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Crazy prophecy in Melville's CLAREL

 

 

From Melville's religious epic Clarel: A poem and pilgrimage in the Holy Land part 4 (Bethlehem), canto 21 (Ungar and Rolfe):

                                 "Know,
Whatever happen in the end,
Be sure 'twill yield to one and all
New confirmation of the fall
Of Adam. Sequel may ensue,
Indeed, whose germs one now may view:
Myriads playing pygmy parts —
Debased into equality:
In glut of all material arts
A civic barbarism may be:
Man disennobled—brutalized
By popular science—Atheized
Into a smatterer ——

                                “Oh, oh!” 

“Yet knowing all self need to know
In self's base little fallacy;
Dead level of rank commonplace:
An Anglo-Saxon China, see,
May on your vast plains shame the race
In the Dark Ages of Democracy."

America!

 -- Clarel Part 4 Canto 21 

https://books.google.com/books?id=BvRDAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA526&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

Virtual 1851 reading copy

 in case you need one for the virtual 2021 Moby-Dick Marathon...