#Billy Budd | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

watsonmelon · 8 months

Text

finished reading billy budd a while ago. quote and thought dump about billy budd, blithedale romance, and a few others. spoilers. religion.

I already posted about The Blithedale Romance but I WILL say it again: it messes me up that the book mentioned in this letter appears to have been Blithedale Romance.....

My Dear Hawthorne: -- This name of "Hawthorne" seems to be ubiquitous. I have been on something of a tour lately, and it has saluted me vocally & typographically in all sorts of places & in all sorts of ways. I was at the solitary Crusoeish island of Naushon (one of the Elisabeth group) and there, on a stately piazza, I saw it gilded on the back of a very new book, and in the hands of a clergyman. -- I went to visit a gentleman in Brooklyne, and as we were sitting at our wine, in came the lady of the house, holding a beaming volume in her hand, from the city -- "My Dear," to her husband, "I have brought you Hawthorne's new book." I entered the cars at Boston for this place. In came a lively boy "Hawthorne's new book!" -- In good time I arrived home. Said my lady-wife "there is Mr Hawthorne's new book, come by mail" And this morning, lo! on my table a little note, subscribed Hawthorne again. -- Well, the Hawthorne is a sweet flower; may it flourish in every hedge.

imagine!

a Blithedale Romance excerpt particularly relevant to Billy Budd:

It is my private opinion that, at this period of his life, Hollingsworth was fast going mad; and, as with other crazy people (among whom I include humorists of every degree), it required all the constancy of friendship to restrain his associates from pronouncing him an intolerable bore. Such prolonged fiddling upon one string—such multiform presentation of one idea! His specific object (of which he made the public more than sufficiently aware, through the medium of lectures and pamphlets) was to obtain funds for the construction of an edifice, with a sort of collegiate endowment. On this foundation he purposed to devote himself and a few disciples to the reform and mental culture of our criminal brethren. His visionary edifice was Hollingsworth's one castle in the air; it was the material type in which his philanthropic dream strove to embody itself; and he made the scheme more definite, and caught hold of it the more strongly, and kept his clutch the more pertinaciously, by rendering it visible to the bodily eye. I have seen him, a hundred times, with a pencil and sheet of paper, sketching the facade, the side-view, or the rear of the structure, or planning the internal arrangements, as lovingly as another man might plan those of the projected home where he meant to be happy with his wife and children. I have known him to begin a model of the building with little stones, gathered at the brookside, whither we had gone to cool ourselves in the sultry noon of haying-time. Unlike all other ghosts, his spirit haunted an edifice, which, instead of being time-worn, and full of storied love, and joy, and sorrow, had never yet come into existence.

shortly after Blithedale Romance, that exploration of gender roles and sexuality, Melville publishes "Bartleby," the innocent one sentenced. decades later, Clarel, with another parallel to the rejection in Blithedale Romance...

Blithedale:

"I will not argue the point," said he. "What I desire to know of you is,—and you can tell me in one word,—whether I am to look for your cooperation in this great scheme of good? Take it up with me! Be my brother in it! It offers you (what you have told me, over and over again, that you most need) a purpose in life, worthy of the extremest self-devotion,—worthy of martyrdom, should God so order it! In this view, I present it to you. You can greatly benefit mankind. Your peculiar faculties, as I shall direct them, are capable of being so wrought into this enterprise that not one of them need lie idle. Strike hands with me, and from this moment you shall never again feel the languor and vague wretchedness of an indolent or half-occupied man. There may be no more aimless beauty in your life; but, in its stead, there shall be strength, courage, immitigable will,—everything that a manly and generous nature should desire! We shall succeed! We shall have done our best for this miserable world; and happiness (which never comes but incidentally) will come to us unawares."

It seemed his intention to say no more. But, after he had quite broken off, his deep eyes filled with tears, and he held out both his hands to me.

"Coverdale," he murmured, "there is not the man in this wide world whom I can love as I could you. Do not forsake me!"

