Melville's 'Hawthorne and His Mosses': Manifesto for Moby-Dick

Contextual Overview of Melville's Review. In this seminal piece of American Renaissance literary criticism (originally published in two parts) of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse (a collection of short stories), Herman Melville, posing as a Virginian visiting New England, extols Hawthorne's works in ways that reflect Melville's own literary ambitions. He praises Hawthorne for his commitment to truth telling, even (and especially) if that effort involves exploring the darker aspects of human experience. In addition, by praising Hawthorne as a specifically American writer who is worthy of comparison with Shakespeare and other great authors of the past, Melville calls for national pride in the accomplishments and potential of American literature.

Significance in Melville's Career and Literary Appreciation. Melville's essay is important in the first place as one of the first great appreciations of Hawthorne's writings. Indeed, Hawthorne's wife considered it the first published essay ever to convey accurately the true scope of her husband's achievement. However, the essay is also important for two other reasons: First, it announces many of Melville's own deepest aspirations and values as a writer; and, second, it was composed during a time when Melville, having met and been influenced by Hawthorne, was revising Moby-Dick. Thus the essay is significant in large part as a series of hermeneutic reflections, by Melville himself, on what he was trying to achieve in his own greatest novel.

Melville's Literary Manifesto and Moby-Dick Parallels. The Role of Humor and Sympathy. Melville praises Hawthorne, for instance, for his "contemplative humor," a "humor so spiritually gentle that it might almost be called 'the very religion of mirth'" (Tales 49). These comments are important, for they suggest a good deal about the humor that pervades Moby-Dick—a humor that helps make that book so emotionally complex. Equally revealing is Melville's praise of Hawthorne for his "depth of tenderness" and his "boundless sympathy with all forms of being"—a sympathy that amounts to an "omnipresent love" (Tales 50). Clearly these comments are relevant to Moby-Dick, especially to the intertextual relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg and to the loveless, egoistic monomania of Captain Ahab.

The Power of Blackness and Calvinist Theology. Most famous, however, is Melville's assertion that balancing and deepening Hawthorne's humor and sympathy is a darker perspective—a perspective that Melville describes as being "shrouded in a blackness, ten times black" (Tales 51), and a blackness that enhances, through contrast, the brighter aspects of Hawthorne's work. Hawthorne, in other words, was willing to face up to the fact of evil in the world; there is in his work (according to Melville) "a touch of Puritan gloom," for "this great power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinist sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free" (Tales 51). In these words we sense Melville's own fascination with human evil and corruption—a fascination reflected in his depiction of such memorable characters as Ahab and Fedallah in Moby-Dick or John Claggart in Billy Budd.

Shakespearean Truth-Telling. Melville admires Hawthorne for some of the same reasons that he admires Shakespeare: He appreciates them for being willing to confront the ugly and terrifying aspects of reality, for being willing to tell unpleasant truths. Such traits, he says, are "the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare." Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things, which we feel to be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them.... For in this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,—even though it be covertly, and by snatches. (Tales 53).

A Personal Declaration of Purpose. Obviously Melville aspired to be this kind of truth teller, especially in Moby-Dick, and his essay on Hawthorne is essentially his own literary manifesto, his personal declaration of his deepest purposes as an author. This manifesto emphasizes the necessity of confronting the darker aspects of human experience to achieve literary depth. By aligning Hawthorne with Shakespeare, Melville elevates the stakes of American literature to a global, timeless standard.

For Discussion or Writing.
1. Use Melville's essay as a guide for interpreting some of Hawthorne's short stories, such as "The Birth-mark" or "Young Goodman Brown." How do Melville's ideas about theme, character, tone, and purpose seem to apply to these works? At one point Melville says that although "it is that blackness in Hawthorne, of which I have spoken, that so fixes and fascinates me," it is nevertheless possible that such darkness "is too largely developed in him. Perhaps he does not give us a ray of his light for every shade of his dark" (Tales 52). Is this comment relevant at all to the two stories just mentioned?

2. How are such Shakespearean characters as Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago relevant to our understanding of Melville's fiction, especially Moby-Dick? How does Ahab (for instance) resemble Lear? How does Fedallah resemble Iago? Does any character in Moby-Dick resemble Hamlet? Do any themes from Hamlet and King Lear seem relevant to Moby-Dick?