Melville's Pardonable Sin

Author(s): Jerome M. Loving

Source: The New England Quarterly , Jun., 1974, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Jun., 1974), pp. 262-278
Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/364088

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 MELVILLE'S PARDONABLE SIN

JEROME M. LOVING

THE friendship of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Haw-

thorne is one of the famous associations in American liter-
ary history. Although some doubt remains about the intensity
of their relationship subsequent to the publication of Moby-
Dick (1851), their friendship was at its height when they were
neighbors in Berkshire, the most western county of Massa-
chusetts. From May, 185o, until November, 1851, Hawthorne
and his family lived in a farmhouse on the Tappan estate,
about two miles west of the village of Lenox. In the summer
of 1850 Melville and his wife were boarders in Pittsfield, six
miles away. That fall, Melville purchased a farm in Pittsfield,
where he lived for the next thirteen years. When Hawthorne
and Melville finally met at the now-famous party in the Berk-
shires on August 5, 1850, they were both highly regarded by
the literary world. In addition to short stories and sketches,
many of which were collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837,
1842) and Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), Hawthorne had
recently published The Scarlet Letter (1850) and was then
writing The House of the Seven Gables (1851). Before he
moved away fifteen months later, he had also written A Won-
der-Book (1852) and parts of The Blithedale Romance (1852).
Melville, though fifteen years younger, was already the author
of five novels: Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), Red-
burn (1849), and White-Jacket (1850). More important, how-
ever, is the fact that Melville at the time of his meeting with
Hawthorne was writing what would ultimately become his
masterpiece, Moby-Dick.
It has been generally concluded that until the time of his
meeting with Hawthorne and his fiction, Melville was in the
process of making Moby-Dick another sea narrative in which
he would finally make use of his knowledge of the whaling in-
dustry, and that Melville's relationship with Hawthorne re-

262

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 MELVILLE'S PARDONABLE SIN 263
sulted in changing Moby-Dick into a complex allegory w
rages against the inequities of the universe.' In support of t
theory that the book changed radically in midstream, E
Duyckinck's letter to his brother George on August 7, 1
is frequently cited. Two days after the meeting of Melville
Hawthorne Duyckinck wrote, "Melville has a new book m
done-a romantic, fanciful & literal &8 most enjoyable presen
ment of the Whale Fishery-something quite new."2 It sh
be noted, however, that these are Duyckinck's words, not M
ville's, and that we have no external evidence that Duyck
had read the unfinished manuscript.
Edward Rosenberry suggests that the "inevitable start
point of any case for Hawthorne's influence is Melville's
recorded statement about his friend's art, the essay-re
'Hawthorne and his Mosses,' published pseudonymously
the Literary World in August, 1850."3 If not his most can
Melville's remarks in this review are his most comprehen
ones concerning his appreciation of Hawthorne's fiction.
ville was particularly taken by the darkness in Hawtho
which he adds is also a part of Shakespeare. Further, in read
the Mosses, Melville wrote that he saw a "parity of ideas
tween the author and himself. The Literary World essay
deed offers much evidence that Melville was impressed w
Hawthorne's fiction. Yet it is not quite the starting poin
tracing Hawthorne's influence on Melville. We know fr
The Melville Log that Melville had read and undersc
certain passages in his copy of the Mosses possibly as ear
July 20o, 1850.4 Hence, the starting point for Hawthorne's
fluence could conceivably be pushed back another three w
or so. Yet even this date does not come close enough to
turning point in Moby-Dick-if in fact there was such a t
1 Such a view is probably best expressed by Leon Howard, Herman Me
A Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951), 168-177.
2 Jay Leyda, The Melville Log. A Documentary Life of Herman Me
(New York, 1969, rev. ed.), 1, 385.
3 "Melville and His Mosses," American Transcendental Quarterly, no. 7, p
(Summer, 197o), 47.
4 Leyda, 38o.

