Herman Melville‘s creative activity in 1850‘s is considered in my project in context of the literary-philosophical situation of the middle of the XIX century in Europe. The Period of 1830–40‘s was called by a famous Russian thinker Georgij Florovsky «a philosophical awakening», its characteristic features being certain «philosophical longing», a «passion towards philosophy» which was flourishing at that time both in Europe and in Russia. The origins of this «awakening» can be traced to such an important factor as the dissappointment of many young thinkers of the time in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. The wave of this disappointment has in its turn followed the wave of an extremely enthusiastic involvement in Hegel’s ideas — the author of the «Phenomenologie des Geistes» was widely read and worshiped in the whole Europe and Russia. «A new world has opened to us. Power is law and law is power. I have understood the idea of kingdoms‘ fall, of the conquerers‘ legality… I have understood that there is no… accidence, — and my guardianship over the humankind has come to an end» wrote Russian critic G. Belinsky in 1839. For many thinkers of the time Hegel seemed to have finally explained the sense and meaning of life: everything in the world appeared to be involved in the global process of the development of the Weltgeist and was gradually moving to the final beautiful goal.
But the enthusiasm wasn’t long: already in a couple of years it ended in deep disappointment which was almost as great as the previous enthusiasm, when the whole generation had to suffer from its consequences. The writers and philosophers of this time have searched to escape from the metaphysical vacuum they have suddenly found themselves in: the old system was no longer vital, and there was no new one at their disposal yet. Thus some of them started to come out with their own attempts to present their own ideas and thoughts to the world. The post-Hegelian crisis of thought gave birth to a new generation of Romanticists who seem to differ from their predecessors mainly by their concentration on metaphysical and religious problems. The 1840‘s are generally characterized by an appearance of a whole range of philosophical concepts, many of which are absolutely independent. The authors whom I call here «the generation of the 1840‘s» (e. g. S. Kierkegaard, F. Dostoevski, G. Belinski, later — H. Heine and G. Flaubert) have marked a certain border in the development of Classical Idealism and have made some important changes in the field of literature, philosophy and criticism. It can be said that their approaches to the problem of the relationship between an individual «I» and the Universe are extremely subjective and are mainly antagonistic to those of Hegel (where an individual is considered mainly as a part of the whole and plays the secondary role in the universal development of the Subjectivity).
Consequently these thinkers and writers have concentrated mainly on the individual in their search for Truth: its origins were to be found in man himself (as Sö ren Kierkegaard has put it: «truth is in subjectivity»). Thus turning into one’s self, bringing the individual and his inner, subjective state to the fore was one of the central points of reflection for the authors of the 1840‘s generation.
Herman Melville is perhaps the only American writer of the epoche who belongs to this group: he was involved in the basic philosophical discussions of the time, greatly concerned with the metaphysical problems and questions, and finally he has concentrated on the problem of the search for the Absolute developing his ideas in the same direction as they did.
It seems to be of an importance to begin the analysis of this aspect in Melville»s works regarding the idea of a close connection of the quest problem with the mental and spiritual state of the questers.
The same way Kierkegaard has built his ladder of levels in approaching the Eternal, namely, the aesthetical, the ethical and the religious, it can be said that Melville builds the scheme where the levels of one’s relation to the Absolute depend on one’s psychical or mental state. The mental state appears to be of vital importance in achieving the final metaphysical (or spiritual) goal by an individual. In my dissertation chapter below I regard the idea of madness as it is viewed by Melville and the role which madness plays in the metaphysical quest of Melville’s characters.
It is necessary to begin with a brief consideration of certain events of Melville’s life which have influenced his own spiritual development and consequently, his whole creative activity. Interestingly enough, but many representatives of the generation of the 1840‘s have certain parallels in their biographies (e. g. spiritual or nervous shocks which they suffered in youth) as it was, for example with Kierkegaard or Belinsky. Analysing their works it is always important to take a biographical aspect into account, as one of the sources of their spiritial crisis were constant and vain attempts to solve the spiritual paradox that these thinkers have faced in their lives. As a result many of them have remained ununderstood by the society and have suffered from numerous conflicts with it.
