Did you hear of the _______? by Scott Norsworthy
A shared 5-gram in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" and Herman Melville's "The Lightning-Rod Man"
Read on Substack
Original research and riffs on Herman Melville, authorship, and nineteenth-century American literature.
Showing posts with label authorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label authorship. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2026
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Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Champ prevails! "Experts" foiled, Truth wins in a knockout. Review of THE FIGHT FOR "THE NIGHT"
This is the book for any reader on Santa's nice-list who ever cared or wondered who really wrote "A Visit from St. Nicholas," better known as "The Night Before Christmas." More broadly, I imagine The Fight for "The Night" by Tom A. Jerman will appeal to mystery buffs, poetry lovers, holiday traditionalists, fans of children's lit, students of American literary history, 19th century specialists, and the growing number of persons who relish true stories about college English professors behaving badly.
Sick-in-the-head authorship obsessives like me already bought it, probably, but won't object to receiving an extra copy. Meticulously documented yet super enjoyable to read, being refreshingly free of academese, Fight for "The Night" thoroughly examines the disputed authorship of the now famous rhymes that first appeared, anonymously, in the Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823. The timing of Jerman's follow-up to Santa Claus Worldwide (McFarland & Company, 2020) is perfect since this year marks the 200th anniversary of the classic Christmas poem's debut in Troy.
Non-obsessives I'm told genuinely love to recall 'Twas the night before Christmas and hear it recited in the family circle, year after year, no matter the author. Still, I have to believe that even the happiest and mentally healthiest of my fellow mortals will be pleased to know for sure which guy deserves credit for our present-day notion of Santa as a "right jolly old elf" who lands on lawns and flies to rooftops in a "sleigh full of toys" propelled by eight reindeer. Alright then, who described Santa Claus and his magical mystery "Visit" on Christmas Eve so memorably, going down the chimney "with a bound," then up again and away "like the down of a thistle"? Esteemed Bible scholar Clement C. Moore
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| Clement C. Moore (1779-1863) |
or Poughkeepsie farmer, surveyor, and local magistrate Henry Livingston Jr?
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| Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828) |
Before continuing, some necessary disclosures and disclaimers. Transparency here seems all the more desirable in view of Jerman's illuminating comparisons of participants in authorship debates to "corners" in a boxing match and (in a pleasing diversion from the controlling "prize fight" metaphor) "expert witnesses" called by opposing attorneys to testify in court. With respect to authorship of "The Night Before Christmas" I'm squarely in Moore's corner. You can check out my chief reasons in the 2017 post on How we know Clement C. Moore wrote The Night Before Christmas.
I feel honored indeed to have been counted in Tom Jerman's book with Niels H. Sonne, Nancy H. Marshall, Stephen Nissenbaum, Pat Pflieger, Seth Kaller, and Joe Nickell as a public defender of Clement C. Moore and the merits of his longstanding claim to have written the beloved Christmas poem.
Lately, however (and independently of Jerman's Fight) the claim for Henry Livingston, Jr. appears to have lost much of the traction it had in years past. Major Livingston's descendant and most dedicated advocate Mary Van Deusen declared victory in 2016 after the publication by McFarland & Company of MacDonald P. Jackson's monograph, Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? But Van Deusen's great Henry Livingston website has not been updated with fresh authorship-related content for a good while now. In the meantime, here on Melvilliana I have documented a number of discoveries that support the traditional attribution to Clement C. Moore. On their Red-Pilled America podcast, storytellers Patrick Courrielche and Adryana Cortez have incorporated some of my findings in highly entertaining Christmas episodes. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Justin Fox has convincingly defended Moore from the false charges of keeping enslaved persons and endorsing slavery. Link here to the Bloomberg site with his 2021 article A Gift for America's Christmas Poet: Rehabilitation:
ColumbiaDC in December 2023 hosted a A Bicentennial Celebration of the Poem by Clement Clarke Moore with a featured presentation by historian, writer and publisher Pamela McColl, author of 'Twas the Night: The Art and History of the Classic Christmas Poem.
More than fittingly, Clement Clarke Moore will be inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame on December 19, 2023. Ceremony to be held at Hoffman Hall of the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
Amidst all this bicentennial buzz, it might be well to note that the "tale of the tape" with regard to the long-running authorship debate has not been fully presented anywhere in any format. Until now, that is. The Fight for "The Night" brings it, with easily the most complete and persuasive account in print of the contest for authorship credit. Of course I'm pleased by the good use made of findings originally posted on Melvilliana. Three prime examples would be
- the 1844 letter to the editor of the New York American in which Moore unambiguously claimed authorship of the Christmas verses "not for publication, but to amuse my children" (quoted and discussed by Jerman in Fight, pages 27-28);
- the previously overlooked fact that T. W. C. Moore (the fellow who obtained a manuscript copy of the poem for the New York Historical Society in 1862 after a personal interview with Clement C. Moore) was a first cousin of Henry Livingston, Jr (Fight, pages 216-219); and
- the anonymous publication in the Troy Sentinel of another poem by Moore, later titled Lines Written after a Snow-Storm on February 20, 1824, just 2 months after "The Night Before Christmas" (Fight, pages 19-20).
I'm very glad also to find my five Livingston "deal-breakers" inventoried on pages 314-316; and naturally gratified by the serious attention given on pages 316 and 351 to my Eight Great favorite expressions of Clement C. Moore which turn out to be more useful than Jackson's relatively dreary set of six for the purpose of distinguishing Moore's verses from Livingston's.
As he did also in his previous book Santa Claus Worldwide, Jerman not only provides a valuable synthesis of published work on his chosen subject, he makes original contributions of his own that significantly enrich our understanding of that subject. There, the history of St. Nicholas and other midwinter gift-bringers; here, authorship of "The Night Before Christmas." For one of many original insights here, check out Jerman's lawyerly explanation for Moore's much-discussed delay in publishing his Christmas poem (Fight, pages 29-32). Jerman reasonably proposes that Moore took the most "prudent course" by waiting until William Gilley's copyright on The Children's Friend (the "Old Santeclaus" poem therein being an obvious literary source for "The Night Before Christmas") expired in 1835 before authorizing its reprinting the following year in The New-York Book of Poetry.
