WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.419 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are taking 00:00:02.419 --> 00:00:05.000 on one of the great tragic ironies, not just 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.900 of American literature, but arguably of any literature, 00:00:08.060 --> 00:00:11.259 the life and career of Herman Melville. It is 00:00:11.259 --> 00:00:14.220 such a compelling story because the writer we 00:00:14.220 --> 00:00:16.899 now, you know, universally recognize as a foundational 00:00:16.899 --> 00:00:19.280 American genius, the author who gave us Captain 00:00:19.280 --> 00:00:22.440 Ahab and Moby Dick. He died always completely 00:00:22.440 --> 00:00:24.960 forgotten. The paradox is just stunning, isn't 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:27.460 it? It is. A man who poured his soul into the 00:00:27.460 --> 00:00:30.199 greatest quest narrative ever written was so 00:00:30.199 --> 00:00:33.719 obscure at his death in 1891 that his own masterpiece 00:00:33.719 --> 00:00:36.719 was famously misspelled in his obituary. As Moby 00:00:36.719 --> 00:00:39.240 Dick. Moby Dick, yes. That typo is just so brutal. 00:00:39.259 --> 00:00:41.320 It's not just an error. It's a cultural signpost. 00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:44.280 For us today, what does that single misspelled 00:00:44.280 --> 00:00:46.359 title really tell us about where he stood with 00:00:46.359 --> 00:00:49.840 his contemporaries? It tells us he had ceased 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:52.420 to matter to the popular imagination. The name 00:00:52.420 --> 00:00:55.579 Moby Dick was, at best, a vague memory of a long, 00:00:55.740 --> 00:00:58.520 confusing book that didn't sell, published 40 00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:00.960 years earlier. It was a footnote. So our mission 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:03.700 today is to trace this traumatic, really turbulent 00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:05.780 arc of his life to understand how that happened. 00:01:06.019 --> 00:01:08.659 Exactly. We're going from his... Privileged youth 00:01:08.659 --> 00:01:11.180 to his frustrating time as a misunderstood artist 00:01:11.180 --> 00:01:14.079 through, you know, decades as a customs inspector. 00:01:14.280 --> 00:01:16.480 And then finally to that extraordinary critical 00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:19.879 resurrection, the Melville revival that secured 00:01:19.879 --> 00:01:23.379 his ultimate lasting immortality. And to do this, 00:01:23.379 --> 00:01:25.879 we've synthesized a really comprehensive body 00:01:25.879 --> 00:01:28.359 of source material. It spans everything. His 00:01:28.359 --> 00:01:31.159 careers as a sailor, writer, teacher, customs 00:01:31.159 --> 00:01:34.519 inspector, his complex and often painful relationships, 00:01:34.620 --> 00:01:37.560 his unique style, and of course, the rich thematic 00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:39.959 studies that define his relevance today. We're 00:01:39.959 --> 00:01:42.060 essentially following the money and the philosophy 00:01:42.060 --> 00:01:44.879 to understand how a successful travel writer 00:01:44.879 --> 00:01:47.819 transformed into the author of such complex and 00:01:47.819 --> 00:01:50.189 challenging works that it took... Well, nearly 00:01:50.189 --> 00:01:52.269 a century for us to fully appreciate them. Okay, 00:01:52.329 --> 00:01:54.069 let's unpack this journey. And we have to start 00:01:54.069 --> 00:01:56.370 with a background that suggested he was destined 00:01:56.370 --> 00:01:59.310 for the highest echelons of society. Right. Herman 00:01:59.310 --> 00:02:02.530 Melville, or originally Herman Melville, he added 00:02:02.530 --> 00:02:04.269 that later, probably after his father's death. 00:02:04.450 --> 00:02:07.829 A bit of a rebranding, maybe? Maybe. He was born 00:02:07.829 --> 00:02:10.430 in New York City in 1819, the third of eight 00:02:10.430 --> 00:02:12.969 children. And this was not a struggling family 00:02:12.969 --> 00:02:15.150 by any stretch of the imagination. Far from it. 00:02:15.189 --> 00:02:17.909 His father, Alan Melville, was a prosperous commission 00:02:17.909 --> 00:02:20.710 merchant. He was a high -end importer of French 00:02:20.710 --> 00:02:24.069 dry goods. So Herman lived what the sources repeatedly 00:02:24.069 --> 00:02:28.530 describe as an opulent early life. We're talking 00:02:28.530 --> 00:02:30.990 about a household with, what, three or more servants? 00:02:31.229 --> 00:02:34.210 At any given time, yes. The family moved through 00:02:34.210 --> 00:02:36.469 increasingly spacious and elegant homes in New 00:02:36.469 --> 00:02:39.009 York, eventually settling right on Broadway by 00:02:39.009 --> 00:02:42.340 1828. This was the absolute peak of the early 00:02:42.340 --> 00:02:44.599 American patrician lifestyle. And it wasn't just 00:02:44.599 --> 00:02:46.759 the money either. It was the lineage. He later 00:02:46.759 --> 00:02:49.300 talked about his double revolutionary descent. 00:02:49.620 --> 00:02:51.659 Right. His grandfathers weren't just guys who 00:02:51.659 --> 00:02:53.759 were around during the war. They were certified 00:02:53.759 --> 00:02:56.280 bona fide war heroes. One was at the Boston Tea 00:02:56.280 --> 00:02:58.520 Party. Exactly. And his maternal grandfather, 00:02:58.819 --> 00:03:01.240 General Peter Gansevoort, famously commanded 00:03:01.240 --> 00:03:05.000 the defense of Fort Stanwix, a huge deal in 1777. 00:03:05.880 --> 00:03:08.080 Melville was born with this lineage that promised 00:03:08.080 --> 00:03:10.740 prestige, social capital, everything. He had 00:03:10.740 --> 00:03:13.719 it all. But history, as it so often does in Melville's 00:03:13.719 --> 00:03:17.219 own work, takes a very sharp turn. That opulent 00:03:17.219 --> 00:03:20.080 life was built on, well, incredibly shady foundations. 00:03:20.719 --> 00:03:23.599 To put it mildly, what was Alan Melville doing? 00:03:24.199 --> 00:03:27.270 He was living a facade. He was constantly extending 00:03:27.270 --> 00:03:30.150 credit, living well beyond his actual means, 00:03:30.310 --> 00:03:32.830 and borrowing heavily. From his own family, no 00:03:32.830 --> 00:03:34.870 less. From both the Melville and the Gansevoort 00:03:34.870 --> 00:03:37.789 families. The sources highlight that by 1830, 00:03:37.969 --> 00:03:40.490 this debt had just spiraled. It was over $20 00:03:40.490 --> 00:03:43.870 ,000. And to give you some context, that is equivalent 00:03:43.870 --> 00:03:46.710 to nearly $600 ,000 today. Staggering. For the 00:03:46.710 --> 00:03:49.169 early 19th century, that kind of exposure was 00:03:49.169 --> 00:03:51.729 just catastrophic. So it's more than just a failure. 