When Herman Melville was 12 years old his father got ruined. Not being able to bear this tragedy he suffered from mental and physical illness and soon died. His death in 1832 was a shock for young Melville which he could not overcome for a very long time and which had influenced his whole spiritual development. His inner life was often described as a tragical one, and his critics have often written of a total mental and spiritual breakdown which was probably caused by the constant attempts to grasp the ungraspable, to perceive the sense and paradox of life: we often read of his «tragedy of mind» — the same condition in which Ahab had found himself, and the same kind of spiritual and mental state which was described in details by S. Kierkegaard (it is analyzed further in connection with Ahab’s «tragedy of mind»). Melville was also depressed by a «Calvinistic sense of curse» which had never left him — he wrote about «the Puritanic gloom… great power of blackness [which]… derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free». The strange tragical coincidences which took place in Melville’s family had perhaps formed the ground for such a feeling: for example, the father’s fate seemed to repeat with the son — the writer‘s brother Gansevoort Melville had also got ruined.
Melville»s visit to Europe of which so much has been written and which has definitely inspired certain ideas of his next novel («Moby Dick», 1851), started with an accident on a ship which Melville has himself described in details in his «Journal». On the third day of the voyage a man jumped off the ship and neglecting the rope Melville had thrown him twice «let himself drown». The scene was not only terrifying, but strange as well, as everybody warned Melville (and he singles out that «me» in «they warned me») not to fall overboard himself. It apparently shocked him that «no board was lowered, no sail was shortened, hardly any noise was made. The man drowned like a bullock. It afterwards turned out that he was crazy, and had jumped overboard». The only one who was trying to do something to save him was the writer himself, whereas the others seemed to be mere spectators of the tragedy. It appeared afterwards that the man «had declared he would do so several times; and just before he did jump, he had tried to get possession of his child, in order to jump into the sea, with a child in his arms».
The incident described was not the only one. The very next day Melville encounted another madman — he saw him «leaning against the bulwarks… he stopped [him], and told [him] to look off and see the steamers»: «So I looked for about five minites, — straining my eyes but saw nothing. — I asked the 2d Mate whether he could see the steamers; when he told me my informant was the crazy Englishman». Later on the madman behaved himself very aggressively in the dining saloon: he «struck the Stuard, who knocked him down, and dragged him forward».
These strange and perhaps to some extent symbolic encounters could have influenced Melville‘s associations of ship and madness — an association close to the one expressed by Ishmael in «Moby Dick», namely, of water and meditation. As Ishmael noticed, water and consciousness were in strong connection. According to Ishmael, one»s world vision, values, certain concepts — both physical and metaphysical seem to change completely, to be transformed when the consciousness regards them not from the shore, but from the sea. At the same time certain qualities seem to disappear, to appear or to get intensified in these new conditions. As James Mcintosh argues in «The Mariner»s Multiple Quest», madness is a notion «we hide from ourselves ashore and face more immediately at sea». It seems to be not only because of the feeling of isolation one encounters on the ship, the understanding that the shore is far away and may be not reached at all. It also has something to do with the person being overwhelmed by the endless horizon, the mightiness of the ocean, just the same way as Ishmael was when he was staying on the mast, almost loosing his identity in cosmic spheres. The other character with poetical sensibility — Pip — had perhaps experienced too much of it and, being also more vulnerable than Ishmael, got mad.
The notion of madness as regarded by Melville is multidimentional. As Ishmael mentions, «Heaven have mercy on us all — Presbyterians and Pagans alike — for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending». This universal madness implies the wrong understanding of the world and the Universe, when the common values are turned upside down (the theme which is continued in Pierre (Book XIV «The Journey and the Pamphlet»), and is the central point of «Billy Budd»).
In «Pierre» an unusual approach to the problem of truth is suggested: Plotinus Plinlimmon, the author of a pamphlet which Pierre had found in a coach, compares the difference between the time zones to a difference between the earthly and the heavenly truth. According to Plinlimmon, the difference between Greenwitch time and Chineese time does not mean that the Chineese live wrong — the time they have is as correct for them as Greenwich for the Britts. If then a Chinaman would still use a Greenwich chronometer, «he would be guilty of all manner of absurdities». The same happens if we concern our metaphysical relation to God, as «in an artificial world like ours, the soul of man is further removed from its God and the Heavenly Truth, than the Chronometer carried to China, is from Greenwich». Plinlimmon draws than an original conclusion that God’s truth is one thing whereas the earthly truth is another, and «whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, He is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him». According to this «philosopher», the people have their own horological values as only such a perfect being as an angel can be a chronometer, and consequently anyone who tries to live according to the heavenly standard is doomed: he won’t be understood, he will be hated by the people and could even be brought to death as it happened to the God Himself: Christ’s «bequeathed chronometer has still preserved its original Heaven’s time, and the general Jerusalem of this world has likewise carefully preserved his own».