Another highlight for me is the full transcription of Moore's comical poem The Pig and the Rooster, together with the excellent analysis thereof (Fight, 257-265). Jerman takes Moore's lighthearted exercise as "a witty and enjoyable piece," contra haters for the last hundred years. In a fine appreciation of Moore's Seussian verve, Jerman concludes:
The closest analogy to "The Pig and the Rooster," however, is probably "The Big Brag," one of the "other stories" in Yertle the Turtle, about a rabbit and a bear who boast that they are the "best of the beasts" because of the range of their hearing and smelling abilities, respectively. In the course of their obviously bogus brags, they are interrupted by a worm who explains in an utterly condescending tone that he can see so well his vision actually circles the world, allowing him to see the backsides of the rabbit and bear, "the two biggest fools that have ever been seen." In both sound and sense, Moore's "The Pig and the Rooster" is comparable to "The Big Brag" and many other Dr. Seuss stories. (Fight, page 262)
Challenging naive acceptance of hearsay on the Livingston side (by Jackson, for example, in Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? pages 110-112) Jerman develops a strong argument against taking so-called "witness letters" from distant Livingston descendants as evidence of anything bearing on authorship of "The Night Before Christmas," other than beliefs (erroneous and conflicting, often) of the writers. See especially the sections in Chapter 10 of Fight for "The Night" under sub-headings "The Unreliability of the Livingston Witness Letters" at pages 227-229 and "Witness Letters Are Second-, Third-, and Fourth-hand Hearsay" at pages 229-236).
Two punches late in this "literary prize fight" dropped Livingston cold. Delivered in chapters 10 and 11, these particular hits are so devastating to the contender's chances that a more compassionate reader-ref might have stopped the figurative Fight then and there. The first blow exposed a known but insufficiently exploited weakness in the story of Henry Livingston's writing "The Night Before Christmas" years before its main sources were published. Livingston partisans who say their man wrote "The Night Before Christmas" sometime between 1807 and 1809 (roughly guesstimated) fail to account in any satisfactory way for the twin influences of Washington Irving's A History of New-York (1812 ed. or later) and the illustrated poem Old Santeclaus (1821). In Fight for "The Night" Jerman persuasively frames these works as inescapable precedents and literary sources for specific details in "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (pages 209-212; 224-227; and 329).
Other investigators have pointed out the big problem of chronology (awfully hard to credit Livingston with writing a poem around 1808 that is demonstrably indebted to two different literary works not yet printed, hence inaccessible until 1812 and 1821) but none so effectively. Practically regarded, the need of Livingston supporters to make their candidate a time-traveler invalidates the claim. So effectively that I might want to appropriate it some day, if Tom Jerman would let me, for a sixth Livingston "deal breaker."
Same goes for the second heavy blow dealt to the contender in round-chapter 11, pages 273-280. This one also would make a devastating deal-breaker, perhaps the future #7 on my list. Simply put, Clement C. Moore's immediate family and church celebrated Christmas in high style, Livingston's did not. The contender's corner has failed to show that Henry Livingston, Jr. gave a fig for Christmas and related holiday festivities, apart from belatedly wishing his sweetheart and future wife "Happy Christmas" in a letter to Sally Welles dated December 30, 1773. Surprisingly, the Poughkeepsie patriarch represented as the embodiment of pure Christmas joy has never been caught decking the halls, baking Christmas cookies, caroling with the family, or (most tellingly of all) even once acknowledging St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, or any other midwinter gift-giver. In Jerman's words, aptly channeling Theodor Geisel aka Dr. Seuss: "Like the Whos down in Whoville, the Livingston family had no presents, no ribbons, no wrappings, no tags, no tinsel, no trimmings, no trappings, no Christmas pudding, and no Who roast beef" (Fight, page 278). As clarified on the back cover of Fight for "The Night" "Livingston's religion, Dutch Reformed, prohibited celebration of Christmas or veneration of saints whereas Moore, a devout Episcopalian, celebrated in traditional English style and treated St. Nicholas as the Christmas gift-giver."
The middle rounds of Jerman's Fight, chapters 7 ("Basic Principles of Authorship Attribution" and 8 ("Best Practices for Authorship Attribution"), establish ground rules that could and ideally should have governed the contest--when conducted, that is, by highly trained academic "experts." These sections are a wonderful gift to anybody interested in all kinds of authorship questions, not only pertaining to "The Night Before Christmas." Jerman delves into the nitty-gritty of authorship attribution as a distinct field of scholarship. Chapter 7 summarizes important work by Samuel Schoenbaum, Harold Love, Janet Ainsworth, Carole E. Chaski, Patrick Juola, and other leading scholars. Traditional and non-traditional varieties of evidence are weighed and helpfully discussed, along with the virtue of "validity testing" your method. Reviewing best practices, chapter 8 further highlights the good advice of Patrick Juola that "experts in the field 'prevalidate' methods of authorship attribution through the establishment of appropriate, formal protocols" (as distilled by Jerman in Fight, page 173).
Fans of "English Professors Behaving Badly" can skip the ground rules and proceed straight to round-chapter 9 in Fight for the Night, itemizing "Foster's and Jackson's Violations of the Best Practices." I know that Don Foster's meanest and nastiest attacks on the character of Clement C. Moore were convincingly rebutted long ago by Nissenbaum, Kaller, and Nickell. The trouble, as Jerman rightly perceives, was the attempted rescue of Foster's awful arguments by distinguished Shakespeare scholar and authorship expert MacDonald P. Jackson. In postmortems on the Funeral Elegy fiasco, Foster's method of authorship attribution had just become a textbook example of high profile failure when Jackson backed him on the Livingston side. Jackson inadvertently revealed his bias for Livingston throughout Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? despite the posture of cool scientific objectivity that he tried to maintain. As Jerman demonstrates, Jackson like Foster before him employed a seriously flawed methodology. Each expert committed multiple violations of the "best practices" handbook according to Jerman, including failure to test for accuracy (Fight, pages 175-176); use of inaccurate corpora (176-181); failure to use independent researchers (181-185); failure to provide a profile of the likely author (185-187); adopting the role of "hired gun" (187-192); and unacknowledged sources of scholarly bias (192-196).
