After regaling you with mediocrity for the week (but I liked Mardi!), today we’ll have the most disappointing bit of the novel, for me. Melville really fails here.
Now, there’s a lot you don’t know about because I haven’t mentioned (tons of blogging fodder if I’m still at it when I do a re-read), including the company in the canoes. Taji, the Melville/narrator, is accompanied by King Media, the philosopher Babbalanja, the historian Mohi, and the minstrel Yoomy. As they paddle around the lagoon of Mardi they conduct quite a salon, delving into sociology, theology, metaphysics, history, politics, literature, &tc. In general, it’s not unlike a philosophical “dialogue.”
Babbalanja is the most interesting. I read somewhere something about how Babbalanja is the head and Taji the heart, with Melville torn between, or something. Maybe that only applies to the end, but anyway. Babbalanja is troubled; he spends a lot of time pondering the nature of the world and coming up short.
“Oh Man, Man, Man! thou art harder to solve, than the Integral Calculus—yet plain as a primer; harder to find than the philosopher’s-stone—yet ever at hand; a more cunning compound, than an alchemist’s—yet a hundred weight of flesh, to a penny weight of spirit; soul and body glued together, firm as atom to atom, seamless as the vestment without joint, warp or woof—yet divided as by a river, spirit from flesh; growing both ways, like a tree, and dropping thy topmost branches to earth, like thy beard or a banian!—I give thee up, oh Man! thou art twain—yet indivisible; all things—yet a poor unit at best.”
The company is on a quest, I may have forgotten to mention, for Yillah, Taji’s lover. Among other things, of course. And after however many hundreds of pages of questing, stopping at island after island only to declare it devoid of Yillah, touching every shore, visiting every society, only to admit failure and disappointment at each place, they finally reach Serenia.
The old man who greets them their explains the society he lives in, basically the ideal Christian society. And it is ideal, and good, and I won’t fault Melville for making it into the end of the quest, the perfect place. In the description of the society, though, the company rediscovers Christ—whom they only knew through the corrupt priesthood closer to home—and…
“Oh, Alma, Alma! prince divine!” cried Babbalanja, sinking on his knees—“in thee, at least, I find repose. …Gone, gone! are all distracting doubts. Love and Alma now prevail. I see with other eyes:—Are these my hands? What wild, wild dreams were mine;—I have been mad. Some things there are, we must not think of. Beyond one obvious mark, all human lore is vain. …Reason no longer domineers; but still doth speak. All I have said ere this, that wars with Alma’s precepts, I here recant. Here I kneel, and own great Oro and his sovereign son.”
This is weak sauce. The rest of the part has a similar conversion—even Media, who declares himself “no more a demigod.” But nothing has happened; they haven’t even seen the people of Serenia. They just had some old man say, basically, “God is love, we’re just sinners who are trying to love each other.” Come on!
I’ll give Melville some credit for a good vision of heaven—with levels, and men at the bottom in a zone of eternal sadness because in fact we will never know what we seek to know—but poor Babbalanja, reduced to this: “This have I learned, oh! spirit!—In things mysterious, to seek no more; but rest content, with knowing naught but Love.”
Well, Taji does not learn it at least; and it’s hard to believe Melville did either.
And, sigh, here’s another instance where I wonder if a failure is really a failure. Perhaps the conversion is purposely unbelievable, because moving from such anguish to such peace so easily is quite literally incredible.
I may be misremembering, but our narrator “Melville” also rejects pure Christianity, right? He continues his pursuit of his beloved, who has been turned into a pearl or something. It’s hard to remember stories that make no sense.
I think I had a similar reaction to you – how is this world less empty than some of the others we’ve visited, besides the assertion that it’s different? But maybe, like you say, that’s some part of the point.
I gave up on really sorting out the disputants. You’ve made a more serious attempt on this book. You might convince someone to read it.
Right—I referred to him here as “Taji.”
I found that sorting out the disputants in general was not too hard; they seemed to have sort of surprisingly coherent personalities. Especially helpful since it’s not always explicit who’s talking.
I hope—sort of—I do convince someone to read it. Half of me wants to say, “Everyone should read Mardi!” And then the other half wants to say, “Actually, no one should read Mardi.”
Oh right, the narrator changes names. Aargh.
Here is how I think of that last conundrum. Mardi is essential for the study of Melville. The reading of Melville is essential. Therefore –
I’m not necessarily happy about the logical conclusion here, but it’s true! I’m very glad I read it. Much light was shed on the subject of Herman Melville.