00:03:51.770 --> 00:03:55.180 It's a betrayal of the promise of his life. How 00:03:55.180 --> 00:03:57.539 did that collapse shape young Herman's worldview? 00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:00.460 It was the defining tragedy. The family moved 00:04:00.460 --> 00:04:03.039 to Albany to try and stop the bleeding, but it 00:04:03.039 --> 00:04:05.259 was too late. Alan Melville's decline wasn't 00:04:05.259 --> 00:04:07.280 just financial. It was mental and medical. And 00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:09.620 Herman saw this firsthand. It seems very likely. 00:04:09.780 --> 00:04:13.400 He died in 1832, two months shy of his 50th birthday. 00:04:13.979 --> 00:04:16.439 Herman was just 12 and had already stopped attending 00:04:16.439 --> 00:04:19.240 school to help the family. Biographers are pretty 00:04:19.240 --> 00:04:21.740 certain he witnessed this distressing deterioration 00:04:21.740 --> 00:04:24.000 of his father. Witnessing the collapse of the 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.379 patriarch, the family fortune, all at once, that 00:04:27.379 --> 00:04:30.439 has to be a crucible. It was. And the fallout 00:04:30.439 --> 00:04:33.480 was immediate. Allen's death revealed he had 00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:36.139 unscrupulously borrowed way more than his share 00:04:36.139 --> 00:04:38.160 of the inheritance, leaving Herman's mother, 00:04:38.259 --> 00:04:40.720 Maria, with almost nothing. How little are we 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:42.980 talking? We're talking literally just $20 from 00:04:42.980 --> 00:04:45.220 her mother -in -law's estate. Herman's comfortable 00:04:45.220 --> 00:04:48.139 childhood just vanished. It was instantly replaced 00:04:48.139 --> 00:04:50.660 by grinding poverty and the necessity of work. 00:04:50.990 --> 00:04:53.129 And spiritually, this meant a deeper dive into 00:04:53.129 --> 00:04:55.769 his mother's faith. Precisely. Maria was committed 00:04:55.769 --> 00:04:58.069 to her family's strict Dutch Reformed version 00:04:58.069 --> 00:05:00.750 of the Calvinist creed. Biographer Newton Arvin 00:05:00.750 --> 00:05:03.350 suggests this intense experience, the sudden 00:05:03.350 --> 00:05:05.949 loss, the failure of the father, the severity 00:05:05.949 --> 00:05:08.449 of the mother. It resulted in Melville's early 00:05:08.449 --> 00:05:11.410 saturation in Orthodox Calvinism. And that fosters 00:05:11.410 --> 00:05:14.009 what Arvin called the tormented psychology of 00:05:14.009 --> 00:05:17.620 the decayed patrician. That phrase is so powerful. 00:05:17.839 --> 00:05:21.019 It's vital. It's this sense of inherited failure, 00:05:21.079 --> 00:05:23.779 the realization that the world's promises are 00:05:23.779 --> 00:05:26.459 just illusions, and this constant struggle with 00:05:26.459 --> 00:05:30.060 a god who seems arbitrary or completely absent. 00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:32.740 That alienation sticks with him for his entire 00:05:32.740 --> 00:05:35.819 life. So formal schooling is out. Where does 00:05:35.819 --> 00:05:38.620 his education continue? Well, he'd shown early 00:05:38.620 --> 00:05:41.560 promise at places like the Albany Academy. But 00:05:41.560 --> 00:05:44.459 post -collapse, he had to take manual labor jobs. 00:05:44.860 --> 00:05:46.540 He was a clerk at the New York State Bank for 00:05:46.540 --> 00:05:49.959 just $150 a year. Barely anything. He later tried 00:05:49.959 --> 00:05:52.519 some brief, unsuccessful stints in surveying 00:05:52.519 --> 00:05:54.839 and engineering. But the sources say that even 00:05:54.839 --> 00:05:57.220 with all this hardship, his intellectual growth 00:05:57.220 --> 00:05:59.300 just kept going, especially because of his brother 00:05:59.300 --> 00:06:01.959 Gansevoort. Gansevoort was crucial. He was a 00:06:01.959 --> 00:06:03.959 role model and a kind of bibliographic guide. 00:06:04.120 --> 00:06:06.519 He kept something called an index rerum. Which 00:06:06.519 --> 00:06:08.699 was like a personal reading journal? Sort of, 00:06:08.699 --> 00:06:11.839 yeah. It was a comprehensive register for indexing 00:06:11.839 --> 00:06:14.060 and retrieving key passages from books he'd read. 00:06:14.490 --> 00:06:17.490 The surviving volumes show us Herman's intellectual 00:06:17.490 --> 00:06:20.529 diet during this period. He was already deeply 00:06:20.529 --> 00:06:23.439 immersed in the classics. So what was on the 00:06:23.439 --> 00:06:26.399 menu, so to speak? What was he reading that would 00:06:26.399 --> 00:06:28.879 later become the scaffolding for his great work? 00:06:29.019 --> 00:06:30.879 It's this amazing mix. He was reading Shakespeare, 00:06:31.180 --> 00:06:34.259 Milton, history, of course. But critically, there 00:06:34.259 --> 00:06:36.779 are also notes on James Fenimore Cooper's maritime 00:06:36.779 --> 00:06:39.720 tales, descriptions of the Parsis from an East 00:06:39.720 --> 00:06:42.759 India sketchbook, and historical accounts of 00:06:42.759 --> 00:06:45.300 conflict. Like Benjamin Trumbull's history of 00:06:45.300 --> 00:06:48.180 the Pequot War. Exactly. And that is so significant. 00:06:48.649 --> 00:06:51.569 The Pequot War that was that brutal 17th century 00:06:51.569 --> 00:06:53.889 conflict between English settlers and Native 00:06:53.889 --> 00:06:56.389 Americans in New England. That has to be connected 00:06:56.389 --> 00:06:59.329 to the name of Ahab's ship. Absolutely. The name 00:06:59.329 --> 00:07:01.800 of the whale ship, the Pequot. is no accident 00:07:01.800 --> 00:07:04.079 he was reading about the destruction of an entire 00:07:04.079 --> 00:07:07.360 people during his formative years so when he 00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:09.839 finally writes his great novel he's linking the 00:07:09.839 --> 00:07:12.500 destructive doomed nature of the american quest 00:07:12.500 --> 00:07:15.839 ahab's quest to the brutal bloody history of 00:07:15.839 --> 00:07:18.160 colonization he learned about as a struggling 00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:20.870 young man The seeds of Moby Dick's depth were 00:07:20.870 --> 00:07:23.329 sown right there, long before he ever set foot 00:07:23.329 --> 00:07:26.149 on a whaler. Long before. The family struggles 00:07:26.149 --> 00:07:29.410 just kept mounting, and the panic of 1837 forced 00:07:29.410 --> 00:07:31.689 his older brother into bankruptcy. They had to 00:07:31.689 --> 00:07:34.529 move again. Land offered no stability, no wealth. 