As I look back upon this scene, through the coldness and dimness of so many years, there is still a sensation as if Hollingsworth had caught hold of my heart, and were pulling it towards him with an almost irresistible force. It is a mystery to me how I withstood it. But, in truth, I saw in his scheme of philanthropy nothing but what was odious. A loathsomeness that was to be forever in my daily work! A great black ugliness of sin, which he proposed to collect out of a thousand human hearts, and that we should spend our lives in an experiment of transmuting it into virtue! Had I but touched his extended hand, Hollingsworth's magnetism would perhaps have penetrated me with his own conception of all these matters. But I stood aloof. I fortified myself with doubts whether his strength of purpose had not been too gigantic for his integrity, impelling him to trample on considerations that should have been paramount to every other.

Clarel:

Divided mind knew Clarel here;

The heart's desire did interfere.

Thought he, 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

Which, long as hungering unfed,

All else rejected or withstood.

Some inklings he let fall. But no:

Here over Vine there slid a change

A shadow, such as thin may show

Gliding along the mountain-range

And deepening in the gorge below.

Does Vine's rebukeful dusking say--

Why, on this vernal bank to-day,

Why bring oblations of thy pain ⁠

To one who hath his share? here fain

Would lap him in a chance reprieve?

Lives none can help ye; that believe.

Art thou the first soul tried by doubt?

Shalt prove the last? Go, live it out. ⁠

But for thy fonder dream of love

In man toward man--the soul's caress--

The negatives of flesh should prove

Analogies of non-cordialness

In spirit.--E'en such conceits could cling ⁠

To Clarel's dream of vain surmise

And imputation full of sting.

but now, in Billy Budd, the doubling down, writing of a convict, someone who has killed a man, who needs no redemption because he is already innocent! over 30 years after Blithedale! in the late years of his life! he IS obsessed with guilt and innocence, still! and i absolutely loved "Bartleby," but just like that part from Clarel felt bolder than "Bartleby," Billy Budd felt to me less raw and more black-and-white and more focused than "Bartleby," everything in place to tell what needed to be told, the culmination of it all, despite that it wasn't even published while he was alive, and was found in disarray.

Billy Budd:

Though our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can expect anywhere to see; nevertheless, like the beautiful woman in one of Hawthorne's minor tales, there was just one thing amiss in him. No visible blemish, indeed, as with the lady; no, but an occasional liability to a vocal defect. Though in the hour of elemental uproar or peril he was everything that a sailor should be, yet under sudden provocation of strong heart-feeling, his voice otherwise singularly musical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was apt to develop an organic hesitancy, in fact, more or less of a stutter or even worse. In this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch interferer, the envious marplot of Eden, still has more or less to do with every human consignment to this planet of earth. In every case, one way or another he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind us- I too have a hand here.

The avowal of such an imperfection in the Handsome Sailor should be evidence not alone that he is not presented as a conventional hero, but also that the story in which he is the main figure is no romance.

HHHHHH jumpscared. he is woven in. well, i read "The Birth-Mark":

Had she been less beautiful,—if Envy's self could have found aught else to sneer at,—he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart; but, seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

much to think about. back to Billy Budd.

In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road, some by-paths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. I am going to err into such a by-path. If the reader will keep me company I shall be glad. At the least we can promise ourselves that pleasure which is wickedly said to be in sinning, for a literary sin the divergence will be.

that is such a herman melville thing to say

When Claggart's unobserved glance happened to light on belted Billy rolling along the upper gun deck in the leisure of the second dog-watch, exchanging passing broadsides of fun with other young promenaders in the crowd; that glance would follow the cheerful sea-Hyperion with a settled meditative and melancholy expression, his eyes strangely suffused with incipient feverish tears. Then would Claggart look like the man of sorrows. Yes, and sometimes the melancholy expression would have in it a touch of soft yearning, as if Claggart could even have loved Billy but for fate and ban. But this was an evanescence, and quickly repented of, as it were, by an immitigable look, pinching and shrivelling the visage into the momentary semblance of a wrinkled walnut. But sometimes catching sight in advance of the Foretopman coming in his direction, he would, upon their nearing, step aside a little to let him pass, dwelling upon Billy for the moment with the glittering dental satire of a Guise. But upon any abrupt unforeseen encounter a red light would flash forth from his eye like a spark from an anvil in a dusk smithy. That quick fierce light was a strange one, darted from orbs which in repose were of a color nearest approaching a deeper violet, the softest of shades.

ough.. just this bit on repression, passion distorted.