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264 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

ing point. It is part of my thesis here to suggest a much ear

commencement of the writing of the book as an allegory
not as another sea narrative-perhaps as early as when Mel
first sat down to write it-which indicates that Hawthorne m
not have influenced the writing of Moby-Dick as much as
been suspected.
Perry Miller supports the theory that Moby-Dick wen
"astray" soon after the August 5 meeting of Melville and Ha
thorne by citing, along with Duyckinck's letter to his broth
a phrase from Melville's letter of May 1, 1850, to He
Dana, Jr.5 Miller notes a reference in the letter to Moby-Dic
as a "whaling voyage" on which Melville says he is halfw
through. If one stops with the phrases "whaling voyage"
"half way in the work," Melville's letter to Dana seems
offer sound evidence that Moby-Dick did not go "astray" un
after the author's association with Hawthorne had begu
Further sections of the same paragraph suggest, however, th
Moby-Dick was already drifting away from becoming ano
Redburn or White-Jacket. In calling it a whaling voyage, Me
ville qualifies the phrase by adding, "It will be a strange
of a book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know... &
cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fan
which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as
gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the tr
of the thing, spite of this."6 While this letter is ambigu
it does not support the theory that Moby-Dick was yet
the process of becoming another Redburn or White-Jac
rather, it suggests that the book was already fast becom
something more than "a romantic, fanciful & literal" narrat
about a "whaling voyage"-as early as three months befo
Melville's meeting with Hawthorne and almost two months b
fore his initial reading (as far as we know)7 of Hawthor
5 The Raven and the Whale: The War of Words and Wits in the Era of
and Melville (New York, 1956), 280-281.
6 Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman, editors, The Letters of Her
Melville (New Haven, 196o), io8.
7 The fact that the narrator in White-Jacket wishes that his country
Nathaniel Hawthorne, had served aboard a Man-of-War suggests that Me
may have been familiar with some of Hawthorne's fiction before July, 185

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 MELVILLE'S PARDONABLE SIN 265

fiction. Such a position is further supported by the disda

attitude Melville displays earlier in the same letter t
Redburn and White-Jacket. No doubt having received
pliment from Dana about these works, Melville replies th
be called out by any White Jackets or Redburns of mi
is indeed delightful to me. In fact, My Dear Dana, di
write these books of mine almost entirely for 'lucre'-
job, as a woodsawyer saws wood ... ."8 There is present
passage a feeling of embarrassment that he should be c
mented by the author of Two Years Before the Mast (184
what he considered to be essentially two exercises in prod
something marketable.
If such remarks suggest that Melville was in no mood t
his "Whale" another Redburn or White-Jacket, certa
sages from an even earlier letter to Dana, dated Octo
1849, shortly before his trip abroad when he took th
pleted manuscript of White-Jacket to his English pub
and a letter dated the same day to his father-in-law,
Shaw, should even more lucidly re-create Melville's dispos
toward writing another romance of the sea long bef
met Hawthorne. In a postscript to the first, he refers to
burn as a "little nursery tale of mine."9 To Judge Shaw
ville conjures up the same simile that he later used
1850 letter to Dana in denigrating Redburn and White-Ja
"But no reputation that is gratifying to me, can poss
achieved by either of these books. They are two jobs,
have done for money-being forced to it, as other men
sawing wood."'0 Admitting that he had managed "
much" to speak his mind in these two books, Melville
theless complains that he has "felt obliged to refrain
writing the kind of book" he wanted. He closes this parag
with a fairly clear statement of his present attitude tow
writing: "Being books [Redburn and White-Jacket], t
written in this way, my only desire for their 'success' (a
8 Davis and Gilman, io6.
9 Davis and Gilman, 93. While the term nursery tale may only refer to the
youth and ndiivet6 of Redburn, it can also have a pejorative meaning.
0o Davis and Gilman, 91-92.

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266 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

called) springs from my pocket, F& not from my heart. So fa

am individually concerned, &8 independent of my pocket, i
my earnest desire to write those sort of books which are s
'fail.' " Such a declaration-catching Melville after the wr
of White-Jacket and most likely before the writing of Mo
Dick-casts some doubt on the theory that the latter was
even begun as a literal rendering of a "whaling voyage."
Such observations do not, however, deny the possibilit
Hawthorne's eventual influence on the composition of M
Dick. But if there was a second growth in the book, it
before Melville's association with Hawthorne. Supportin
"second growth" theory after the Melville-Hawthorne m
ing, however, Perry Miller suggests that the history of Mo
Dick "is roughly similar to Mardi's,""1 and that the se
growth in Moby-Dick was the result of Hawthorne's influe
While the shift in Mardi is fairly easy to discern, that of M
Dick is not so readily perceived. That Ishmael must go t
because of the "damp, drizzly November in [his] soul" seem
match the pessimistic tone of the book throughout. It is pl
ble, of course, that Melville went back and made the first
correspond with the second. But considering the letters
above, it is just as likely that this was the tone of the book
it was first begun-as well as when it was completed. Fur
to compare the development of Mardi with that of Moby-D
is to deny Melville the benefit of artistic development
labored on what is considered his greatest work. The fact t
a "Mardi" did precede Moby-Dick without Hawthorn
catalyst demonstrates the course that Melville's art was tak
Glimpses of such development can be seen in White-Jac
where the jacket is a symbol almost as elusive as that o
white whale. As Harry Levin suggests, Mardi had appro
the allegorical penultimate;12 that Melville's next attem
writing a "failure" would be more successful seems reaso
from the course his art was following. And so the process
11 Miller, 280.
12 The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe and Melville (New York,
175.