00:07:34.730 --> 00:07:38.050 So he turned to the sea. The sea was, first and 00:07:38.050 --> 00:07:40.550 foremost, a job. It was financial necessity. 00:07:41.149 --> 00:07:43.329 But for Melville, that necessity was coupled 00:07:43.329 --> 00:07:45.569 with his powerful literary inspiration. He was 00:07:45.569 --> 00:07:47.449 reading all the popular seafaring literature 00:07:47.449 --> 00:07:49.730 of the time. And two sources really stand out. 00:07:49.829 --> 00:07:52.790 First, Richard Henry Deena Jr.'s Two Years Before 00:07:52.790 --> 00:07:55.209 the Mast. That was the definitive, realistic 00:07:55.209 --> 00:07:57.790 account of the brutal life of a common sailor. 00:07:57.870 --> 00:08:00.350 It grounded the fantasy in reality. And the second. 00:08:00.410 --> 00:08:02.529 Second, and maybe more mythologically important, 00:08:02.750 --> 00:08:05.689 was Jeremiah N. Reynolds' account of the hunt 00:08:05.689 --> 00:08:08.250 for a great white sperm whale. Mocha Dick. Mocha 00:08:08.250 --> 00:08:10.750 Dick, the real -life antagonist that became the 00:08:10.750 --> 00:08:13.220 blueprint for the white whale. Reynolds' story 00:08:13.220 --> 00:08:16.519 was this wild, almost gothic tale of a massive, 00:08:16.660 --> 00:08:19.300 incredibly powerful whale that had a history 00:08:19.300 --> 00:08:22.500 of wrecking ships. It solidified the mythic potential 00:08:22.500 --> 00:08:24.759 of the subject for Melville. So you have this 00:08:24.759 --> 00:08:27.699 blend of financial desperation and mythic inspiration. 00:08:28.100 --> 00:08:31.720 And he takes his first voyage in 1839 as a boy, 00:08:31.879 --> 00:08:34.519 a green hand, on the merchant ship St. Lawrence 00:08:34.519 --> 00:08:37.700 to Liverpool. That experience ends up in Redbourne. 00:08:37.879 --> 00:08:40.070 Right. But the real apprenticeship, the one that 00:08:40.070 --> 00:08:42.809 truly shaped his greatest fiction, came in 1841. 00:08:42.909 --> 00:08:45.070 That's when he signed on to the Whaler Cushnet. 00:08:45.210 --> 00:08:48.610 A 360 -ton vessel out of New Bedford. He signed 00:08:48.610 --> 00:08:51.129 on as a completely inexperienced green hand for 00:08:51.129 --> 00:08:53.389 a shared profit structure. And his share was 00:08:53.389 --> 00:08:57.970 minuscule, 1175th of the profits. One of 175th. 00:08:57.970 --> 00:09:00.830 I mean, for that amount of brute, dangerous labor, 00:09:01.009 --> 00:09:02.929 that's almost criminal. It was backbreaking. 00:09:03.149 --> 00:09:05.629 There were deep sea hunters. Cutting in a single 00:09:05.629 --> 00:09:07.889 whale and boiling the oil took about three days. 00:09:08.070 --> 00:09:11.970 They often killed 40 whales per voyage. He was 00:09:11.970 --> 00:09:14.990 sharing a dark, cramped forecastle with 20 other 00:09:14.990 --> 00:09:17.429 men. The polar opposite of his opulent Broadway 00:09:17.429 --> 00:09:20.750 childhood. He had been thrown into the disinherited 00:09:20.750 --> 00:09:23.090 commons he would champion in his work. And it 00:09:23.090 --> 00:09:25.769 was during this grueling voyage far out in the 00:09:25.769 --> 00:09:28.789 Pacific that the narrative of Moby Dick really 00:09:28.789 --> 00:09:31.509 starts to take psychological hold. This next 00:09:31.509 --> 00:09:34.389 point is... Maybe the most pivotal biographical 00:09:34.389 --> 00:09:37.070 moment in his time at sea. The Akrishnit was 00:09:37.070 --> 00:09:38.789 in the South Pacific near the Juan Fernandez 00:09:38.789 --> 00:09:41.429 Islands, the exact spot where Robinson Crusoe 00:09:41.429 --> 00:09:43.950 was marooned. More literary resonance. And the 00:09:43.950 --> 00:09:46.889 ship gammed, or visited socially, with another 00:09:46.889 --> 00:09:49.889 whaler, the Lima. And on that ship, he met William 00:09:49.889 --> 00:09:52.690 Henry Chase. Yes, and William gave him a copy 00:09:52.690 --> 00:09:55.009 of his father Owen Chase's account of the catastrophic 00:09:55.009 --> 00:09:58.409 1820 shipwreck of the Essex. The Essex, which 00:09:58.409 --> 00:10:00.769 was famously sunk by a sperm whale. The very 00:10:00.769 --> 00:10:04.460 one. Melville later got his own copy and annotated 00:10:04.460 --> 00:10:07.580 it heavily. He wrote that reading this wondrous 00:10:07.580 --> 00:10:10.059 story upon the landless sea and close to the 00:10:10.059 --> 00:10:12.399 very latitude of the shipwreck had a surprising 00:10:12.399 --> 00:10:14.899 effect upon me. I can't even imagine reading 00:10:14.899 --> 00:10:17.620 the true account of a whale sinking a ship, knowing 00:10:17.620 --> 00:10:20.419 you're on a similar ship in the same waters pursuing 00:10:20.419 --> 00:10:23.059 the same creature. It authenticates the terror 00:10:23.059 --> 00:10:25.600 of the quest. It turns the mythic Mocha Dick 00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:28.909 into a fatal reality. The Essex account provided 00:10:28.909 --> 00:10:31.490 the verifiable, factual framework, while the 00:10:31.490 --> 00:10:33.610 Mokedick Tales provided the psychological one. 00:10:33.730 --> 00:10:35.309 It was the perfect storm of source material. 00:10:35.629 --> 00:10:38.269 But his actual voyage on the Akushnet ended pretty 00:10:38.269 --> 00:10:40.330 abruptly. The conditions were just too much. 00:10:40.490 --> 00:10:43.690 In the summer of 1842, in the Marquesas Islands, 00:10:44.090 --> 00:10:46.350 Melville and his shipmate, Richard Tobias Green 00:10:46.350 --> 00:10:49.139 Tobey, They jumped ship. They chose the jungle 00:10:49.139 --> 00:10:51.500 over the forecastle, and his stay there in the 00:10:51.500 --> 00:10:54.120 Taipi Valley formed the basis for Taipi. Yes, 00:10:54.159 --> 00:10:57.559 in 1846, he lived among a tribe the whalers called 00:10:57.559 --> 00:11:00.340 cannibals, though his account, which was a pretty 00:11:00.340 --> 00:11:02.779 romanticized version of his experiences, described 00:11:02.779 --> 00:11:05.379 them as idyllic and sexually uninhibited compared 00:11:05.379 --> 00:11:07.899 to the West. But he didn't stay in that idyllic 00:11:07.899 --> 00:11:09.600 setting for long. He kind of bounced around the 00:11:09.600 --> 00:11:11.740 South Pacific. He became a true beachcomber. 