But Captain Vere was now again motionless standing absorbed in thought. But again starting, he vehemently exclaimed--"Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!"

gave me chills when i read it! and vere is so hawthorne-coded to me......... vere who believes in his innocence, and yet!!

In the jugglery of circumstances preceding and attending the event on board the Indomitable, and in the light of that martial code whereby it was formally to be judged, innocence and guilt personified in Claggart and Budd in effect changed places. In a legal view the apparent victim of the tragedy was he who had sought to victimize a man blameless; and the indisputable deed of the latter, navally regarded, constituted the most heinous of military crimes. Yet more. The essential right and wrong involved in the matter, the clearer that might be, so much the worse for the responsibility of a loyal sea-commander inasmuch as he was not authorized to determine the matter on that primitive basis.

the twisting of guilt and innocence!! Melville's recurring criticism of people doing truly wicked things, taking advantage of people while hiding behind power and still being respected by the world, while people with good hearts are punished by the world... god, i will eat it up every single time.

But the Indomitable's Chaplain was a discreet man possessing the good sense of a good heart. So he insisted not in his vocation here. At the instance of Captain Vere, a lieutenant had apprised him of pretty much everything as to Billy; and since he felt that innocence was even a better thing than religion wherewith to go to Judgement, he reluctantly withdrew; but in his emotion not without first performing an act strange enough in an Englishman, and under the circumstances yet more so in any regular priest. Stooping over, he kissed on the fair cheek his fellow-man, a felon in martial law, one who though on the confines of death he felt he could never convert to a dogma; nor for all that did he fear for his future.

and

At sea in the old time, the execution by halter of a military sailor was generally from the fore-yard. In the present instance, for special reasons the main-yard was assigned. Under an arm of that lee-yard the prisoner was presently brought up, the Chaplain attending him. It was noted at the time and remarked upon afterwards, that in this final scene the good man evinced little or nothing of the perfunctory. Brief speech indeed he had with the condemned one, but the genuine Gospel was less on his tongue than in his aspect and manner towards him. The final preparations personal to the latter being speedily brought to an end by two boatswain's mates, the consummation impended. Billy stood facing aft. At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these--"God bless Captain Vere!" Syllables so unanticipated coming from one with the ignominious hemp about his neck-- a conventional felon's benediction directed aft towards the quarters of honor; syllables too delivered in the clear melody of a singing-bird on the point of launching from the twig, had a phenomenal effect, not unenhanced by the rare personal beauty of the young sailor spiritualized now thro' late experiences so poignantly profound.

declared guilty under the laws of men, and judged to be innocent by God... i think Melville truly wanted to believe in divine goodness, and that man's laws and interpretations and narrow-mindedness are not God's..... i think he meant it. and that's what i like about his writing.

and almost finally, a journal entry by Hawthorne...

Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he “pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated”; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief.

It is strange how he persists — and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before — in wandering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other.

If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.

heart is wrenched.........

other than that. whoever owned this collection of stories by melville before i did wrote "no" in the table of contents by bartleby, billy budd, and one other. the other one maybe i get, but bartleby and billy budd? two of the best ones? at any rate, the ones that touched me the most. what could they have meant? how could you say such a thang...

other than THAT. it's completely meaningless but very funny to me that I've been posting about melville once or twice a month and each time getting between like zero and five notes and tumblr is like congratulations! top #herman melville blogger!

and truly finally, i just started pierre the other day. i'm not very far, but already the love and passion and divinity and profanity...

'Fie, now, Pierre; why should ye youths always swear when ye love?' 'Because in us love is profane, since it mortally reaches toward the heaven in ye!'

so far i am hooked 👍

#herman melville #billy budd #the blithedale romance

6 notes · View notes