I'm a little disappointed tbh that (unless I missed it?) Jerman did not mention my favorite exhibit of confirmation bias, the place in Who Wrote where Jackson acknowledged eight instances of the Moore-word "like" then quickly discounted their significance.
Fortunately, however, my trivial loss is more than compensated in Jerman's 13th and final chapter (no more rounds, the "fight" metaphor is exhausted by this point). Don't be fooled by its boring title, "The Use of Nontraditional Analysis." Chapter 13 is way more than a stocking stuffer. It's more like a plain box or carelessly wrapped package that contains your dream-present, something fantastically grand you never really expected to get. Say a first edition of Herman Melville's epic religious poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1876), both volumes; or the smart-remote-key-fob to a new Firecracker Red 2023 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. Jerman's gift to me and every truth-seeker in the last section of the last chapter of Fight for "The Night" involves "The Use of JGAAP in the Moore-Livingston Dispute." JGAAP stands for the Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program, described by EVL Labs on evllabs.com as "a Java-based, modular, program for textual analysis, text categorization, and authorship attribution i.e. stylometry / textometry." Jerman really has two surprises in store for the patient and attentive reader. The first would be his discovery of previously unreported results from one earlier trial of Moore v. Livingston using JGAAP.
The second surprise is the good and equally unexpected news that "with some friendly advice from Juola," Tom Jerman was able to perform another series of 17 tests in JGAAP using the same bodies of texts or "corpora" as before. Jerman identifies the clear winner and his Endnotes list categories of specific tests for both trials. Relative numbers and percentages within each test are not provided, and not really needed I suppose by general readers. Here, then, a fine opportunity opens up for further research. Future investigations using JGAAP can confirm if Jerman's findings are repeatable. Even better, researchers could try the same battery of tests with more realistic corpora, minus unsubstantiated attributions to Livingston of some Carriers' Addresses and other poems that should have been rejected as incompatible with best practices.
This line of legitimate research makes a great gift for anybody in the Livingston corner. That would include me, too, since I never had anything against him, personally. Henry Livingston, Jr. did not and could not have written "The Night Before Christmas" but saying so does not make me Anti-Livingston or Anti-anything (excepting bad faith and worse arguments by College English Professors). With the Christmas business finally out of the way, I imagine it could be lots of fun in the coming New Year to tackle new and different authorship problems. For a start, maybe someone will try to determine if Major Livingston of Poughkeepsie ever wrote more than one New Year's Day "Carrier's Address." If he did, then which ones, and how exactly would we know (or even reasonably conjecture) that he wrote them? Until then, many thanks to Tom for the blessing of his excellent new book The Fight for "The Night" and Happy Christmas to all!!!
Thursday, May 11, 2023
All I want is a good listener
New essay on Substack, excerpt below...
Inspired by recent encounters with Hawthorne, in particular by their heady and hearty barn-talk that March, Melville might have found a way to get the gist of their stimulating conversations into print. Echoes of Melville’s letters in the opening installment of “Scenes Beyond the Western Border” lead me to suspect it may be haunted by Hawthorne. At any rate, coincidence or no, the narrator of “Scenes Beyond the Western Border” talks to the reader like Melville talked in letters to Hawthorne. Here’s one example from the first of Melville’s Agatha letters to Hawthorne dated August 13, 1852.24
In this example, wording and structure of the Captain’s pledge to do most of the talking for his singular reader match the “and if / why I” construction in Melville's 1852 letter to Hawthorne (emphasis mine):“… and if you are absolutely dumb, why I will sometimes answer for you.”
“And if I thought I could do it well as you, why, I should not let you have it.”
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.84865/page/n197/mode/2up
Introducing likely topics of conversation, the Captain sounds quite like Melville when promising a good time to his invited guest:
MELVILLE
“Hark— There is some excellent Montado Sherry awaiting you & some most potent Port. We will have mulled wine with wisdom, & buttered toast with story-telling & crack jokes & bottles from morning till night.”
— Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, 29 January? 1851; emphasis mine.CAPTAIN
“We will talk on all subjects, from the shape of a horse-shoe to that of the slipper of the last favorite—say the 'divine Fanny,’ from great battles, or Napier's splendid pictures of such, down to the obscurest point of the squad drill—from buffalo bulls to elfin sprites.”
—Scenes Beyond the Western Border, June 185125These elaborate invites are similarly themed and structured. Each presents an inventory of delightful activities in store for the recipient, each inventory being divided in three main parts. Melville’s three groupings of promised events are separated by three ampersands; the Captain’s by the word from, used thrice. The invitation in each case extends to just one person: Melville to Hawthorne, the Captain to his Imaginary Friend the reader. The plural “We” brings together speaker and singular reader as joint enjoyers of good times ahead, chiefly to be spent in stimulating conversation....
Friday, December 23, 2022
Search for Santa's father on Red Pilled America, now a legit Christmas tradition
What better way to celebrate the 199th Birthday of Santa Claus as we know and love him than this?! Check out the true history of Santa, Sr. as beautifully told on Red Pilled America with Patrick Courrielche and Adryana Cortez.
https://redpilledamerica.com/episodes/ep-114-santa-sr/
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Pseudo-Melville and Fake-Fanon, Prophets of Woke Utopia
As a few shrewd commentators have pointed out, mostly to crickets, Frantz Fanon never gave the handy definition of cognitive dissonance that has been widely attributed to him since 2013 or so, in print as well as myriad texts and memes on social media. One of the weightier endorsements of Fake Fanon to date is this seemingly authoritative quotation in War on Terror and American Film by Dr Terence McSweeny:
Franz Fanon in Black Skin, White Mask (1967) stated,
Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against this belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief. (Fanon 1967: 194).