00:11:12.100 --> 00:11:15.159 After escaping the Taipi Valley, He briefly took 00:11:15.159 --> 00:11:18.139 part in a mutiny on an Australian whaler, which 00:11:18.139 --> 00:11:20.679 landed him in jail in Tahiti. He called it the 00:11:20.679 --> 00:11:23.659 Calabusa Baratunay. The British jail. And then 00:11:23.659 --> 00:11:26.200 he spent about a month as an Oumu, or island 00:11:26.200 --> 00:11:29.889 rover, on Moria, working odd jobs. That became 00:11:29.889 --> 00:11:32.870 the basis for his successful sequel, Oumu. And 00:11:32.870 --> 00:11:35.769 he finally gets home in 1844 after joining the 00:11:35.769 --> 00:11:38.250 U .S. Navy for a year on the frigate USS United 00:11:38.250 --> 00:11:41.830 States. And that experience, with its rigid hierarchy, 00:11:42.129 --> 00:11:44.990 informs his book White Jacket. Right. Those five 00:11:44.990 --> 00:11:48.850 years at sea, from 1839 to 1844, they fundamentally 00:11:48.850 --> 00:11:52.029 reshaped him. Scholar Robert Milder summarizes 00:11:52.029 --> 00:11:54.330 it perfectly. They generated a settled hatred 00:11:54.330 --> 00:11:57.210 of external authority and a metaphysical estrangement. 00:11:57.549 --> 00:11:59.750 That phrase, metaphysical estrangement, is so 00:11:59.750 --> 00:12:02.049 powerful. What does it mean for a sailor? It 00:12:02.049 --> 00:12:04.669 means the ocean, in its vastness and indifference, 00:12:04.870 --> 00:12:07.629 had just shattered his inherited Calvinism. He 00:12:07.629 --> 00:12:10.669 felt seemingly abandoned by God. And, crucially, 00:12:10.830 --> 00:12:13.990 the exposure to Polynesian cultures, the Oumu 00:12:13.990 --> 00:12:16.690 lifestyle, it allowed him to see Western culture, 00:12:16.830 --> 00:12:19.809 that same genteel background he lost from a complete 00:12:19.809 --> 00:12:22.509 outsider's perspective. He starts to sympathize 00:12:22.509 --> 00:12:25.509 with the common man, the rebel. Deeply. And that 00:12:25.509 --> 00:12:27.710 informs the radical politics of his later works. 00:12:27.889 --> 00:12:30.870 So Melville gets back to Boston in 1844 with 00:12:30.870 --> 00:12:33.149 this unbelievable material. Family and friends 00:12:33.149 --> 00:12:35.629 push him to write, and his initial success is 00:12:35.629 --> 00:12:38.789 just immediate and astonishing. A meteoric rise. 00:12:39.129 --> 00:12:41.429 It would be hard for any modern celebrity author 00:12:41.429 --> 00:12:44.950 to replicate. Typee in 1846 was an overnight 00:12:44.950 --> 00:12:47.139 bestseller in London and New York. And it was 00:12:47.139 --> 00:12:49.580 the perfect literary cocktail for the time. It 00:12:49.580 --> 00:12:52.700 was. Adventure, ethnography, and this slightly 00:12:52.700 --> 00:12:55.860 shocking but still chaste South Sea Idol. Even 00:12:55.860 --> 00:12:57.820 Nathaniel Hawthorne reviewed it, praising his 00:12:57.820 --> 00:13:00.000 freedom of view. So he's lauded, he's financially 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:01.759 solvent for the first time, he's celebrated, 00:13:01.919 --> 00:13:03.919 but he immediately starts to chafe at this success. 00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:07.720 Why? Because Melville was ambitious. He quickly 00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:10.740 realized the market wanted the exotic tale, not 00:13:10.740 --> 00:13:12.740 the philosophical depth he knew he possessed. 00:13:13.320 --> 00:13:16.580 He worried he would go down to posterity. as 00:13:16.580 --> 00:13:19.039 a man who lived among the cannibals. A legitimate 00:13:19.039 --> 00:13:22.659 fear. But he wrote the sequel, Omu, in 1847, 00:13:22.879 --> 00:13:25.500 which cemented his reputation and gave him the 00:13:25.500 --> 00:13:28.480 security to marry Elizabeth Lizzie Knapp Shaw 00:13:28.480 --> 00:13:31.740 that year. And that marriage was a huge stabilizing 00:13:31.740 --> 00:13:34.559 force, largely because of her family. Yes. Her 00:13:34.559 --> 00:13:37.059 father, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of Massachusetts, 00:13:37.460 --> 00:13:39.860 became this consistent source of financial and 00:13:39.860 --> 00:13:42.700 emotional support. He was the one who lent Melville 00:13:42.700 --> 00:13:46.330 the $3 ,000 to buy Arrowhead Farm later on. And 00:13:46.330 --> 00:13:49.330 Lizzie herself was incredibly loyal. Immensely. 00:13:49.330 --> 00:13:52.309 She intended to shield Melville from unpleasantness, 00:13:52.389 --> 00:13:54.470 which became a more and more necessary role as 00:13:54.470 --> 00:13:56.610 his career took its disastrous turn. And that 00:13:56.610 --> 00:13:58.830 disastrous turn began almost immediately with 00:13:58.830 --> 00:14:01.710 his growing ambition. With Marty in 1849, he 00:14:01.710 --> 00:14:04.009 tried to move beyond what he knew. Right. You 00:14:04.009 --> 00:14:06.610 wanted to write a romance, a quest, an allegory. 00:14:06.669 --> 00:14:09.169 This was his first non -autobiographical work. 00:14:09.330 --> 00:14:11.090 And commercially, it was a complete disaster. 00:14:11.629 --> 00:14:13.289 The audience wanted island adventure. They got 00:14:13.289 --> 00:14:15.649 dense philosophy. Exactly. He was grappling with 00:14:15.649 --> 00:14:18.789 governance, faith, knowledge. The public was 00:14:18.789 --> 00:14:22.110 bewildered. Sales plummeted. But a few critics, 00:14:22.210 --> 00:14:25.570 including Hawthorne, recognized its depths. His 00:14:25.570 --> 00:14:27.649 mind was already leaping far ahead of his audience. 00:14:27.990 --> 00:14:30.269 But the stage for his masterpiece was really 00:14:30.269 --> 00:14:32.769 set in 1850. He'd already started what he called 00:14:32.769 --> 00:14:36.350 his whaling romance. Right. In May 1850, he told 00:14:36.350 --> 00:14:38.850 an author he was halfway in the work. But that 00:14:38.850 --> 00:14:41.409 book was about to be radically transformed by 00:14:41.409 --> 00:14:44.370 external influence, internal conviction, and 00:14:44.370 --> 00:14:47.049 a change of scenery. Let's talk about the scenery 00:14:47.049 --> 00:14:49.149 first. He moved to the Berkshires. September 00:14:49.149 --> 00:14:52.370 1850, thanks to Judge Shaw's loan, he bought 00:14:52.370 --> 00:14:55.330 the 160 -acre Arrowhead Farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. 00:14:55.889 --> 00:14:58.450 He set up his writing desk facing Mount Greylock. 00:14:58.669 --> 00:15:01.529 He was aiming for stability, but the intellectual 00:15:01.529 --> 00:15:04.129 environment he found there was anything but calm. 00:15:04.440 --> 00:15:06.879 Because of that pivotal meeting in August with 00:15:06.879 --> 00:15:09.340 Nathaniel Hawthorne. They met at a literary gathering. 00:15:09.779 --> 00:15:11.919 Sources say they took shelter from a rainstorm 00:15:11.919 --> 00:15:14.720 and had this deep, private conversation. They 00:15:14.720 --> 00:15:17.639 immediately recognized a profound kinship. An 00:15:17.639 --> 00:15:19.919 intense, passionate friendship that just fueled 00:15:19.919 --> 00:15:22.240 Melville's transformation. Immediately after 00:15:22.240 --> 00:15:25.240 this, he dove into Hawthorne's work and penned 00:15:25.240 --> 00:15:27.850 that famous essay. Hawthorne and His Mosses. 