We find a similar idea in S. Kierkegaards’s «Philosophical Fragments»: the Danish thinker writes that people don’t understand Christ as the life He preaches is impossible for them to lead. Moreover, His speech is offensive for them, as it makes clear their own wrongfulness — so in order to justify themselves they accuse Him of all possible things. Kierkegaard speaks about gradual detachment of the humankind from its inital Center and of it’s complete disorientation — which has a lot in common with Melville’s reflexions in Pierre. We face the same problem in «Billy Budd» when captain Vere has to choose between the chronological time of absolute justice and horological time of earthly necessity. Thus the central point of the novel is not Billy Budd’s death and to a certain extent even a martyrdom, but the question which his judges have to solve — either to justify him as the Heavenly Judge would do, or to execute him — as the necessity claims. Captain Vere has thus to accommodate to the circumstances and to act as a horologe, although he realises Billy’s innocence and even whispers his name before he dies.
The fact of the metaphysical disorientation of the humankind can be grasped only by the one who has either already reached some spiritual level in his development or by the one who like Carlyle’s Teufelsdroeck finds himself in a sense «beyond good and evil», i. e. a pessimist, a fatalist or a sceptic. In «Moby Dick» it is Ishmael.
What Ishmael does is on the one hand escaping from that mad world — the world where he comes to the point of «knocking people»s hats off», the world he is dissapointed in and that he does not understand any more. It is also the world which drives him crazy by being too ordinary and unimaginative and therefore unbearable for his poetic consciousness. This «sense of having exhausted life» which Ishmael describes and which brings a person on the verge of suicide originates according to Irwing Babbitt in his «Rousseau and Romanticism» in the feeling that «the ordinary round of life seems pale and incipid compared with the exquisite and figutive moment».
Thus escaping from one type of madness, Ishmael gets on a ship where «madness seems an immediate presence», but, paradoxically, it is there he gets closer to the Absolute and to finding the answers to his questions. James Mcintosh writes, that «madness is in fact a danger for all who acknowledge the unknown deep within themselves». It is exactly what Ishmael is experiencing: trying to perceive the «white-hooded grand phantom», he also gets deeper into his own soul»s labyrinth; his interest consists in «taking off Isida»s veil», but what he gradually discovers under this veil is his own face.
The supposition which can be made here is when such an individual as Ishmael sails on a ship guided by a mad captain, he faces the danger of getting mad himself as well. Nevertheless, his madness would not be like Ahab»s, for his is mainly a posession, but one bearing a more metaphysical character, it is close to what Pip became after he had been left alone in the open sea. In the very first chapter Ishmael talks about that mysterious magnetism of the water which rules every soul with no exceptions. People reach out to the water, «nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land» (MD, 4). «Meditation and water are wedded forever», he says, thus drawing a line between earth and the physical world on the one hand and water and the metaphysical world on the other. The same idea is expressed in «Mardi», thus the one getting to the sea for the first time is not only overwhelmed, but even shocked, and the feeling like having entered another dimension almost drives him mad: «At first he is taken by surprise, never having dreamt of a state of existence where existence itself seems suspended. He shakes himself in his coat to see whether it is empty or no… Thoughts of eternity thicken. He begins to feel anxious concerning his soul». The one is left alone to himself — free to meditation facing the shoreless sea which can well get associated with eternity — the parallel Melville constantly draws in his works: «The stillness of the calm is awful. His voice begins to grow strange and portentous. He feels it in him like something swallowed too big for the esophagus. It keeps up a sort of unvoluntory inferior humming in him, like a live beetle. But more than all else is the consciousness of his utter helplessness». The People possessing a «healthy soul» «get crazy to go to sea», and this is very important, as the healthy soul implies a certain openedness to reflection. When one «gets crazy» about the sea it means that he has reached a very important level in his metaphysical development thus paradoxically suggesting deviation from normality, certain «craziness» being a positive quality at certain stages of life, as it signalizes sensitivity towards the mystical. Starting with this initial «psychical irregularity» one then begins meditating and perceiving through meditation the secrets of the universe, thus gradually coming to faith. This is why the one like Ishmael — in a state of a complete disbelief and hypochondria — becomes a sailor. The sea appears to be a gate towards the Absolute whereas the shore does not provide an individual with enough conditions for a spiritual evolution.
