Last year I read through the complete works of Herman Melville (1819-1891), who is one of my favourite writers. I read his novels, his short stories and his poetry. Over the next few days I will give my own personal ranking of his ten novels. But today I am going to focus on his lesser known work in poetry and short prose.
Melville is adept at painting small pictures. While his novels can sometimes be tedious and encyclopedic, his shorter prose contains some of the most wondrous studies of character and suspense. Melville gets people, and his scenes pop with images that become implanted in your mind.
"Benito Cereno"(1855) is a novella about two ships that meet, but there is more there than meets the eye. You read the story never knowing fully what is going on, or where your sympathy should lie. And the unveiling of the figurehead is a scene that stays with you. "Bartleby the Scrivener"(1853) is a claustrophobic story about a man whose world gets smaller, until he is unable to leave the law office where he is employed. It is a story about being stuck. You feel sympathy for Bartleby, and yet also feel frustration along with his employer. These are the two finest examples of Melville's shorter fiction.
Melville's poetry, on the other hand, is not memorable. In fact, his prose work is more poetic than his verse. Clarel (1876), an epic poem about his journey to the holy land, has wondrous highs, but reading the poem takes its toll on the reader, as there is not enough story to justify the length. It is like a good movie that's twenty minutes too long. His volumes of shorter poetry are so uneven. His poetry on the American Civil War, Battle Pieces and aspects of war (1866), bears interest as it relates to the history of the war, but lacks in overall literary merit.
Tomorrow, #8-10 of Melville's novels.
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