Herman Melville: Stargazer 9780773567443

Table of contents :
Contents
Tables and Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Uranic Muse: Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy
2 The Cosmic Drama of Mardi
3 Stars and Spiritual Navigation in Clarel
4 Astronomical Imagery and Symbolic Antitheses in Billy Budd
5 Final Thoughts on Melville and Astronomy
Appendix One: Catalogue of References to Astronomical Subjects
Appendix Two: More Maps and Drawings from Hiram Mattison's Atlas
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z

Citation preview

Herman Melville: Star gazer

Astronomy fascinated Herman Melville and provided an important and recurring theme in all his writing. He was inspired by uranography stellar lore, ancient philosophical notions about the nature of the universe, and discoveries and speculations in contemporary astronomy. In Herman Melville: Stargazer Brett Zimmerman investigates Melville's knowledge and literary uses of astronomy, especially within the thematic contexts of Mardi, Clarel, and Billy Budd. Melville's passion for things astronomical is visible throughout his canon. Zimmerman places Melville's many astronomical citations within the thematic context of the works in which they appear and within the larger cultural and historical context of nineteenth-century studies. In addition he provides a comprehensive catalogue of every reference to astronomy, its practitioners, and related topics in Melville's works. Herman Melville: Stargazer will be of great interest to scholars and students of American literature as well as those interested in the relationship between science and literature. BRETT ZIMMERMAN is instructor of English and humanities, York University.

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Herman Melville: Stargazer BRETT ZIMMERMAN

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

McGill-Queen's University Press 1998 ISBN 0-7735-1786-3

Legal deposit fourth quarter 1998 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for its activities. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Zimmerman, Brett, 1958Herman Melville: stargazer Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1786-3

1. Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 - Criticism and interpretation. 2. Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 Knowledge - Astronomy. 3. Astronomy in literature. i. Title. PS2388.535754 1998 813'-3 c98-901011-2 Typeset in Palatino 10/12 by Caractera inc., Quebec City

Contents

Tables and Figures vii Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction xiii 1 The Uranic Muse: Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy

3

2 The Cosmic Drama of Mardi 2 The Cosmic Drama of Mardi 29

3 Stars and Spiritual Navigation in Clarel 43 4 Astronomical Imagery and Symbolic Antitheses in Billy Budd 58 5 Final Thoughts on Melville and Astronomy 70 Appendix One: Catalogue of References to Astronomical Subjects 75 Appendix Two: More Maps and Drawings from Hiram Mattison's Atlas 111 Notes 119 Bibliography 131 Index 137

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Tables and Figures

TABLES

1 Constellations and Star Clusters in Melville's Writings 8 2 Stars Mentioned by Name in Melville's Writings 10 FIGURES

1 Cetus the Whale 6 2 Cover of Atlas Designed to Illustrate Burritt's Geography of the Heavens 12

3 The vernal equinox 25 4 The autumnal equinox 27 5 The Southern Cross (Crux) and other south circumpolar stars 54 6 Taurus with Aldebaran 63 7 Scorpio and Sagittarius 65 AI Canis Major, Argo Navis, and other constellations 112 A2 Capricornus, Cygnus, Aquila, Lyra, and other constellations 113 A3 Virgo, Berenice's Hair, Leo Major, Leo Minor, Sextans, Crater the Cup, and Corvus the Crow 114

viii Tables and Figures A4 Ursa Major (with the Big Dipper), Ursa Minor, Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and other north circumpolar constellations 115 A5 Pegasus, Aquarius, Pisces, and other constellations 116 A6 Great Refracting Telescope at Cambridge, MA 117 A7 Drawings of celestial objects 118

Acknowledgments It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the author of a scholarly work cannot enjoy an Emersonian sense of self-reliance for long. My indebtedness extends from family members to editors of refereed journals to librarians to colleagues both here at York University and abroad. As for colleagues here at home, Professor Robert Adolph has done the most for me, both in my role as a graduate student and then as a fellow teacher and scholar. My debts to him will be repaid only after several successive incarnations in lives to follow. Other professors who have supported me are Virginia Rock and Elizabeth Sabiston. Professor Hardy Grant of the Mathematics Department agreed to be the fourth reader when I was composing my dissertation ("The Uranic Muse: Astronomy, Melville, and His Contemporaries"), upon which this book is based. His knowledge of astronomy and of its history proved invaluable. I would also like to thank the current chair of York's English department, Professor Maurice Elliott, who, along with Professors Sabiston and Adolph, supported my application for a research grant - which I subsequently won. The grant from York enabled me to purchase a new computer and laser printer and to "foist" the old hardware upon my children. The new equipment facilitated my work on this and another manuscript, Herman Melville: Stylist. American Melvilleans have also contributed their knowledge and advice to this book. When "The Uranic Muse" was nearing completion, Professor Milton Stern was kind enough to fly from Connecticut to Toronto one sunny August day to be my external examiner. Professor Stern's well-respected intellectual rigour was responsible for catching several weaknesses in the original draft. I can only hope that my subsequent attempts to eliminate those weaknesses might meet with his satisfaction. Another Connecticut scholar, Dr David

x Acknowledgments E.E. Sloane, has also been very helpful. He was editor of Essays in Arts and Sciences when my essays on Clarel and Billy Budd (republished here as Chapters 3 and 4) appeared in that journal in 1993 and 1994. He kindly granted permission to have these essays reproduced here. My gratitude now takes me from Connecticut to Ohio, the home of John M.J. Gretchko. Mr Gretchko's interest in the astronomy in Melville's works compelled him to drive from Cleveland to Toronto one day to photocopy "The Uranic Muse." In 1991 we began corresponding by letter and continue to do so, celebrating our passion for Melville and supporting one another in our scholarly pursuits through moral support, the exchange of essays, and a cross-fertilization of ideas. Mr Gretchko is the author of many articles on Melville in addition to two books: Melvillean Ambiguities and Melvillean Loomings: Essays on Moby-Dick. Several chapters in these works deal with Melville and astronomy. Many others helped make this project possible, and I have been gratified at the willingness shown by these people to cooperate with my requests. Editor Douglas J. Wurtele kindly granted permission on behalf of the Association of Canadian University Teachers of English (ACUTE) to reprint "The Cosmic Drama of Mardi," which appeared originally in Carleton University's English Studies in Canada. The staff of York University's Interlibrary loan office procured a number of articles and rare works for me. Maureen Cummings, of the University of Toronto's Astronomy Library, made two trips for my sake to the David Dunlap Observatory to pick up another rare work, Burritt's Geography of the Heavens. At my request Mr Donald Yannella, of Glassboro State College in New Jersey, sent an old copy of the Melville Society Extracts containing Wilson Heflin's "Melville, Celestial Navigation, and Dead Reckoning." Katherine H. Griffin, the manuscript cataloguer of the Massachusetts Historical Society, showed an interest in my work and mailed photocopies of letters by Edward Everett and the French astronomer Le Verrier (from the Everett Papers). She also referred me to Mr Louis L. Tucker, the director of the Massachusetts Historical Society, who gave me permission to quote from the letters. While working on "The Uranic Muse," I wrote to Edmund Scientific Company in Barrington, New Jersey, asking for star maps and for permission to photocopy a planisphere (a rotating star map) published by that company. Mr Robert M. Edmund, the President, responded to my requests by sending not only a new planisphere but two beautiful star atlases as well - compliments of Edmund's. He also gave me permission to photocopy the planisphere and the atlases. To all the aforementioned I say, thanks again.

xi Acknowledgments

Finally, I want to thank my family for their encouragement. My parents, Lloyd and Betty, and my brother and sisters have provided moral and financial support, as has my wife, Janet, who, although she occasionally sought a remedy for insomnia by asking me to talk about my projects, nevertheless has helped sustain me in my academic endeavours for many years.

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Introduction Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine Following, above th'Olympian hill I soar, Above the flight of Pegasean wing! John Milton, Paradise Lost (7:1-4)

"One of the strange things about literary criticism has been the infrequency with which it has concerned itself about science and its relations to literature" (Beaver, Walt Whitman - Poet of Science, vii). As if responding to Beaver's remark of 1951, A.J. Meadows published The High Firmament eighteen years later. Noting that "unless a special analysis is made many literary references to science become incomprehensible to a modern reader," Meadows then sets up his parameters, stating that he will concentrate on the particular science of astronomy and that his "discussion is restricted to literature produced in the British Isles - American literature has been excluded" (ix). I read that last clause as a challenge - albeit an implicit one - and taking up that challenge would be fruitful indeed. Astronomy was very popular in the United States during the1800s,especially during the middle decades, as I demonstrate in the introduction and in chapter i of my dissertation.1 There is much to prove, then, that another High Firmament, one dealing with American literature, is needed. But even a work covering only nineteenth-century American writers would be massive; thus, I narrow my focus here by examining at length only one author. I shall be concerned primarily with Herman Melville's understanding and literary use of astronomy.2 I shall not be intimidated by John M.J. Gretchko's - facetious? - warning: "Rarely does anyone dare even mention astronomy in connection with Herman Melville. When this dreaded event happens, the recoiling, exacerbated scholars show the audacious to the nearest door, in some cases justifiably" ("Herman Melville's Closet Astronomy Source," 20). There are simply too many references to astronomical subjects in the Melville canon for us to neglect them. Acting like the "sub-sub-librarian" in Moby-Dick, I have compiled a lengthy catalogue in appendix i: recorded there are 162 places in Melville's

xiv

Introduction

prose and poetry where stars are mentioned, either generically or by their specific names; there are 76 passages referring to the moon or lunar eclipses; 66 in which the Zodiacal and other constellations are named (generically or specifically); 49 referring to planets (generically or by name); 37 to the sun, sunspots, or solar eclipses3; 34 to astronomers and their instruments; 22 to the theory of a plurality of worlds (that is, to other inhabited planets and extraterrestrials); 18 to the Milky Way; 17 to meteors and meteorites; 15 to comets; 9 to the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights); and 4 to asteroids. Not including those writings that have been attributed to Melville but of which the authorship is not entirely certain, we find over 500 passages in Melville's writings pertaining to astronomical themes - all of which suggests that Melvilleans would do well to consider this category of themes and images and to understand them in light of the author's characteristic intellectual concerns. Melville employs his extensive knowledge of astronomy - that it was extensive is shown in chapter 1 - most in Mardi, Billy Budd, and Clarel: the subjects of the science are centrally relevant to many of the themes in those works. Mardi depends upon uranography, stellar lore, ancient philosophical notions about the nature of the universe, and upon discoveries and speculations in contemporary astronomy. In Clarel Melville employs the tradition of natural religion to relate the stars to God and faith, for stars in that poem generally symbolize potential guides for the spiritual navigator. In Billy Budd Melville uses his knowledge of uranography and celestial geometry to broaden the pattern of symbolic opposites centered upon Billy and Claggart. Melville seems to have taken the idea of astronomical antitheses from Milton's Paradise Lost. I conclude that Melville's attitude toward astronomy was mostly sympathetic. When he wrote Mardi his fascination with that science peaked; his enthusiasm remained in later years but perhaps was dampened by the time he wrote Clarel for by then he was disturbed at the conflict between science and religion. At any rate, Melville's literary use of astronomy is extremely varied: he uses it for its discoveries and speculations, and for the poetry, philosophy, and the myths it has inspired.4

Herman Melville: Stargazer

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CHAPTER

ONE

The Uranic Muse: Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy

Elsewhere I have demonstrated that astronomical references show up in the works of many major nineteenth-century American writers: Edgar Allan Foe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Henry James, for instance.1 Of these, Poe, Emerson, Whitman, and Mark Twain, particularly, display an impressive enthusiasm for and knowledge of the science, as discussed by several scholars (Kremenliev and Conner on Poe; Paul, Lindner, and Clark on Emerson; Joseph Beaver, Cooke, Dugdale, Tanner, and Scholnick on Whitman; Waggoner, Paine, and Cummings on Mark Twain). But besides the essays of John Gretchko, very little critical attention has been paid to Melville's knowledge of astronomy. In this book, then therefore, I shall consider the breadth of Melville's understanding of the science by addressing the following questions: How much of his knowledge pertained to sights in the heavens gained from celestial maps or firsthand observation, and how much related to other aspects of astronomy less dependent upon mere sky-watching - such as the nebular hypothesis, the theory of a plurality of inhabited worlds, abstruse mathematical equations, astronomers and their instruments, the spectroscope and its revelations? Did Melville learn from books too? Did he attend any lectures or know any astronomers? (Emerson was an acquaintance of the amateur Nantucket astronomer William Mitchell and his daughter Maria, as well as of the well-known Scottish astronomer John Pringle Nichol. Hawthorne also knew Maria Mitchell, while Whitman knew Henry Whitall.) How well did Melville keep up with contemporary discoveries, if at all? Does he ever make any errors that might suggest some deficiency in his understanding of the science? I begin with a consideration of the most basic branch of astronomy - observational astronomy. Because anyone may simply watch the

