem attests to Melville’s acknowledgement of the. ‧. inseparability of “carnal desire” from “intellectual aspiration” (Rosenberg 73, Watson. y. Nat. er. io. sit. 400). They apply this view to Clarel, arguing in the wake of Baym that Clarel at some point recognizes the sexual element in his spiritual quest. However, their reading of. al. n. v i n Ch “After the Pleasure Party” is problematic. e n g cMelville’s h i U emphasis is not that sexual desire is inseparable from the spiritual, but that it must be separated.. To read this poem, one should first note the discrepancy of attitudes between the narrator and Urania. The poem begins with a verse carved under a statue of Amor, in which the god threats to vent his fury upon those virgins who “exempt” themselves from love (1-6). It echoes the end, where the narrator warns virgins to take Urania as an example, not to slight Amor as she does, lest he, “incensed,” should take “vengeance” (144-148). The body part of the poem mostly consists of Urania’s 39.

(52) soliloquy. Filled with the jealousy inflicted by love, Urania feels for the first time the futileness of her studies in the face of insuppressible desire. Her starry devotion is now “usurped” by “love’s stronger reign” (99). So far one may well agree with Watson and Rosenberg, but this is an incomplete reading. The last part of Urania’s soliloquy sees a change of tone. She recovers from her former bitterness (“surged emotion seething down”) and seeks solution. The first way she could think of is to take the veil under the aegis of Virgin Mary. On the verge of submitting to Mary’s. 政治大 “But thee, arm’d Virgin! 立less benign,. “moving plea,” however, she somehow turns toward “less benign” Athena:. ‧ 國. 學. Thee now I invoke, thou mightier one. Helmeted woman—if such term. ‧. Befit thee, far from strife. y. Nat. er. io. And clogs the aspirant life—. n. al. Ch. O self-reliant, strong and free,. sit. Of that which makes the sexual feud. engchi. i n U. v. Thou in whom power and peace unite, Transcender! raise me up to thee, Raise me and arm me!” (132-41) Urania’s invocation of Athena, a virgin goddess of war and wisdom, asserts her resolution to fight against carnal desires, to persist in an “aspirant life,” and to be “self-reliant, strong and free.” Directly following Urania’s soliloquy is the narrator’s curt, sarcastic comment: “Fond appeal.” The narrator does not believe in a 40.