00:15:27.870 --> 00:15:31.190 And that essay is just a document of frenzied 00:15:31.190 --> 00:15:34.009 admiration. It's electric. It is. He repeatedly 00:15:34.009 --> 00:15:36.929 compared Hawthorne to Shakespeare. He spoke of 00:15:36.929 --> 00:15:39.549 Hawthorne dropping Germanist seeds into my soul. 00:15:40.420 --> 00:15:42.840 Critics have often interpreted the essay as revealing 00:15:42.840 --> 00:15:45.799 this intense, intellectual, maybe even a suppressed 00:15:45.799 --> 00:15:48.820 emotional or sexual excitement. He recognized 00:15:48.820 --> 00:15:51.759 a fellow explorer of the dark truths. He did. 00:15:51.919 --> 00:15:54.179 And the final catalytic agent, the thing that 00:15:54.179 --> 00:15:56.200 allowed him to rewrite half a book into a legend, 00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:59.240 was Shakespeare himself. He'd acquired a large 00:15:59.240 --> 00:16:01.980 font edition of Shakespeare in 1849. And the 00:16:01.980 --> 00:16:04.360 language, the complexity, the dramatic structure 00:16:04.360 --> 00:16:06.940 of the plays, combined with that jolt from Hawthorne, 00:16:07.039 --> 00:16:14.570 it inspired Melville to discover his That transformation 00:16:14.570 --> 00:16:17.309 was monumental. The book that was halfway finished 00:16:17.309 --> 00:16:20.450 ballooned into Moby Dick or The Whale. It took 00:16:20.450 --> 00:16:22.529 him nearly a year and a half of obsessed writing. 00:16:22.610 --> 00:16:24.850 He dedicated it to Hawthorne. But here is the 00:16:24.850 --> 00:16:27.990 genuine tragedy of this arc. The publication 00:16:27.990 --> 00:16:31.889 in late 1851 led to commercial disaster. It just 00:16:31.889 --> 00:16:34.610 did not find an audience. It was too much. The 00:16:34.610 --> 00:16:36.730 philosophical density, the technical whaling 00:16:36.730 --> 00:16:40.129 data, the Shakespearean tragedy, it alienated 00:16:40.129 --> 00:16:41.909 the reading public who still thought of him as 00:16:41.909 --> 00:16:44.690 the type E guy. And he doubled down. The next 00:16:44.690 --> 00:16:49.629 year, 1852, he published Pierre, or The Ambiguities, 00:16:49.750 --> 00:16:52.809 a heavily psychological novel exploring incestuous 00:16:52.809 --> 00:16:55.750 desire, conflicting motives, the decay of his 00:16:55.750 --> 00:16:58.629 own patrician class. It was a devastating artistic 00:16:58.629 --> 00:17:01.309 response to his own life trauma. And the reaction 00:17:01.309 --> 00:17:04.299 was just... Vicious. Immediate and vicious. The 00:17:04.299 --> 00:17:07.480 literary world felt betrayed. A New York paper 00:17:07.480 --> 00:17:09.700 published an attack headline, Herman Melville 00:17:09.700 --> 00:17:12.339 Crazy, suggesting he needed to be institutionalized. 00:17:12.420 --> 00:17:13.859 Imagine reading that headline about yourself. 00:17:14.039 --> 00:17:16.240 It crushed him. It compounded his already serious 00:17:16.240 --> 00:17:18.660 financial struggles. He lost the manuscript for 00:17:18.660 --> 00:17:21.039 another novel, Isle of the Cross, possibly because 00:17:21.039 --> 00:17:23.019 he was too destitute to retrieve it. He had to 00:17:23.019 --> 00:17:25.240 retreat from the novel form entirely. He started 00:17:25.240 --> 00:17:27.839 writing short fiction for magazines to make money, 00:17:27.920 --> 00:17:31.210 which ironically gave us masterpieces like Bartleby 00:17:31.210 --> 00:17:34.769 the Scrivener and Benito Sereno. But the personal 00:17:34.769 --> 00:17:37.630 toll was immense. His father -in -law, Judge 00:17:37.630 --> 00:17:40.690 Shaw, was deeply concerned about his severe nervous 00:17:40.690 --> 00:17:44.470 affections caused by overwork and scorn. Shaw 00:17:44.470 --> 00:17:46.549 advanced him money for a grand tour of Europe 00:17:46.549 --> 00:17:48.769 and the Holy Land. And during that tour, he met 00:17:48.769 --> 00:17:51.470 Hawthorne again in Liverpool. And Hawthorne recorded 00:17:51.470 --> 00:17:53.869 this heartbreaking observation in his journal. 00:17:54.089 --> 00:17:56.609 He wrote that Melville was deeply troubled, having 00:17:56.609 --> 00:17:58.789 pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated. 00:17:59.200 --> 00:18:01.440 The man who chased the absolute in the form of 00:18:01.440 --> 00:18:03.839 the white whale was now wrestling with ultimate 00:18:03.839 --> 00:18:07.019 despair. The quest had failed him. Or the world 00:18:07.019 --> 00:18:09.099 had failed to understand the quest. Perhaps. 00:18:09.299 --> 00:18:12.019 His last full -length prose work in this period, 00:18:12.220 --> 00:18:16.319 The Confidence Man in 1857, was a bizarre satirical 00:18:16.319 --> 00:18:19.019 novel that was met with bewildered reviews. It 00:18:19.019 --> 00:18:21.460 sealed his commercial fate and ended his career 00:18:21.460 --> 00:18:23.849 as a professional novelist. After The Confidence 00:18:23.849 --> 00:18:25.869 Man, he essentially gives up on writing prose 00:18:25.869 --> 00:18:28.349 for contemporary audience. He needed to make 00:18:28.349 --> 00:18:30.230 a living. Right, and the idea of becoming a public 00:18:30.230 --> 00:18:32.970 lecturer seemed plausible, given his initial 00:18:32.970 --> 00:18:35.609 fame. He tried the lecture circuit from 1857 00:18:35.609 --> 00:18:38.710 to 1860. What did he lecture on, and how did 00:18:38.710 --> 00:18:41.490 that go? He mostly lectured on Roman statuary 00:18:41.490 --> 00:18:44.450 and sightseeing in Rome. But he was too intellectual 00:18:44.450 --> 00:18:47.009 for the Lyceum culture, which expected light 00:18:47.009 --> 00:18:49.809 entertainment. His efforts were panned, and the 00:18:49.809 --> 00:18:52.500 financial returns were negligible. So he retreats 00:18:52.500 --> 00:18:54.839 into obscurity and makes a profound creative 00:18:54.839 --> 00:18:57.420 shift. He turns almost exclusively to poetry. 00:18:57.660 --> 00:19:00.099 It seems to be a combination of things. Prose 00:19:00.099 --> 00:19:03.019 had failed him, and poetry allowed him the concision 00:19:03.019 --> 00:19:05.759 and philosophical depth he craved without commercial 00:19:05.759 --> 00:19:09.019 pressure. His first major poetic subject was 00:19:09.019 --> 00:19:11.420 the Civil War. That resulted in battle pieces 00:19:11.420 --> 00:19:14.839 and aspects of the war in 1866. The sources call 00:19:14.839 --> 00:19:18.200 that collection of 72 poems a polyphonic verse 00:19:18.200 --> 00:19:20.880 journal of the conflict. What does that mean 00:19:20.880 --> 00:19:22.940 for you as a reader? Polyphonic means it has 00:19:22.940 --> 00:19:25.980 many voices. He uses perspectives from commanders, 00:19:26.200 --> 00:19:29.059 common soldiers, people watching from home. Stylistically, 00:19:29.140 --> 00:19:32.339 he chose to be concise, spare, almost journalistic. 