4 Herman Melville: Stargazer objects in the nocturnal skies, we may think of astronomy as the most "democratic" of the sciences: in Melville's time, as always, the beauties of the darkened heavens were open to every man and woman, not just to an elite group of scientists. As the title of a book by Canada's matriarch of astronomy Helen Hogg, suggests, the stars belong to everyone. Like many of his fellow Americans, Melville appreciated the wonders of the celestial orbs. We have no evidence of him doing any stargazing as a child or adolescent, however. The earliest occasions he may have had to do some serious and, incidentally, practical stargazing came in 1839 when at twenty years of age he shipped as a "boy" on the St Lawrence, bound for Liverpool, and then in 1841 when he sailed on the Acushnet, bound for the Pacific to kill whales. His days as a sailor lasted, on and off, for three years thereafter and ended in October 1844 when he left the u.s. frigate United States. Many of Melville's experiences on that ship were later incorporated into his fifth book, White-Jacket; in chapter 19 of that work we find the following tantalizing statement: "I am of a meditative humour, and at sea used often to mount aloft at night, and, seating myself on one of the upper yards, tuck my jacket about me and give loose to reflection. In some ships in which I have done this, the sailors used to fancy that I must be studying astronomy - which, indeed, to some extent, was the case ... Then, to study the stars upon the wide, boundless sea, is divine" (76).2 Because of the heavily autobiographical nature of the book, we can probably assume safely that Melville is speaking here of himself, rather than that the character nicknamed "White-Jacket" is reporting a habit not shared by Melville. The only other place where Melville refers directly to his interest in star-gazing appears in a letter to Evert A. Duyckinck, dated 7 March 1850 [?]: "I should have gone - as I love music - were it not that having been shut up all day, I could not stand being shut up all the evening - so I mounted my green jacket & strolled down to the Battery to study the stars" (Correspondence, 159). In studying the stars Melville learned the geography of the heavens; that is, he became familiar with the names of certain stars and with the configurations of the constellations. The branch of astronomy involved here is uranography, which is concerned with the description and mapping of the stellar worlds. Sailing both below and above the equator, Melville was able to study the constellations in the celestial northern hemisphere as well as in the southern hemisphere. Such knowledge, of course, is vital to sailors for navigational purposes, and thus I doubt that Melville's decision to study the positions of the stars while a sailor would have been made solely to

5 Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy

satisfy idle curiosity. We can conclude that he became quite proficient in his uranographical endeavours, in fact, as Taji's statement from Mardi suggests: "But that we were not removed any considerable distance from the Line [equator], seemed obvious. For in the starriest night no sign of the extreme Polar constellations was visible; though often we scanned the northern and southern horizon in search of them. So far as regards the aspect of the skies near the ocean's rim, the difference of several degrees in one's latitude at sea, is readily perceived by a person long accustomed to surveying the heavens" (108). Melville was aware, then, that the picture of the night sky differs for observers at different latitudes. This is also shown by an entry in the journal he kept while on the Meteor: in the third week of June 1860, he noted that he had "crossed the Northern Tropic [of Cancer] - and last night saw the Southern Cross - the North Star sensibly sinking" (Journals, 132). As Melville sailed south from Boston toward Cape Horn, the North Star would have appeared to drop lower and lower toward the northern horizon, while the Southern Cross - a constellation of the south celestial hemisphere - would have appeared to ascend the skies (the observation is also found in his poem "Crossing the Tropics"). That Melville was capable of noting such a phenomenon accurately shows that he was familiar with the stars and stellar configurations and also that he was knowledgeable in matters of celestial geometry. There are several excerpts in the catalogue of references to astronomical subjects in Melville's writings in appendix i that further demonstrate Melville's acquaintance with the heavens. For example, in the following passage from Moby-Dick he displays his familiarity with constellations both of the northern and southern hemispheres: "Nor ... can you fail to trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them... Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis [Jason's ship Argo], and joined the chase against the starry Cetus [the Whale, or Sea Monster] far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus [the Water Snake] and the Flying Fish [Pisces Volans]" (271; see figure 1). Despite the fanciful nature of the passage, since we know of Melville's whaling voyages, there is no reason to doubt that he really did observe the various constellations he names. Just as Clarence Dugdale consulted star maps to determine the accuracy of Walt Whitman's observations of constellations and their stars (135-6) and just as Joseph Beaver referred to nautical almanacs of the 18705 and i88os to confirm the poet's sightings of the stars,

Figure i Cetus the Whale, from Hiram Mattison's At/as Designed to Illustrate Burritt's Geography of the Heavens

7 Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy

moon, and planets (26-37), so J nave used moon, and planets (26-37), so I have used essentially the same technique with Melville and consulted a rotating star map - a planisphere - in order to check Melville's familiarity with the nighttime sky. For example, in chapter 183 of Mardi Taji notes, "At that instant, down went the fiery full-moon, and the Dog-Star" (614). This full moon, we have been told earlier (611), is the Harvest Moon, which occurs closest to the time of the autumnal equinox, when the sun moves below the celestial equator in Virgo. A look at the star map shows the sun near the autumnal equinox in Virgo; a full moon about to set ("went down") would have to be in western Pisces, diametrically opposite the rising sun in easterly Virgo (that the sun is rising is indicated by Melville on page 615). Meanwhile, the DogStar (Sirius, in Canis Major) would be due south near the meridian (the imaginary north-south line in the sky) and starting its sloping journey ("went down") towards the westerly setting Harvest Moon, nearly ninety degrees away. Melville's description of the celestial events is entirely accurate according to the planisphere (I have also confirmed his precision by consulting Skyglobe computer software); and we see, therefore, that his uranographical descriptions can be relied upon generally. This is important for my later examination of passages in Moby-Dick and especially in Mardi and Billy Budd.3 Arguably, none of Melville's major American literary contemporaries seems to approach his knowledge of uranography, with the sole exception of Whitman. Dugdale has listed the stars and constellations Whitman mentions by name in his works: there are around twenty-five stellar groups and twelve stars (135). The number of stellar configurations and individual stars in Melville's canon is even greater, however, as tables i and 2 indicate. In addition to all these, two other constellations are alluded to, though not named specifically: on page 632 of Mardi, Babbalanja refers to "the astral crosses, Crowns, and Cups." Melville knew that as well as a Southern Cross and Northern Crown (Corona Borealis), both listed in table i, there is also a Northern Cross and a Southern Crown (Corona Australis). All in all, then, there are thirty-three constellations and two star clusters (Hyades and Pleiades) mentioned by name or alluded to in Melville's complete writings. I have listed the names Melville provides and have occasionally given the Latin or English translation. Note that Melville uses either the Latin or the English names - as opposed to Whitman, for instance, who "almost always uses the popular [English] names" (Dugdale, 130). From the table we can see which star groups appear most frequently in the Melville canon, and several of these function thematically in Melville's long works. The Southern Cross, the most famous

8 Herman Melville: Stargazer Table i Constellations and Star Clusters in Melville's Writings Star Group

Hemisphere

Mentioned

Pleiades (in Taurus) Orion Southern Cross Taurus Aries Cassiopeia Great Bear Leo Sagittarius Aquarius Pisces Bootes Corona Borealis Libra Gemini Cancer Capricorn Berenice's Hair Perseus Hyades (in Taurus) Cetus Argo-Navis Hydrus Flying Fish Virgo Scorpio Cygnus Aquila Little Bear Andromeda Dragon (Draco) Lyre (Lyra) Cup (Crater)

northern equatorial southern northern northern northern northern northern southern southern northern northern northern southern northern northern southern northern northern northern equatorial southern southern southern equatorial southern northern northern northern northern northern northern southern

8 times 7 6 5 5 5 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

of the southern constellations, is the smallest in the sky but contains more bright stars for its area than any other and is therefore quite a striking sight. More significantly, it is a constellation with important symbolic associations in Mardi and, especially Clarel. Taurus and Bootes, two other constellations mentioned several times, have some significance in Billy Budd and Mardi, respectively, as we shall see. The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, is a loose, or "open," star cluster that forms part of the constellation Taurus. In Clarel, Melville refers to the grouping when he writes, "Dim pendant lamps,

9 Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy

in cluster small / Were Pleiads of the mystic hall" (4.13.113-14; see also Mardi, 556). This grouping is one of the most beautiful sights in the sky and appears many times in English and American literature (occasionally in Emerson and Dickinson, frequently in Whitman, for instance). A well-known puzzle about the Seven Sisters, furthermore, is that there are only six of them; that is, only six can be seen with the average unaided eye. Melville shows his awareness of the mysterious disappearance of the seventh sister in his poem "Naples in the Time of Bomba": "and his star / Evanish like the Pleiad lost" (40i).4 Orion, one of the most famous stellar configurations, was also a favourite constellation with Melville. He knew it is a winter constellation, as is shown by the passage in Moby-Dick in which Ishmael thinks, "What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters" (10). He was also cognizant of the individual stars that constitute the shape of the mythological figure, from its well-known brilliant stars to the somewhat dimmer three in Orion's belt (see the poem "The Fall of Richmond") to the even dimmer stars in Orion's sword - "all the jewels in Orion's sword-hilt" (Mardi, 489). But now it is time to consider the specific stars (in their respective constellations) featured in the Melville canon. Thirteen stars appear in Melville's prose and poetry (table 2). Arcturus and Aldebaran appear to be Melville's favourite stars. The former is a bright firstmagnitude star and very well known to sky-watchers. Melville shows in his poem "Amoroso" that he was aware of its colour: "While red Arcturus, he / A huntsman ever ruddy / Sees a ruddier star by me" (339)- (m chapter 2 I show that Arcturus plays an important role in Mardi.) Aldebaran, another bright star, is of a similar hue; in Mardi, Babbalanja refers to it as "indeed, a ruddy world!" (616). Aldebaran figures in Billy Budd, where the young sailor of that name is associated with it (see chapter 4). It is perhaps no surprise that the other two most frequently mentioned stars, the Polar (North) Star and Sirius (the Dog-Star), appear as often as they do in Melville's works. Both are very famous stellar luminaries - the Polar Star because of its obvious navigational importance, and Sirius because it is (apparently) the brightest star in the heavens. Sirius is dominant in the winter skies but is perhaps more notorious for being in conjunction (in the same area of the sky) with the sun in midsummer, when it is associated with the hottest days, the "dog days," of the season, and has rightly earned its name (Greek: "parching," "scorching"). Of Sirius's position in the predawn skies of summer Melville was aware, as he demonstrates in "The House-Top: A Night Piece," a poem about the draft riots of mid-July

io Herman Melville: Stargazer Table 2

Stars Mentioned by Name in Melville's Writings Star

Hemisphere

Mentioned

Constellation

Arcturus Aldebaran Polar Star Sirius Rigel Betelgeuse Bellatrix Fomalhaut Alphacca Alphard Markab Denebola Capella

northern northern northern southern southern northern northern southern northern southern northern northern northern

6 times 5 4 4 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Bootes Taurus Ursa Minor Cards Major Orion Orion Orion Pisces Australis Corona Borealis Hydra Pegasus Leo Auriga

1863: "Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought" (64). Furthermore, in a letter to Peter Gansevoort dated 9 June 1869 we find the following imperative: "My love and Lizzie's to Kate, and tell her to hasten her preparations, and come down before the Dog Star rageth" (Correspondence, 410). Presumably Melville means for his friends to visit before the hottest days of the summer (see Burritt, 59-60). At any rate, the above excerpts show not only that Melville was familiar with the larger starry patterns in the celestial hemispheres, but that he knew the individual stars as well - their seasonal positions and even their colours. When he was in his early twenties the demands of a sailor's occupation could have instilled in Melville a knowledge of the celestial map for the purposes of navigation, as we have already seen. This hypothesis is rather compelling because, in fact, all thirteen of the stars he mentions by name are navigational stars. The young sailor could have known this from several sources: Nevil Maskelyne's Requisite Tables for the Nautical Almanac; Hamilton Moore's Practical Navigator or his revised edition of that work (The New Practical Navigator...); or Nathaniel Bowditch's New American Practical Navigator: An Epitome of Navigation (which monumental work superseded Moore's). Melville's familiarity with at least the latter two celestial aids is suggested by a passage in Mardi in which Taji discusses the reading tastes of the skipper of the Arcturion, whose "library was eight inches by four: Bowditch, and Hamilton Moore" (5). Also, in Moby-Dick Stubb meditates upon the stellar markings on the doubloon: "That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the

ii Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy zodiac, and what my almanack below calls ditto" (432); and in Redburn a certain set of tables is likened to "the Logarithm Tables at the end of Bowditch's Navigator" (90). Bowditch's work was first published in 1802 and was so useful it became a "veritable Bible to seamen" (Mendillo, "Practical Men," 42). That Melville certainly consulted at least a few books tells us something more about the sources of his astronomical knowledge. While he did examine the stars under the open sky, he would at some time have had to resort to printed celestial maps, as coming to know the positions of stars and stellar configurations is almost impossible otherwise. Thus, in learning uranography he combined first-hand experience in Nature with book-study. Although Melville is not known to have actually owned a copy of, say, Moore or Bowditch, he probably had access to these works on celestial navigation while a sailor on shipboard. Bowditch's Epitome, for instance, surely would have been in the library of a ship like the United States; the book contained maps, tables, and illustrations that would have facilitated any study of the nocturnal skies. It appears that Melville's family did own a celestial atlas, however. In his revised and enlarged edition of Melville's Reading, Sealts provides the following note: "Burritt, Elijah Hinsdale. Atlas, Designed to Illustrate the Geography of the Heavens ... Edition unidentified. Mrs. Metcalf remembered that in the Melville household in New York City there was a large atlas in paper covers, creased in the middle and kept with Chambers's Cyclopaedia ... containing plates of the constellations in soft colors; she did not recall the exact title. According to John M.J. Gretchko (letter of 24 Jun 1978), the Perkins Observatory, Delaware, Ohio, has an edition of Burritt's Atlas (New York, F.J. Huntington, c. 1835) that fits Mrs. Metcalf's description" (160). The Geography of the Heavens, and Class-Book of Astronomy, with its accompanying atlas based on Burritt's drawings, was first published in 1833. Clark Elliott informs us that, "intended for schools and colleges, this work probably ranked as [the] best American publication up to that time and had wide circulation, selling over 300,000 copies and sixteen editions by 1876" (46). Hiram Mattison, who, starting in 1852, revised and supplemented several subsequent editions (Burritt had died in 1838), maintains in the preface to a revised 1873 edition that the work is "the most perfect and complete textbook of astronomy ever offered to the American public" (iv). We seem to have no way of determining which version of the immensely popular atlas the Melvilles acquired: if an early one, published before Melville's sailing days, we may suppose that he had consulted it and perhaps knew some stars and constellations before engaging