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 MELVILLE'S PARDONABLE SIN 267
would make Moby-Dick the great American classic that i
become was already underway; the next question is how
how much Hawthorne and his fiction helped to refine
product of this process.
II

Rather than reflecting a significant change in the philosophy

of Melville, Moby-Dick records the point in his career when
his raging skepticism fully surfaced in his art. His suspicions
about the nature of the world had been active as early as his
adventurous whaling voyage on the Acushnet in 1841. And
while in Lahaina and Honolulu in the Hawaiian Islands in
1843, he had already seen in the actions of the mission
how evil can result from apparently good intentions. H
become doubtful about the providence of God, being u
to accept the divine riddle of how the Prime Mover co
instill in man such a desire for life and at the same time burden
him with the certainty of death. The works of Melville previ-
ous to Moby-Dick indicate that he had read widely in an
endeavor to resolve this eternal paradox, but had already con-
cluded that man's plight was more or less hopeless, that evil
would harass him until his death because it was the malevolent
will of God. He had read Carlyle's answer to such ontological
queries but had rejected his conclusion that man, after much
soul searching, would come to approve of the inscrutable yet
benevolent ways of God. While White-Jacket was written
for "lucre," it also became Melville's dramatic negation of
Carlyle's theory as it appears in Sartor Resartus (1833-34). For
Melville, Christianity, no better than the white jacket, fit his
protagonist. It is not surprising, then, that he found Carlyle's
theory, which is essentially Christian, to be untenable. Briefly
stated, Carlyle believed that each individual, after discarding
his inherited ill-fitting and second-hand garments of religious
belief and thus falling into a state of disillusionment ("The
Everlasting Nay") would ultimately advance to a higher per-
ception of the ineffable joy derived from submissive affirma-
tion of faith and trust in the inexplicable ways of God ("The

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268 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Everlasting Yea").-3 Although Melville had dealt with thi

in White-Jacket, his loudest objections were dramatize
Moby-Dick. With this eclectic achievement, Melville fi
made clear his tragic vision of human existence.
The problem in literary criticism of attributing the in
ence of Hawthorne on Melville has been that to do so we must
blame Hawthorne, to some extent, for Melville's tragic vision
in Moby-Dick. Yet when we consider the total philosophy of
Hawthorne as embodied in his art, we encounter paradox.
For Hawthorne clearly did not share Melville's pessimistic
vision. Although he presents evil as pervasive in his short
stories and romances, it is not the hopeless situation that is de-
picted in Moby-Dick. Hawthorne perceived the world as a
mixture of good and evil, and many of his sketches and short
stories show the futility and fatality of not being able to accept
this necessary evil along with the good in the world. Haw-
thorne demonstrates, for example, in "The Birthmark" or in
"Rappaccini's Daughter" that if man attempts to purge evil
from the world, he will also stamp out the good. These obser-
vations in Hawthorne, however, are not manifestations of his
disillusionment, for he attempts to show that man, instead of
isolating himself, like Aylmer or Rappaccini-along with many
others in Hawthorne's fiction-in his attempt to rid the world
of evil, must accept and make the best of the balance of good
and evil because it is in accordance with the plan of God.
The question is how the art and friendship of this yea-sayer,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, during his fifteen months in the Berk-
shires, managed to bring to the surface the full force of Mel-
ville's angry pessimism in Moby-Dick. Obviously, the younger
Melville saw something in the stories and sketches from Mosses
from an Old Manse that was akin to his own feelings about the
nature of existence. It is part of my thesis that Melville mis-
interpreted Hawthorne because he saw in Hawthorne's fiction
reflections of his own pessimistic philosophy, that the blackness
13 Lawrance Thompson, Melville's Quarrel with God (Princeton, 1952), 129-
130o.