00:19:32.519 --> 00:19:35.579 It's a surprisingly deep exploration of the moral 00:19:35.579 --> 00:19:37.779 and political complexities of the war. Maybe 00:19:37.779 --> 00:19:39.940 the greatest literary work about the conflict 00:19:39.940 --> 00:19:43.420 by a contemporary writer. Arguably, yes. And 00:19:43.420 --> 00:19:45.640 commercially. A predictable failure. It sold 00:19:45.640 --> 00:19:49.380 only 551 copies. The public just wasn't interested. 00:19:50.029 --> 00:19:53.269 To survive, he desperately needed stable employment. 00:19:53.490 --> 00:19:55.349 And that leads to one of the most incredible 00:19:55.349 --> 00:19:58.609 details of his life, the customs inspector job. 00:19:58.829 --> 00:20:02.390 In 1866, Herman Melville became a United States 00:20:02.390 --> 00:20:05.970 customs inspector in New York City. This is the 00:20:05.970 --> 00:20:08.769 ultimate irony. The writer of the world's most 00:20:08.769 --> 00:20:11.630 profound philosophical quest. The former celebrity 00:20:11.630 --> 00:20:14.670 traveler now spent 19 years checking manifests 00:20:14.670 --> 00:20:16.970 and weighing cargo on the docks of New York. 00:20:17.069 --> 00:20:20.089 In a notoriously corrupt institution. An era 00:20:20.089 --> 00:20:23.009 of intense political corruption. But Melville 00:20:23.009 --> 00:20:25.589 was famous for his honesty. And here's the truly 00:20:25.589 --> 00:20:28.430 extraordinary twist. His position was sometimes 00:20:28.430 --> 00:20:30.609 protected by a man who admired his writing future 00:20:30.609 --> 00:20:32.970 president, Chester A. Arthur. Wait, Chester A. 00:20:33.009 --> 00:20:35.309 Arthur, a customs official at the time, was protecting 00:20:35.309 --> 00:20:38.089 Herman Melville? Yes. Arthur admired Melville's 00:20:38.089 --> 00:20:40.369 writing, recognized his talent, and would pull 00:20:40.369 --> 00:20:42.390 strings to ensure the poet kept his job during 00:20:42.390 --> 00:20:44.990 bureaucratic purges. But the sources say Arthur 00:20:44.990 --> 00:20:47.309 and Melville never actually spoke. That's incredible. 00:20:47.529 --> 00:20:50.069 It just underscores his complete isolation. And 00:20:50.069 --> 00:20:51.650 his personal life during this period was just 00:20:51.650 --> 00:20:54.329 harrowing. He struggled with nervous exhaustion, 00:20:54.569 --> 00:20:58.009 frustration. There are painful suggestions that 00:20:58.009 --> 00:21:00.289 he behaved like the tyrannical captains he had 00:21:00.289 --> 00:21:02.869 portrayed in his novels, possibly even beating 00:21:02.869 --> 00:21:07.130 Lizzie when drinking. In 1867, his eldest son, 00:21:07.269 --> 00:21:09.789 Malcolm, died from a self -inflicted gunshot 00:21:09.789 --> 00:21:12.930 wound. The intent remains unclear. After that, 00:21:13.109 --> 00:21:14.910 Lissy's family tried to get her to leave him 00:21:14.910 --> 00:21:17.009 and have him institutionalized. But she refused. 00:21:17.410 --> 00:21:20.289 She refused, showing this profound, if deeply 00:21:20.289 --> 00:21:23.589 complicated, loyalty. And then in 1886, his other 00:21:23.589 --> 00:21:26.869 son, Stanwix, died of tuberculosis at 36. Despite 00:21:26.869 --> 00:21:29.369 all this grief and the grueling work, his creative 00:21:29.369 --> 00:21:32.650 dedication never stopped. He spent years on his 00:21:32.650 --> 00:21:35.309 autumnal masterpiece, the epic poem Chlorelle. 00:21:35.509 --> 00:21:37.849 This work is monumentally ambitious. It's about 00:21:37.849 --> 00:21:39.750 a theological student's journey in Jerusalem, 00:21:39.970 --> 00:21:42.500 exploring faith, doubt, the collapse of belief. 00:21:42.680 --> 00:21:45.460 At 18 ,000 lines, it's among the longest single 00:21:45.460 --> 00:21:47.819 poems in American literature. Comparable to the 00:21:47.819 --> 00:21:51.319 Iliad or Odyssey. In length, yes. He poured himself 00:21:51.319 --> 00:21:53.259 into it for years, even funding the publication 00:21:53.259 --> 00:21:55.660 himself with an inheritance. Did it fare any 00:21:55.660 --> 00:21:58.460 better? No. The commercial outcome was crushing 00:21:58.460 --> 00:22:01.819 silence. Sales failed miserably. Most of the 00:22:01.819 --> 00:22:03.940 unsold copies were eventually burned by the publisher. 00:22:04.299 --> 00:22:06.700 There's a famous story that a scholar later found 00:22:06.700 --> 00:22:08.720 an unread copy in the New York Public Library. 00:22:09.150 --> 00:22:11.369 But the page is still uncut. Wow. No one had 00:22:11.369 --> 00:22:13.650 even bothered to break the seal. That just perfectly 00:22:13.650 --> 00:22:16.450 encapsulates his late career. But he kept writing, 00:22:16.549 --> 00:22:20.130 even in retirement. He retired in 1885 thanks 00:22:20.130 --> 00:22:22.829 to financial support from relatives. In his final 00:22:22.829 --> 00:22:24.869 years, he published two modest collections of 00:22:24.869 --> 00:22:27.109 poetry privately, just for friends and family, 00:22:27.309 --> 00:22:30.170 John Marr and Timoleon. He was writing purely 00:22:30.170 --> 00:22:32.710 for posterity, having completely given up on 00:22:32.710 --> 00:22:34.609 the public. Herman Melville died on September 00:22:34.609 --> 00:22:38.390 28, 1891, the cause listed as cardiac dilation. 00:22:38.589 --> 00:22:41.170 And in his entire lifetime, his writing career 00:22:41.170 --> 00:22:44.329 earned him just over $10 ,000. Which is a stunning 00:22:44.329 --> 00:22:46.710 measure of how far his financial reality was 00:22:46.710 --> 00:22:49.859 from his artistic genius. And this brings us 00:22:49.859 --> 00:22:52.119 back to the paradox we started with. He died 00:22:52.119 --> 00:22:56.200 unappreciated. But he left behind several unpublished 00:22:56.200 --> 00:23:00.059 works, including, critically, an unfinished novella 00:23:00.059 --> 00:23:01.599 that would ultimately secure his reputation. 00:23:02.299 --> 00:23:05.400 Billy Budd, Sailor. And where exactly was this 00:23:05.400 --> 00:23:08.660 foundational text found? It was found in disarray, 00:23:08.660 --> 00:23:11.000 tucked away in a family breadbox at Arrowhead. 00:23:11.539 --> 00:23:13.519 Lizzie struggled to decipher his handwriting. 00:23:13.819 --> 00:23:16.029 He'd been revising it until the end. And she 00:23:16.029 --> 00:23:17.950 abandoned any attempts to edit it. And it just 00:23:17.950 --> 00:23:20.309 sat there for nearly three decades, until the 00:23:20.309 --> 00:23:23.309 centennial of his birth in 1919. That's when 00:23:23.309 --> 00:23:25.930 Raymond Weaver, a young scholar, found the manuscript, 00:23:26.150 --> 00:23:28.769 transcribed it, and finally published it in 1924. 