The most obvious associations to appear when the one thinks of the earth are those of the limit, of constant repetition and a closed circle. The sea is associated, on the contrary, with the endlessness, an open road along which the meditating consciousness freely moves in its search for the Absolute. According to Melville «the earthly effort» is endless in its repetitions and untolerable, whereas the sea «permits no records»: one can loose or find himself in its magnanimity (MD, 59). Consequently the earth symbolises finity, and one of its main features is time, whereas the sea brings consciousness to the perception of infinity and time looses its actuality there. The mad prophet from «Ieroboam» who called himself Gabriel, and whose «insanity broke out in a freshnet» as soon as the ship «got out of sight of land» (MD, 313) is another example to support the assumption that the open sea functions as a door to another dimention. Ishmael leaves the «earth» in its both physical and metaphysical sense, and, as Paul Brodtkorb argues, Ishmael»s initial goal is to survive himself by breaking out of time into eternity.
The conditions in which Ishmael has found himself allow such an individual to realize only one of the two possible ways out: he can come in the end of his quest either to belief or in case of an unsuccessful encounter with the Absolute, the Paradox (using Sö ren Kierkegaard»s terminology) — to madness. There is also the third way out which is possible: it is a suicide as a result of disbelief and complete pessimism which, as Ishmael mentions himself, he has almost committed. As far as the two first ways are concerned, they are both beyond the reach of an average consciousness, i. e. unperceptible, and as it was explained by Kierkegaard in his «Fear and Trembling» — beyond the realm of the rational — they are paradoxical and go far beyond the common understanding.
So, the consciousness on its way to the «religious stage» [according to Kierkegaards scheme] often comes through the state of unordinarity — one has to be sensible, prepared for the understanding of the supernatural, to be at least a poet, and Ishmael is the one. He realizes it together with the lack of spirituality which he nevertheless is longing for. Thus comparing the water and meditative mood he talks about Narcissus in a different sense than we are used to think, finding «a deeper meaning of that story». According to Ishmael, Narcissus saw not his physical, but his spiritual reflection: «the tormenting, mild image in the fountain» was «the image of the ungraspable phantom of life». Trying to grasp it and never succeeding, Narcissus has drown of the dissappointment as he could not reach that Something he was so much longing for. If on the other hand he would even succeed in grasping that image, he would probably get drown still — from the awe, as he just would not be capable to bear what he saw.
This is the usual effect from the encounter with the Eternal, and P. Brodtkorb notices in his research, that the facing with the Whale in «Moby Dick» is exactly the case described. So, encounting the Eternal (i. e. Moby Dick) all Melville»s characters either get mad or die. The same happens, for example, to «Ieroboam»»s first mate, Macey, who, paying no attention to the prophetical warnings of Gabriel, «succeeded in persuading five man from the crew to man the boat» and died in very strange circumstances without receiving a «single mark of violence» (MD, 316). Thus Macey‘s death symbolises the end of all those who like Ahab try to confront the Absolute without making any attempts to perceive it.
Interestingly enough, there is still one exclusion: the encounter with the White Whale seems to appear spiritually insignificant for the «good-humored Englishman», the captain of «The Samuel Enderby». But that exclusion only supports the general rule, so to speak. The captain is too ordinary, too close to earth, Moby Dick for him is only «a noble great whale» and even while telling his story he makes the stress not on him, but on different details of his encounter with him. He would never think of blaming Moby Dick for his lost arm: «he is welcome for the arm he has, since I can»t help it». For him it was just an incident which could not be regarded as something very extraordinary, and which had made a part of his whaling experience. Taking into account the above discussed mutual relation of water and spirituality, the following passage from this chapter emphasises the total unimaginativeness and strong connection to the «earth» of «Samuel Enderby»»s crew members: «Water!» cried the captain; he [the surgeon] never drinks it; it is a sort of fits to him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia» (MD, 433).