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 MELVILLE'S PARDONABLE SIN 269

he perceived was that found in his own questioning mi

in the tenor of his latest works.
In order to get a more accurate view of Melville's reactions
to Hawthorne's art, however, it is necessary to examine the
underscorings Melville made in his copy of the Mosses (and
recorded in The Melville Log) rather than rely upon his sub-
sequent essay in the Literary World. For in the essay Melville
had other tasks before him besides registering his approval of
Hawthorne. As a member of the "Young America" movement,
led by Evert Duyckinck, the proprietor and editor of the
Literary World, Melville was probably encouraged to write an
eloquent plea for a true American literature. And it must have
been of some comfort for him to be able to write this contro-

versial essay anonymously, for he, as well as the rest of the

"Tetractys Club," was well aware of what reaction to expect
from the opposition. Commencing long before the young Mel-
ville had returned from sea and written Typee, literary battles,
which culminated in the so-called "Longfellow War" and
Poe's abortive "Literati" series, had raged between the "Young
America" group and its Dickens-worshiping opponents, led by
Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine,
and supported in one way or another by such figures as Holmes
Longfellow, and Griswold. In such circumstances Melville is
to be excused not only for his far-reaching comparisons of
Hawthorne with Shakespeare, but also for his failure to be a
candid in his essay as he is in his copy of the Mosses.14
Indeed, all of the passages which he underscored-some, two
or three times-catch Hawthorne when he is most pessimistic
The first one mentioned by Leyda comes from "The Birth-
mark," immediately after Georgiana has asked Aylmer whether
he had experienced a dream the night before about the re-
moval of the mark that flaws her otherwise perfect beauty
Aylmer denies having had such a dream when in truth he had
14 While it may be simply a display of modesty, it is interesting to note that
in a letter to Hawthorne written around Nov. 17, 1851, Melville calls his Liter-
ary World essay "paltry." See Davis and Gilman, 143-

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27o THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
that previous evening vicariously undertaken the operation to
remove the birthmark from Georgiana's face and had dis-
covered that it went as deep as her heart, which would have to
be removed along with the blemish. The narrator of the story
introduces the account of this dream with the following pas-
sage, which Melville underscored: "The mind is in a sad state,
when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres with-
in the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth,
affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to
a deeper one." A few sentences later Melville underlined:
"Truth often finds its way to the mind close-muffled in robes
of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of
matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-
deception, during our waking moments."15
There is pessimism here-of the kind that must have ap-
pealed to Melville, who was already convinced that God is
malicious and after forcing man to suffer a lifetime of humilia-
tions contemptuously ends his pain with the ultimate indig-
nity, death. But such passages endorse Melvillian pessimism
only when taken out of context. Properly read, the truth in
Hawthorne that keeps emerging is that man cannot cleanse the
world of its imperfection and evil. And if he attempts to do so,
he will also ruin the good-just as Aylmer loses the whole
beauty of Georgiana in his vain and selfish attempt to remove
only the flaw. It is doubtful that Melville made such a con-
clusion during his reading. If he had, he would have probably
extended his pen to underscoring the sentence that immedi-
ately follows: "Until now he [Aylmer] had not been aware of
the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind,
and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for
the sake of giving himself peace.""' Hawthorne is presenting
one of his recurring themes, namely, the danger of permitting
the Head to stifle the emotions of the Heart. Aylmer experi-
ences a brief glimpse of this truth, but is soon persuaded by his
15 Leyda, 380.
16 Norman Holmes Pearson, editor, The Complete Novels and Selected Tales
of Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1937), lo23.

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 MELVILLE'S PARDONABLE SIN 271
very victim, Georgiana, that his "deep science" can solve
microcosmic problem of imperfections in the world.
Two other passages in "The Birthmark" which Melv
obviously read in isolation from their context and, accor
to Jay Leyda, scored, checked, and underscored are part
Hawthorne's description of Aylmer:
his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if
pared with the ideal at which he aimed.... [Aylmer's journal]
the sad confession, and continual exemplification, of the shortcom
ings of the composite man-the spirit burthened with clay a
working in matter; and of the despair that assails the higher natu
at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perh
every man of genius, in whatever sphere, might recognize the im
of his own experience in Aylmer's journal.1"

