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Stempel, D. Stillians, Bruce M. Bartleby The Scribner - A Parable of Pessimism
Stempel, D. Stillians, Bruce M. Bartleby The Scribner - A Parable of Pessimism
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[2681
fidelity
ofhis translationsofexcerptsfromhisworksand in general
was delightedby thearticle,whichattackedthe Germanacademi-
cians forfailingto recognizethe geniusof a philosopherwho was
not a professor.4
The WestminsterReview, as Hugh W. Hetheringtonhas
pointedout,was one ofa numberof Britishmagazineswhichwere
widely circulated in the United States, often arrivingby fast
steameraftera two-weekcrossing.5 Melville was an avid readerof
the periodicalpress,and it is likelythathe read the Westminster
Review,if onlyto see whetherhis bookshad been includedin the
regularsurveyof Americanwriting.The Review had printeda
briefbut favorablereferenceto Melville'sworkin 1852.6It is not
possibleto determineexactlywhereand when Melville pickedup
the April issue because the opportunitieswere omnipresent.In
May he was in New Yorkto see his father-in-law offto Europe and
it washiscustomto go to thereadingroomoftheNew YorkSociety
Libraryand scanthelatestperiodicals.7 Further,he could haveread
theAprilissuein Bostonat theAthenaeumor even in Pittsfield.
Grantedtheopportunity, whatabout the interest?Here theevi-
dence is so strongas to rule out the possibilitythathe mighthave
simplyignoredthearticle.On his tripto Europe in 1849 Melville
traveledwithGeorgeJ. Adler,professor of Germanat New York
University. Adler,whomMelvilledescribedas "Coleridgean,"was
an enthusiasticstudentof Germanphilosophyand lostno timein
initiatinghis travelingcompanioninto the mysteries of transcen-
dental metaphysics, "Hegel, Schlegel,Kant, 8Cc." 8 And Melville
was a farfromunwillinglisteneras theystrolledthe deck talking
of his favoritetopics,"Fixed Fate, Free will, foreknowledge abso-
lute." Nor did thisinterestwane whenhe returnedand settledat
9
Arrowhead.J. E. A. Smithof Pittsfieldnoted thatafterhis day's
12 Oxenford,PP. 405-7.
13 Ibid., P. 405.
All that the liberal mind looks forwardto with hope, if not with con-
fidence-theextensionof political rights,the spread of education, the
brotherhoodof nations,the discoveryof new means of stubduingstub-
born nature-mustbe given up as a vain dream,if ever Schopenhauler's
doctrinebe accepted.In a word,he is a professed"Pessimist";it is his
Bartleby has already made the choice which initiates this pro-
cess, the single free act of which man is capable, and then only
through the refiningprocess of great suffering:the denial of the
will to live. This is the incurable and innate "disorder" which re-
flectsthe unspoken "paramount consideration" that inspires Bartle-
by's negative preferences.It opposes and negates everyvalue which
the Master in Chancery, that cheerful lover of life,cherishes.Thus,
even the mere contemplation of Bartleby's passive but unfaltering
withdrawal fromthe world stuns and repels him; it points toward a
conclusion which, for him, is literally unthinkable, like the "hor-
ror" of Conrad's dying Kurtz. That morning the lawyer does not go
to church: "Somehow the things I had seen disqualified me for the
time forchurch-going."
Bartleby remains in the office,preferringto do nothing but his
copying, and his employer continues to seek for new methods of
drawing him back into the stream of life. But it is Bartleby who
dominates the office,not his employer,who, to his dismay,findsthat
he and his staffare falling into the habit of using "prefer."
The lawyer resolves once more to dismiss Bartleby, but a new
development offers him an opportunity to diagnose Bartleby's
malady as a physical disorder, causally explicable, and therefore
quite forgivable. Bartleby announces that he has "given up copy-
ing" and the lawyer,seeing that his eyes appear "dull and glazed,"
jumps to the conclusion that he has impaired his vision by working
in poor light. Now Bartleby does nothing at all, and his presence
becomes even more irritating,especially since it soon becomes ob-
vious that his reason for giving up copying has nothing to do with
his health. He is given six days notice, but mutely rejects all pro-
posals, threats,or bribes, and remains "like the last column of some
ruined temple ... standing mute and solitaryin the middle of the
otherwisedeserted room" (40).
The narrator,becoming more and more disturbed, is at the same
time experiencing an expansion of knowledge which opens up new
15 Ibid., p. 394.
16 The issues of freedomand fatalityin the Colt murder case had been noted by
an anonymous editorial contributorto Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 6 (1852-
53), 127. Perhaps Oxenford's comment that the will is suibjtugatedto "that law of
cause and effectby which the whole world of phenomena is governed,and which is
action"
equally potent in the dischargeof a pistol and the performanceof a virttuouis
(p. 406) broughtthiscase to mind as Melville workedon Bartleby.
17 See Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, e(l. Patil Ramsey (New Haven:
Yale Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 138-39, and Priestley's Writingson Philosophy, Scien7ce,
and Politics, ed. John A. Passmore (New York: Collier Books, 1965), p. 76.