But still, the captain himself, «flies into diabolical passions sometimes», according to the surgeon»s words, but he does not admit that himself, and this rare fits of madness seem to be the only consequence of the encounter with Moby Dick. «No more White Whales for me… he»s best let alone», — he concludes, thus showing his absolute disinterest in the unordinary and wishing to encount it no more again. The next chapter, «The Decanter» shows us again that the practicism of the crew of the ships like «Samuel Enderby» is the source of their total unimaginativeness and inability to encount the Mystical. They are «high leavers» and thus belong to the world which Ishmael has left and which is completely alien to him: «for, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least».
Those Melville»s characters who are or claim to be opened to the unordinary, find the Ungraspable in the deep water — and these questers are Pip and Ishmael, not Ahab. Although the «Pequod»»s captain has also once experienced something of the kind (when he has lost his leg in his first encounter with Moby Dick), he could never get into the posession of «the heavingly truth». It is only the one like Ishmael who, going to sea for belief, perhaps not even realizing it, but still longing for it, finally gets into its posession.
Thus the stage Ishmael has come to so far is the one when an individual can perceive only the outer world, enjoy its poetry and beauty. He would still speak the other language than the one who has reached the religious stage, but he nevertheless constantly tries to move further. I. Babbitt makes a very interesting comparison of the Christian and Romantic types of consciousness: he argues that the Christian soul «inspires prayer and piece» whereas the romantic one — is «a soul of restlessness, of infinite indeterminate desire» … «Berlioz showed a rather peculiar conception of religion when he took pride in the fact that his Requiem (!) Mass frightened one of the listeners into a fit».
This is a very good example of that fake religiousness, or rather unreligious religiousness, when even the works on religious theme appear to have nothing in common with the spirituality, but are rather a cry of despair — they are not calm, but, vice versa, something desperate and «restless». This is a consciousness which is separated from its basis [Christianity] and always, consciously or subconsciously longing for it. The spiritual quest, be it music, literature or art becomes unstable, even nervous to a certain extent. That»s the reason the romantic questers are so insecure, lack calmness and stability. As Babbit writes further, «a man»s restlessness is ordinarily an inverse ratio to his religion». The Romantic madness has its source in the fountain of Narcissuss — they have too long watched the reflection perceiving the impossibility of grasping it. The madman encounted by Melville on the board of the «Southampton», looking for something in the open sea, seeing the things that do not exist at all had perhaps enriched the image of a captain chasing the Whale who haunts him — another side of «the grand hooded phantom», «a phantom of life», making everybody around to follow him in his crazy voyage.
This is a kind of madness that posesses Ahab. His madness, «the madness maddened», is described by some researchers as the one close to King Lear’s. Both Ahab and Lear, to site Melville»s «Hauthorne and his Mosses», «tormented into desperation [speak] the sad madness of vital truth», this pair is similar Shakespare’s Lear and the Fool. Ahab»s madness differs from Pip»s: It is in its biggest part psycholgically grounded, less metaphysically oriented. It originates from an unwillingless to perceive the metaphysical side of the matter when the offence Ahab feels functions as a screen to the further metaphysical perception. The relation of madness and reason are paradoxical in this context. Nevertheless, if we analyze it more thouroughly, it would sease to be so strange. The age of reason, age preaching the priority of intellect, an age which loses its interest towards everything «unintellectual», unreasonable gave an impulse to another kind of madness. It is not the «Romantic Madness» (the one suffering from it is Ishmael), but the one caused by the priority of reason. S. Kierkegaard calls this state «an offence at the Paradox». In his «Philosophical Fragments» («Philosophiske Smuler eller et Smule Philosophie», 1844) he writes about the Paradox, or the Ungraspable, the God. The tragedy of reason, according to him, lies in the reason‘s vain attempts to understand something that is not understandable, to do something which is definitely beyond its abilities. In this constant efforts to grasp the ungraspable the reason finally either steps back and, taking its unedequacy for granted, gives the Paradox an opportunity to reveal itself. This, according to Kierkegaard, is the way to faith. The other way is what actually happens to Melville»s Ahab — is an «offence at the Paradox». Understanding that he is doomed, Ahab nevertheless does not want to stop, to turn back. Thus he says: «They think me mad… but I»m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that»s only calm to comprehend itself!.. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there» (MD, 168–169). For Ahab there exists only Reason, and the chapter «Ahab and the Carpenter» is very important in this respect. There Ahab expresses his wish to create a giant: «I`ll order a complete man after a desirable pattern. Imprimus, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel, then legs with roots to them, to stay in one place; then, arms three feet through the wrist; no heart at all, brass forehead, and about a quater of an acre of fine brains; and let me see — shall I order eyes to see outwards? No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuninate inwards» (MD, 461). An iron man, heartless, eyeless, but posessing a perfect brain the work of which is observable shows us again the the importance and superiority of reason for this Melville’s character: the life is concentrated inside the human being, it is an endless reflection, when the subjective concentration is based not on the spiritual, but on the intellectual life. And to a very big extent this appears to be the tragedy of the whole generation.