Figure 2

Cover of Atf«s Designed to Illustrate Burritt's Geography of the Heavens

13 Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy in his cosmical cogitations while on the upper yards of various ships; if a later edition, we can only suppose that the Atlas supplemented his already acquired uranographical knowledge and perhaps came in handy in his literary endeavours. Clearly, as the catalogue of astronomical references in Melville's writings (appendix i) suggests, he knew much more about astronomy than can be gleaned from star maps and stargazing. However, as with Poe and Whitman, so with Melville: we do not have a great deal of evidence pertaining to what scientific books he may have consulted to learn more about astronomy. Yet there are two books listed by Sealts in Melville's Reading that his family apparently owned: First Book in Astronomy Applied to the Use of Common Schools (Boston, 1831), by John Lauris Blake, was given to Melville's brother Thomas (156); and James Ferguson's Easy Introduction to Astronomy for Young Gentlemen and Ladies was the property, it seems, of Melville's father (177). I have not found Blake's textbook and am not able to demonstrate that Melville made use of Ferguson's popular work, although he may have. Sealts also lists Chambers's Cyclopaedia as a book the Melvilles owned (164), and Herman certainly could have found information about astronomy there. A passage in the semiautobiographical Redburn suggests that the young Melville may indeed have consulted some of the aforementioned works: "during the summer months in Liverpool, the days are exceedingly lengthy; and the first evening I found myself walking in the twilight after nine o'clock, I tried to recall my astronomical knowledge, in order to account satisfactorily for so curious a phenomenon" (200). We cannot know for sure if the first-person narrator can be identified with the author in this passage, but if Melville did not invent Redburn's "astronomical knowledge" - and there is no reason to believe that he did - then we can conjecture that Melville was familiar with the above texts and, at any rate, that he did know something about astronomy even before sailing on his first voyage. Other possible sources of information were the talks on astronomy presented by Poe, Nichol, and O.M. Mitchel in 1847-48. It is the opinion of Merrell Davis that "Whether or not Melville heard these lectures he must have known them in the full reports that appeared in the New York Tribune when he read the newspapers in the reading room of the New York Society Library" (67). Furthermore, Melville may have read the pamphlets that resulted from the lectures of Nichol and Mitchel or perhaps even have come across some of the books of the two astronomers. I am prepared to maintain that Melville was familiar with some manifestation of Mitchel's thoughts on astronomical subjects; this is suggested by a few sections in Mardi,

14 Herman Melville: Stargazer

the ponderous fiction Melville was working on while the lecturers were making astronomy a "fashionable topic" in the winter of 184748. In chapter 188 Babbalanja relates to Taji and the others a vision in which he takes his auditors on an imaginary journey through space: "I saw a shining spot, unlike a star. Thwarting the sky, it grew, and grew, descending; till bright wings were visible: between them, a pensive face angelic, downward beaming." Then the angel said, "'Come, and see new things'": "We clove the air; passed systems, suns, and moons: what seem from Mardi's isles, the glow-worm stars. "By distant fleets of worlds we sped, as voyagers pass far sails at sea, and hail them not. Foam played before them as they darted on; wild music was their wake; and many tracks of sound we crossed, where worlds had sailed before. "Soon, we gained a point, where a new heaven was seen; whence all our firmament seemed one nebula. Its glories burned like thousand steadfastflaming lights. "Here hived the worlds in swarms: and gave forth sweets ineffable. "We lighted on a ring, circling a space, where mornings seemed forever dawning over worlds unlike. "'Here/ I heard, 'thou viewest Mardi's Heaven. Herein each world is portioned/" (633)

Eventually another angel came to continue the visionary journey with Babbalanja: "'Come thou and learn new things'": "Like a spark new-struck from flint, soon Mardi showed .afar. It glowed within a sphere, which seemed, in space, a bubble, rising from vast depths to the sea's surface" (636). Imaginary cosmic journeys were apparently frequent in lectures and astronomy texts during the time of the American Renaissance. Mitchel's contained several star treks. In the book that is based on his lectures are examples such as the following: "We have passed over sixty millions of millions of miles. We have reached a new system of worlds revolving around another sun, and from this remote point we have a right to expect a new heavens [sic]" (Planetary and Stellar Worlds, 280). A few pages later, however, Mitchel becomes more mystical in relating "the wild dream of the German poet": "God called up from dreams a man into the vestibule of heaven, saying, 'Come thou hither, and see the glory of my house' ... It was done: and, with a mighty angel for his guide, the man stood ready for his infinite voyage; and

15 Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy ... at once they wheeled away into endless space ... light dawned for a time through a sleepy film; by unutterable pace the light swept to them, they by unutterable pace to the light. In a moment the blazing of suns was around them ... suddenly, as thus they tilted over abysmal worlds, a mighty cry arose - that systems more mysterious, that worlds more billowy, - other heights and other depths, - were coming, were nearing, were at hand." (287-8)

The passages from Mardi have several features in common with those from Mitchel, in addition to the obvious stellar imagery: the mystical visions, the angelic guides, light imagery, sea imagery (Mitchel's "billowy"), imagery of height and profundity; the idea of breathtaking speed. There is even verbal parallelism: "a new heaven" echoes Mitchel's "a new heavens"; the imperative "Come thou" echoes "Come thou hither" from Mitchel; and Melville's "dawning" echoes "dawned." In chapter 2 I offer further evidence to demonstrate Melville's possible debt to Mitchel. Of this I am certain: Mardi was extensively influenced by the popularity of astronomy during that New York winter of the late 18405. Accepting the hypothesis that Melville learned about astronomy not just from first-hand, practical experience as a sailor under the heavens, we can see that what may be true of Ishmael when he says "a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard" (Moby-Dick, 112) is not entirely true of his creator. In addition to books and probably newspapers and lectures, Melville could also have supplemented his knowledge of astronomy from magazines. He subscribed to Evert Duyckinck's Literary World, for instance, which carried notices of some of the astronomy lectures of 1847-48 and advertisements for books on the subject. Now and then he contributed reviews to the journal from 1847 to 1850, and he cancelled in February 1852. As well, he contributed and subscribed to Putnam's Magazine, which also carried articles on science, among other things. Harper's New Monthly Magazine had Melville on its subscription list too. This New York publication began in June 1850; Sealts indicates that Melville seems to have begun receiving it around 1851 and stopped in March of 1859 (Melville's Reading, 181). Several articles on astronomical subjects were published in Harper's by the early i86os, including "Galileo and His Daughter"; "Obstructions to the Use of the Telescope," by Sir David Brewster; "The Planet-Watchers of Greenwich"; "The Sun"; "Concerning the Eclipses in July, 1851"; "The Solar System"; "New Proofs of the Earth's Rotation"; "The Immensity of the Universe"; "Zone of Planets between Mars and Jupiter" (asteroids), by Elias Loomis; "Astronomical Observatories in the United States," by Loomis; and "The Yard-Measure Extended to

16 Herman Melville: Stargazer

the Stars." There is even a comical illustration, entitled "Astronomy," in an 1862 number (24.142:574). Melville no doubt saw most of these and could have learned from them. What about astronomers themselves? Did Melville know any personally? All I can ascertain is that he, like Hawthorne and his family, knew Maria Mitchell - "the Lady Astronomer" - and probably was shown her observatory, as she had shown Emerson. Mitchell's biographer tells us that Melville "came from Boston with his father-inlaw, Judge Lemuel Shaw. Afterward the Judge described the trip to his son, Lemuel, in a letter written on 20 July. He had gone to Nantucket to hold court, and had 'made the occasion an opportunity for pleasure and relaxation for Herman, who was weary with his literary labors' [he had finished the burdensome Pierre in March]. He writes: 'We passed the evening with Mr Mitchell, the astronomer, and his celebrated daughter, the discoverer of comets.' That evening was the seventh of July 1852 - a night to be remembered!" (Wright, Sweeper in the Sky, 80-1 ).5 Susan Beegel speculates that Melville and Shaw did some stargazing with their host and hostess: "Unless it was raining or foggy father and daughter took Melville and Shaw to their makeshift observatory on the roof of the bank for a view of the stars, a treat they characteristically extended to distinguished guests" (44). Unfortunately, there seems to be no reference to the meeting in Melville's letters or journals. Leon Howard, however, thinks that Melville may have been moved by his meeting with Maria nonetheless, "for many years later, after she had become a distinguished professor at Vassar, his mind was to turn backward and brood upon the possible emotions of such a devotee to Urania" (196). Howard goes on to suggest (334) that Maria Mitchell was the model for the virginal Urania of Melville's poem "After the Pleasure Party," in which we find the lines: And kept I long heaven's watch for this, Contemning love, for this, even this? O terrace chill in Northern air, O reaching ranging tube I placed Against yon skies, and fable chased Till, fool, I hailed for sister there Starred Cassiopeia in Golden Chair. (255-6)

Although we cannot deny that Melville may have been thinking of the famous Caroline Herschel, who was the first important female astronomer and who died unmarried in 1848, it is more likely that

17 Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy

Maria was his choice - if Urania is indeed based on anyone. Maria Mitchell died unmarried in 1889, two years before the publication of "After the Pleasure Party" in Timoleon. Melville very likely heard of the death of this celebrated American woman, whom he had met decades before, and was perhaps inspired to remember her in his own way. The poem, at any rate, is the only evidence we have to suggest that Maria Mitchell influenced Melville the writer. Admittedly, it is difficult to zero in on the possible sources of Melville's astronomical knowledge. The book of Nature, navigational aids, celestial maps, lectures, newspapers, journals, books, the astronomers themselves: with these I have had to do much speculating and suggesting. Whatever Melville's definite sources were, that he knew something about the "sublime" science - beyond his uranographical wisdom - is certain. In addition to having a practical knowledge of the stellar configurations and positions of navigational stars, the sailor-turned-writer was familiar with stellar lore - traditions and myths about the heavenly orbs and figures. Stubb's thoughts on the doubloon in MobyDick display Melville's understanding of the fanciful beasts and people of the zodiac: "Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull; - and Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins" (432ff). In chapter 3 of Mardi other constellations are mentioned: Taji speaks of the cavalry captains in Perseus, the fabulous hero who rode the winged horse Pegasus (hence "cavalry"), and the old hunters of Orion - Orion is a mythical hunter (13). Later, Melville's Mohi speaks of "Andromeda, and Perseus' chain-armor, and Cassiopea in her golden chair [the constellation shows the mythological queen on her throne]" (489). While all this celestial lore cannot be considered, strictly speaking, knowledge of the science of astronomy, it is certainly related. Furthermore, it is not unusual for astronomy textbooks to devote some space to stellar fables - Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, for example, contains much information on constellatory myths. Here is what Burritt supplies on Bootes: "The Bear-Driver is represented by the figure of a huntsman in a running posture, grasping a club in his right hand, and holding up in his left the leash of his two greyhounds, Asterion and Chara, with which he seems to be pursuing the Great Bear round the pole of the heavens. He is thence called Arctophylax, or the 'Bear-Driver'" (84). Melville's awareness of Bootes as a pursuer, a driver, is shown in Israel Potter, "you seem to be Bootes [sic] driving in heaven" (4). Earlier we saw evidence of his keen observations of the stars and constellations, but Melville, like Whitman (see Joseph Beaver), was also a pretty keen watcher of the moon. Like many of us at one time

i8 Herman Melville: Stargazer

or another, he enjoyed observing the lunar sphere rising in the east, and he, like many of us, was aware that an ascending moon appears ruddy when it is very low on the horizon ("The full red moon was rising" [Mardi, 550]). Yet his observations went further, as these lines from Clarel indicate: Launched up from Nebo far away, Balloon-like rose the nibbled moon Nibbled, being after full one day.... The ascending orb of furrowed gold, Contracting, changed, and silvery rolled In violet heaven. (2.16.18-25)

