All Astir

Abstract

All Astir Mary K. Bercaw Edwards This issue of Leviathan will arrive in the midst of the Thirteenth International Melville Society Conference, “Melville’s Energies,” in Paris, France. A full conference issue will appear in Leviathan 25.1 in March of 2023, but for now we are stirred with the anticipation of a wondrous and enlightening conference involving scholars from around the world. Thanks to the generosity of donors to the Melville Society Travel Awards Fund, the Melville Society was able to award seven travel grants of $350 each paired with waived conference registration fees, more than twice the number originally projected. Congratulations to K.L. Evans, Adam Fales, Yui Kasane, Samuel Moriarty, Chris Rice, Justina Torrance, and Tom Truss. Meredith Farmer writes: “There were, of course, more applicants than we could afford to support this year. And while we intend to continue this program in 2024, we expect to receive even more applications as both the job market in American Literature and pools of travel funding continue to decline. To that end: we are keeping the travel fund open to build a base for future awards.” If you would like to donate, please visit the Melville Society Fundly page <https://fundly.com/melville-society-travel-awards-paris-2022>. Chapter 2 of Melville’s Print Collection Online has now been published on the MPCO site <http://melvillesprintcollection.org/exhibits/show/ch2>. Thanks to Robert K. Wallace for the following wonderful description: “Ancient Rome to Modern Italy” features 51 prints from Ancient Roman busts to nineteenth-century subjects and sites (CAT 70–120). Highlights include Melville’s prints after Flaxman’s Dante and after Italian artists including Piranesi, Francia, Raphael, Titian, Veronese, and Guido. Many visitors to the Berkshire Athenaeum have enjoyed the color lithograph of The Bay of Naples donated by Melville’s granddaughter Eleanor Melville Metcalf (CAT 120). The print itself includes no information about its artist, publisher, or date, but MPCO co-director Samuel Otter has discovered the original of this work in our research for this entry. The image, by English artist Samuel Read, first appeared as a black-and-white engraving in London Illustrated News on November 22, 1856, three months before Melville himself visited the city. The color lithograph later acquired and framed by Melville was originally published in a Special Christmas Number of London Illustrated News on December 22, 1860, shortly after Garibaldi had liberated Naples from oppressive Spanish rule. [End Page 109] Click for larger view View full resolution Samuel Read. The Bay of Naples. London Illustrated News, December 22, 1869. This picturesque view of Naples, created three months before Melville visited the city in February 1857, is a perfect visual supplement to the detailed journal entries he wrote during his one week in the city (NN Journals 101–05). It is an equally valuable supplement to the narrative poem, “An Afternoon in Naples in the Time of Bomba,” he left unpublished at his death (NN Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Uncompleted Writings 177–202). Read’s View of Naples, like Melville’s journal entries and narrative poem, gives detailed attention to the hill of Posilipo in the foreground, Vesuvius in the distance, and the steep hillside city rising from the curve the bay. The colors of Melville’s framed print have faded considerably from exposure to light, but the colors in the copy from Samuel Otter’s collection featured here—and on the MPCO site—are much closer to those of the original print because this copy has been preserved in a bound edition of the London Illustrated News from 1860, as can be seen in the fold in the middle of the two-page image, also visible in Melville’s copy of the print. Here we can see more clearly the white sails of boats sailing “hither and thither” on the bay that Melville would point out to his granddaughter Eleanor whenever they returned from a walk in the city (Eleanor Melville Metcalf, Herman Melville: Cycle and Epicycle [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953], p. 282). Photo courtesy of Samuel Otter. The MPCO site can be visited at <http://melvillesprintcollection.org or on the Digital Resources page of the Melville Society...