Ahab»s madness originated, as I tried to explain, in his unwillingless to perceive the irrational — and the preoccupation with reason led him to the worshiping of reason and then — the will of man, and so that his intellect, as Karin Spranzel has noticed in her research «singt ganz und gar zum Instrument und blossen Diener des Willens herab». Thus we have a closed circle: the preoccupation with reason leads to its loss and total madness. Rationalism thus equels to madness from the Romantic point of view, and Ishmael»s problem is that he sometimes finds himself on the verge of moving from the ballancing point of scepticism in Ahab»s direction. Ahab»s madness, which can be to a certain extent compared to illness, leads to self-destruction.
Ishmael understands that, and his most sincere effort becomes to try and oppose himself to Ahab. A scene which is very important in this aspect is the one where Melville’s narrator regards the others staying at the helm in the darkness. Looking from the shadow, as from his inner self, having finally detached himself from Ahab‘s magical influence, Ishmael watches a play (he even talks about the fire being «artificial»). He understands perfectly well that the captain’s madness leads neither to the Whale nor to the truth, but brings him more and more into chaos, out of which there will be no metaphysical way out. As Karin Spranzel points out, fire and madness stay in direct connection to Ahab’s will, from which Ishmael tries to keep distance. The fire becomes to a certain extent a symbol of madness, sickness, thus in another chapter we read: «The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed» (MD, 416). Ishmael‘s distancing, stepping aside, acting as a spectator, can act, can be according to K. Spranzel compared to Schopenhauer’s motto for his «Ä sthetik» in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung: Ishmael «gleicht einem Zuschauer, weil er von allem getrennt das Schauspiel ansicht». Ahab acts, whereas Ishmael contemplates the play and «versucht die Welt und das Verhä ltnis des Menschen als erkennendem Subjekt ihr gegenü ber in erster Linie zu verstehen».
Melville juxtaposes fire and water as psychical and meditative consepts. Nervousness is thus contrusted to reflectivity, nerves to the soul (psyche) — consequently all Ahab‘s major qualities are contrasted to those of Ishmael.
Finally there exists another type of madness — «the heavingly madness», so to speak, which only seems to be madness for everybody, but is actually a deep wisdom. It is again what Melville talks about in «Book XIV» of Pierre when he says that the heavinly truth seems to be absolutely ununderstandable to the majority of people, and those who nevertheless try to live according to it are taken for mad by their neighbours. Richard Chase in his research «Melville and Moby Dick» emphasises that human nature always seeks but never finds, looks but never sees — and that is what Pip mumbles when he regards the dooblon and conjugates the verb «to look» — he was able to see something, the others who consider him mad would never be able to see.
In «Moby Dick» it is Pip who gets into the posession of the Heavingly truth and thus becomes «the castaway», «an idiot»; such at least they said he was». This comment is of importance, as Pip only seemed an idiot to the whole crew, but he really was not: «The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the misermerman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipotent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God»s foot upon the treadle of the loom and spoke it; and therefore the shipmates call him mad. So man»s in sanity in heaven»s sense; and wondering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic» (MD, 409).