Melville was also a close watcher of the moon's phases, as these lines and many other excerpts in the catalogue in appendix 1 show. More than this, however, the last three lines here deal with the changes in colour the moon undergoes as it rises higher in the sky - going from red when it is very low on the horizon and seen through the thickest part of Earth's atmosphere, to orange, then yellow ("furrowed gold"), then becoming white ("silvery") as it ascends higher. As well as an apparent change in hue, the rising moon undergoes an apparent reduction in size: nearest the horizon it is magnified by our atmosphere; as it lifts up into the sky the optical illusion wears off, and the moon seems to shrink in size ("contracting"). Melville also knew something about lunar topography. In Israel Potter we are told about a journey through the countryside of the Berkshires in Massachusetts: "For nearly the whole of the distance, you have the continual sensation of being upon some terrace in the moon" (3). Melville the poet writes in Clarel of "That lava glen in Luna's sphere, / More lone than any earthly one - / Whereto they Tycho's name have given" (1.25.11-13); the reference here is to the prominent crater Tycho. Mardi provides a speculation on the part of Mohi regarding a wonderful tree, "its seed having been dropped from the moon; where were plenty more similar forests, causing the dark spots on its surface" (226). This last observation is actually based on a passage from Ellis's Polynesian Researches, as David Jaffe has demonstrated (59-60); yet during the time of the American Renaissance there was much speculation concerning the nature of the moon's surface. The notorious "Discoveries in the Moon" - a hoax perpetrated by Richard Adams Locke in the New York Sun (August and September 1835) - announced that the immense magnifying power of Sir John Herschel's telescope had enabled him to

19 Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy

discover the nature of the flora and fauna on the lunar surface. All other legitimate claims by respectable astronomers concerning the moon also depended on the resolving power of the telescope in use, on how large or small an object the instrument could allow the user to discern. The imaginative Melville thought up a magnifying tube more powerful than even Herschel's: "Oh-Oh conducted us to an arbor, to show us the famous telescope, by help of which, he said he had discovered an ant-hill in the moon" (Mardi, 381). No telescope in America or elsewhere had such immense resolving power, but the passage from Mardi seems to suggest that Melville knew this. At any rate, it does appear that to some extent Melville kept up with recent astronomical discoveries and speculations. The fabulous lunar "discoveries" already referred to may bring to mind the theory of a plurality of inhabited worlds. Melville was clearly inspired by the idea of extraterrestrials, as this excerpt from Typee seems to indicate: "the natives multiplied their acts of kindness and attention towards myself, treating me with a degree of deference which could hardly have been surpassed had I been some celestial visitant" (109). However, "Tommo" could be making a metaphysical, rather than a scientific, statement here; "celestial" could mean the Typees are treating their guest as a god rather than as a visitor from another planet. Less ambiguous is the brief passage from White-Jacket in which Melville is relating the habits of a Polynesian sailor, Wooloo, who, "wandering about the gun-deck in his barbaric robe, seemed a being from some other sphere" (118), and the place in Moby-Dick where Ishmael speaks of "a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets" (81). Even when Melville became a lecturer, he did not neglect the theory of a plurality of inhabited worlds. In "The South Seas" he told his audience, "There are many places where a man might make himself a sylvan retreat and for years, at least, live as much removed from the life of the great world as though its people dwelt upon another planet" (169). Melville seems to have been interested especially in the idea of lunar inhabitants and occasionally refers to the notion when he wants to suggest something outlandish. Redburn speaks of a Greenland sailor looking "strange enough to me, then, to have come from the moon" (41), and later communicates with a Lascar sailor whose "experiences are like a man from the moon - wholly strange, a new revelation" (172). Speculations concerning extraterrestrials, so popular in the nineteenth century, would influence Mardi most of all, as I show in chapter 2.6 More proof that Melville was informed about contemporary astronomical thought is also found, it seems, in Mardi. In chapter 175 the cosmos-conscious Babbalanja says, "Already, in its unimaginable

20 Herman Melville: Stargazer roamings, our system may have dragged us through and through the spaces" (576). By "system" the philosopher means, not Earth and its satellite, but the entire solar system. A discovery that was not too old when Mardi was being written revealed that "The sun, attended by all its planets, satellites, and comets, is sweeping through space towards the star marked n in the constellation Hercules, with a velocity which causes it to pass over a distance equal to thirty-three millions three hundred and fifty thousand miles in every year!" (Mitchel, The Planetary and Stellar Worlds, 312) The marvelous final chapter in White-Jacket also seems to be based on the discovery. A single line from Clarel proves that, to a certain degree, Melville kept himself informed of new astronomical revelations and techniques even while he was nearing the end of his literary career. In an argument with Derwent, Rolfe mentions "The claims of stellar chemistry" (2.21.34). This is surely an allusion to the findings of what was in the iSoos the relatively new science of spectroscopy. The spectroscope is a prism that divides light into its constituent colours and Frauenhofer lines; when applied to the sun and other stars it can tell astronomers much about the star under scrutiny, such as its chemical composition (what elements are in the star). After 1850 American scientists - for instance, Henry Draper - began to make their mark in the field of spectroscopy, says David DeVorkin (60). Melville's single line of poetry just quoted, coupled with the materialist Mortmain's assertion that "stars must go / Or change!" because "All's chymestry [chemistry]" (2.39.66-7), shows that he was aware of the marriage between physics and astronomy, resulting in the extension of the science known as physical astronomy. Now let us retrace our steps from Clarel (1876) back to the midnineteenth century to consider the sensational planetary discoveries of that period and Melville's references to other planets. The famous discovery of Neptune is alluded to in Mardi: "day by day new planets are being added to elder-born Saturns, even as six thousand years ago our own Earth made one more in this system" (229-30). This passage is also an allusion to the many asteroids that were discovered while Melville was composing his third book; in fact, Mardi is the only work in the entire Melville canon in which we find asteroids mentioned. Other than the indirect reference to Neptune, just mentioned, that planet is never named in Melville's works. Neither is Uranus, though Melville does refer to all the other primary planets: Mercury appears once, Venus is named directly seven times (including once as Hesperus, the Evening Star), Mars once, Jupiter twice (once with its atmospheric belts), Saturn six times (once with its ring, twice with its moons), and Earth appears over a dozen times as a

21 Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy

planet - that is, in cosmic perspective. Mercury, Uranus, and Neptune are neglected by Melville, then. Interestingly, Whitman neglects these three worlds too. Here is Dugdale's theory regarding that poet: "Neither Uranus nor Mercury can be seen easily with the naked eye, while Neptune is entirely invisible; and Whitman studied primarily what he could see with the naked eye" (132). Melville would not have felt obliged to study solely what he could sense first-hand, but as a former sky-watching sailor he might have been inclined to name only those planets that he could have seen without telescopic aid as planets invisible to the naked eye (Uranus and Neptune) would have been of no use navigationally and as Mercury's close proximity to the sun renders that planet seldom fit for navigation as well.7 Venus is mentioned three times in connection with its transits (its movements across the face of the sun as seen from Earth). The earliest reference to this phenomenon occurs in Omoo when we are being told about Tahiti: "Here the famous Transit of Venus was observed, in 1769" (66). The watching was done by none other than Captain Cook, who set up an observatory on the most northerly part of the island for the occasion (Omoo 98n). This transit, which occurred on the third day of June, was "the most eagerly awaited astronomical event of the i8th century," according to Michael Mendillo ("Comets and Transits," 26). Thus, one of the earliest astronomical references in the Melville canon is an historical one. Not only did Melville keep attuned to contemporary revelations in astronomy, then, but he also knew something about historical celestial events and astronomers. One reference to a past event concerns the famous Cassiopeia supernova (exploding star) of 1572. In Mardi it is again the cosmos-conscious Babbalanja who speaks, quoting the sage Bardianna: "There was a time, when near Cassiopeia, a star of the first magnitude, most lustrous in the North, grew lurid as a fire, then dim as ashes, and went out. Now, its place is a blank. A vast world, with all its continents, say the astronomers, blazing over the heads of our fathers; while in Mardi were merry-makings, and maidens given in marriage. Who now thinks of that burning sphere? How few are aware that ever it was?" (577).8 There are a few references to very ancient astronomy in Melville's works as well: in the poem "The Lake" he mentions the early Chaldaean sky-watchers (432); in Moby-Dick Ishmael speaks of the Egyptians and the belief that "the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes ... those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars" (155). Five of the eight astronomers Melville mentions by name in his writings are historical figures (while the other three were, in his

22 Herman Melville: Stargazer

century, contemporaries - Sir John Herschel, Rosse, and "La Place").9 The most ancient of the historical figures is Ptolemy (Mardi, 489). Copernicus is named in Mardi also (22), and "the Copernican astronomers" in Pierre (208). Moreover, Melville's understanding of the rival cosmologies of Ptolemy and Copernicus - the geocentric and heliocentric models, respectively - is suggested by the passage in Mardi in which Babbalanja says to Media, "the astronomers maintain that Mardi moves round the sun; which I, who never formally investigated the matter for myself, can by no means credit; unless, plainly seeing one thing, I blindly believe another. Yet even thus blindly does all Mardi subscribe to an astronomical system, which not one in fifty thousand can astronomically prove. And not many centuries back, my lord, all Mardi did equally subscribe to an astronomical system, precisely the reverse of that which they now believe" (455). The most famous proponent of the heliocentric system, Galileo, is cited three times by Melville; as, for instance, in Clarel, when he writes of the Church's persecution of that astronomer: Or is that priestly instinct right (Right as regards conserving still The Church's reign) whose strenuous will Made Galileo pale recite The Penitential Psalms in vest Of Sackcloth. (3-5-65-70)

We have seen that Melville knew about two of the three branches of astronomy that we have been examining, but to many men and women of that science, astronomy means mathematics - abstruse equations, gravitational theory, conic sections, and the like. Did Melville also engage in this side of astronomy? Sealts, in the historical note to the Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, writes of Dr West's recollection of "the young Melville as 'a favorite pupil, not distinguished in mathematics'" (461). Nevertheless, he certainly knew of the relevance of mathematics to astronomy; an absurdly hyperbolic statement from "I and My Chimney" can be cited as proof: "an adequate conception of the magnitude of this chimney is only to be got at by a sort of process in the higher mathematics, by a method somewhat akin to those whereby the surprising distances of fixed stars are computed" (358). Melville is probably alluding to parallax, a trigonometric technique for computing the distance of relatively nearby stars by using the diameter of Earth's orbit as the base. The point of the allusion is to

23 Melville's Knowledge of Astronomy

stress the amazing height of Melville's chimney at Arrowhead. An even vaguer suggestion of astronomical computations is found in Billy Budd when Melville speaks of how "an astronomer knows about a comet's travels prior to its first observable appearance in the sky" (67). This passage refers to the calculations of cometary orbits conducted by scientists to predict the appearance in Earth's skies of those wandering worlds. Mathematical/theoretical astronomy is a big part of gravitational (Newtonian) astronomy, which involves the application of mathematics to celestial motions. Melville seems to have been most impressed, or perhaps we should say distressed, with the unchanging Newtonian laws in Pierre. In that depressing book we find several references to these physical truths that rule the material universe: "for strive we how we may, we can not overshoot the earth's orbit, to receive the attractions of other planets; Earth's law of gravitation extends far beyond her own atmosphere" (261). Twice later, Melville uses astronomical metaphors based on Newtonian laws to describe Pierre's inability to escape from the burden of writing his book: "However lofty and magnificent the movements of the stars; whatever celestial melodies they may thereby beget; yet the astronomers assure us that they are the most rigidly methodical of all the things that exist. No old housewife goes her daily domestic round with one millionth part the precision of the great planet Jupiter in his stated and unalterable revolutions. He has found his orbit, and stays in it; he has timed himself, and adheres to his periods. So, in some degree with Pierre, now revolving in the troubled orbit of his book" (298). Like the laws of the universe, Pierre's manuscript becomes something from which he cannot extricate himself: "Still his book, like a vast lumbering planet, revolves in his aching head. He can not command the thing out of its orbit" (305).10 In Clarel Melville's Derwent is equally impressed with the cosmic laws, as he speaks of "Newton and his gravitation!" But Rolfe is less so: "Think you that system's strong persuasion / Is founded beyond shock?" (2.21.25-7). Although Melville refers to astronomical mathematics now and then, there is no evidence that he had very great mathematical inclinations, as Edgar Allan Poe certainly did. A glance through any work on celestial navigation - I have read an updated version of Bowditch's American Practical Navigator - shows that a great deal of mathematics is involved in that study, but we have no way of knowing how far Melville's understanding went into the realm of numbers, and so beyond what his occasional mentioning of navigational stars and navigational equipment demonstrates (see Heflin,

24 Herman Melville: Stargazer

"Melville, Celestial Navigation"). We can probably conclude that his knowledge of astronomy was mostly nonmathematical. Furthermore - and again, unlike some of Foe's - Melville's writings suggest that he was no theorizer, no thinker in abstract terms, about astronomy. Finally, we should consider briefly any apparent errors Melville makes in his use of astronomical subjects. Probably least important is his occasional reference to the moon as a "planet" (Mardi 22, 283; Israel Potter 123; Clarel 2.16.21). That he knew the difference between a planet and a satellite like the moon (which orbits a planet) is suggested by his reference in Mardi to "planets, duke-like, dancing attendance, and baronial satellites in waiting" (183). Perhaps he is thinking of the broader etymology of "planet," which means "wanderer" - the moon does "wander" in that it is not "fixed" (the stars are often referred to as "fixed," because they are apparently stationary). Or, in the case of Clarel, anyway, Melville's substitution of "planet" for "moon" could be merely poetic license. A less ambiguous, though incidental, error occurs in Clarel: "This change, this dusking change that slips (Like the penumbra o'er the sun), Over the faith transmitted down; Foreshadows it complete eclipse?" (3.5.60-3).

