Herman Melville, Immortality, St. Paul, and Resurrection: FromRose-BudtoBilly Budd

Abstract

Pequod Meets the Chapter 91 of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, second mate Stubb swindles the inexperienced French captain of the Bouton-de-Rose out of blasted but extremely valuable whale carcass. The chapter opens with an epigraph from Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors: In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese the paunch of this Leviathan, fetor denying inquiry (402). the next chapter, however, Stubb does just by probing the purloined whale's bowels for ambergris, the precious substance of fine perfumes. As Stubb proceeds with his inquiry, Ishmael soliloquizes over the marvelous reversal of olfactory sensations this insufferable fetor: Now the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of saying of St. Paul Corinthians about corruption and incorruption; how we are but glory (409; 1 Cor. 15:42-43). Gordon Poole argues the name of this foul-smelling French ship was private joke between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Melville about the malodorous diapers of Hawthorne's baby daughter Rose, nicknamed Rosebud at her birth on 20 May 1851, when Melville was deep into the writing of his great sea story. On basis as well as on etymological surmises, Poole claims the encounter with the Rose-Bud gives bawdy, grossly impudent, ironic twist to St. Paul's homily (13). While Poole finds this seemingly minor and dispensable encounter sown dishonor, his scatological interpretation ignores the less urgent but infinitely more momentous end of humankind signaled by raised glory Ishmael's Pauline homily. St. Paul's preachments upon resurrection and immortality 1 Corinthians, evoked Ishmael by the spoils of the Rose-Bud, hounded Melville for lifetime, eventually suggesting late-blooming roses symbolic eschatology. Melville's early commercial success as writer of South Sea experiences whetted his appetite for literary immortality, but after Omoo he wanted to spring free of the restraints imposed by John Murray, his English publisher whose Home and Colonial Library published only works of true adventures. Melville's breakout effort at telling different kind of truth was Mardi, voyage of the mind he hoped would earn him both fame and commercial success. By the time he presented copy to his literary friend Evert Duyckinck, however, he already knew Mardi had failed, for he likened it to tropical may possibly--by some miracle, is--flower like the aloe, hundred years hence---or not at all, which is more likely by far, for some aloes never flower (Correspondence 154). Whether or not literary immortality would ever come, he refused to court transient fame based upon his experiences as a man who lived among the cannibals, as he wrote to Hawthorne (Correspondence 193). Pressed by family responsibilities and the birth of his first child, Melville after Mardi resumed writing of his salt-water experiences because dollars damned him, and quick succession he produced Redburn and Whitejacket before setting off to Europe 1849, ostensibly to get more favorable terms for future publications England. Upon returning to New York on 1 February 1850, he plunged into writing about whaling, material he had skirted his five previous books. Then, after escaping to the Berkshires summer, he discovered Hawthorne--first, as the author of Mosses from an Old Manse, about which he wrote rhapsodic review for Duyckinck's Literary World; and, second, as neighbor living but six miles away. June of 1851, when Moby-Dick was in his flurry Melville wrote Hawthorne he did not think of Fame, year ago, as I do now; [is] the most transparent of all vanities; All Fame is patronage; and he blustered, Let me be infamous; there is no patronage that (Correspondence 192-93). …