As W. E. Segwick notices in his «Herman Melville. The Tragedy of Mind», Ahab’s sympathy with Pip «is like a cordial to keep his madness off», thus the above mentioned parrallel with Lear and the Fool becomes evident in if we regard Lear’s words:
My wits begin to turn,
Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself… Come, your hovel.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That’s sorry yet for thee.
Like Lear Ahab freezes, and subconsciously tries to be close to the mad boy. As W. E. Sedgwick notes, if Ahab’s sympathy for Pip «suffered to grow and ramify this feeling might cast out Ahab’s hateful monomania and restore him to his humanity», and as Ahab himself says: «There is that in thee… which I feel too curing to my malady… and for this hunt my malady becomes my most desired health». He loves his madness, and does not want to be cured. So when Ahab encounters Pip for the second time, and the boy (the «possessor of the real truth») tries to join him and to remain with him («I will never desert ye, sir, as Stubb did him [Pip]») the captain answers: «I tell thee no; it cannot be… Weep so, and I»ll murder thee! have a care, for Ahab too is mad» (MD, 519–520). He cannot remain together with Pip, as the sources of their madness are different and uncoherent. Ahab is demonically afraid of everything «reasonable» in Heavenly sense, so the «unreasonable reason» of Pip frightens him and makes him to go away. If he is cured, then he has to give up his «offence at the Paradox» which his proudness does not let him to do, thus his moral strength turns into moral weekness in front of Pip, paradoxically he cannot find enough will to «step aside» and thus to be cured and saved. Ahab chooses to «freeze to the end», and just before death he says his famous words: «Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods, nor men his neighbours! Cold, cold — I shiver!» The cold is thus associated not only with physical loneliness, but with a metaphysical one as well. It is a feeling of being left by Everything, an existential tragedy when there is only one way out, and it is death. The last words of Ahab sound like Hamlet’s in the beginning of the play: «‘Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart». Like a romantic artist Ahab finds pleasure in his moral sufferings, in this «heart sickness» and chooses to suffer to the end, to go on pursuing his goal even if he knows perfectly well what the result will be.
The definition of «a lonely castaway» can be applied not only to Pip and Ahab, but to Ishmael as well. We see that the narrator of «Moby Dick» has come through the same «stage» as Pip — being left alone in the middle of the ocean, «befelling the same abandontment» (MD, 409), he lived through the catastrophe, and had almost reached the vortex — that mysterious thing which marks the border of the two worlds, which symbolises a vertical way out of the horizontal (ordinary) dimention, like the mast, and plays the same role, although leads to something very different and unknown. Ishmael has almost visited the other world, he suffered the same experience as Pip, which means that his conscious is not «sane» according to the common notions.
Ishmael is a poet and a Romanticist which presupposes certain unordinarity, a kind of «sickness», about which a lot has been said beginning with Goethe, who, describing the later generation of Romanticists wrote to Eckermann: «All these poets write as though they were ill, and as though the whole world were a hospital… I am going to call their poetry hospital poetry». But this «sickness» is only the other, more sensible type of the world perception. The [romantic] poet, according to Babbitt appears to be either a victim of fatye, or a victim of society. «Nobody loves a poet. His own mother, according to Baudelaire, utters a malediction upon him. That is because the poet feels so exquisitedly that he is at once odious and unintelligible to the ordinary human pachyderm». Ishmael appears to be exactly the person of the kind — he even suffered the same longeliness described when he was a child, and the cold cruelty of his stepmother has probably effected his future spiritual development. His extreme poetic sensibility marks him as being not quite sane from the point of view of the rest.
He tried to get beyond the rational, and he has partially succeeded in it. Achim von Arnim wrote about Hö lderlin that the poet had actually carried out that exploration into the realm beyond rationality — but a very important thing is that getting there once it was impossible for the one to find the way out (or, perhaps, undesirable). Ishmael was posing the same questions as, for example, Nerval did, namely whether «the world was governed by destiny, by cold necessity or by chance»? The question was typical for the cultural-philosophic situation of the 1840»s, but posing it was a dangerous thing, as the answer could well lead to madness: as Frederick Burwick writes in his «Romantic Madness. Hoelderlin, Nerval. Clare»: «Nerval [unlike Hoelderlin] has penetrated into his texts to find at the core no meaning at all». The theme of meaningless of the Universe is the leading one in Ishmael»s reflections. Sometimes he seems to be afraid to proceed with his quest, to take off Izida»s veil as he could find there nothing (as Melville has once noticed «sometimes I think there is naught beyond»).
