observation applies to the mechanical arts. In America, the inventions of Europe are adopted with sagacity; they are perfected, and adapted with admirable skill to the wants of the country. Manufactures exist, but the science of manufacture is not cultivated; and they have good workmen, but very few inventors.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
(1805–1859), from
Democracy in America.
This landmark work of reportage is remarkable for both its social predictions and its portrait of America in the early 19 th century. The profound changes in approach to literature, most evident in the transcendentalists and dark romantics that occurred following its publication and reception in the United States, is not without correlation to the publication of de Tocqueville’s travels
.
Herman Melville’s Inexcusable Insanity
Mr. Melville does not improve with time. His later books are a decided falling off, and his last scarcely deserves naming; this however we scarce believe to be an indication of exhaustion. Keats says beautifully in his preface to “Endymion,” that “The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted.”
Just at present we believe the author of
Pierre
to be in this state of ferment.
Typee
, his first book, was healthy;
Omoo
nearly so; after that came
Mardi
, with its excusable wildness; then came
Moby Dick
, and
Pierre
with its inexcusable insanity. We trust that these rhapsodies will end the interregnum of nonsense to which Keats refers, as forming a portion of every man’s life; and that Mr. Melville will write less at random and more at leisure, than of late. Of his last book we would fain not speak, did we not feel that he is just now at that stage of author-life when a little wholesome advice may save him a hundred future follies. When we first read
Pierre
, we felt a strong inclination to believe the whole thing to be a well-got-up hoax. We remembered having read a novel in six volumes once of the same order, called
The Abbess
, in which the stilted style of writing is exposed very funnily; and, as a specimen of unparalleled bombast, we believed it to be unequalled until we met with
Pierre
. In
Mardi
there is a strong vein of vague, morphinized poetry, running through the whole book. We do not know what it means from the beginning to the end, but we do not want to know, and accept it as a rhapsody. Babbalanja philosophizing drowsily, or the luxurious sybaritical King Media, lazily listening to the hum of waters, are all shrouded dimly in opiate-fumes, and dream-clouds, and we love them only as sensual shadows. Whatever they say or do; whether they sail in a golden boat, or eat silver fruits, or make pies of emeralds and rubies, or any thing else equally ridiculous, we feel perfectly satisfied that it is all right, because there is no claim made upon our practical belief.But if Mr. Melville had placed Babbalanja and Media and Yoomy in the Fifth Avenue, instead of a longitude and latitude less inland; if we met them in theatres instead of palm groves, and heard Babbalanja lecturing before the Historical Society instead of his dreamy islanders, we should feel naturally rather indignant at such a tax upon our credulity. We would feel inclined to say with the Orientals, that Mr. Melville had been laughing at our beards, and Pacha-like condemn on the instant to a literary bastinado. Now Pierre has all the madness of Mardi, without its vague, dreamy, poetic charm. All Mr. Melville’s many affectations of style and thought are here crowded together in a mad mosaic. Talk of Rabelais’s word-nonsense! there was always something queer, and odd, and funny, gleaming through his unintelligibility. But
Pierre
transcends all the nonsense-writing that the world ever beheld.
Thought staggers through each page like one poisoned. Language is drunken
—Alexis de Tocqueville
(1805–1859), from
Democracy in America.
This landmark work of reportage is remarkable for both its social predictions and its portrait of America in the early 19 th century. The profound changes in approach to literature, most evident in the transcendentalists and dark romantics that occurred following its publication and reception in the United States, is not without correlation to the publication of de Tocqueville’s travels
.
Herman Melville’s Inexcusable Insanity
Mr. Melville does not improve with time. His later books are a decided falling off, and his last scarcely deserves naming; this however we scarce believe to be an indication of exhaustion. Keats says beautifully in his preface to “Endymion,” that “The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted.”
Just at present we believe the author of
Pierre
to be in this state of ferment.
Typee
, his first book, was healthy;
Omoo
nearly so; after that came
Mardi
, with its excusable wildness; then came
Moby Dick
, and
Pierre
with its inexcusable insanity. We trust that these rhapsodies will end the interregnum of nonsense to which Keats refers, as forming a portion of every man’s life; and that Mr. Melville will write less at random and more at leisure, than of late. Of his last book we would fain not speak, did we not feel that he is just now at that stage of author-life when a little wholesome advice may save him a hundred future follies. When we first read
Pierre
, we felt a strong inclination to believe the whole thing to be a well-got-up hoax. We remembered having read a novel in six volumes once of the same order, called
The Abbess
, in which the stilted style of writing is exposed very funnily; and, as a specimen of unparalleled bombast, we believed it to be unequalled until we met with
Pierre
. In
Mardi
there is a strong vein of vague, morphinized poetry, running through the whole book. We do not know what it means from the beginning to the end, but we do not want to know, and accept it as a rhapsody. Babbalanja philosophizing drowsily, or the luxurious sybaritical King Media, lazily listening to the hum of waters, are all shrouded dimly in opiate-fumes, and dream-clouds, and we love them only as sensual shadows. Whatever they say or do; whether they sail in a golden boat, or eat silver fruits, or make pies of emeralds and rubies, or any thing else equally ridiculous, we feel perfectly satisfied that it is all right, because there is no claim made upon our practical belief.But if Mr. Melville had placed Babbalanja and Media and Yoomy in the Fifth Avenue, instead of a longitude and latitude less inland; if we met them in theatres instead of palm groves, and heard Babbalanja lecturing before the Historical Society instead of his dreamy islanders, we should feel naturally rather indignant at such a tax upon our credulity. We would feel inclined to say with the Orientals, that Mr. Melville had been laughing at our beards, and Pacha-like condemn on the instant to a literary bastinado. Now Pierre has all the madness of Mardi, without its vague, dreamy, poetic charm. All Mr. Melville’s many affectations of style and thought are here crowded together in a mad mosaic. Talk of Rabelais’s word-nonsense! there was always something queer, and odd, and funny, gleaming through his unintelligibility. But
Pierre
transcends all the nonsense-writing that the world ever beheld.
Thought staggers through each page like one poisoned. Language is drunken
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