The "penumbra" is the Earth's shadow that falls upon the moon during a lunar eclipse, but Melville here is applying the term to a solar eclipse. No shadow, from the Earth or any other body, falls over the sun during a solar eclipse. More intriguing, and perhaps more significant from a thematic point of view, is a mistake found in Moby-Dick. Ahab, contemplating the doubloon's zodiacal markings, speaks to himself of "the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra" (431), and then notes that "six months before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries!" (432). Because of a phenomenon known to astronomers as "precession of the equinoxes," the autumnal equinox no longer occurs in Libra and the vernal equinox no longer takes place in Aries, "six months before." The equinox - the point at which the northerly moving sun crosses the celestial equator to signal the beginning of spring, or at which the southerly moving sun crosses the celestial equator to start autumn - has shifted back one zodiacal house since the equinoctial points were observed in Aries and Libra, respectively, two thousand years ago. Now the vernal equinox actually occurs when the sun is in Pisces, not Aries, and the fall equinox presently

Figure 3 The vernal equinox

26 Herman Melville: Stargazer occurs when the sun is in Virgo, not Libra. This was also true in Melville's time. A star map in Dick's Sidereal Heavens (70) and a discussion of precession in Mitchel's Planetary and Stellar Worlds (723) both indicate that astronomers contemporary with Melville certainly knew about the equinoctial shift that has occurred over the centuries. Did Melville know about precession? Burritt's Atlas does indeed show the equinoxes in their modern positions (see figures 3 and 4). On the other hand, Melville's father's old-fashioned source of astronomical knowledge, Ferguson's Easy Introduction ...for Young Gentlemen and Ladies, would not have informed him about it, as that text keeps to the obsolete equinoxes (and solstices). Probably no work dealing with celestial navigation would have taken into account the phenomenon - I have read in the revised Bowditch's American Practical Navigator that "The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac still lists the sun as entering these constellations [Aries and Libra] at the times of the equinoxes" (374). Presumably, then, Ahab's books would not have brought him up to date on equinoctial shifting. Or perhaps Melville means to imply something here. If he knew about precession - and he would have if he had been in the habit of studying Burritt's Atlas - he may be trying to suggest something about Ahab's ignorance of it. In part, Moby-Dick is about epistemology, about ways of knowing the universe and the Power that may lie behind the mask of Space and Time; maybe Ahab's error about the positions of the equinoxes on the zodiac signifies his being out of synchronization with the universe and its God - as so many other things he does suggest his wrong-headedness about the nature of Reality and how to know it. At last we can draw some conclusions about Melville's knowledge of astronomy. The area of this science in which he is most impressive is clearly observational astronomy, which is concerned with noting the exact positions of celestial orbs and applying this data to something as practical as navigation. His uranographical expertise was probably gained as a sailor, and although he may have referred to books or maps to facilitate his study of heavenly geography, this is the one area of astronomy in which he was surely least dependent upon things other than first-hand observation. Other areas of astronomy in which he was knowledgeable reflect the attention he must have paid to sources such as books, newspapers, journals, and perhaps lectures: stellar lore; fresh discoveries and contemporary speculations; the calculations involved in determining stellar distances, the mathematics of

Figure 4 The autumnal equinox

28 Herman Melville: Stargazer

gravitational/Newtonian astronomy; and descriptive/physical astronomy involving the spectroscope. Melville's allusions to this latter branch, furthermore, show that astronomy was not just a passion of his during the time of the American Renaissance but that in fact he kept up with the astronomy of his century until the last years of his career. All in all, however, my impression is that while Melville's knowledge of astronomy was considerably broad, it was not very deep. This impression is suggested by his nonmathematical understanding of astronomy and also perhaps by his apparent neglect of the "nebular hypothesis," a cosmogonal theory that was widely publicized in the nineteenth century. He focused more on description and observation than on theory. My guess is that perhaps Emerson's and Whitman's understanding of the science was on a par with Melville's, but that if we are to look for an equally broad but deeper knowledge of astronomy, we might turn to Poe. At any rate, Melville certainly made wide use of astronomy in his writings, and to his literary use of the science I now turn.

CHAPTER TWO

The Cosmic Drama of Mardi

In Mardi Melville uses his knowledge of astronomy both for symbolic and allegorical purposes.1 Here I examine the cosmic allegory of Mardi: Taji and his entourage are space-travelers voyaging within the Milky Way galaxy through a plurality of worlds. For the most part, Melville uses this literary device to explore the idea of cultural relativism and to satirize humanity's sense of self-importance. The Mardian universe is filled not only with myriads of extraterrestrial physical existences but also with myriads of essences - for the old Neoplatonic Great Chain of Being forms part of the cosmologicalmetaphysical vision of the book. Taji's fanatical otherworldliness can be understood within the context of this ancient philosophical idea. Like his alterego Lombardo, writing his "Koztanza," Melville "ransacked the etherial [sic] spheres" (597) to give us Mardi. STARRY ISLES AND THE OCEAN OF SPACE

Scholars have long realized that Mardi is comprised of several layers of action and meaning. On one level - what I call the "obvious" level - the book concerns a seavoyage undertaken by the narrator (eventually to be called "Taji") and various traveling companions to and through the islands of a Pacific archipelago called "Mardi." On another level, however, beginning at chapter 145, Taji and friends are sailing over the entire planet visiting several countries along the way - such as America (Vivenza) and Canada (Kanneeda). At this level "Mardi" is the planet Earth. But "Hark ye yet again, - the little lower layer," as Ahab says, and the deeper-diving reader will find another stratum in which Taji and his entourage are astronauts

3O Herman Melville: Stargazer

("star-sailors") crossing the ocean of outer space. At this layer of action and meaning "Mardi" is the whole galaxy.2 The astronomical allegory comes into play right at the beginning of the book. Melville's preference for the name Arcturion over Leviathan - the name of the whaler in Omoo, the adventures of which were supposed to continue in Mardi - can be cited as the first evidence. He chose to call the vessel in Mardi Arcturion, which sounds so much like "Arcturus" (the brightest star in the constellation Bootes), because we are meant to associate the ship with the star; and here is the first correspondence in Melville's grand cosmic allegory: Arcturus the ship and Arcturus the stellar world. Hennig Cohen, in his foreword to Moore's That Lonely Game, also shows his awareness of the association when he writes of "the starry Arcturion" (xvii), as does William B. Dillingham in An Artist in the Rigging (113). Gordon Mills has written on the significance of Arcturus in Mardi, as well. He suggests that the idea of using that star in his third book came to Melville from the magazine Arcturus, published by his friends the Duyckincks from 1840 to 1842. In the prologue to the first number the editors write of "the inhabitants of Arcturus." Here we find the doctrine of the plurality of worlds; more important, however, the narrator of Mardi is in fact one of those Arcturian inhabitants, and he is voyaging through space. When Taji first encounters Yillah, he considers that she will regard him "as some frigid stranger from the Arctic Zone" (142). The Latin root of "Arcturus" is arctos, which means "North Pole," or "North"; and, of course, the star is in the northern hemisphere not too far from the North Star. In this way, then, Taji is from the Arctic zone, being from Arcturus. The tale commences with a restless narrator aching to get away from the Arcturion, for he finds the voyage "exceedingly dull." If we see him as an Arcturian, we should not be surprised at his intense boredom, for Arcturus, like all stars, seems to revolve around the Pole Star in the nighttime sky - and Arcturus has been engaged in its "eternally" circular voyage for hundreds of years: "The days went slowly round and round, endless and uneventful as cycles in space. Time, and time-pieces! How many centuries did my hammock tell, as pendulum-like it swung to the ship's dull roll, and ticked the hours and ages" (5). The captain has told the complaining narrator that Arcturion will soon head northwest toward the Russian bay of Kamchatka. The Arcturion, however, is soon to meet with catastrophe, for not long after the narrator and Jarl abandon the ship, it somehow sinks while on its "Nor-West" route. Taking up the allegorical parallel, we must imagine how the stars appear from the whaler's equatorial position before and as it begins to head north

31 The Cosmic Drama of Mardi

and west. Polaris, as seen from the equator, would be on or near the northern horizon, and all the stars would appear to be reeling east to west around the Pole Star's central position. When, after leaving the doomed Arcturion, the narrator tells us that the constellation Pisces was ascending eastwardly (39), the star Arcturus would be just about to set below the waters of the northwestern horizon. Thus, the Arcturion ends up sinking just as the star with which we are meant to associate it sinks "into the ocean" on its route around the North Star. So it is good that the narrator and his first companion another space-traveler from the stars in the sky ("Skye, one of the constellated Hebrides" [12]) - escape from Arcturus when they do: "By quitting the Arcturion when we did, Jarl and I unconsciously eluded a sailor's grave" (25). Melville continues the astronomical allegory as Jarl and the narrator find themselves on the open sea in (on the obvious level) their tiny Chamois. Soon the star-sailors are becalmed, and Melville's description blends both the earthly and the celestial halves of his trope: "the two gray firmaments of sky and water seemed collapsed into a vague ellipsis. And alike, the Chamois seemed drifting in the atmosphere as in the sea. Every thing was fused into the calm: sky, air, water, and all. Not a fish was to be seen. The silence was that of a vacuum" (48; cf. "were all space a vacuum," 230). This passage may be compared with Melville's earlier description of a calm: "The ignoramus [captain] must have lost his way, and drifted into the outer confines of creation, the region of the everlasting lull, introductory to a positive vacuity. Thoughts of eternity thicken" (10). A later calm is described as "airless and profound" (116). The diction and imagery suggest that the narrator and his assistant are floating in the "endless sea" (38) of outer space. Eventually they spot the Earth's sun, Sol: "Save ourselves, the sun and the Chamois seemed all that was left of life in the universe" (38).3 If the ocean can be likened to the shoreless sea of the cosmos, it follows that the islands can be equated with stars. Merrell Davis suggests (67-8) that Melville may have taken the idea from one of J.P. Nichol's lectures on astronomy or from his book The Stellar Universe. If Melville did attend or read about the lectures on astronomy given in New York in the winter of 1847-48, however, it is also possible that he could have taken the idea from the Cincinnati astronomer O.M. Mitchel. The ocean-space equation appears in the very first paragraph of the first lecture in The Planetary and Stellar Worlds; there Mitchel writes of "the blue ocean of space" (17); nine pages later he fills in the corresponding equation: "Like the ocean islands which guided the early mariners, so God has given to us the stars of

32 Herman Melville: Stargazer

heaven." The image is also found in the penultimate lecture, in which the astronomer mentions the possibility of fathoming "this mighty ocean of stars" (275); three pages later he continues the same imagery in speaking of "the sounding line employed in gauging these mighty depths" (see also 286). Wherever Melville got the inspiration, if indeed he took it from anyone, it is certain that beginning with chapter 52 the astronomical allegory of Mardi becomes more foregrounded. Upon coming across the island cluster called Mardi, the narrator exclaims "Bravo! good comrades, we've discovered some new constellation in the sea," and on the next page tells us "the mild waters stretched all around us like another sky" (161). The narrator discerns a nearby island "belted round by a frothy luminous reef, wherein it lay, like Saturn in its ring" (178). "Wondrous worlds on worlds!" he thinks (179). "Far beyond all, and far into the infinite night, surged the jet-black ocean" (178). Once Yillah separates from Taji, the star-island analogy becomes even more pronounced and can be seen to pervade the remainder of Mardi. Melville has taken those imaginary lines that crisscross the Earth, latitude and longitude, and has projected them onto the starry sky to give us the astronomical equivalents, declination and right ascension. What on two levels of the book is geography becomes, on the level of astronomical allegory, uranography. When Taji sets out on his voyage with his Mardian entourage (Media, Babbalanja, Yoomy, Mohi), examples of the cosmic allegory are quite frequent: "Like stars in multitude, bright islets multiplied around" (549); "'Granite continents/ cried Babbalanja, 'that seem created like the planets'"; "The universe again before us; our quest, as wide" (554-5). Says Taji of Yillah: "Her, will I seek, through all the isles and stars" (6^8).4 In Chapter 169 Taji compares his trek to the sun's yearly journey through the zodiac: "Part and parcel of the Mardian isles, they [another group of islands] formed a cluster by themselves; like the Pleiades, that shine in Taurus, and are eclipsed by the red splendor of his fiery eye [Aldebaran], and the thick clusterings of the constellations round ... And, as the sun, by influence divine, wheels through the Ecliptic; threading Cancer, Leo, Pisces, and Aquarius; so, by some mystic impulse am I moved, to this fleet progress, through the groups in white-reefed Mardi's zone" (556). Dillingham, especially investigates Taji's quest as a journey through the zodiacal star-patterns; Taji's voice, he says, "reverberates from constellation to constellation throughout the universe" (Rigging, 112). There are two more passages in Mardi that name certain stars and constellations but that are problematic if we ignore the stellar allegory.