--Introduction, War on Terror and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second (Edinburgh University Press, 2014, 2016).McSweeney cites a London edition of Fanon's 1952 book Peau noire, masques blancs, published by Pluto Press. Evidently this is the 1986 reissue of the Charles Lam Markmann translation, first published in 1967 by Grove Press. Another edition by Grove Press appeared in 2008, with a new translation from the French by Richard Philcox.
Deployers of deep-fake Fanon ask us to believe that Frantz Fanon neatly defined the term cognitive dissonance five years before Leon Festinger first developed the idea in A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.
The oft-quoted words on cognitive dissonance may indeed derive from an academic footnote or gloss on Fanon, but they are not Fanon's. Online, the earliest instance I have been able to find appears in a 2008 Huffpost article by Pam Atherton titled Why Some Smart Women Think Palin is a Good Choice. Trying to understand the basis of other people's delusions, Atherton consulted her therapist-friend who diagnosed the problem as cognitive dissonance. As reported by Atherton, Betti Hoeppner gave the now familiar definition with no trouble and no credit to Frantz Fanon:
In the course of our conversation she explained why. She told me that sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-some-smart-women-thin_b_137416
Terence McSweeney knows who wrote the book on this particular subject, literally, and says so. But somehow he can't help himself. The good Doctor footnotes Festinger, and forges ahead with Fanon anyhow. Evidently people can maintain invalid beliefs in spite of direct and unequivocal evidence to the contrary. Unostentatiously as possible, a certain genius named "Michael U." has identified the technical term for that kind of thing:To be sure, Black Skin, White Masks exhibits lots of cognitive dissonance, as observed by Constancio Nakuma without reference to the precise definition later attributed to Fanon.
"... the continued belief that this quote is from Frantz Fanon is a prime example of cognitive dissonance."
http://underthetree63.blogspot.com/2013/03/revisiting-frantz-farnon.html
Nakuma, Constancio. “COGNITIVE DISSONANCE REDUCTION STRATEGIES BY BLACK INTELLECTUALS IN THE DIASPORA: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC EXPLORATION OF NEGRITUDE AND AFROCENTRISM.” CLA Journal 43, no. 2 (1999): 167–180 at 169. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44323286.
"I am not a prisoner of history."
But how to account for the birth and surging popularity of Fake Fanon? In alphabetized book indexes and bibliographies the surname Festinger follows Fanon, immediately in some cases. Sometime after the turbulent 1960's and early 1970's, perhaps, on a quiet university campus in the blissful calm of a graduate student's library carrel, a sleepy research assistant may have mistakenly tracked a textbook paraphrase of cognitive dissonance to Fanon instead of the name just below Fanon. Otherwise it's hard to say exactly how or where the mistaken attribution first occurred.
The rapid proliferation of pseudo-Fanon in the internet age resembles the worldwide re-assignment of Rev. Henry Melvill's fine image of moral accountability as a network of "sympathetic threads" and "fibres" to Herman Melville. As with pseudo-Melville, pseudo-Fanon peculiarly suits the advancement of leftist political agendas. In the service of politicians and academic activists, both pseudo-Melville and Fake-Fanon have been usefully employed as prophets of Woke utopia.
In print, Hillary Clinton called on pseudo-Melville to establish the collectivist theme of her blockbuster 1996 book It Takes a Village. Reviewed most memorably by P. J. O'Rourke in It takes a village idiot. The Senator from New York again flaunted her false attribution to the "great American author Herman Melville" in a 2003 editorial for the Ithaca Journal, urging that communal education pursue "equity" along with "excellence." In case you were wondering, the phony Melville quote persists in the 10th anniversary edition of It Takes a Village.
We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Hillary's husband blithely ascribed the "sympathetic fibers" quote to Herman Melville at the 1997 Memorial Service for Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Then-President Clinton misappropriated Melville for the purpose of honoring Shanker as a teacher and social justice advocate, while eliding Shanker's-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, It Takes a Village (Simon & Schuster, 2006).
"lifelong hatred of Soviet-style communism." --Jack Schierenbeck, Class struggles: The UFT story
Here in Minnesota, our once-beloved prairie moralist and Moby-Dick hater Garrison Keillor (before he got canned by MPR) loved to spout pseudo-Melville, as he did in Good Poems for Hard Times (Penguin Books, 2006).
Minnesota middle-schoolers probably don't get to read Typee or Redburn, but twenty years ago some of them got spoon-fed pseudo-Melville as part of their indoctrination in utopian ideology and ethics.
"At North Junior High, we try to remember what Herman Melville said: 'We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads.' Let us all commit to invest in a common future and not just in our private affluence." -- Patricia Welter, St. Cloud Times, May 16, 2001.
Pat Welter later co-founded Partner For Student Success or PFSS, largely devoted to data collection and the promotion of Social-Emotional Learning and other dubious, usually harmful ideologies.
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| https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames |
Newspapers in Education - Pseudo-Melville enters the NIE program
Early in the present century, corporate media enlisted pseudo-Melville to help teachers promote the virtues of "diversity" and social "harmony" in a lesson on The Building Blocks of Character Education. Connecticut kids had to explain in writing why Herman Melville, in reality the type of guy who would just say NO! in Thunder, would agree with establishment dictates to "live in harmony." The stated focus of this particular activity, the fourth of ten in the series on character-building, was "Acceptance."
In a well-organized paragraph, discuss the following quote by Herman Melville: "We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results." Explain why Melville would agree that by learning about differences, we allow ourselves to appreciate diversity and begin to live in harmony by respecting the views of others. Stamford CT Daily Advocate - December 3, 2001 via genealogybank.com
For a more recent example of reality-denial in the service of radical activism, look at the celebration of pseudo-Melville by the Interaction Institute for Social Change.
