Analysis of poetry and politics

Melville and Clarel
Introduction
Herman Melville is typically mostly known for his novel Moby-Dick, but the prose writer turned to poetry in his later years after his novels (following Moby-Dick) failed to be best-sellers. Poetry, it was thought, would be a creative outlet for him that would refresh his reading audience and spark new life into his readership and following. The attempt failed to produce much of anything in the way of literary recognition at the time. However, Melville produced the longest American epic poem ever written—Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876), a work of 18,000 lines making it longer than Paradise Lost, the Iliad, or the Aeneid. The subject of Clarel is a metaphysical one, like so many of Melville’s works; even when rooted in a time and place with a specific conflict, plot and arc, his works tend to have a metaphysical backdrop that tells the story behind the story—the spiritual conflict inherent in the secular conflict. Melville’s own move away from prose to poetry indicates his inward turn towards the lofty (as though he could get any loftier after Moby-Dick, Israel Potter, Pierre, Bartleby the Scrivener, or Billy Budd). With Clarel, however, he united themes of pessimism that were evident in his earlier writings, such as Pierre and Bartleby (Stempel & Stillians, 1972; Tally, Jr., 2009) with themes of soulful entreaty and a desire to understand the mind of God. As Short (1979) noted just over a century after Melville’s Clarel was published, the poem represented Melville’s “spiritual quest for the meaning of existence” (p. 554). This paper will provide background and contextual information about Melville and how his life influenced his work. It will also provide a brief analysis of Clarel and show how it ties into the poet’s life, background, experience, politics, and sense of the spiritual.
Background
Melville was born in 1819 in New York City to a prominent well-to-do family. His grandfathers had both served nobly in the Revolutionary War and fought to secure the nation’s independence from England. The family lived beyond its means, though, and before long they were forced out of New York City to Albany where the expenses were less considerable (Parker, 1996). Melville was deeply influenced by ideas of nobility, honor, integrity, independence, and free will. Baptized as a baby into the South Reformed Dutch Church, Melville learned his Scripture and knew the Bible backwards and forwards—which he showed in Moby-Dick, as various Biblical themes and concepts are woven throughout the work from beginning to end. However, Melville was never satisfied with his religion and felt that there was something extraordinarily off-putting about the Protestant, Calvinist doctrines so prevalent in New England society. He struggled all his life to reconcile the message of Christ, or the Word of God, with the limitations of Calvinism. His journey to the Holy Land as an adult was conducted in part to provide him with a first-hand glimpse into the place where Christ had walked and talked and to see if he could, in any way, reconcile his pessimism with regard to Calvinism and his admiration for the Christian ideal (Flibbert, 1981).
Melville found success early on as a writer after basing a serious of novels on his own experiences in aboard various sea vessels in both the whaling industry and in the U.S. Navy. His sea experiences were rich and full of adventure, but they also formed his inner life in a way that would later be manifested in his writings. As Milder (1988) points out, Melville’s time at sea likely resulted in a kind of spiritual estrangement that the author spent the rest of his life attempting to deal with. The major question on Melville’s mind was whether men had any real free will—and this was connected to his hatred of a God who could be so heartless as to create men simply to watch them suffer and spend eternity in damnation. However, his experiences did not empty him of spiritual belief. Instead, they molded him and turned him against the restrictiveness of the Calvinist doctrines. As Melville (1851) would later writer to the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, “I stand for the heart. To the dogs with the head! I had rather be a fool with a heart, than Jupiter Olympus with his head. The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch.” Melville rejected the idea that God created some to spend eternity in Paradise and others to go to Hell willy-nilly. He viewed God as having more heart than that—if He existed—and that the great struggle of human existence was deciding whether you in your own heart wished to move towards Him or away from Him. But simply understanding Him was the main challenge, first and foremost—and to understand Him, Melville wanted to go to the Holy Land.
Once he made himself known as a writer with his early adventure books based on his sea experience, Melville became more ambitious and began reflecting his spiritual and religious and social views in his writings. It began in earnest with Moby-Dick and continued on with Bartleby, The Confidence Man, Pierre and Billy Bud. When these works produced dwindling returns, Melville turned to writing poetry. By that time, America was on the verge of Civil War, and Melville captured the mood in his first book of poetry that came out following the conclusion of the war. Melville managed to visit the Holy Land in the meantime and it was based on that experience that he began composing the longest epic in American poetry—Clarel.
Melville’s politics were such that he identified with the cause of the Union during the American Civil War. His book of poems written during that time conveyed his respect for the fallen who gave their lives in defense of the Union. However, his politics were more completely seen in his sense of the union of mankind—a union that transcended nationalities: it was a spiritual union, but, as with the Civil War, there were battles to be fought as the members of the union of mankind often found cause for dispute and demonstrated a desire to break apart. This sense is evident in Clarel.