33 The Cosmic Drama of Mardi

King Media pledges the stars in chapter 136: "Here's to thee, old Arcturus! To thee, old Aldebaran! who ever poise your wine-red, fiery spheres on high. A health to thee, my regal friend, Alphacca, in the constellation of the Crown: Lo! crown to crown, I pledge thee! I drink to ye, too, Alphard! Markab! Denebola! Capella! - to ye, too, sailing Cygnus! Aquila soaring! - All round, a health to all your diadems! May they never fade! nor mine!" (431). We should also study the various constellations Mohi claims to see in chapter 151: "I see the Great Bear now, and the little one, its cub; and Andromeda, and Perseus' chain-armor, and Cassiopea in her golden chair, and the bright, scaly Dragon, and the glittering Lyre, and all the jewels in Orion's sword-hilt" (489). Media and Mohi are supposed to be skirting the equator, but not all the stars and star-patterns they mention can be seen from there simultaneously. If Media can see Arcturus and Aldebaran at the same time, then the former must be just rising on the northeastern horizon, while the latter would be just setting on the northwestern horizon. If such were the case, however, Markab (in Pegasus), Cygnus, and Aquila would be out of sight below the waters of the horizon and visible only to viewers on the other side of the world. If Mohi can see Lyra, Cassiopeia, Orion, Perseus, and Andromeda from the equator, then the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and most of the Little Bear and Draco are in the sky of Earth's other side and thus not visible. Even if they were - which is unlikely, for Melville himself tells us that sometimes the extreme polar constellations are not visible from the "Line" (108) - then Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Perseus, and Orion's sword would not be seen. In short, not all the constellations that Mohi claims to see simultaneously from the equator can be seen at the same time; this is also true of Media's observations. Granted, Media and Mohi are a little intoxicated, and Melville plays with the idea of seeing stars when drunk in Omoo as well (62); but although he is introducing an element of humour here, Melville is doing more. He is perpetuating his stellar allegory: although the stars and star-patterns Mohi and Media claim to see cannot all be seen together from a position on Earth's equator, they can be seen together by star-sailors from a position far above the Earth, in outer space. An alternative explanation is that Melville's descriptions are faulty because his knowledge of the geography of the heavens is faulty/but I have taken great pains in chapter i to demonstrate his competence in matters of uranography. Certainly there are many allusions in Mardi to space travel and to astral travelers. Chapter 3, the first "visionary digression" - I call it such because it has no thematic connection with the literal narrative

34 Herman Melville: Stargazer

of the adventure story in which it is found - suggests a plurality of worlds and extraterrestrial space voyagers: "Then, shall we sit by the sages, who of yore gave laws to the Medes and Persians in the sun; by the cavalry captains in Perseus, who cried, To horse!' when waked by their Last Trump sounding to the charge; by the old hunters, who eternities ago, hunted the moose in Orion; by the minstrels, who sang in the Milky Way when Jesus our Saviour was born. Then shall we list to no shallow gossip of Magellans and Drakes; but give ear to the voyagers who have circumnavigated the Ecliptic; who rounded the Polar Star as Cape Horn" (13). In later references we are meant to see Taji and his companions as star-sailors too, and it is Babbalanja who speaks frequently of their celestial trek. He talks of getting to Bootes (576), to Jupiter's belts and Saturn's satellites (577); and later cries "Ho! let's voyage to Aldebaran," and then suggests that he has already been there: "Ha! indeed, a ruddy world! What a buoyant air! Not like to Mardi, this. Ruby columns: minarets of amethyst: diamond domes! ... I faint: - back, back to some small asteroid" (616). He finally concludes that "This Mardi is not our home. Up and down we wander, like exiles transported to a planet afar" (619). The earthly and extraterrestrial star-sailors are limited in their astral roamings, however, for there is a natural barrier beyond which the living are not meant to exist. The "innumerable islands" of the Mardian archipelago are surrounded by a circular "milk-white zone of reef" (i'6o) - this represents the Milky Way. The chapter on "Dreams" provides confirmation: Taji speaks of "Shoals, like nebulous vapors, shoreing the white reef of the Milky Way, against which the wrecked worlds are dashed" (367). In chapter 147 King Bello asks Taji "whether the Astral hosts were of much account as territories, or mere Motoos, as the little tufts of verdure are denominated, here and there clinging to Mardi's circle reef" (477). In Mardi the realm outside the galaxy belongs to the dead, as Taji says: "For all who died upon that isle [Odo] were carried out beyond the outer reef" (192). In chapter 99 a funeral procession of canoes heads "toward the opening in the reef" and, once through and beyond, the mourners deposit their corpse in the sea (302-3). Melville's association of the Milky Way with death and annihilation also appears in Moby-Dick. In chapter 42 Melville considers the colour white: "Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way?" (195). Chapter no tells about Queequeg's race, "who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his

35 The Cosmic Drama of Mardi

canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way" (478). Once the weary traveler passes the "circumvallating reef" of the Via Lactea, he hurtles into another kind of existence, and it is into this realm that Yillah leads Taji: "She I seek, still flies before; and I will follow, though she lead me beyond the reef; through sunless seas; and into night and death" (638). The three Avengers pursue Taji into the same fate, for they swear to chase him "round Eternity" (653). Even Yoomy and Mohi cannot keep the errant Taji within the boundaries of the known universe: "He's seized the helm! eternity is in his eye!" (654). Taji has failed to keep Yillah within the vast and stelliferous confines of the Milky Way. Soaring from island to island, from country to country, from planet to planet, and from star to star, Taji has found his treasure elusive. Whatever Yillah symbolizes, she cannot be found, or at any rate recaptured, in this existence; therefore, the mad and despairing Taji "crosses the bar," shooting out from the galaxy into the endless sea of extragalactic space. A PLURALITY

OF

WORLDS

Functioning as part of Melville's uranographical allegory is the doctrine of a plurality of worlds, an ancient concept that was very well known in the nineteenth century. The entire cosmos was considered by many within and without the scientific community to be chockfull of life; the planets, rings, moons, comets, and even the sun (and, by extension, the other stars) were held to be the abodes of intelligent life forms, some of which, according to many intelligent earthlings, must be adapted to their particular environments.5 Speculations concerning extraterrestrials can be found in some of Melville's other books, but they appear in Mardi more than elsewhere. When Taji and Jarl board the Parki, Samoa, who is at a loss to account for the sudden appearance of the two mysterious strangers on deck, is led temporarily to suppose that they are "a couple of men from the moon" (86). Much later, in another one of Babbalanja's apparently incomprehensible philosophical ejaculations, the babbler apostrophizes the "furthest worlds! and all the beauteous beings in ye!" (616). But Melville does not merely play with the doctrine of plurality; he employs it for strategic - mainly satirical - purposes. In chapter 147 he uses it to make fun of the imperialistic attitudes of King Bello of Dominora (England): "Bello sought to know, whether

36 Herman Melville: Stargazer

his solar Majesty had yet made a province of the moon; whether the Astral hosts were of much account as territories ... whether the people in the sun vilified him (Bello) as they did in Mardi; and what they thought of an event, so ominous to the liberties of the universe, as the addition to his navy of three large canoes" (477). Other stellar monarchs are mentioned later - the astronomer-kings of Rigel and Betelgeuse, in the constellation Orion (556). More important, Melville uses the idea of other inhabited globes in space to ridicule humanity's inflated sense of importance in this universe. Actually it is the old sages, as quoted by Babbalanja, who, by adopting a cosmic perspective, would burst the pretensions of humanum genus. I suspect here the influence of Montaigne: on 18 January 1848, while Mardi was in its early stages of composition, Melville purchased a copy of Montaigne's writings (Montaigne is even mentioned in Mardi [367]). The great skeptic also ridiculed the vanity of earthlings, and he was enabled to do so by broadening his vision to take in the entire world: "This great world, which some multiply further as being only a species under one genus [here is an allusion to the doctrine of the plurality of worlds], is the mirror in which we must look at ourselves to recognize ourselves from the proper angle ... So many humors, sects, judgments, opinions, laws, and customs teach us to judge sanely of our own" (Frame, 116). This excerpt exemplifies Montaigne's celebrated sense of relativity. What passes for "truth" really depends on one's point of view. "When I play with my cat," he inquired, "who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?" (331). With regard to a species of fish that is as poisonous to humans as we are to it, he also asked, "Which is really poisonous, man or the fish?" (451). If Melville had read the longer passage I have quoted, he would have recognized the allusion to the plurality of worlds. Perhaps that reference gave him the idea of applying the stance of ethical relativity not only to the various customs of Earth's different tribes and nations - although the cultural relativist of Typee and Omoo was already inclined to do so - but to the "beauteous beings" inhabiting the other planets and stars as well. The tone is set at the very beginning of chapter 175, after Taji and the others have left the Isle of Cripples. Babbalanja raises the issue of point of view when he asks, "who are the monsters, we or the cripples?" (574). His question recalls those of Montaigne regarding his cat and the poisonous fish; and Babbalanja's answer to his own question is worthy of Montaigne: "whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge. There is no supreme standard yet revealed, whereby to judge of ourselves."

37 The Cosmic Drama of Mardi

Much of the rest of the chapter explores more explicitly the issue of ethical relativity as applied to the extraterrestrials. Babbalanja quotes a favourite source: "'In respect of the universe, mankind is but a sect' [cf. Montaigne's "So many ... sects"], saith Diloro: 'and first principles but dogmas.'" "What ethics prevail in the Pleiades?" Babbalanja continues, "What things have the synods in Sagittarius decreed?" (574). Humanity must learn that the laws, ethical systems, and standards of morality that are revered on Earth are not universally cherished, let alone known. Such a note would be struck in a later book, White-Jacket: "We perceived ... how that in other planets, perhaps, what we deem wrong, may there be deemed right" (186). J.M. Cohen, in his introduction to the Essays of Montaigne, says that a knowledge of Copernican heliocentricity and of travelers' tales about the New World showed the French skeptic that "Western Man, with his classical culture and his revealed religion, was not the centre of the Universe" (10). This is very much the message of Babbalanja in chapter 175. The philosopher goes on to ridicule humanity's belief in our supremacy over creation and in our strategic place in it: "The firmament-arch has no key-stone; least of all, is man its prop" (577). The astronomers of the nineteenth century showed that human beings dwell on a planet orbiting a star that is not even at the centre of our own vastly populated galaxy. "Who in Arcturus [Taji's home star] hath heard of us?" asks Babbalanja, quoting Bardianna; "They know us not in the Milky Way" (575). Like Hawthorne's egocentric, vain, and pompous Wakefield, we earthlings flatter ourselves that our sudden disappearance would make a difference in the universe. But the "universe can wax old without us" (577); our extinction would go unheeded in the cosmos, hints the philosopher, just as the annihilation of some distant extraterrestrial tribe "in Bellatrix" would not become known to us. Then Babbalanja refers to the apparent destruction of the Cassiopeia star - and, presumably, of its inhabitants: "Who now thinks of that burning sphere? How few are aware that ever it was?" (577). The merciless Babbalanja also seems to destroy humanity's traditional conception of heaven; it may be, he says, that "at this instant, there are beings gazing up to this very world as their future heaven. But the universe is all over a heaven: nothing but stars on stars, throughout infinities of expansion. All we see are but a cluster" (576). Even our much-vaunted knowledge of things is suspect. The ancient sage whom Babbalanja quotes used sea imagery to suggest that knowledge is unfathomable and humans are unable to touch the bottom (576-7). We have grand theories, but "we go not beyond an archangel's apprehension of it [Mardi], who takes in all suns and

38 Herman Melville: Stargazer

systems at a glance" (578). Our five senses are not enough to show us the Truth of the universe, and we grope blindly in darkness, even when our sun shines most brightly (575). In the Apology for Raymond Sebond Montaigne also discusses at great length the inadequacy of human senses to understand the universe. We now have a good idea of the ways in which Melville employs the doctrine of a plurality of worlds within the larger framework of his astronomical allegory. The stellar regions constitute an appropriate setting for Taji and his debating companions, who so often engage in philosophical discussions about a wide variety of subjects - about, in fact, what Melville sometimes referred to as "the problem of the universe." As Babbalanja shows, the cosmic perspective can, at best, enable the distanced observer to make impartial and objective judgments. On page 472 we find the statement, "In good round truth, and as if an impartialist from Arcturus spoke it, Vivenza was a noble land." The ideas of impartiality and relativity are summarized in another of Babbalanja's exclamations: "Fellow-men! we must go, and obtain a glimpse of what we are from the Belts of Jupiter and the Moons of Saturn, ere we see ourselves aright" (577). The more Babbalanja considers the smallness of the human species and the relativity of our customs in relation to the universe, however, the more he maddens and despairs, and the more his demon Azzageddi becomes predominant ("Gogle-goggle, fugle-fi, fugle-fogle-orum!" [578]). Allowed a cosmic perspective, Babbalanja finally cannot remain objective and impartial, and is saved from the despair of his own cogitations only when he adopts faith in Alma (Christ). Whereas the philosopher satisfies his yearning for epistemological certainty by taking the humble way of Alma's religion, Taji spurns Alma and continues his tormenting quest to the very limits of the material universe - and beyond. THE

GREAT CHAIN

OF BEING

Taji, Jarl, and their Polynesian companions "sail" through a cosmic ocean filled with myriads of populated worlds, but besides being full of life on the physical level, the Mardian universe is also brimming with intelligences on the metaphysical level. The doctrine of a plurality of worlds is only part of a larger idea that is as old as Western philosophy - the Great Chain of Being. Arthur O. Lovejoy shows us how that doctrine had its inception in Plato's metaphysics and in Aristotle's system of classification. Both these philosophical concepts eventually combined in Neoplatonic thought to give the Western world a view of the universe as a vast hierarchy. At the top of