IISC uses pseudo-Melville to promote Social Justice and Racial Equity, noble-sounding words that mask a totalitarian project of wrecking vital public services and institutions in order to control them, and people they normally benefit. As James Lindsay explains on New Discourses, the mundane aim of such projects is
a managed state of racial equity that will eventually produce a post-racial utopia in which “racial justice” finally exists. The revolution and administered (socialist, “equity”) state will be led by a Dictatorship of the Antiracists (DOA?), comprised of awakened (Woke) Critical Race Theorists with the right critical consciousness of race.
-- Critical Race Theory's Dictatorship of the Antiracists.
Pseudo-Melville and Fake-Fanon have been adopted as prophets in the new religion of Wokeness. The repurposed scriptures of these prophets serve to implant and cultivate the ethos of communitarian supermorality. For strong "reasons why a code of communitarian supermorality is unlikely to work," see the extended paraphrase of John Mackie by Richard A. Posner in The Problems of Jurisprudence (Harvard University Press, 1990) pages 416-418. In practice, such utopian ideals require "high levels of coercion" to maintain, resulting in all kinds of wickedness and abuse. In education, the praxis of critical theory has methodically enabled the psychological and sexual abuse of children in schools run by Woke teachers and administrators, as shown by James Lindsay on New Discourses.
Along with American schools, groomers have also hijacked the "ETHICS" department at Boy Scouts of America. Fake-Fanon is this day being employed there in the worst conceivable way, as an approved text designed to create doubt about commonly understood standards of ethical behavior.
Prominently introduced with "Troop Leader Resources," fake-Fanon specifically helps to teach kids "The Value of Ethical Controversies":
"there are two sides to most questions and that the gray area between right and wrong is sometimes difficult to define."
In some cases, the theory of cognitive dissonance according to Festinger required evaluating the factual basis of "core beliefs" in order to distinguish valid beliefs from invalid ones. Granted, that distinction has seemed less important to later analysts who tend to emphasize the supposed discomfort or dissonance produced by conflicting ideas, regardless of their empirical merit. Human psychology is complicated, after all. This aint the Boy Scouts. Wait, this IS the Boy Scouts. Here we are, almost in 2022, and Woke Troop Leaders at Boy Scouts of America can't tell right from wrong, or pretend they can't, and make a virtue of teaching ethical indeterminacy to other people's children. And their best authority for this exercise in moral relativism is Fake-Frantz-Fanon. Reality check: confusing kids with lessons about "gray areas between right and wrong" is a very bad practice, conducive to further abuse.
More Fake-Fanon
Below are more examples of Fake-Fanon enlisted in Woke promotions of communitarian supermorality.
- Janay Richmond, Director of Marketing and Membership for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP):
I can’t help but think about the work of Leon Festinger on cognitive dissonance and psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionist Frantz Fanon’s famous statement referencing this theory:
"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with information that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that does not fit in with the core belief."
We may not go about our daily lives thinking of the term “cognitive dissonance,” but we’ve all seen this theory materialized. We’ve seen presidential poll numbers that don’t change regardless of the policies some candidates bring forth. We’ve seen studies in newspapers or sometimes comical takes of the data on television proving that people will agree or disagree with the same policy based merely upon whose idea they believe it is. We can probably also think of instances of it in our own communities and within the work we do. For example, one of our nonprofit members recently talked to me about this theory and how cognitive dissonance is a major obstacle in their work for economic equity.
-- Keeping an Open Mind about the Education Reform Debate, September 23, 2015.
- Daisy Auger-Dominguez, "human capital executive" and Chief People Officer at VICE Media Group.
"And in a tribute to my grandmother’s defiance of cultural norms, I have built a career reshaping workplace cultures through equity and inclusion." Fake-Fanon supplies an imposing epigraph for this 2017 Call for Courage in the Workplace by Daisy Auger-Dominguez.
https://www.daisyauger-dominguez.com/perspectives/2019/3/20/a-call-for-courage-in-the-workplace
"Daisy is an advisor to startups and social impact organizations, and serves on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood Federation of America as Vice-Chair, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation as Chair of the Governance Committee, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and on the advisory board of Facing History and Ourselves." https://www.daisyauger-dominguez.com/about-daisy
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| "ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men...." The Rev. Henry Melvill, 1855 sermon on Partaking in Other Men's Sins |
That mistaken attribution persists--on high authority, since Hillary and Bill Clinton both put the words of Anglican preacher Henry Melvill in Herman Melville's mouth. The Truth is out there now, readily accessible for more than a decade thanks to Melvilliana and Google. For some reason though, many people are unable to discard their invalid belief that the author of Moby-Dick or The Whale prophesied the coming utopia of intricately networked Antiracists.
... they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.What's that called again?
Related posts
- 2 + 2 = 4, Melville's anti-communist math
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/08/2-2-4-melvilles-anti-communist-math.html
- the finest thing Herman Melville never said
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2011/09/finest-thing-herman-melville-never-said.html
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Frederic Swartwout Cozzens on Mardi
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| Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849). PS2384 .M3 1849 v1 from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries |
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| Frederic S. Cozzens, detail from Elliott and his Friends (1857) by Junius Brutus Stearns Image Credit: Graphic Arts Collection, Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University |
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| Frederic S. Cozzens via The New York Public Library Digital Collections |
In 1847 and again ten years later, the literary career of F. S. Cozzens closely tracked that of Herman Melville. Both wrote for Yankee Doodle, the New York humor magazine, although Cozzens is not named as a contributor by Luther Stearns Mansfield in Melville's Comic Articles on Zahchary Taylor. In the posthumously published Autobiographic Sketch, Cozzens admitted to writing "a humorous imitation of Spenser" (the illustrated verse tale of Sir Clod his Undoinge, published in Yankee Doodle on March 13, 1847, page 242); and a "Mythological History of the Heavens" (published under the general heading of Celestial Intelligence on March 20, 1847, page 256). In the mid 1850's both Cozzens and Melville wrote for Putnam's magazine. Submissions from both were initially rejected by George William Curtis, who wrote to publisher Joshua Dix on June 18, 1855 that
"Melville & Cozzens have not passed muster." -- quoted in The Melville Log, ed. Jay Leyda (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1951), volume 2, page 502. Houghton Library, Harvard has the original with correspondence of Dix, Edwards & Company that also includes letters from Frederick S. Cozzens in February and March 1856.
