Originally published to promote his French translation of Moby-Dick , Jean Giono's Melville: A Novel is an astonishing literary compound of fiction, biography, personal essay, and criticism. In the fall of 1849, Herman Melville traveled to London to deliver his novel White-Jacket to his publisher. On his return to America, Melville would write Moby-Dick . Melville: A Novel imagines what happened in between: the adventurous writer fleeing London for the country, wrestling with an angel, falling in love with an ...
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Originally published to promote his French translation of Moby-Dick , Jean Giono's Melville: A Novel is an astonishing literary compound of fiction, biography, personal essay, and criticism. In the fall of 1849, Herman Melville traveled to London to deliver his novel White-Jacket to his publisher. On his return to America, Melville would write Moby-Dick . Melville: A Novel imagines what happened in between: the adventurous writer fleeing London for the country, wrestling with an angel, falling in love with an Irish nationalist, and, finally, meeting the angel's challenge--to express man's fate by writing the novel that would become his masterpiece. Eighty years after it appeared in English, Moby-Dick was translated into French for the first time by the Proven�al novelist Jean Giono and his friend Lucien Jacques. The publisher persuaded Giono to write a preface, granting him unusual latitude. The result was this literary essay, Melville: A Novel --part biography, part philosophical rumination, part romance, part unfettered fantasy. Paul Eprile's expressive translation of this intimate homage brings the exchange full circle. Paul Eprile was a co-winner of the French-American Foundation's 2018 Translation Prize for his translation of Melville .
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I read "Melville: A Novel" as a result of my interest in the great American author of "Moby-Dick". I thought it would be valuable to have a perspective on Melville from a writer outside of the United States. The author, Jean Giono (1895 -- 1970), had been unfamiliar to me but was an important French novelist in his own right. He was the first to translate, (with the assistance of others) "Moby-Dick" into French, and his work remains the standard version in French. Giono was asked to write a preface for the original edition of his translation, and the project developed into this short, highly imaginative novel published in the same year,1941, as the translation itself. This English version of "Melville: a Novel" appears in its turn for the first time in a translation by Paul Eprile published by NYRB Classics in 2017 with an introduction by Edmund White.
Giono's novel imagines Melville from the inside in the way that one novelist tries to get inside the mind of another. The book might have been intended as an introduction to "Moby-Dick" for a French reader coming to the work for the first time but it quickly passes beyond that. The story includes some basic biographical information of Melville's life but it is infused with poetry, mysticism and a sense of reflection, both about Melville and about Giono himself. Most of the story takes place in 1849 in London. Melville had crossed the ocean to place his novel "White Jacket" with the British publisher. "White Jacket" was the Melville novel that immediately preceded "Moby-Dick".
The trip to London is, in fact, biographical while Giono's telling includes flights of fancy. Melville is pursued by an angel (with echoes of the Biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel) who tells him that he needs to do the meaningful writing he was born to do rather than write popular sea stories in the manner of his early books. At one point, Melville argues with his angel: "You're saying I should give them the opposite of what they expect? What kind of tune are you whistling now? If you went to the shoemaker's and he handed you a guitar instead of a pair of shoes, what would you say?"
In addition to encountering his angel, Giono creates and has Melville meet a mysterious young woman while taking a carriage ride from London as a cure for restlessness after his business with the publisher is concluded. From the first, Melville is smitten with his fellow-passenger but is reluctant to speak to or approach her. Melville and the young woman gradually talk and establish a bond. They walk together in the fields and hills of rural England where Melville rapturously describes the beauties of nature and his dreams as a writer. The young woman finally reveals her name together with something of her life as a married woman with a four-year old son, and her job smuggling food from England to the starving multitudes in Ireland. The two fall in love, in a relationship that appears unconsummated, and promise to write and hold each other in their hearts as they go their separate ways. With his love for Adelina and under the prodding of his angel, Melville returns to the United States where he will write "Moby-Dick".
The writing in this book and translation is dense and beautiful. It moves from a large, omniscient third person narration to passages in which Melville speaks for himself, particularly when he wrestles with his angel and when he talks with Adelina. Biography (sometimes not entirely accurate) mingles with poetry and with Giono's own philosophical reflection. In his Preface to the book, for example, Giono discusses his translation of :"Moby-Dick" and what Melville came to mean to him. Giono writes of what he learned from Melville:
"Man always craves some monstrous object. And his life has no meaning unless he devotes himself entirely to its pursuit. Often, he needs no fanfare of any kind. He appears to be tucked away, quietly cultivating his garden; but, inwardly, he cast off long ago on the perilous voyage of his dreams. No one knows he's gone. For that matter, he looks like he's still here."
Giono sees Melville as a mystic, dreamer, and visionary as do many, but not all, other readers. What is particularly insightful is Giono's understanding of the importance of the search for love, for a soul mate, both to Melville's writing and to his life. Giono briefly portrays Melville's marriage to Elizabeth Shaw which was beset with difficulty and which seemed to be lacking in passion. With his invention of Adelina and of Melville's relationship to her, Giono suggests that the search for a true, passionate love was a driving factor in Melville's creative activity and in the search for meaning by many people..
I was glad to get to know something of Jean Giono's work through reading this book. I enjoyed even more reading his poetic, insightful interpretation of an author whose works I have long treasured.