Melville saw the image of his own experience here; wha

failed to perceive, however, was that the cause of Aylm
dilemma, according to Hawthorne in the overall theme of
story, comes not from any direct action of God, but rather f
the meddling of Aylmer himself. By refusing to accept mo
existence as a mixture of good and evil, man only frustr
and damns himself. And also there is nothing admirable in t
futile quest of attacking evil in the world when it is cle
invulnerable. Instead of seeing the whole of Hawthorne's
Melville apparently focused on only what he already belie
Further notations in Melville's copy of Hawthorne's b
show that he found passages which-when read alone-re
even more directly to his angry philosophical stance. S
ideas were of the kind that Melville later in his essay cla
to have "incorporated" into his being. Actually, the "ger
nous seeds" that Melville said Hawthorne dropped into
soul were merely reflections of his own philosophy, not Ha
thorne's. In "Rappaccini's Daughter"-a story similar in th
to "The Birthmark"-Melville underscored and hence isolated
Hawthorne's statement that the mixture of both "dark" and
"bright" emotions produces "the illuminating blaze of the in-
17 Leyda, 380.

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272 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
fernal regions."'s In his reading of Dante, Melville-like man
of his contemporaries-apparently did not read far beyond th
Inferno.19 Believing that evil is a preponderant part of human
experience, he was fascinated by Dante's catalogue of sinner
it dramatized for him the existence of evil in the world. Here
again, Melville has absorbed merely a part of Hawthorne's
thesis.

Probably the most significant notation by Melville is in

"The Artist of the Beautiful." Here he triple-scored the follow-
ing passage, which seems to have become his manifesto for the
artist:

It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess a force of character that

seems hardly compatible with its delicacy; he must keep his faith in
himself [italics mine], while the incredulous world assails him with
its utter disbelief; he must stand up against mankind and be his
own sole disciple, both as respects his genius, and the objects to
which it is directed.20

Taken alone, this passage seems to correspond well with Mel-

ville's own feeling of artistic and philosophical defiance. But
read in the context of the two sentences before and after it, the
passage means something altogether different. The first sen-
tence warns that in this world the highest ideals are often quite
vulnerable when brought into contact with reality: the practi-
cal mundane forces that prevail in mortal existence. The sec-
ond is short and best quoted: "For a time Owen Warland
succumbed [italics mine] to this severe but inevitable test."21
Surely, if Hawthorne intended the statement that Melville
triple-scored as being the artist's manifesto, he could have
chosen a more appropriate verb than succumbed in his next
sentence. This Melville missed, and he also missed Haw-
thorne's theme that the "severe but inevitable test" is one
which ultimately demonstrates that the concept of the id
is Leyda, 380-381.
19 G. Giovannini, "Melville's Pierre and Dante's Inferno," PMLA, LXIV,
n. 4 (March, 1949).
20 Leyda, 381.
21 Pearson edition, 1143.

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 MELVILLE'S PARDONABLE SIN 273
artist cannot be realized on earth and that for the artist "bur-
thened with clay" to view his art accurately he must see it as
only a part of the overall scheme of the universe. Otherwise,
he commits the sin of isolation. Unlike Aylmer who refuses to
surrender his dream, Owen Warland, when his work of art-a
fragile butterfly-is reduced to fragments by a playful child,
has learned to accept the world as it is, and hence realize the
limitations of those caught up in the mortal whirlwind-even
the genius.
III

Armed with such partial truths about Hawthorne's phi-

losophy, Melville, not surprisingly, was fascinated with the
darkness in Hawthorne. Preoccupied with his own darkness,
he could see little else in the writing of his Berkshire neighbor.
And from Melville's private reaction to Hawthorne's fiction,
one can almost predict the content of his later essay. Aside
from his enthusiastic hopes for an American literature, hi
words in the Literary World essay reflect the spirit of the
passages he underscored in the previous weeks-if not the par-
ticular examples from Hawthorne's Mosses that first attracted
him. But like Melville's observations in his copy of the Mosses,
the essay demonstrates his misunderstanding of Hawthorne's
art.22 One of the first to question Melville's interpretation
of Hawthorne's fiction was Sophia Hawthorne. In a letter
to her mother shortly after the appearance of both parts of
the essay, she wrote, "But it is funny to see how he does not
know how this heart and this intellect are enshrined."'23 It
seems fairly clear that Hawthorne and Melville differed greatly
on the role of evil. In the romances, tales, and sketches of Haw-
thorne where the major figures come to grief, the message i
clear that if they had kept the Head and Heart in balance they
would not have fallen to such depths of failure. In the words of
James E. Miller, Jr., "Inflamed with the knowledge of the
22 For an excellent essay on Melville's misreading of the Mosses, see Hubert
H. Hoeltje, "Hawthorne, Melville, and 'Blackness,' " AL, xxxvn, 41-51 (March
1965).
23 Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (Boston, 1897), 173-