Curtis meant Melville's "The Bell-Tower," and maybe a sketch in Cozzens's "Living in the Country" series, neither of which appeared in the July 1855 issue. But Curtis changed his mind about "The Bell-Tower," as Hershel Parker points out in the second volume of Herman Melville: A Biography (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), page 259. "Living in the Country" resumed with further rural adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sparrowgrass in the August 1855 issue of Putnam's, where The Bell-Tower also shows up on pages 123-130. In the December 1855 number of Putnam's, the third and final installment of Melville's short fiction Benito Cereno follows immediately after another episode of Living in the Country by Cozzens. ("Living in the Country" began in the December 1854 Putnam's; the same issue also featured three chapters of Melville's story Israel Potter, starting with John Paul Jones and his gallant call on the Countess of Selkirk.) By May 1856, both writers had book versions of their Putnam's sketches ready for sale: Melville's The Piazza Tales, published by Dix & Edwards; and Cozzens's The Sparrowgrass Papers, published by Derby & Jackson.CURTIS, George William ALS to: J. A. Dix Providence, R.I. June 18, 1855, 1855. Dix, Edwards & Company letters and agreements, MS Am 800.13, (58). Houghton Library, Harvard College Library. https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/c/hou00666c00059/catalog Accessed October 24, 2019
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| "New Books" for sale by P. Allen & Son in Pittsfield, MA Pittsfield Sun - January 15, 1857 via GenealogyBank |
In The Raven and The Whale (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), Perry Miller correctly identified Cozzens as the author of remarks on Mardi in Graham's. As Miller knew without saying exactly how, Cozzens had received his reading copy from Lewis Gaylord Clark, then editor of The Knickerbocker:
Clark thought it so beneath contempt as not to deserve notice, and gave his copy to Cozzens, who in Graham's, under his pseudonym of "Richard Haywarde," found some particles of gold in a network of affectation. (248-9)Miller did not cite his source for the gift of Mardi to Cozzens. More generally, Miller did acknowledge reliance on The Melville Log, 2 vols. (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951), where Jay Leyda had recorded that on April 27, 1849 "Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of The Knickerbocker, presents a copy of Mardi to Frederick S. Cozzens" (Volume 1, page 301).
Hugh Hetherington approved the attribution in Melville's Reviewers, British and American, 1846-1891 (University of North Carolina Press, 1961), page 124:
But the reaction of Frederick S. Cozzens (under the pseudonym Richard Haywarde) in a column in the August Graham's Magazine was mixed and exasperated: "Confound the book! there are such beautiful Aurora-flashes of light in it that you can almost forgive the puerilities — it is a great net-work of affectation, with some genuine gold shining through the interstices . . ." (Cozzens was the Knickerbocker set's authority on wine).
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015004756162?urlappend=%3Bseq=142
http://www.questia.com/read/3574589/melville-s-reviewers-british-and-american-1846-1891.In The Melville Log (vol. 1, page 375) Jay Leyda proposed Cozzens as also the author, possibly, of the unsigned review of White-Jacket in The Knickerbocker for May 1850. Leyda's conjecture is reported in The Recognition of Herman Melville, edited by Hershel Parker (University of Michigan Press, 1967). There Parker notes also that Perry Miller attributed the White-Jacket review to Lewis Gaylord Clark. The Knickerbocker review of White-Jacket is ascribed to Frederick Swartwout Cozzens without Leyda's qualifying question mark by Watson G. Branch in Herman Melville: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1974), page 235.
https://books.google.com/books?id=LsdGAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA448&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=falseThe Knickerbocker review of White-Jacket is accepted as Cozzens's and reprinted in Bloom's Classic Critical Views: Herman Melville, ed. Harold Bloom and Tony McGowan (Chelsea House Publications, 2008), pages 62-63. However, no external documentary evidence has yet been adduced for Cozzens's authorship of the White-Jacket review. Perry Miller may have been right, again, in assuming that Clark wrote it.
As Miller and Hetherington each observed, Cozzens's authorship of the bookish commentary on Mardi in Graham's magazine for August 1849 is established by the use of his known pseudonym, "Richard Haywarde." The closing signature, "Richard Haywarde" does not appear in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, where only the first half of the "Lender's Books" article, with matter directly pertaining to Melville and Mardi, is reprinted. Over the same pseudonym, Cozzens wrote articles for The Knickerbocker and other periodicals, some of which were collected in the 1853 volume, Prismatics by Richard Haywarde. The Literary World (April 23, 1853) classed Prismatics as a type of "genial, humorous, and warm-hearted" writing after the manner of Washington Irving. In the first paragraph, the reviewer openly called it "Frederick Cozzens's 'Prismatics' " (page 328).
The choice of pseudonyms honored one of Cozzens's ancestors. As Cozzens informed Lewis Gaylord Clark on June 23, 1855, "Richard Haywarde was my father's maternal great grandfather."
https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:6h443r81gClark forwarded the letter to Rufus W. Griswold who adapted the information for a page on Cozzens in the updated Poets and Poetry of America (Philadelphia, 1856).
For anybody who still did not know who "Richard Haywarde" was, The Knickerbocker for May 1860 officially linked Cozzens to his nom de plume. With extreme admiration, the Editor's Table surveys past contributions by Cozzens, aka Richard Haywarde. The first was a poem titled Stanzas: Worship, printed over the humble initial "C." in the December 1847 issue of The Knickerbocker. Cozzens's second contribution to be published in The Knickerbocker was a prose sketch, Thoughts from the Top of Trinity, written under the pseudonym Richard Haywarde and published in the July 1848 issue.
Cozzens is duly identified as Richard Haywarde in William Cushing, Initials and Pseudonyms: A Dictionary of Literary Disguises, Volume 1 (New York, 1885), page 127.