Jean Paul»s exclamation: «Dieu est mort! Le ciel est vide… Pleurez! enfants, vous n»avez plus de pere!» appeared to be a tragical revelation for a wide circle of young people, who suddenly found themselves absolutely alone on a desolated and unguided Earth. Ishmael, who portrayed this kind of a young man, started his voyage with almost no hope, and going to sea for him was merely a substitution for a suicide (which he had not commited for he still possessed, on the other hand, certain will to quest) during the voyage he gradually discovered that the situation was not as hopeless as he had first thought. In contrast to Ahab, when approaching the Whale he was also approaching the Absolute. He had survived to tell the story which, as it was clear from the quotation from «Job» was the story of distruction, but distruction not so much physical as the moral one. But at the same time it was also the story of a «resurrection» of the soul: Ishmael»s survival was symbolically both a physical and a spiritual one. We don»t know what did he actually come to: «The drama»s done», and no definite answer is given in the end, but, as Christopher Stein in his «Sounding the Whale. Moby Dick as Epic Novel» suggests, Ishmael approppriates his name at the very moment of his miraculous survival. His name meaning «God shall hear» thus becomes not the given name — «he is the only man in the ill-fated «Pequod» whose cry God hears», although he is still an orphan and a castaway. But he has at least opened Izida»s veil a little, and has encounted something — definitely not an empty space.
The discussion of Melville»s characters who in different ways possess or suffer mental irregularity would be incomplete without paying some attention to the writer»s own mental and spiritual state. In addition to what has already been said above it is important to add some more facts. As Elizabeth Renker in her research «Strike Through the Mask» suggests, the process of writing drove Melville mad sometimes, and not only that. To begin with, he himself was like Ishmael, to a certain extent, an outcast in the society and in the family — he is believed to say once about his mother: «she hated me», and these relations have perhaps found their reflection in «Moby Dick» [Ishmael and his stepmother]. According to some researches, all the women in Melville‘s family hated him. We also know that his children were unhappy: «Stanwix according to his mother was «posessed with a demon of restlessness» and died aged 35, Elizabeth crippled with arthritus, and Fraces — the only one of them who got married… late in life would not hear the name of her father spoken». His son Malcolm committed suicide in the circumstances which hint to a probable moral guilt of his father. Charles Olson wrote that between 1851–56 « [Melville] remained periodically violent to his wife and strange with his mother» — just in the time of writing «Moby Dick», and Melville‘s mother wrote that «this constant working of brain and excitement of imagination, [was] wearing Herman out».
To encount the Absolute requires certain spiritual preparation and reaching a level of spirituality which is connected to the mental state of an individual. It is vital to «be opened» to the mysterious and to be ready to encount the mystical. In some cases psychical irregularity differs from spiritial readiness — a mad prophet has nothing to do with the maniacal «maddness maddened» of Ahab.
Melville has thought in Socratical categories distinguishing soul, spirit and body as three independent notions — soul and spirit stay close together in this scheme constantly influencing each other, whereas body as a concept clearly stays aside. But a diviation from this Socratic view is obvious when we regard, for example, captain Ahab, whose madness has both physical (injury) and metaphysical («Offence at the Paradox») sources. Changing the scheme Melville has already marked the direction which Naturalists have followed later.
But it is not only lack of imagination or blind pride and unwillingless which can, according to Melville, prevent one from grasping the paradoxical Absolute. Ishmael talks about a danger of getting drowned in the sea of reflection and being carried away by the streams of different philosophical concepts: going too far it one almost looses himself, but when he realizes that he is on the verge of falling into this sea, «his identity comes back in horror». If he fails to realize it in time — he is doomed to get lost in the waves of metaphysics: «Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise forever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!» (MD, 160)
Thus it is better «to hover» over the ocean of philosophy than to swim in the wrong direction and sink somewhere in its depths. Melville prefers to play on the ideas and doctrines never singling out any. The vortex would always appear and get the one when he is spiritially ready for that, just the same way Kierkegaardian Absolute would approach the quester giving him the conditions for truth perception and thus bringing him to faith.