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Melville's Reading of Arnold's Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
With ten volumes of prose fiction behind him, Herman Melville (1819-91) turned to writing poetry at the age of forty. When inability to market his first volume of verse set him to studying poets and poetry it was natural that he include Matthew Arnold (1822-88). Arnold had emerged as an important though not popular young poet in the mid-fifties. Whether or not Melville watched his rise in the British periodicals, which were reviewing his own books, he must have noted it in the pages of Putnam's Monthly Magazine, to which he was a regular contributor and subscriber. By the time Melville passed through England on his way to the Mediterranean late in 1856, Arnold was a figure of some repute. On the way back Melville dropped in at Longmans (27 April 1857), publishers that month of The Confidence-Man; they were Arnold's publishers too and were currently bringing out a third edition of the Poems. Later in the week Melville spent a memorable Sunday at Oxford University. “Most interesting spot I have seen in England,” he wrote in his journal. “Made tour of all colleges. It was here I first confessed with gratitude my mother land, & hailed her with pride… . Amity of art & nature. Accord… . Learning lodged like a faun… . Sacred to beauty & tranquility… . Soul & body equally cared for… . I know nothing more fitted by mild & beautiful rebuke to chastise the (presumptuous) ranting of Yankees… .” Melville's temporary yearning for the peace and tranquility of Oxford life, as he imagined it, where “learning lodged like a faun,” coincided almost exactly with Arnold's moment of consummation. Three days later (5 May) Arnold was elected by convocation to the Oxford Professorship of Poetry. Melville's words had not been those of an innocent abroad; they sheltered the value judgments of one who anticipated difficult years of wide-open readjustment. Melville's destiny lay elsewhere, but the Oxford incident marks symbolically the dawning community of interests between the later Melville and Arnold. For a moment the American scholar-gipsy looked down on the lights of Oxford, turned, and was gone. Five years later he began to read the Professor's poetry with a sense of coming upon a major contemporary.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954
References
1 Leon Howard, Herman Melville (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951), p. 270. For others see Merton M. Sealts, Jr., Melville's Reading: A Check-List of Books Owned and Borrowed, offprinted from HLB, 1945-50. For sample marginalia see Jay Leyda, The Melville Log (New York, 1951).
2 Putnam's noted the 1st ed. of Arnold's Poems with mild favor in 1854 (iii, 452); made an enthusiastic evaluation of the 2nd ed. and of Poems, Second Series in a lead article of 1855 on “New English Poets” (vi, 225-238); and in 1856 commended Ticknor and Fields for making Arnold available in a “complete” edition (viii, 658).
3 Herman Melville: Journal up the Straits, ed. Raymond Weaver (New York, 1935), pp. 173-174, 178-179.
4 Poems (Boston, 1856: acquired 1862); Essays in Criticism (Boston, 1865; acq. 1869); New Poems (Boston, 1867; acq. 1871); Literature & Dogma (New York, 1881; acq. —?); Culture & Anarchy … and Friendship's Garland (New York, 1883; acq. —?); Mixed Essays, Irish Essays, and Others (New York, 1883; acq. —?). Sealts Nos. 16-21.
5 Herman Melville: Representative Selections, ed. Willard Thorp (New York, 1938), p. 334.
6 Poems. / By / Matthew Arnold. / A New and Complete Edition. // Boston: / Ticknor and Fields. / MDCCCLVI. Pp. 336. All markings by Melville in pencil. Opposite the title: “H Melville / N.Y. Ap. 6, 1862”. Roman numerals on title translated: “1856”. Newspaper clipping of an Arnold poem, “A Wish,” pasted on flyleaf; printed heading: “[From Matthew Arnold's ‘New Poems,‘ in Press by Ticknor & Fields.]”; markings by Melville (below) and “1867” written at top. I wish here to express my thanks to Dr. Henry A. Murray for the loan of this volume.