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274 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
imperfections of this world, unable to reach the higher vision
of eternity, they enter, at first perhaps unwittingly, the servic
of the devil to do battle against God."24 Ethan Brand searche
too deeply and loses the very pity that motivated his search
Aylmer risks and subsequently takes the life of Georgiana i
his egotistical quest for perfection. Rappaccini, who had de-
voted his life to science, inadvertently extinguishes the life of
his own daughter whom he had sought to protect from evi
in the world. Of course, Giovanni in the same story is no bette
than Aylmer in "The Birthmark"; he cannot accept the fact
that good exists in the midst of evil, and thus he never over
comes the suspicions about the nature of Beatrice that were
planted in his mind by Dr. Baglioni. Chillingworth, in The
Scarlet Letter, exerts his medical knowledge not to relieve
physical suffering but to torment Dimmesdale. There are
few, however, in the fiction of Hawthorne who discover the un-
pardonable sin in time, such as Owen Warland. Others are
Roderick Elliston in "Egotism; or, the Bosom Serpent," Hol-
grave in The House of the Seven Gables, and Kenyon in Th
Marble Faun (1860).
The general characteristics of Hawthorne's unpardonable
sin are pride (its cause) and isolation (its deadening effect)
The first is a consuming regard for self, an egotism that know
no bounds. The second is that in the process of developing
such monstrous intellects, these sinners isolate themselves
from the rest of mankind; they deaden their emotions in order
to sharpen their minds. They give up their sense of human
affection and are thus able to pursue their goal at any cost-
even the lives of others. They trade fellowship for knowledge
and forever lose their place in the mainstream of humanity.
Such a description seems to fit Melville's Ahab whose mono-
maniacal quest for the White Whale, or evil, is at the center
of the action in Moby-Dick. All other action revolves around
this fanatical pursuit. Much like Goodman Brown who leaves
his wife to search out evil, Ahab changes from a family man
241"Hawthorne and Melville: The Unpardonable Sin," PMLA, LXX, 95
(March, 1955).

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 MELVILLE'S PARDONABLE SIN 275
into one of enlarged intellect but meager heart. His
desire for revenge develops into monomania.25 There i
similarity between Ahab and Hawthorne's unpardonab
ners. But Ahab is clearly the most dramatic such sin
American literature; he far surpasses the height of egotis
monomania possessed by any of Hawthorne's own cre
And perhaps the creator of Ethan Brand realized A
singularity when he exclaimed to Evert Duyckinc
letter after reading Moby-Dick: "What a book Melvil
written!"26

The question that arises from such a comparison, however,

is whether Ahab is regarded by Melville in the pejorative sense
that Hawthorne views his sinners. For Hawthorne, the sinner
is a victim of his own egotism, and not God's indifference;
hence, he is not to be pitied. In the overall context of Moby-
Dick, Ahab's "sin" cannot be dismissed so easily. There is
something noble and pitiable about the plight of Ahab. Unlike
Hawthorne's unpardonable sinners, he subjects those around
him to no more danger than he himself is willing to take.
When the White Whale is sighted, Ahab is the most eager to
board his whaleboat for the chase-despite the fact that with
a missing limb he is the least likely to escape the jaws of the
monster. Melville enables the reader to view the plight of
Ahab sympathetically, not only by presenting his dilemma
through the eyes of Ishmael, one of Ethan Brand's "half-way
sinners," but by contrasting him with this philosophical cow-
ard who would "crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there"27
rather than stand up to Fate as Ahab does. Ishmael can ap-
preciate the nobility of Ahab's quest because he knows that
man can never expect to find victory on mortal seas. Ahab
nevertheless has to be respected for trying, for refusing to go
down with a whimper. Despite the futility of his quest, he re-
fuses to accept finally-like some of Hawthorne's pardonable
25 James E. Miller, io6.
26 Randall Stewart, Nathaniel Hawthorne. A Biography (New Haven, 1948),
112.