39 The Cosmic Drama of Mardi

this Great Chain is the ens perfectissimum, the Most Perfect Being, "God." This ultimate Being was compelled to create not only lesser metaphysical beings but also the material universe, the realm of "Becoming," of change and evolution. The Being is a "Self-Transcending Fecundity" that allowed the creation to emanate from Itself, and there is nowhere in this universe that can possibly be devoid of Its manifestation. Thus, the cosmos is one of plenitude; every corner of our galaxy, for instance, is filled with life in one form or another physical or metaphysical. The idea of ranking these creatures in a scale came ultimately from Aristotle; Lovejoy calls it the "principle of unilinear gradation." That is, the universe is "composed of an immense, or ... of an infinite, number of links ranging in hierarchical order from the meagerest kind of existents, which barely escape nonexistence, through 'every possible' grade up to the ens perfectissimum - or, in a somewhat more orthodox version, to the highest possible kind of creature, between which and the Absolute Being the disparity was assumed to be infinite - every one of them differing from that immediately above and that immediately below it by the 'least possible' degree of difference" (59).6 Like the idea of other inhabited planets, belief in the Great Chain of Being was still alive at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There are passages in Melville's third book that suggest both a plurality of physical worlds and a plurality of metaphysical intelligences making up the cosmos of Mardi. A brief statement by Babbalanja "We crawl not like worms; nor wear we the liveries of angels" (577) - conveys the idea of a universal hierarchy encompassing both the lowest forms of physical life and the highest spiritual forms, with humanum genus in the middle. The earliest expression of the Great Chain, however, is the book's first visionary digression. In chapter 3 appear the following strange sentiments: "Thus all generations are blended: and heaven and earth of one kin: the hierarchies of seraphs in the uttermost skies; the thrones and principalities in the zodiac; the shades that roam throughout space; the nations and families, flocks and folds of the earth; one and all, brothers in essence - oh, be we then brothers indeed! All things form but one whole; the universe a Judea, and God Jehovah its head" (12). This passage might seem enigmatic unless we read it in terms of the Great Chain of Being, for certainly in this conception of the universe, angels and earthlings - "the shades that roam throughout space" and human "nations and families" - can indeed be "brothers in essence"; for all these creatures have in common their spiritual selves (their essences) and all emanate from the same Supreme Being. They do indeed form one

4O Herman Melville: Stargazer

whole: they are the Many from the One, but constitute Unity in Diversity. Taji believes, then, that the cosmos is a vast hierarchy of both physical existents and metaphysical essences (referred to in the book as "shades," "spirits," "seraphs," "angels," and "archangels"). The passage just quoted is not the only strange visionary digression in Mardi, for there are others - chapters 75, 119, and 188 especially and each one is based upon the idea of the Great Chain of Being. The last is a visionary journey that combines both the ancient idea of the Great Chain with the understanding of the physical universe that nineteenth-century astronomy had revealed to Melville. Babbalanja relates his vision of how one of the lesser angels lifted him past "systems, suns, and moons" (633), starry clusters, rings, and nebulae, to behold some of the relatively inferior spiritual beings inhabiting the universe - the shades that roam throughout space. Then an angelic being from higher up the Chain came to transport both Babbalanja's spirit and the lesser angel to even greater celestial regions. Eventually Babbalanja had the privilege of descrying the ens perfectissimum Itself, the Supreme Being from Whom all creation has emanated: "And afar off, in zones still upward reaching, suns' orbits off, I, tranced, beheld an awful glory. Sphere in sphere, it burned: the one Shekinah!" (636). It is Taji, however, who relates the other two visions. The most revealing appears in the chapter "Dreams": "But beneath me, at the Equator, the earth pulses and beats like a warrior's heart; till I know not, whether it be not myself. And my soul sinks down to the depths, and soars to the skies; and comet-like reels on through such boundless expanses, that methinks all the worlds are my kin, and I invoke them to stay in their course" (367). This cannot only be taken as evidence that Taji is traveling through space ("But beneath me ... the earth"), but it also displays his otherworldliness that is the basis of the quest for Yillah. Although on the level of astronomical allegory he does speed through space, as we have seen, nevertheless his own mortality, his own fleshly self, restrains him from experiencing the ultimate freedom of an emancipated spirit: "Yet, like a mighty threedecker, towing argosies by scores, I tremble, gasp, and strain in my flight, and fain would cast off the cables that hamper." Taji's goal is to make a leap up the Great Chain of Being; to throw off his hampering mortal body, liberate his immortal essence, and join the spirits that roam throughout space in what he imagines is an ecstatic beatitude. The vision Babbalanja reports, in chapter 188, is very much like the otherworldly imaginings of Taji: "'These,' breathed my guide, 'are spirits in their essences; sad, even in undevelopment.

41 The Cosmic Drama of Mardi

With these, all space is peopled; - all the air is vital with intelligence, which seeks embodiment ... From hence, are formed your mortal souls; and all those sad and shadowy dreams, and boundless thoughts man hath, are vague remembrances of the time when the soul's sad germ, wide wandered through these realms. And hence it is, that when ye Mardians feel most sad, then ye feel most immortal"' (636). The words "shadowy dreams, and boundless thoughts" describe precisely Taji's visionary digressions - chapter 119, we remember, is called "Dreams." That yearning that mortals have to rejoin the disembodied spirits explains, furthermore, why the sage Doxodox is so fervently sought: "Doxodox hath attained unto a knowledge of the ungenerated essences" (563). Even more, Babbalanja's words describe exactly what Yillah symbolizes, what she means, to Taji. In "Dreams" Taji tells us that his "memory is [of] a life beyond birth" (368); in the other visionary chapter he claims that "man himself lives months ere his Maker deems him fit to be born" (229). The memory of prebirth existence is recalled to Taji by Yillah: "For oh, Yillah;" he apostrophizes, "were you not the earthly semblance of that sweet vision, that haunted my earliest thoughts?" (158). The reference to his earliest thoughts supports Taji's previous statement that "these conceits of a state of being anterior to an earthly existence may have originated in one of those celestial visions seen transparently stealing over the face of a slumbering child" (153). Hence, the young boy in chapter 109 can claim, "I am fresh from my Maker, soul and body unwrinkled" (338). Originally Taji makes the mistake of thinking he can regain, in his terrestrial life, the beatific existence he believes he enjoyed before birth. He seeks paradise on Earth through Yillah and for a time feels that he has achieved it; but his joy is ephemeral and his hope a delusion, for happiness in this world is impossible because it is a blighted planet. Here is how the rest of the book is relevant: after Taji loses Yillah he, on the obvious level, scours the Mardian islands for her; on the level of geographical allegory he scours the entire globe for her. But everywhere he roams he finds the opposite of paradise; he finds more and more evidence that we live in a fallen world: sin, idiocy, revolt, vanity, corruption, oppression, murder, cruelty, injustice. On the level of astronomical allegory Taji ransacks the ethereal spheres for Yillah. Not only is Earth fallen, however, but so is the entire universe, as he and his entourage discover. The writer of the anonymous scroll (chapter 161) sums it all up by claiming that "evil is the chronic malady of the universe; and checked in one place, breaks forth in another" (529).

42 Herman Melville: Stargazer

In the end the physical body of Yillah is drowned in the whirlpool. Yet what she symbolizes retains its validity for Taji, except that he finally comes to understand that he cannot gain happiness, paradise, in this life, in the physical realm of the Great Chain of Being. So, putting his death wish into motion, he heads toward the final bar of the Milky Way and launches through the barrier in his frenzied and suicidal attempt to leap up the Great Chain of Being and enter the higher ethereal realms of emancipated essences: "Hail! realm of shades!" (654).

CHAPTER

THREE

Stars and Spiritual Navigation in Clarel

As far as I can tell very little has been written about the stellar imagery in Clarel. In Herman Melville's Clarel: A Spiritual Autobiography, Vincent Kenny makes a few observations but considers the stellar imagery within the context of a larger pattern - light imagery. Joseph Knapp, in Tortured Synthesis: The Meaning of Melville's Clarel, has a few remarks, the best of which is, "a transcendent in the heaven above the earth, is suggested in the brilliant star images" (31). It is odd that so little critical attention has been brought to bear on this pattern of images, however, for, like Mardi and Billy Budd, Clarel is replete with astronomical references. As Walter Bezanson observes, "star images hover over the poem" (Ivi). Here the celestial images help to illustrate the theme of religious questing. Except for the Southern Cross, particular constellations and stars do not represent good or evil, as in Billy Budd; rather, the stars most often are mentioned generically and represent the Divine generally. Melville's decision to put the stellar imagery within the framework of natural theology may be sadly nostalgic, for he is recalling, in a work written in the second half of the nineteenth century (1876), a time decades earlier when science - especially the "sublime science" of astronomy - was still seen largely to support faith rather than to undermine it and when people could look to the stars in particular as aids to "spiritual navigation" because they were regarded as symbols of the Divine. Not all the references to stars in the poem are hopeful, however. The disappearance of the Star of Bethlehem and the Southern Cross from the skies of the Holy Land suggest the absence of the Divine and the decline in religious faith. Those who once looked to the stars as symbolic beacons leading to harbors of spiritual stability now flounder in existential angst, as Clarel does. And even astronomy, by the end of the nineteenth

44 Herman Melville: Stargazer

century, took its place among those sciences that were threatening the beauty of the old myths and the credibility of the ancient religions.

NATURAL RELIGION: FAITH AND ASTRONOMY Natural theology is a tradition at least as old as the psalmist in the Bible who wrote, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork" (Ps. 19.1). Yet natural theology - based largely on the teleological argument that clear evidence of design in the universe indicates it was designed by a wise and benevolent Deity - really began to flourish in the seventeenth century and continued to do so through to the nineteenth, when the tradition got a great boost with William Paley's Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802). Other scientific fideists contributed to natural theology as well: in 1816 the Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers, in Astronomical Discourses, depended specifically upon astronomy to strengthen Christian faith. Almost two decades later the Reverend William Whewell, having been invited to write one of the Bridgewater Treatises, concentrated on the science of celestial bodies in Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1833). In book 2 Whewell takes up the matter of "cosmical arrangements" to confirm his readers' belief in a divine architect responsible for the creation and smooth functioning of our star and its attendant worlds. Whewell's work was so popular it went through seven editions, the last of which came out in 1864 (Crowe, 271). By the first half of the iSoos, then, the view held by many people in western civilization was of an orderly, harmonious universe in which the findings of science could complement biblical revelation. Thanks to men such as Chalmers, Whewell, and the Scottish astronomer Thomas Dick - Dick's works are an even greater monument to natural theology than those of the other two - the particular science of astronomy led many to religious contemplation and therefore supported rather than undermined faith. The link between faith and the uranic science seemed to be quite natural, quite proper. Not surprisingly, then, many nineteenth-century astronomers were intensely religious. Albert Brooks attests to the deep faith of the American astronomer Elijah Hinsdale Burritt, "as a perusal of his 'Geography of the Heavens' will show" (296). Theodore Treadwell notes that the writings of Yale astronomer Denison Olmsted "reflect his religious outlook by frequent references to the 'divine plan' as revealed by the order in the solar system, and occasional paragraphs

45 Stars and Spiritual Navigation are devoted to theological speculations" (240). The Scottish astronomer John Pringle Nichol, whose lectures Melville may have attended in New York (Davis, 67-8), closed his Views of Astronomy (1848) with the following ecstatic exclamation: "Reverentially before him humbly grateful that in the course of this beneficent arrangement He has permitted such intimations of his glory to reach us - let us conclude in the rapt language of the Psalmist: How manifold, oh God, are thy works, by wisdom Thou hast made them all!" (41). Melville may also have heard the lectures of the Cincinnati Observatory's director, Ormsby Macknight Mitchel, who concludes the final pages of The Planetary and Stellar Worlds (1848) with an extended teleological rhapsody: "If you would know [God's] glory, examine the interminable range of suns and systems which crowd the Milky Way ... Would you gather some idea of the eternity past of God's existence, go to the astronomer, and bid him lead you with him in one of his walks through space ... Would you comprehend the idea of the omniscience of God ... [He] has computed the mutual perturbations of millions of suns, and planets, and comets, and worlds, without number ... Would you gain some idea of the wisdom of God, look to the admirable adjustments of the magnificent retinue of planets and satellites which sweep around the sun" (323-6). Russell McCormmach mentions that Mitchel occasionally "expressed the religious feelings that astronomical objects inspired in him" in his astronomy magazine Sidereal Messenger (1846-48). McCormmach tells us that the association of God with astronomy was quite effective on the lecture platform as well. In his Lecture on the Great Unfinished Problems of the Universe (1859), a pious sentiment of Mitchel's glorifying the MakUniverse (1859), a pious sentiment of Mitchel's glorifying the Maker

of "Sun and System, Cluster and Universe" was responded to with "Great Applause" by his audience (39). Some of Melville's literary contemporaries also found the connection between astronomy and theology easy to make. Before he became a full-fledged transcendentalist, Emerson, in his sermon "Astronomy," told his congregation that "There are many considerations that associate astronomy with the history of religion"; that "the song of the morning stars was really the first hymn of praise and will be the last" (171); and that "the heavenly bodies were the first objects of idolatry" (172). He goes on to speak of the view that the stars exert a moral influence upon human lives and notes that the study of astronomy reforms our religion by increasing our understanding of and exalting our views of God, and by modifying and enlarging our theological doctrines (173). Emerson also includes in the sermon a teleological sentiment: "The investigations of the last two hundred years have brought to light the most wonderful proofs of design -

