Herman Melville Biography and List of Works

American author, best-known for his novels of the sea and his masterpiece MOBY-DICK (1851), a whaling adventure dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. The work was only recognized as a masterpiece 30 years after Melville's death. The fictitious travel narrative,TYPEE (1846) was Melville's most popular book during his lifetime.

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the less of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."
(from Moby-Dick)

Herman Melville was born in New York City into an established merchant family. His father became bankrupt and insane, dying when Melville was 12. A bout of scarlet fever in 1826 left Melville with permanently weakened eyesight. He attended Albany (N.Y.) Classical School in 1835. He left the school and was largely autodidact, devouring Shakespeare as well as historical, anthropological, and technical works. From the age of 12, he worked as a clerk, teacher, and farmhand. In search of adventures, he shipped out in 1839 as a cabin boy on the whaler Achushnet. He later joined the US Navy, and started his years long voyages on ships. During these years he was a clerk and bookkeeper in general store in Honolulu and lived briefly among the Typee cannibals in the Marquesas Islands. Another ship rescued him and took him to Tahiti.

Typee was first published in Britain, like most of his works. Its sequel, OMOO (1847), was based on his experiences in the Polynesian Islands, and gained as great a success as the first one. Throughout his career Melville enjoyed a rather higher estimation in Britain than in America. His older brother Gansevoort held a government position in London, and helped to launch Melville's career. From his third book, MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER (1849), Melville started to experience the unpredictable turns of popular acclaim.

In 1847 Melville married Elisabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts. After three yeas in New York, he bought a farm, "Arrowhead", near Nathaniel Hawthorne's home at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and became friends with him for some time. Melville had almost completed Moby-Dick when Hawthorne encouraged him to change it from a story full of details about whaling, into an allegorical novel.

"In general, it is the non-psychological novel that offers the richest opportunities for psychological elucidation. Here the author, having no intentions of this sort, does not show his characters in a psychological light and thus leaves room for analysis and interpretation, or even invites it by his unprejudiced mode of presentation... I would also include Melville's Moby Dick, which I consider the be the greatest American novel, in this broad class of writings."
(Carl Jung in The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, 1967)

Inspired by the achievement of Hawthore, Melville wrote his masterpiece, Moby-Dick. When the novel was published, it did not bring him the fame he had acquired in the 1840s. Its brilliance was noted by some critics and very few readers. The narrator is Ishmael, who signs abroad the whaler Pequod with his friend Queequeg, a harpooner from the South Sea Islands. The mood of the story changes soon from the conventions of 19th-century comic realism. The reader is confronted by a plurality of linguistic discourses, philosophical speculations, and Shakespearean rhetoric and dramatic staging. Mysterious Captain Ahab appears after several days at sea. He reveals to the crew that the purpose of the voyage is to hunt and kill the white sperm whale, known as Moby-Dick, that had cost Ahab his leg on a previous voyage. The novel culminates when Moby-Dick charges the boat, which sinks. Ahab is drowned, tied by the harpoon line to his archenemy. The only survivor is Ishmael. - Moby-Dick was misunderstood by those who read and reviewed it. Through Ishmael the author meditated questions about faith and the workings of God's intelligence. He returned to these meditations in his last great work, BILLY BUDD, a story left unfinished at his death.

'Moby Dick was the most difficult picture I ever made. I lost so many battles during it that I even began to suspect that my assistant director was plotting against me. Then I realized that it was only God. God had a perfectly good reason. Ahab saw the White Whale as a mask worn by the Deity, and he saw the Deity as a malignant force. It was God's pleasure to torment and torture man. Ahab didn't deny God, he simply looked on him as a murderer - a thought that is utterly blasphemous: "Is Ahab Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?...Where do murderers go?... Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?"'
(John Huston in An Open Book, 1980)

PIERRE (1852), a Gothic romance and psychological study based on the author's childhood, was a financial and critical disaster. Melville's stories in Putnam's Monthly Magazine reflected the despair and the contempt for human hypocrisy and materialism. Among the stories were 'The Scrivener' (1853), 'The Encantadas' (1854) and 'Benito Cereno' (1855).

THE CONFIDENCE MAN (1857), Melville's last novel, was a harsh satire of American life set on a Mississippi River steamboat. After 1857 he wrote only some poetry. To recover from a breakdown, he undertook a long journey to Europe and the Holy Land. CLAREL (1876), a long poem about religious crisis, was based on this strip, and reflected his Manichean view of God. Subsequent works were privately printed and distributed among a very small circle of acquaintances.

After unsuccessful lecture tours in 1857-60, Melville lived in Washington, D.C. (1861-62). He moved to New York, where he was appointed customs inspector on the New York docks. This work secured him a regular income. Melville's later works include BATTLE-PIECES AND ASPECTS OF THE WAR (1865), privately printed JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS (1888), and TIMOLEON (1891). Melville's death on September 28, 1891, in New York, was noted with only one obituary notice. His unfinished work, Billy Budd, Foretopman, remained unpublished until 1924.

Billy Budd, Foretopman - also called Billy Budd, Sailor. Written in 1891 and left unfinished, first published in 1924, a definitive edition in 1962. The story is set in 1797 during the war between England and France. Billy Budd, 'the Handsome Sailor', is favourite of the crew of HMS Bellipotent. He becomes the target of John Claggart, the satanic master-at-arms. Claggart accuses falsely Billy of being involved in a supposed mutiny. The innocent Billy, who is unable to answer the charge because of a chronic stammer, accidentally kills Claggart. Captain Vere sees through Claggart's plot, fears reaction among the crew, if Billy is not punished. He calls a court and in effect instructs it to find Billy guilty of capital crime. The court condemns Billy, who goes willingly to his fate and is hanged from the yardarm after crying out 'God bless Captain Vere'. Later Vere is killed during an engagement with the French, murmuring as his last words Billy's name.

For further reading: Herman Melville by William Ellery Sedgwick (1944); Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson (1947); Herman Melville by Richard Volney Chase (1949); Reading of 'Moby-Dick' by Milton Oswin Percival (1950); The Long Encounter by Merlin Bowen (1960); Melville's Thematic of Form by Edgar A. Dryden (1968); Melville: The Ironic Diagarm by John Seelye (1970); Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel by Richard H. Brodhead (1976); New Perspectives on Melville, ed. by Faith Pullin (1978); Melville by Edward H. Rosenberry (1979); Herman Melville, ed. by A. Robert Lee (1984); A Companion to Melville Studies, ed. by John Bryant (1986); White Lies by John Samson (1989); Empire for Liberty: Melville and the Poetics of Individualism by Wai-chee Dimock (1991); Herman Melville by Rebecca Stefoff (1994); After the Whale by Clark Davis (1995); Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, ed. by Harold Bloom (1996); Herman Melville: A Biography: 1819-1851 by Hershel Parker (1996); The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville, ed. by Robert S. Levine (1998, paperback); Herman Melville's Religious Journey by Walter Donald Kring (1998); American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania by Hilton Obenzinger (1999) - 19th century writers criticizing colonial system: Cuban José Martí and Multatuli, whose - novel MAX HAVELAAR depicts the Dutch exploitation in Java.

TYPEE, (1846)