27 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Harrison Hayford and Hershe

editors (New York, 1967), 46o.

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276 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
sinners-the existence of evil in the world. Rather than com-
promise with evil, Ahab pursues it until it consumes him. As
a mortal he has the choice of persisting in his futile quest or
giving up his dignity. To a noble man, this is no choice at all
He is caught up in the human dilemma, which he makes mor
painful by his compulsive pride, and hence he is to be at th
same time pitied and admired, but not blamed, for his noble
resistance. To dramatize Ahab's futile quest, Ishmael recalls
Shelley's image of the wind, whose power Ahab would have
welcomed in his struggle against evil. Yet he says that even
the wind with its greater force "will not stand to receive
single blow." Ishmael then testifies "Ahab is a braver thing-a
nobler thing than that."28
The paradox, of course, is that for Ahab to attempt this
noble deed, to lead an assault on evil, he must become like one
of Hawthorne's unpardonable sinners. The very structure of
the divine trap necessitates that for Ahab to pursue evil, he
must-like the Red Cross Knight in Book I of The Faerie
Queen-enter the cave of error. To focus his energies in such
a direction, he must commit Hawthorne's sin of enlarged intel-
lect and shrunken heart. And this in turn brings down more
evil-usually death, the ultimate evil-upon the pursuer and
those around him. The final frustration is that evil can come
out of good. Whether Melville realized it, Hawthorne was will-
ing to accept this timeless truth and suggest a compromise.
Melville, on the other hand, was only angered that the choices
in human existence should be so limited.

The futile experience of Ahab is propaganda for the nay-

sayers, who refuse to trust in the inscrutable ways of the deity.
Melville considered himself a nay-sayer, and for a time at least,
he thought Hawthorne to be another. In an 1851 letter to
Hawthorne he wrote: "There is the grand truth about Na-
thaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil him-
self cannot make him say yes .... all men who say no,-why,
they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered
travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity
28 Hayford and Parker edition, 46o-461.

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 MELVILLE'S PARDONABLE SIN 277

with nothing but a carpet-bag,-that is to say, the Ego."29

is not Hawthorne, of course; it is simply Melville's ref
of himself-the same error he made with Hawthorne's fiction.
It was Melville then and also six years hence when he visited
his friend in England for the last time. Hawthorne recorded
in his journal after they parted that Melville during his visit
"began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything
that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had
'pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated'; but still
he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will
never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange
how he persists-and has persisted ever since I knew him, and
probably long before ....",30 Feeling the way he did about the
futility of existence, Melville could certainly consider Ahab's
sin a pardonable one. Ahab is one of his nay-sayers who refuse
to accept evil as a part of God's so-called benevolent plan. He
succumbs like all other mortals, but to Melville, at least during
the decade of his life when his art was at its zenith, this was a
noble death.

Hawthorne, it seems, had no conscious part in molding the

damnable soul of Ahab. For no character in the fiction of
Hawthorne was ever allowed to go down to defeat in such
Byronic glory. Ahab was the product of Melville's angry resen
ment over the human condition. And it seems apparent fro
the pessimistic overtones in Redburn and White-Jacket,
well as Mardi, that such a tragic vision had been gnawing
Melville long before he came under any kind of influence
Hawthorne. Hence, he was capable of creating Ahab-and w
probably doing so-before he met Hawthorne or wrote hi
Literary World essay. In fact, it seems that only one who w
engaged in such a task as the creation of Moby-Dick could hav
written this fiery essay on Hawthorne's Mosses-which focuses
for the most part, on the aspects of blackness. Further, from
the letters cited earlier in this essay, as well as Melville's p
vious works and Hawthorne's 1856 journal entry that establish
29 Davis and Gilman, 125-
30 Stewart, 169-170o.

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278 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
the persistence of his pessimism and anger over the mortal
dilemma, it appears possible that Melville was well on his wa
to writing his "wicked book" before he met Hawthorne, an
that the latter had an opportunity only to refine the fina
product. It is here, then, that Hawthorne-however uncon-
sciously-influenced the writing of Moby-Dick. By adjustin
Melville's focus so that he could better envision only th
starker aspects of evil-without the balancing good-Haw
thorne helped create a literary character that would have
never been permitted on stage in his own fiction.

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