7 Numerical citations in parentheses always indicate that the passage referred to was lined, unless otherwise stated. For convenience all references have been transferred to the new Oxford edition: The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. C. B. Tinker and H. F. Lowry (London, 1950); the cited text, however, is always exactly that of Melville's copies.
8 Melville had visited the Vatican in 1857 (Journal up the Straits, pp. 133, 138) where the Laocoön group was displayed. Hamlet's crisis is a major analogue of Pierre. Schiller he had been reading as recently as 1860 (Sealts No. 439), marking such ballads as “The Diver” (the shark symbol), “The Veiled Image at Sais” (“through guilt to truth”), and “The Ideal and the Actual Life” (“the unwilling truth … her mysterious well”). For Melville's scattered reading in Goethe see Sealts Nos. 227-230; why he thought Goethe both “helped & hurt” Schiller can be seen in an 1851 letter to Hawthorne (Thorp, Representative Selections, p. 393), and in Pierre, ed. Henry Murray (New York, 1949), p. 244.
9 Moby-Dick, ed. Willard Thorp (New York, 1947), p. 108.
10 Attested by the annotations in his 7 vols. of Shakespeare (Sealts No. 460), his correspondence, and his “Hawthorne and His Mosses” (Thorp, Representative Selections, pp. 370, 372, 327-345).
11 Four checks beside the positive statement, one beside the negative. An “X” beside the earlier passage (xxviii: 24-30) but no annotation or erasure.
12 Ishmael had phrased it: “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it” (Moby-Dick, p. 427).
13 The precise contents of the Ticknor edition can be reconstructed from tables given in Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch, ed. The Poems of Matthew Arnold: 1840-1867 (London, 1913), pp. xxi-xxii, xxiv, by adding together the 1853 and 1855 tables of contents. One exception: “Power of Youth” was printed as part of “The Youth of Man” (112-118) in the Ticknor edition.
14 Henry F. Pommer, Milton and Melville (Pittsburgh, 1950), pp. 53-55.
15 The Works of Herman Melville, Standard Ed. (London, 1922-24); e.g., xiv, 152, 233; xv, 20, 27.
16 Lines 483-485; 499-506; 514-516 (checked only); 602-606; 610-614; 627-631; 662-665; and 773-776 (lined and checked).
17 C. B. Tinker and H. F. Lowry, The Poetry of Matthew Arnold: A Commentary (London, 1940), p. 73.
18 Lines 197-204; 242-248; 248-253; 254-259; 322-333; 370-378; 457-471. For provocative psychoanalytic commentary on Melville's search for the father see Richard Chase, Herman Melville (New York, 1949); Newton Arvin, Herman Melville (New York, 1950); and Murray's edition of Pierre.
19 Between 1846 and 1857 Melville had published ten books; in the past five years he had published none.
20 Preface (xvii: 22-23; not marked).
21 The annotation also confirms a premise of this study: that Melville liked what he marked—except of course when by annotation he rejected it.
22 Note also the opening scene of “Resignation”—the long metaphor on the gathering of pilgrims bound for Mecca (1-21; not marked)—both in its larger relevance to the whole pilgrimage theme of Clare', and, incidentally, to Melville's scene of pilgrims bound for Mecca (Works, xiv, 26-27).
23 Like the 185S English edition, the Ticknor did not print the original full title (“Stanzas in Memory of the Author of ‘Obermann’ ”); Arnold's note on Senancour did not appear until the 2nd English edition of New Poems (1868), when it accompanied “Obermann Once More” (Tinker and Lowry, A Commentary, p. 253). In 1871 Melville wrote his own note identifying Senancour (below).
24 In the spring of 1862 Melville acquired 2 vols. of Collins (Sealts Nos. 156, 464); his vols. of Wordsworth, if any, have not been found. The quotations are from Collins' “Ode on the Death of Mr. Thomson” (15-16) and Wordsworth's “Remembrance of Collins” (17-18).