Part of the Charvat Collection of American Fiction, Cozzens's Mardi is now held by The Ohio State University in the Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, catalog number PS2384 .M3 V1 and V2. Both volumes of the 1849 first American edition are listed in the OSU Library Catalog.
https://library.ohio-state.edu/record=b1712450~S7OSU also has the 1849 British edition of Mardi, published in three volumes by Richard Bentley. To date, however, only the first volume of the American edition is Google-digitized and accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100587543The Mardi that Cozzens used bears the bookplate of esteemed collector Carroll Atwood Wilson. The set was well described in Atwood's posthumously published work, Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., ed. Jean C. S. Wilson and David A. Randall (Privately printed for Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950).
... 2 Vols. New York, 1849. Of considerable association interest, the end-paper of Vol. I bearing a presentation inscription from Lewis Gaylord Clark, the editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, to F. S. Cozzens, author of the Sparrowgrass Papers, etc. The end-paper of Vol. II has the same inscription, with initials only, but a railway man named Ruben McGrath has added pencil inscriptions therein, alleging that he was born in 1492 and other like matter. The inscription is dated April 27, 1849, the book having been published April 14.
https://archive.org/details/thirteenauthorco000417mbp/page/n324
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| Inscription in Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849). PS2384 .M3 1849 v1 from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries |
Cozzens plainly had this particular copy of Mardi, Volume 1 before him while writing the article, "Lender's Books--No. II" for the August 1849 issue of Graham's. In the persona of "Richard Haywarde" Cozzens acknowledges his review-copy as
"the gift of my warm-hearted friend, L. G. C. of the Knickerbocker"and the OSU Mardi is inscribed in the first volume to "F. S. Cozzens / With kind regards of / His Friend / L. Gaylord Clark." As Wilson noted, the inscription from Clark to Cozzens is dated April 27, 1849.
https://books.google.com/books?id=DdVEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PP3&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=falseAs shown below, all but one of Richard Haywarde's quotations from Mardi are marked in the OSU copy inscribed to F. S. Cozzens. Turning to chapter 50, Yillah in Ardair, Haywarde recasts Melville's first prose sentence as poetry. The hexameter form and romantic content of the resulting verses remind Haywarde of Longfellow's Evangeline, a tale of Acadie (1847). Haywarde's comparison is matched in the marginalia on this page of Cozzens's Mardi. In the left margin, Melville's first sentence in chapter 50 is marked with a vertical pencil line. Next to the penciled line is the added word "Evangeline," apparently in the handwriting of Ferderic S. Cozzens. To compare handwriting, see the autograph letter from Cozzens to Lewis Gaylord Clark in the Griswold Collection, accessible in Massachusetts Collections Online via Digital Commonwealth:
Cozzens, Frederic S. (Frederic Swartwout), and Lewis Gaylord Clark. Frederick Swartwout Cozzens, Yonkers, NY., autograph letter signed to [Lewis Gaylord?] Clark, 23 June 1855. 23 Jun 1855. Web. 21 Oct 2019. <https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/6h443r81g>.Herman Melville's copy of Evangeline, the 1848 Ticknor edition, was given to him by Hope Savage Shaw and is now at Harvard, Houghton Library, GEN *AC85 M4977 Zz848â„“ . Melville's Evangeline is Sealts Number 332 in the Online Catalog at Melville's Marginalia Online. Cozzens would pen his own "Evangeliad" in Acadia, or, A Month with the Blue Noses (1859).
The untitled first number of "Lender's Books" sampled poetry by Dante, Milton, Coleridge and Wordsworth among others, and was published in the form of a letter signed "Richard Haywarde" in the May 1849 issue of Graham's American Monthly Magazine, pages 333-4. Transcribed below, the second number of "Lender's Books" appeared in Graham's for August 1849. Images from Herman Melville's Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849) Vol. 1 are from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries. For expert assistance with locating and reproducing these images for use on Melvilliana, I am grateful to Rebecca Jewett and Orville Martin at Thompson Library Special Collections.
LENDERS BOOKS. — NO. II.
By my right hand, Graham: by my right hand, which for odd years hath traveled and travailed over much foolscap, (and under much fool's-cap quoth the fiend,) I am more and more convinced of the truth of the words of the preacher, “Vanity of vanities: all is vanity." I have just laid aside “Mardi,” (the gift of my warm-hearted friend, L. G. C. of the Knickerbocker,) it lies atop of old Du Bartas and some withered budlets of forget-me-not, and in like manner I sit with a few fragmentaries of old literature at bottom for my primiter, some tender remembrances for my secondary, and for the alluvial stratum of my pericranicks (as gentle Charles hath it) these fripperies by the Author of Typee. Confound the book! there are such beautiful Aurora-flashes of light in it that you can almost forgive the puerilities—it is a great net-work of affectation, with some genuine gold shining through the interstices.
Let us turn over the leaves a little–hear ye now—
“And what to me thus pining for some one to page me a quotation from Burton on Blue-Devils.” V. I. p. 15. [marked]
What is paging a quotation ?
“Anoint the ropes and they will travel deftly through the subtle windings of the blocks.” p 33. [marked]
Why not say—“apply some oleaginous substance to the ambulatory cords, and prevent the inarticulate dissonance caused by the inharmonious attrition of the flaxen fibres against the ligneous particles?”
But this passage I especially commend:
“Good old Arcturion: Maternal craft, that rocked me so often in thy heart of oak, I grieve to tell how I deserted thee on the broad deep. (‘Maternal craft—maternal old oaken-hearted craft—maternal old oaken-cradle hearted craft' is good!) So far from home, with such a motley crew, so many islands, whose heathen babble echoing through thy Christian hull must have grated harshly on every carline.” p. 38.
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| Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849) volume 1, page 38. PS2384 .M3 1849 v.1 from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries |
“Many there are who can fall,” says Martinus Scriblerius, “but few can arrive at the felicity of falling gracefully.
