On Prose-Poetry

Discussing Herman Melville's literary genius exemplified in the writing of Moby Dick, Robert Alter reflects on how Melville broke through the literary stylistic boundaries of that time while under the influence of the powerful prose of the King James Version of the Bible.

This ambition to turn the language of the novel into prose-poetry is a distinctly American project; there is nothing quite like it in British fiction till the advent of modernism. In saying this, and, indeed, in my general account of the presence of the King James Version in American prose, I do not mean to make any larger claim about the much debated issue of American exceptionalism. There are certainly some characteristics traits of American culture that look distinctive, but they do not necessarily encompass the culture as a whole and they are not necessarily unique. It suffices for my argument that the phenomena I describe are particularly at home in the American settings and  are not readily imaginable elsewhere. In regard to the bold polyphony of Melville's prose that is inseparable from its purposefully poetic character, it should be stressed that there is considerable correspondence between the actual allusions to earlier writers and components of style drawn from them. The single figure of Ahab is compound of literary allusions. He resembles King Ahab not only as evil monarch but in his heroic defiance: King Ahab at the end, bleeding to death, asks to be propped up in his chariot so that he can continue to do battle, just as Melville's Ahab at the end, blinded, his boat splintered, persists in the fierce struggle against his terrible foe ("from hell's heart I stab at thee"). Ahab is also Job, bitterly arguing against what he sees as the skewed moral order of creation, and he is even the blighted generation in the wilderness ("forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea!"). At the same time, Ahab is also Milton's Satan and both Macbeth and Lear. What needs to be kept in mind is that Melville summons up for his own novelistic purposes not only the lineaments of these sundry figures but elements of the poetic language in which they are etched in the texts where they originally appear" (Robert Alter, Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, 65-66).

Reading Notes: As I Lay Dying, Moby Dick, The Iliad, and the Noetic Effects of Sin and Anger-and-Revenge's Power to Degrade

Several months ago I read Gene Fant's article at First Things titled "William Faulkner's Peculiar Calvinism: As I Lay Dying." The author reflects on elements from a handful of different works by Faulkner, highlighting his "Peculiar [Read Redemption-Less] Calvinism", and vouches for the truthfulness of Faulkner's Southern characterizations (Fant is a native-born Mississippian). The author's reflections are tied up with the recent film adaptation of As I Lay Dying, written/directed/starring James Franco.

This has made me think of when, several years ago, I first read As I Lay Dying: I thought it was an emotionally-weighty but good read, especially since the noetic effects of sin are soberly portrayed. (The characters in As I Lay Dying do genuinely bizarre and irrational things again and again.) Also, recently I finished reading Moby Dick (I already read half of the book 3 or 4 times, but finally plowed through to the end. Yay!), and, again, I was impressed by the noetic effects of sin: Melville captures that untoward power in his characterization of Captain Ahab, a man who, like Achilles from The Iliad, becomes drunk with anger and revenge to the point of his own demise. Yikes. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Tumultuous Way of Ahab

Ahab has just gone postal on his quadrant and declared a "curse" against "Science." The following is Starbuck's musing, addressed to Stubb, regarding Ahab's tumultuous way: "I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down, down, to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!" (Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 493)

"A Careful Disorderliness"

"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method" (Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 358).

Wise Stubb on Laughter

The wisdom of Stubb: "Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer; and come what will, one comfort's always left--that unfailing comfort is, it's all predestinated. . . . Well, Stubb, wise Stubb--that's my title--well, Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Here's a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing" (Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 168).