25 New Poems. / By / Matthew Arnold. // Boston: / Ticknor and Fields. / 1867. Pp. viii, 208. The blank page opposite the title bears Melville's inscription in blue crayon: “H. Melville / Feb. 13, 71, / N.Y.” (last line erased). All other markings are in pencil. The volume is part of the Melville Collection at Houghton Library, Harvard; I wish here to thank the Librarian, Mr. William A. Jackson, for permission to use it.
26 The Essays were inscribed on 10 July 1869, and some of Melville's markings in New Poems show their influence (nn. 36, 38); however, one annotation carries the phrase “now translated—1871” (Essays, p. 245). The New Poems may have prompted a rereading.
27 The annotation has been erased. Where I read “bale” (note Melville's use of the word in the Clarel passage above) Leyda reads “hate” (The Melville Log, ii, 718); photographic analysis seems to support “bale.”
28 The first word has been erased, the second capitalized.
29 Cf. Celio's defiance of Christ (Works, xiv, 51-54).
30 Poems had contained five lyrics from “Empedocles,” including this one, without so identifying them. Melville had marked none of them.
31 Lines 61-72 (double line at 69-72); 113-116. The fifth stanza (129-132) defines “grace” and “charm” in terms of “gentleness untired” and “noble feeling.”
32 The clause modifies “world.”
33 Thorp, Representative Selections, p. 365.
34 “The Last Years of Heinrich Heine,” Putnam's Monthly Mag., viii (1856), 517-526. Melville probably read this highly sympathetic account of Heine's suffering; in the last paragraph the anonymous writer turns on Heine for missing the “ethical principle in the constitution of man,” concluding that “his genius will consecrate his memory, but can never redeem his character.” On 17 March 1862 Melville purchased The Poems of Heine (Sealts No. 268).
35 Ultraviolet light was of no aid; the present reading comes from a print made with infrared film, using an A-24 red filter. I wish to thank Miss Caroline Jakeman of Houghton Library and Mr. James K. Ufford of the Fogg Museum of Art for technical aid, and Jay Leyda, Howard Horsford, and Merton Sealts for readings. (1) may be either “does have” or perhaps “forfeited.” (2) may be either “unmistakable,” (with comma), or “inscrutably”; or a preposition, noun, and comma (as “in …,”). (3) is “very rarely” or possibly “religiously.”
36 Melville marked 25 passages in “Joubert,” including 2 or 3 on the theme of “charm” and “love.” Since Joubert is not mentioned in the poem, we have here presumptive evidence that Melville read the Essays before the New Poems.
37 Melville's fascination with “the blistered Florentine” (Pierre, p. 48) was of long standing: G. Giovannini, “Melville's Pierre and Dante's Inferno,” PMLA, lxiv (1949), 70-78. Perhaps the passionate episode of Paolo and Francesca—Melville writes of the “bewitching power” of Francesca's face in the Flaxman illustrations (Pierre, p. 48)—lies at the root of the present annotation.
38 Moby-Dick, p. 316; Pierre, p. 244. In Clarel Spinoza is pictured as a “sinless recluse” who was ultimately “deluded” (Works, xiv, 260). In the Essays Melville marked 16 passages in “Spinoza,” again suggesting he had recently read that volume; Spinoza is not mentioned in “Heine's Grave.”
39 Melville had visited Virgil's tomb in 1857 (Journal up the Straits, p. 120).
40 An image that Melville himself had once developed with great power (Journal up the Straits, p. 89).
41 Tinker and Lowry, A Commentary, p. 264.
42 Ten lines on the Grande Chartreuse in Clarel (Works, xv, 42) show no specific indebtedness to Arnold's poem.
43 In Clarel Melville devoted a canto to the saint's legend of “Arculf and Adamnan” (Works, xiv, 139-142).
44 In Paris he had twice waited in line without getting to see the great French actress. Journal of a Visit to London and the Continent by Herman Melville: 1849-1850, ed. Eleanor Melville Metcalf (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), pp. 55, 58, 137.
46 “The vision of the horror and the glory was denied to Arnold, but he knew something of the boredom.” The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), pp. 98-99.