The Old Man and the Triple Goddess: Melville's "The Haglets"

Abstract

The underlying significance of Melville's creative activities in the few years before his death is still obscure. And there seems little doubt that this state of affairs may be traced to our excessive preoccupation with Billy Budd. Merely to mention the novel in terms of any kind of clarification is to invite passionate but inconclusive argumentation. But one can see why this is so. Since the work is incomplete, in many places hardly more than a scenario, we can never hope for a text authoritative enough to make for a fully valid reading. Though we may deplore this unhappy circumstance, there is no need to despair in regard to a clearer understanding of this phase of Melville's career. I suggest that we ought to forget Billy Budd for the time being while we concentrate on the poetry of this period. The fact remains that the bulk of his writings in these years was poetry, all of which has been edited with at least a greater degree of certainty and accuracy than Billy Budd has been. Hence I propose to undertake the analysis of one crucial poem among many in the hope that it will awaken interest in the area where the clue to Melville's later imaginative interests lies. The poem in question is The Haglets, a work of the Billy Budd period, say 1888 and shortly before, as opposed to 18881891. It is the final revision of the much earlier The Admiral of the White. 1 This latter poem was probably written on Melville's voyage to San Francisco aboard his brother Tom's ship in 1860.2 The piece was first revised about twenty-five years later; for in 1885 it appeared in both the New York Daily Tribune and the Boston Herald,3 still under the original title. The subsequent expansion, called The Haglets, was