How beautifully he embellishes the most commonplace ideas:
“Among savages, severe personal injuries are, for the most part, accounted but trifles. When a European would be taking to his couch in despair the savage would disdain to recline.” p. 96. [marked]
“At Ravavai I had stepped ashore some few months previous; and now was embarked on a cruise for the whale, whose brain enlightens the world!” p. 1. [not marked]
Jarl steals a keg of tobacco —
“From the Arcturion he had brought along with him a small half keg, at bottom impacted with a solitary layer of sable Negrohead, fossil-marked, like the primary stratum of the geologists.” (Ahem! primary stratum fossil marked !) p. 68. [marked]
He surmiseth that Samoa likes to get swipesy—
“Nor did I doubt but that the Upoluan, like all Polynesians, much loved getting high of head; and in that state would be more intractable than a Black Forest boar.” [page 130, marked]
Sometimes he breaks into hexameter:
“In the verdant glen of Ardair, far in the silent interior of Amma,
Shut in by hoar old cliffs, Yillah the maiden abode.”
This reminds one of Evangeline —
"In the Acadian land, on the shores of the basin of Minos,
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand Pré
Lay in the fruitful valley.”
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| Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849) volume 1, page 183. PS2384 .M3 1849 v.1 from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries |
Let us hexametrize another passage, and we will have done with these fopperies:
“ 'Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado
On lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alli-
Gator dies in his mail, and the sword-fish never surrenders.
To expire, mild-eyed, in one's bed, transcends the death [of Epam-
Inondas."p.46. [marked]
I have done with Mardi—one is reminded in reading it (after Typee) that "there is as much skill in making dikes as in raising mounts—there is an art of diving as well as flying,” [Pope, on the Art of Bathos] and who knows but what the author, after attaining a comfortable elevation by his former works, may not have made this plunge on purpose, as men do who climb to the top of a high mast that they may dive the deeper.
. . . . . . . . . .
Now do those crushed, withered budlets of forget-me-not, peeping from under the book covers, remind me of those beautiful hope-flowers that opened their pale blue eyes in the morning of my life, and bloomed and drooped— and passed away—
“How fair was then the flower— the tree :Alas! alas! young life, and young hopes are not perennials; even in the lofty conservatories and crystal hothouses of wealth and station they flush into a sickly existence, and then perish like the meanest flower by the wayside. Did it ever strike you how much we are alike in this particular? Every one looking back upon his past life as the shipwrecked merchant looks upon the broad sea that hath swallowed up irretrievable treasures. Do you believe that if one had the power of investing his new created babes with a course of life, that he would say, “Do as I have done—pass through my joys and my afflictions, and in the experience of my experience you will be happy!” Do you believe that any one—even the wisest, the purest, the best could say this? By my faith, I do not! And the great focal-glass of a common destiny brings down prismatic, many-hued humanity to a point hue, as a convex lens gathers and concentrates prism-bundles of light and heat from the broad disk of the sun. Human suffering is the chord universal that swells from the vibration of numberless strings.
How silver-sweet the fountain's fall !
The soulless had a soul to me !
My life its own life lent to all!
The universe of things seemed swelling
The panting heart to burst its bound,
And wandering fancy found a dwelling
In every shape, thought, deed and sound.
Germed in the mystic buds, reposing,
A whole creation slumbered mute;
Alas! when from the buds unclosing,
How scant and blighted sprung the fruit!’’
“Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy;
This vast and universal theatre
Contains more woful pageants than the scene
Whereon we play—”
But, “Mardi” and forget-me-nots have spoiled three good sheets of foolscap, and I fear that I am too much is the sentimental vein; let me therefore conclude with quoting a sweet little piece of philosophy, and lay aside these lender’s books for a period.
“A swallow in the spring
Came to our granary, and 'neath the eaves
Essayed to make a nest, and then did bring
Wet earth, and straw, and leaves.
Day after day she toiled
With patient heart; but ere her work was crowned
Some sad mishap the tiny fabric spoiled,
And dashed it to the ground.
She found the ruin wrought
But, not cast down, forth from the place she flew,
And, with her mate, fresh earth and grasses brought,
And built her nest anew.
But scarcely had she placed
The last soft feather on its ample floor,
When wicked hand, or chance, again laid waste,
And wrought the ruin o’er.
But still her heart she kept,
And toiled again; and last night, hearing calls,
I looked, and lo! three little swallows slept
Within the earth-made walls.
What truth is here, O man!
Hath hope been smitten in its early dawn!
Have clouds o'ercast thy purpose, trust or plan?
Have FAITH and struggle on!" [Richard Salter Storrs Andros]
Here endeth the second fith.
RICHARD HAYWARDE. [Frederic Swartwout Cozzens]
https://books.google.com/books?id=QNYRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq#v=onepage&q&f=falseGraham's American Monthly Magazine had already published a formal review of Mardi in the June 1849 issue. Author unknown.
Mardi, and a Voyage Thither. By Herman Melville. New York : Harper & Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo.
Mr. Melville has given us here an acknowledged romance, and those who doubted the veracity of “Typee” and “Omoo,” may now have an opportunity of noticing the difference between Mr. Melville recording what he has observed, and Mr. Melville recording what he has imagined. It appears to us that the two processes in the author’s mind have little in common, and the best evidence of the truthfulness of his former books is the decidedly romantic character of much of the present.
“Mardi” is altogether the most striking work which Mr. Melville has produced, exhibiting a range of learning, a fluency of fancy, and an originality of thought and diction, of which “Typee,” with all its distinctness and luxuriance of description, gave little evidence. At the same time it has defects indicating that the author has not yet reached the limits of his capacity, and that we may hope from him works better even than the present. “Mardi” is of the composite order of mental architecture, and the various rich materials which constitute it are not sufficiently harmonized to produce unity of effect. It has chapters of description, sketches of character, flashes of fanciful exaggeration, and capital audacities of satire, which are inimitable, but confusion, rather than fusion, characterizes the book as a whole. Of the two volumes the first is by far the best, but both contain abundant evidence of the richness, strength and independence of the author's mind, and are full of those magical touches which indicate original genius.
https://books.google.com/books?id=TKQ2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA385&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
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