Clarel
Clarel is an ambitious work that centers on the title character, who is a young student of theology. Clarel has traveled to the Holy Land to see first-hand (like Melville himself) the land where Christ lived and died. He expects to find here some spirit that will animate his faith, which he feels is sliding and weakening. What he finds in Jerusalem, however, is more chaos—not the stillness and calmness of spirit nor the respect for the sacred place that he anticipated. In Jerusalem are so many different people of so many different faiths that the effect is almost overwhelming. He finds Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and more. While he appreciates the fact that they all have a sense of the divinity, Clarel is looking for more than this: he is looking for something explicit that can bring him confidence in his faith. He senses briefly a kinship with a Catholic named Celio, but Celio soon dies and Clarel bitterly regrets not pursuing the friendship for the opportunity of learning more about the faith. Clarel’s mission at the outset of the poem is to take a spiritual journey—but already he is off to a rocky start upon arriving in the Holy Land. Melville describes Clarel’s mood this way:
Our New World’s worldly wit so shrewd
Lacks the Semitic reverent mood,
Unworldly—hardly may confer
Fitness for just interpreter 
Of Palestine. Forego the state
Of local minds inveterate,
Tied to one poor and casual form. 
To avoid the deep saves not from storm (Melville, 1876, Canto 1, ln. 92-99).
What he describes is a young man who somewhat naively regrets the worldliness of the world around him. He is inspired by the Scriptures and the story of Christ but he is disheartened by those around him who do not share his inspiration. He figures that if the stories are true, everyone should be more concerned about living like a Christian and following Christ as the Scriptures suggest one should do. Yet in his own New World (America) where the “reverent mood” is missing, he finds no such spiritual earnestness or desire—so he goes to the Holy Land to see if he can find it there. This is definitely similar to Melville’s own experiences. He too undoubtedly felt the same way—scornful of the materialistic concerns and worldly ways of his brethren and driven by the Scriptures he learned in his youth to find out why Christianity was so often touted and yet so often neglected in the lives of his fellow men and in society in general. It was a theme he explored in detail in The Confidence Man—a novel about a con artist aboard a ship who sees that everyone on the ship, normal men and women of society, are con artists too in their own ways—only they tend to con themselves and their neighbors not for money but rather to appear virtuous and of good will.
In Clarel, Melville is out to explore why it is so difficult to discern the will’s quality—whether good or bad—and how difficult it is, in such a situation, to feel that one can move toward God in any way, shape or manner. There is a kind of spiritual dread all throughout Clarel that haunts the reader and the titular character. It is reflective of Melville’s own spiritual dread, his own preoccupation with understanding his position in the world, his sense of being in the world and of the world and yet destined for another world in eternity and not knowing or understanding what this other world could be about or how it could be so. As Flibbert (1981) notes, Clarel is on a mission of religious faith, but the mission is nearly a complete disaster from beginning to end and the reader is not left with a great deal of hope once the 18,000 lines have been read. Yet, even still, Melville is not without hope. He admits that the throngs and conflicting narratives and impulses of the modern world are a big distraction that can kill a man’s faith, but he also states that even if there is no God the clashing voices will continue on:
Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate--
The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell;
Science the feud can only aggravate--
No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell
The running battle of the star and clod
Shall run forever--if there be no God (Melville, 1876, Canto 35, ln. 12-17).
Melville himself resolves the question by giving a comforting last word to Clarel, who by the end of the epic is no more resolved or renewed in his faith than when he started out. He simply now has 18,000 lines of experience behind him and the rest of his life to dwell on it and come to some kind of resolve within himself. Melville, stating both to Clarel and to the reader (and most likely also to himself), gives the final remonstrance and indication of hope:
Keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned--
Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind;
That like the crocus budding through the snow--
That like a swimmer rising from the deep--
That like a burning secret which doth go
Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep;
Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea,
And prove that death but routs life into victory (Melville, 1876, Canto 35, ln. 27-34).
Melville as much as says that even if one’s faith seems uncertain, one should not abandon one’s heart—for it is through the heart that one can still find one’s way to “victory,” as Melville calls it. This victory he describes as like a flower blooming in the snow, a swimmer emerging from the deeps of the water to air, a secret that is bursting forth from one’s bosom to be told: the victory is the heart’s in the end so long as the heart is not given up.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Melville believed in the heart. His life was a hearty adventure and his writings reflected as much. His epic poem is a journey of the heart—a spiritual journey that is meant to go to God but ultimately is left at the door of the aching heart and there it stays. Yet, Melville insists that it must remain there in good hope and faith. This idea is one that Melville himself maintained consistently throughout his life—and it can be found in his works as well, from Bartleby to Billy Budd. In all his writings, Melville identified the need for heart—just as he did in 1851 when writing to his friend Hawthorne. In a world made mad by materialism and factionalism, the heart could discern the true path to everlasting happiness so long as it did not become bitter with resentment and hatred for one’s fellows.






References
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