00:23:29.230 --> 00:23:31.609 The publication of Billy Budd was an immediate 00:23:31.609 --> 00:23:34.230 critical success. It served as the launchpad 00:23:34.230 --> 00:23:36.809 for the Melville Revival. The Melville Revival 00:23:36.809 --> 00:23:38.789 is this defining moment in American literary 00:23:38.789 --> 00:23:42.359 history. It began around 1919 and just dramatically 00:23:42.359 --> 00:23:45.059 reassessed his entire body of work, realizing 00:23:45.059 --> 00:23:46.859 the depth that had been missed, particularly 00:23:46.859 --> 00:23:49.880 in Moby Dick. The irony is that the world finally 00:23:49.880 --> 00:23:53.039 caught up to the complex modern themes Melville 00:23:53.039 --> 00:23:56.039 was writing about 70 years earlier. Let's dive 00:23:56.039 --> 00:23:58.380 into what the critics found so compelling, starting 00:23:58.380 --> 00:24:00.660 with his groundbreaking style. He wasn't just 00:24:00.660 --> 00:24:03.700 writing stories. He was reshaping narrative structure 00:24:03.700 --> 00:24:06.539 itself, especially with chapter length. He was 00:24:06.539 --> 00:24:09.220 a master stylist. In his early works, he used 00:24:09.220 --> 00:24:11.920 short chapters for documentary adventure. But 00:24:11.920 --> 00:24:13.980 with Red Mints and White Jacket, he refined this 00:24:13.980 --> 00:24:16.559 into a concentrated narrative, using chapters 00:24:16.559 --> 00:24:19.079 to pause for philosophical reflection. And Moby 00:24:19.079 --> 00:24:20.980 Dick is the perfect example of this. You have 00:24:20.980 --> 00:24:23.519 these short, punchy chapters next to massive 00:24:23.519 --> 00:24:26.339 philosophical treatises. Exactly. Some chapters 00:24:26.339 --> 00:24:29.309 are only two pages long, creating tension. Then 00:24:29.309 --> 00:24:31.410 you have the extreme example of chapter 122, 00:24:31.569 --> 00:24:34.329 Midnight Aloft, which is a single paragraph of 00:24:34.329 --> 00:24:37.289 36 words. It's narrative poetry disguised as 00:24:37.289 --> 00:24:39.789 prose. And this compression only intensified 00:24:39.789 --> 00:24:42.470 later in his life? Yes. In The Confidence Man 00:24:42.470 --> 00:24:45.089 and Billy Budd, his paragraphs got shorter as 00:24:45.089 --> 00:24:47.490 his sentences got longer, leading to what critics 00:24:47.490 --> 00:24:50.509 call one -sentence paragraphing. It gives those 00:24:50.509 --> 00:24:52.750 final pieces a remarkable narrative economy. 00:24:53.210 --> 00:24:55.210 Let's talk about the engine behind the style, 00:24:55.430 --> 00:24:58.420 Shakespeare. As we mentioned, getting that Shakespeare 00:24:58.420 --> 00:25:01.160 edition in 1849 was the catalyst for Moby Dick. 00:25:01.720 --> 00:25:04.000 Critics find deaths to Shakespeare on almost 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:06.839 every page. Ahab's first extended speech, for 00:25:06.839 --> 00:25:09.500 instance, is practically in blank verse. So how 00:25:09.500 --> 00:25:11.859 did Shakespeare affect the nuts and bolts of 00:25:11.859 --> 00:25:14.900 his language? Critics point to three key techniques. 00:25:15.529 --> 00:25:19.170 First, incredibly powerful, vivid verbs of action. 00:25:19.490 --> 00:25:22.410 Second, the energy of verbal compounds, like 00:25:22.410 --> 00:25:25.009 hyphenated descriptions. Full -freighted, sun 00:25:25.009 --> 00:25:27.789 -smitten. It packs descriptive power into a single 00:25:27.789 --> 00:25:30.190 modifier? It does. And the third technique is 00:25:30.190 --> 00:25:32.819 the most innovative. Using one part of speech 00:25:32.819 --> 00:25:35.019 as another. Like using a noun like earthquake 00:25:35.019 --> 00:25:37.819 as an adjective. Exactly. Earthquake power. Or 00:25:37.819 --> 00:25:39.940 turning an adjective into a noun, like referring 00:25:39.940 --> 00:25:42.579 to the deep ocean as the placeless. It allows 00:25:42.579 --> 00:25:44.819 him to stretch the boundaries of grammar, making 00:25:44.819 --> 00:25:47.259 the language feel raw and primal. And alongside 00:25:47.259 --> 00:25:49.700 Shakespeare, you have the enduring rhythm and 00:25:49.700 --> 00:25:52.299 moral weight of the King James Bible. The biblical 00:25:52.299 --> 00:25:54.779 influence is profound, mostly through rhythm 00:25:54.779 --> 00:25:57.869 and simplicity. He was a master of biblical idiom, 00:25:57.869 --> 00:26:00.650 using direct phrases, proverbs, and linguistic 00:26:00.650 --> 00:26:03.150 structures called Hebraisms. Can you give us 00:26:03.150 --> 00:26:05.329 an example of how a Hebraism shapes the tone? 00:26:05.589 --> 00:26:09.329 Sure. A simple one is I Dreamed a Dream. But 00:26:09.329 --> 00:26:12.190 Melville uses it to create a feeling of vastness. 00:26:12.369 --> 00:26:15.529 For example, a succession of genitives like all 00:26:15.529 --> 00:26:18.349 the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous 00:26:18.349 --> 00:26:21.829 mob creates this sweeping, overwhelming rhythm. 00:26:22.009 --> 00:26:25.150 It mirrors the power of nature. Precisely. This 00:26:25.150 --> 00:26:27.769 linguistic texture makes his prose feel ancient, 00:26:27.990 --> 00:26:30.950 timeless, and vast. It gives his narratives an 00:26:30.950 --> 00:26:33.890 immediate moral authority. Beyond this technical 00:26:33.890 --> 00:26:36.869 mastery, the Melville revival dove into his thematic 00:26:36.869 --> 00:26:39.829 content, revealing a modernity his contemporaries 00:26:39.829 --> 00:26:42.490 just missed, especially on sexuality and gender. 00:26:42.690 --> 00:26:45.190 Melville was remarkably open in his exploration 00:26:45.190 --> 00:26:47.769 of sexuality, which has led to a lot of analysis 00:26:47.769 --> 00:26:50.609 in gay and queer literature studies. The homosocial 00:26:50.609 --> 00:26:53.210 world of the sea, a world entirely without women, 00:26:53.329 --> 00:26:55.369 was the perfect setting. And what are the classic 00:26:55.369 --> 00:26:57.900 examples scholars focus on? Well, for Movie Dick, 00:26:58.019 --> 00:27:00.460 you have the famous marriage bed episode with 00:27:00.460 --> 00:27:02.779 Ishmael and Queequeg sharing intimate space. 