The Growth Of A Seeker
Among the early products of the wonderful Library of America Series were three volumes devoted to the novels of Herman Melville. This volume consists of Melville's first three novels, Typee(1846), Omoo(1847) and Mardi (1849)
Melville's novels are based, more or less loosely, on his life at sea. The first two novels describe voyages to the Marquesas and to Tahiti. They are filled with lush descriptions of scenery, and tales of adventure. Of the two, Typee is filled with encounters with cannibals and Polynesian maidens while Omoo presents a wider canvas of characters and scenes. Both books emphasize the sexual openness and relative simplicity of Polynesian life as compared to life in the United States and both books are critical as well of attempts to Christianize the islanders. These are not unusual themes today and probably were not as radical in the 1840s as one might suppose. The stories are well told and the descriptions alluring. These books made Melville's reputation as a young writer.
Mardi, however, is the gem of this collection. Its relationship to the earlier novels can be analogized, say, to the relationship between the young Beethoven's first symphony on the one hand and the growth of language and thought in the second and third symphonies on the other hand. Melville prefaces the book with the note that his first two books were fact-based but were received with "incredulity" while Mardi was pure romance and "might be received for a verity." (Little likelihood of that)
The book as in a baroque, ornate, and bravado style that Melville would bring to completion in Moby Dick. It is an allegory involving the search for Yillah, a strange, mythical maiden, through the seas of Mardi -- Polynesian for "the world". The narrator is accompanied by King Media, by the philosopher Babbalanja, the singer Yoomi, and the historian Mohi. There are many wonderfully exasperating discussions. They wander far and wide in search of Yillah and in there wandering we here many religious allegories and many depictions of the Europe and United States of Melville's own time. There are shadowy maidens, villains, long scenes in the empty wide ocean, and pages of Melvillian thought and bluster.
The book is high American romanticism and presents a religious and personal quest by the narrator that resounds of similar quests by many in our own day. For example, there is a famous unfinished novel of the religious quest called Mount Analogue by a French writer, Daumal, which fits quite compactly into just a few chapters of Mardi. Mardi is a long, maddeningly difficult book but worth the effort.
Americans can learn about themselves by learning about their literature and this book is a fitting place to start (or continue). For those with the patience, it is worth reading these books in order (perhaps with other reading sandwiched in between) to discover the growth of a great and troubled American writer and chronicler of the inward life, as well as of sea journeys.
Robin Friedman
