How many Redburns can you count?

I feel like I don’t write about it particularly a lot, but narration is one of the things I’m relatively more interested in when I read. I try especially not to fall into the dread trap of equating author with narrator, but some people make it hard—people, say, like Melville, who writes loosely autobiographical novels and has a way of inserting himself into things. Redburn is much less complex than Mardi on the narration front as well as others, but there’s still a few things going on.

First, we’ve got more than one Redburn. I count three: the 16-year-old boy who goes to Liverpool, the 16-year-old boy who returns from Liverpool, and the man writing about it. And on top of that, Melville is always somewhere in the background.

The first, pre-voyage boy, is embittered and awkward, leaving upstate New York with a shooting jacket and a gun slung over his shoulder, giving dirty looks to the genteel passengers on the Hudson ferry, but much too genteel and naive himself for life as a sailor. His fellows show “so plainly [their] ignorance and absence of proper views of religion” that Redburn pities them—but mostly finds “opportunity to magnify [himself], by comparing [himself] with [his] neighbors.”

How seriously does the man Redburn, writing about the voyage, take his younger self? Not quite seriously, and yet, one things, not quite as unseriously as Melville might have done.

Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way might sit uneasily upon this sailor, I tought it would soften the matter down by giving him a chance to show his own superiority to me, in a minor thing; for I was far from being vain and conceited.

…I inquited of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meat; and whether, as the big bell hung right over the scuttle that went down to the place where the watch below were sleeping, such a ringing every little while would not tend to disturb them and beget unpleasant dreams; and in asking these questions I was particular to address him in a civil and condescending way, so as to show him very plainly that I did not deem myself one whit better than he was, that is, taking all things together, and not going into particulars.

Unsurprisingly, the sailor thinks Redburn a fool, and makes fun of him. Fortunately, Redburn gets angry. Fortunately? “But my being so angry prevented me from feeling foolish, which is very lucky for people in a passion.”

So, older Redburn is certainly aware of how silly he was as a boy. Later, in Liverpool, Redburn befriends Harry Bolton, an English gentleman fleeing some mysterious problems who decides to ship with the Highlander back to America. But he knows nothing of sailing, even less than Redburn, and his silk finery is even more inappropriate than Redburns shrinking moleskine jacket. Redburn is somewhat older and wiser at this point; he has seen England, and knows that he cannot depend on his father’s guidebook anymore, but he’s still acting a bit big when he describes Harry’s naivete in turn:

But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life, should evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly inadmissible in a person situated as he was. But perhaps his familiarity with lofty life, only the less qualified him for understanding the otehr extreme. Will you believe me, this Bury blade once came on deck in a brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled smoking-cap, to stand his morning watch.

How different is that from the Redburn of only one month or so ago who thought he might call on the captain and have dinner in his cabin? He’s even been noted for his silly clothes, though it’s his fancy buttons that earned his nickname and not the silks and brocades he can no longer afford. The older memoirist Redburn says “I was surprised” (emphasis mine), but he does not seem terribly knowing about the whole thing. Or many things. I wondered often while reading, until it became clear from a detail or two, how long after the story was supposed to have been written, because at first I was willing to believe Redburn wrote it all down shortly after his return.

It makes for a somewhat disconcerting experience, because we know how closely Redburn’s adolescence parallels Melville’s, with its disappointments and failures. We don’t want to think of Melville as this bitter, or this foolish—though he captures the volatile emotions of a teenage boy very well. But more, we don’t want to think of Melville as having grown this little; it’s impossible; Mardi wouldn’t exist, neither would Redburn for that matter. Whose ideas are these about religion and temperance and smoking and swearing, for example? We encounter them elsewhere—the Melville-narrator is always a bit genteel—but not like this, and it feels a bit foreign and wrong. The older Redburn still can’t manage to describe the language of the sailors; he’s much too prissy—but wasn’t Melville a bit prissy in Typee as well? In many ways I feel Redburn the least worthy thus far of a re-read, partly because I found it a bit boring, but these are some issues I would like to be able to explore more later. Because, in case you didn’t realize, obviously an integral part of reading through all of Melville will be doing it again a few years down the road.