00:27:03.099 --> 00:27:06.140 Ishmael calls them a cozy, loving pair. There's 00:27:06.140 --> 00:27:09.039 also the squeeze of the hand, where Ishmael feels 00:27:09.039 --> 00:27:11.400 this profound kinship with the other sailors 00:27:11.400 --> 00:27:14.480 while squeezing spermaceti. A moment of shared 00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:16.839 affection that transcends traditional romantic 00:27:16.839 --> 00:27:19.759 structures. Yes. And this openness continues 00:27:19.759 --> 00:27:22.819 in his later work, like Claral. The poem considers 00:27:22.819 --> 00:27:27.240 every form of sexual orientation, celibacy. homosexuality, 00:27:27.259 --> 00:27:30.420 hedonism, and heterosexuality. It's a complete 00:27:30.420 --> 00:27:33.980 survey of human love. Even Billy Budd is described 00:27:33.980 --> 00:27:36.660 in these ambiguous terms. As the handsome sailor, 00:27:36.660 --> 00:27:39.859 yes. A kind of ideal physical beauty that transcends 00:27:39.859 --> 00:27:42.380 conventional gender. He also tackled the oppression 00:27:42.380 --> 00:27:44.799 of women directly in the short story Diptish, 00:27:44.920 --> 00:27:47.079 The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of 00:27:47.079 --> 00:27:49.539 Maids. That pairing is one of his most politically 00:27:49.539 --> 00:27:52.039 trenchant works. The Paradise of Bachelors is 00:27:52.039 --> 00:27:54.500 about the sterile, isolated world of London's 00:27:54.500 --> 00:27:57.220 legal bachelors. It's a male retreat from messy 00:27:57.220 --> 00:27:59.900 domestic life. And the contrasting piece, The 00:27:59.900 --> 00:28:02.160 Tartarus of Maids, is this visceral depiction 00:28:02.160 --> 00:28:05.039 of factory work. And it's analyzed for exploring 00:28:05.039 --> 00:28:07.480 the oppression of women's physical and reproductive 00:28:07.480 --> 00:28:10.789 labor at the same time. The women are exploited 00:28:10.789 --> 00:28:13.529 as both factory labor and as reproductive organs, 00:28:13.789 --> 00:28:17.269 trapped in a system of unending, meaningless 00:28:17.269 --> 00:28:20.250 production. Finally, his work has been invaluable 00:28:20.250 --> 00:28:22.690 in the field of law and literature because he's 00:28:22.690 --> 00:28:25.309 always challenging external authority. He was 00:28:25.309 --> 00:28:27.269 obsessed with the tension between human morality 00:28:27.269 --> 00:28:31.109 and codified law. The Moby -Bick chapter, Fast 00:28:31.109 --> 00:28:33.829 Fish and Loose Fish, is a perfect example, challenging 00:28:33.829 --> 00:28:36.130 property rights. But the ultimate legal puzzle 00:28:36.130 --> 00:28:39.420 is in his final work, Billy Budd. Absolutely. 00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:41.900 The novella explores Captain Veer's decision. 00:28:42.160 --> 00:28:44.519 Veer convenes a court -martial and sentences 00:28:44.519 --> 00:28:47.039 the innocent Billy Budd to death for accidentally 00:28:47.039 --> 00:28:50.039 killing the malicious Claggart. He chooses adherence 00:28:50.039 --> 00:28:52.619 to wartime law over his own moral heart. And 00:28:52.619 --> 00:28:54.700 that choice is the ultimate Melvillian legal 00:28:54.700 --> 00:28:57.440 puzzle. It sparks endless debate over whether 00:28:57.440 --> 00:28:59.460 Veer was a manipulator of the law to maintain 00:28:59.460 --> 00:29:02.359 order or just took the only tragic legal path 00:29:02.359 --> 00:29:04.839 available. That ambiguity is why we still discuss 00:29:04.839 --> 00:29:07.119 it. It's clear his genius has been fully recognized. 00:29:07.799 --> 00:29:11.019 Affirmed in some very fitting ways. Indeed. The 00:29:11.019 --> 00:29:13.980 ultimate vindication came in 2010 when an extinct 00:29:13.980 --> 00:29:17.200 species of sperm whale, a massive fossilized 00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:20.440 predator, was named Liviatin melvillei in his 00:29:20.440 --> 00:29:23.759 honor. Wow. Two centuries after his birth, the 00:29:23.759 --> 00:29:25.680 concept of the white whale remains so potent 00:29:25.680 --> 00:29:28.859 that it dictates the naming of genuine fossilized 00:29:28.859 --> 00:29:32.200 sea monsters. It's a powerful, posthumous triumph 00:29:32.200 --> 00:29:35.410 over obscurity and that Moby Dick typo. So looking 00:29:35.410 --> 00:29:37.369 back at his turbulent life, the journey is just 00:29:37.369 --> 00:29:39.970 so stark. The man who launched his career as 00:29:39.970 --> 00:29:42.250 a celebrated travel writer died known only to 00:29:42.250 --> 00:29:44.910 a small circle, having dedicated his last decades 00:29:44.910 --> 00:29:47.410 to philosophical poetry that few bothered to 00:29:47.410 --> 00:29:50.470 read. But that essential shift from popular chronicler 00:29:50.470 --> 00:29:53.230 to profound philosophical poet, that was what 00:29:53.230 --> 00:29:55.450 secured his ultimate recognition. The sources 00:29:55.450 --> 00:29:58.109 reveal this remarkable, painful consistency in 00:29:58.109 --> 00:30:00.230 his method. He would take the physical world, 00:30:00.369 --> 00:30:02.609 the whale hunt, the military, the financial collapse, 00:30:02.789 --> 00:30:05.470 and infuse it with Shakespearean energy and biblical 00:30:05.470 --> 00:30:08.490 rhythm to reach for something absolute. His life 00:30:08.490 --> 00:30:10.930 itself was this intense, decades -long quest 00:30:10.930 --> 00:30:13.690 for knowledge and truth, often pursued in isolation 00:30:13.690 --> 00:30:16.430 and obscurity, full of contradiction, and never 00:30:16.430 --> 00:30:19.349 truly finished. Which is a powerful message for 00:30:19.349 --> 00:30:21.750 you, the listener, who may be navigating your 00:30:21.750 --> 00:30:25.269 own complex, contradictory quest. Sometimes the 00:30:25.269 --> 00:30:27.529 reward is an immediate, sometimes it takes a 00:30:27.529 --> 00:30:29.910 century. And what stands out most to me about 00:30:29.910 --> 00:30:32.789 this resurrection story is the great defining 00:30:32.789 --> 00:30:36.450 irony we started with. The term white whale is 00:30:36.450 --> 00:30:39.450 now understood globally as the symbol of an obsessive, 00:30:39.470 --> 00:30:42.170 often self -destructive quest. Millions of people 00:30:42.170 --> 00:30:44.869 use that term every week in business, politics, 00:30:45.210 --> 00:30:47.509 culture. And they have never read a single line 00:30:47.509 --> 00:30:49.569 of Moby Dick. So that's the question we should 00:30:49.569 --> 00:30:51.569 leave you with. What does it tell us about the 00:30:51.569 --> 00:30:54.769 power of an idea, a truly foundational, universal 00:30:54.769 --> 00:30:57.869 idea, when it finally breaks free, becoming a 00:30:57.869 --> 00:31:00.650 piece of global cultural shorthand, divorced 00:31:00.650 --> 00:31:02.789 entirely from the decades of financial ruin, 00:31:02.930 --> 00:31:05.089 personal tragedy, and obscurity the author endured 00:31:05.089 --> 00:31:07.809 just to communicate it in the first place? Think 00:31:07.809 --> 00:31:09.730 about that as you face your own white whales. 00:31:10.089 --> 00:31:11.950 We'll see you next time on The Deep Dive.