46 Herman Melville: Stargazer

beneficent design - operating far and near in atoms and in [star] systems, reaching to such prodigious extent both of time and space." As well, he quotes to his listeners what seems to have been a wellknown dictum: "The undevout astronomer is mad" (175). Astronomy intensified the religious devotion not only of astronomers and of philosopher-writers such as Emerson but also of the average American citizen. Many Americans who had poetic tendencies were inspired to publish their lyrical thoughts about astronomy in the periodicals of the day. In the New York magazine Knickerbocker we find poems with titles such as "The Joy of the Stars" (June 1842), "The Stars: An Extract" (January 1837), and "Star-Gazing" (August 1851). One brief excerpt can demonstrate the easy connection some Americans made between faith and astronomy. In "Sea-Side Night Thoughts" (May 1843) a voice speaks to the poet thus: "Turn, weary earthling! turn thine eye / On these immortal spheres above, / And read, inscribed on all the sky, / The lessons of eternal love" (21.5: 428-9). The excerpt is a typical example of how such poetry illustrates the sentiment expressed by a writer for the American Whig Review (August 1847) who said of astronomy: "Among all the sciences its moral influence is the strongest and most exalting" (6.2: 218). That is, the celestial lessons of Nature's book teach humanity theological truths. NATURAL RELIGION AND T H E S T A R S I N CLAREL

In the context of natural religion we can understand much of Melville's use of stellar imagery in Clarel. That Melville was fully aware of the associations people saw between religious faith and astronomy is shown by a passage in Mardi in which Taji adores the night sky and apostrophizes the stars and star-patterns: "Wondrous worlds on worlds! Lo, round and round me, shining, awful spells: all glorious, vivid constellations, God's diadem ye are! To you, ye stars, man owes his subtlest raptures, thoughts unspeakable, yet full of faith" (179). In Clarel the easy-going and optimistic Anglican priest, Derwent, expresses the sentiments of natural religion most often. Given his temperament, the stars surely inspire feelings of natural piety in Derwent (who mentions stars now and then), but Melville gives us instead a teleological rhapsody from Ungar, who Alone, upon the terrace stair Lingered, in adoration there Of Eastern skies: "Now night enthrones

47 Stars and Spiritual Navigation Arcturus and his shining sons; And lo, Job's chambers of the South: How might his hand not go to mouth In kiss adoring ye, bright zones? Look up: the age, the age forget There's something to look up to yet!" (4.7.92-100) Thus, although Derwent and Ungar are opposites and antagonists in the poem, the one thing they have in common is a conviction of God's existence brought about by a contemplation of Nature. That Ungar is put in mind of God when he beholds the stars is shown by the fact that his reference to Arcturus echoes the Book of Job, in which God the star-maker asks the sufferer, "canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?" (38.32).1 The other reference that supports a reading of this passage as an expression of natural piety is one to "Job's chambers of the South." Bezanson suggests that this is probably "an uncommon name for a constellation" (635) and Gretchko agrees: "Indeed it is! Job is a southern constellation on the star charts of Julius Schiller. No one else has been known to place Job in the South" ("Melville's Closet Astronomy Source," 20). Richard Allen, in Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, notes that in his attempt to "Judeo-Christianize" the pagan starpatterns Schiller combined the southern constellations of Indus (the Indian) and Pavo (the Peacock) to make the star group Job (251). Ungar may not be referring specifically to Schiller's Job, however, but may again be echoing the Book of Job. In the Bible Job speaks to Bildad about the might of the Power "Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and ... maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south" (9.8-9). The phrase seems to refer to the constellations of the southern hemisphere generally and not to the star-pattern of Job (or Indus and Pavo) particularly. At any rate, what is important is that Ungar echoes not one but two passages from the Bible and so demonstrates his awareness that the God of that book is the creator of Nature's stars and constellations. Other references to stars in the poem are not direct expressions of natural piety but make the connection between the stars and God nevertheless. Perhaps the most obvious one appears in book 2 when the ascetic Syrian monk tells the pilgrims about his self-exile in the wilderness and about his visionary dialogue with Satan: "Mute then my face I lifted to the starry space;

48 Herman Melville: Stargazer But the great heaven it burned so bright, It cowed me, and back fell my sight. Then he: 'Is yon the Father's home? And thou His child cast out to night? Tis bravely lighted, yonder dome.' Tart speak'st thou true: yea, He is there.'" (18.93-100)

Other references to stars are related to God-as-the-Son: "And Christ those words of parting said ... Ah, / They be above us like a star, / Those Paschal words" (1.26.52-6). In a later canto the narrator wonders if the visionary Nehemiah imagines Christ ascending "Mid chaplets, stars, and halcyon wings" (1.36.17). The many examples of stellar imagery in Clarel, while often somehow associated with God, are not always associated with Christianity; sometimes they are found in conjunction with Judaism and the Old Testament (as we have already seen). In Jerusalem Clarel ascends frequently to the roof of his hostel and there, on one nocturnal occasion, accidentally witnesses Abdon in prayer wearing his talith. Then "The Hebrew rose, / And, kindled by the starry sky, / In broidered text that mystic flows / The talith gleams" (1.18.77-80). Later (2.10.5-6) Melville mentions the vision of God in chapter 28 of Genesis, when "Bethel high / Saw Jacob, under starry sky." The final example of celestial imagery in the poem appears in the epilogue and constitutes one of the most convincing proofs that the stars symbolize the God of Judeo-Christian tradition. The last canto is founded upon a series of antagonists and antitheses: Luther and Darwin; science and religion; faith and despair; spirit and "dust"; angel and ape; Heaven and Hell; chimes and knell; life and death. The most important symbolic antitheses, for our purposes, are expressed in lines 16-17: "The running battle of the star and clod / Shall run forever - if there be no God" (4.35). "Clod" here refers to the body, the material; "star," therefore, refers to the opposite associations - to things such as the soul and God that transcend the material world. c SPIRITUAL GUIDES

Related to the stellar imagery in Clarel is the "guide motif": Clarel is trying to follow certain guides that he hopes will lead him into a harbor of spiritual rest and stability. There are three kinds of guides in the poem. On the literal level, which pertains to the physical

49 Stars and Spiritual Navigation

journeying through towns and over the desert from one holy site to the next, the type of guide is merely a "geographical" one - like Djalea, who takes the pilgrims from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea to Mar Saba and back to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The second kind acts on the level not of Clarel's physical but of his spiritual journey: these guides are represented by the Bible and by the poem's major characters, for with their various beliefs and attitudes toward life they represent potential pilot-guides who might lead Clarel into a philosophical haven to escape his despair. The third type of guide often functions on both levels of Clarel's trek - the geographical and the spiritual: the stars in Clarel are navigational aids to the voyagers on all levels of the poem. In "The Timoneer's Story" we find a reference to the stars as visual guides for the mariner, Agath: "For I, the wretched timoneer, / By fitful stars yet tried to steer" (3.12.98-9). When Melville mentions navigational stars, however, they usually function most significantly as symbolic beacons for spiritual seekers like Clarel. The motif is suggested early on when Clarel, standing on the roof of his hostel, is compared to a "ship-boy at mast-head alone) / Watching the starrise" (1.18.41-2). What this means, symbolically, is that the former theology student is on the lookout for new guides to meaning. Not until the end of book 3 does the star-as-spiritual-guide motif become most noticeable. Hearing the end of his sojourn at Mar Saba, Clarel is put in mind of his Jewish sweetheart as his longing to be with her increases. While his thoughts are fixed upon Ruth, his vision of this potential guide cannot remain steady: "In cloud thus caught, / Her image labored like a star / Fitful revealed in midnight heaven" (30.6-8). While Ruth continues to represent a navigational star-beacon to Clarel, however, another possible guide appears in the person of the Celibate. Despite the monk's misogyny, Clarel is very much attracted to his harmonious, peaceful way of life. As with Ruth, Melville employs stellar imagery to emphasize the Celibate's role as another spiritual guide: "What stillness in the almoner's face: / Nor Fomalhaut more mild may reign / Mellow above the purple main/ Of autumn hills" (30.74-7). Fomalhaut is a first-magnitude star in the constellation Pisces Austrinus (the Southern Fish), and like all the stars mentioned by name in Melville's writings, it is navigational. Thus, the Celibate represents yet another celestial beacon that Clarel can follow in his search for spiritual peace and meaning. Interestingly, the secular guides in the poem are not associated with stellar imagery. This should not surprise us, since the stars are symbols of religion and God in Clarel. The epicurean Lesbian is understood by Rolfe to lack religious faith (3.13.21-3) and to live by

50 Herman Melville: Stargazer

a carpe diem credo - and as such is no spiritual navigator: "Holding to now, swearing by here, / His course conducting by no keen / Observance of the stellar sphere - / He coasteth under sail latteen" (40-3)The motif culminates in the final book of Clarel, which opens with a reference to the archetypal navigational Star of Bethlehem - which led the magi over the desert waste to God-the-Son. The Star and the three pilgrim-kings who followed it are the predominant symbols of book 4, and Clarel and his fellow travelers are reenacting the ancient pilgrimage as modern "magi" searching for stellar guides. They are "Like magi of the old Chaldaea, / Viewing Rigel and Betelguese [sic]/' says Rolfe (16.138-9; Rigel and Betelgeuse are navigational stars in the constellation Orion). They would be like the three kings who "failed not, for a light was given - / The light and pilotage of heaven" (1.13-14). However, as Melville observes sadly, the Bethlehem Star is "A light, a lead, no longer won / By any, now, who seekers are: / Or fable is it? but if none, / Let man lament the foundered Star" (1.15-18). In canto 2, as the pilgrims leave Mar Saba to head toward Bethlehem, the star continues to be absent from the heavens but does appear on Agath's tattoo. In the absence of a navigational star-beacon in the sky, Derwent suggests that Agath be their guide: "While now for Bethlehem we aim, Our stellar friend the post should claim Of guide. We'll put him in the van Follow the star on the tattooed man, We wise men here." (139-43)

Derwent's flippancy serves only to emphasize the situation as a tragic, or at least pathetic, parody of the scene in the Book of Matthew (2.1-12). Nevertheless, they finally reach Bethlehem and another holy site, the Church of the Star. Because they have found the place of the Manger, Agath's symbolic function as the Star of Bethlehem is no longer necessary, and Melville has him exit. The pilgrims meet a new tour guide (and, because of his inclination to proselytize, a new spiritual guide) - the monk Salvaterra. He takes them to "a silver star / In pavement set" that symbolizes "The place ... where that shining grace / Which led the Magi, stood; below, / The Manger is" (13.5865). Salvaterra is associated inextricably with the symbol of the Star of Bethlehem, and both converge as yet another potential guide for

5i Stars and Spiritual Navigation

Clarel. Clarel is indeed attracted to the monk and envies him his fervent devotion. Five cantos later Clarel's contentment in considering Salvaterra's faith gives way to despair when he listens to Ungar's jeremiads and Calvinistic judgments of depraved humanity. Clarel is deeply distressed, for if Ungar's words are right then human beings "are not worth the saving" (22.66). But perhaps there is reason to be hopeful, Clarel thinks, as he catches sight of a celestial beacon once again: "Yet, yet there gleams one beckoning star - / So near the horizon, judge I right / That 'tis of heaven?" (68-70). Even better, the pilgrims later come upon the Cistern of the Kings, and this holy site recalls the hopeful Star one last time: the Magi here Watered their camels, and reclaimed The Ray, brief hid. Ere this they passed Clarel looked in and there saw glassed Down in the wave, one mellow star; Then, glancing up, beheld afar Enisled serene, the orb itself: Apt auspice here for journeying elf. (29.116-23)

I disagree with Kenny (114) that this represents the actual Star of Bethlehem. What is important is that Clarel sees a star at all - sees what throughout the poem has been a symbol of God and faith. Perhaps he will be guided over the desert of faithlessness and doubt to a harbor of spiritual consolation after all. BUT THE CROSS IS SLANTED AND THE GOD IS COFFINED

We never find out if Clarel reaches his harbor, though, for the poem is open-ended; and, it must be admitted, while Melville clearly makes the association between the stars and their divine creator, not all the references to the stars are hopeful. The lines about the constellation Crux, the Southern Cross, constitute a case in point. Melville is drawing upon a centuries-old tradition in which that starry configuration had been an inspirational symbol of God-the-Son and Christianity. "Its invention as a constellation is often attributed to Royer as of 1679," says Allen, but it had been known nearly two centuries before him (185). Furthermore, the use of the Southern Cross as a symbol was a literary commonplace by the time Melville wrote Clarel. Allen speaks of "all the poetry and romance associated

52 Herman Melville: Stargazer

with it/' and as proof quotes from Whittier's Cry of a Lost Soul and from Crass of the South by one Mrs Hemans (189). Melville himself had used the emblem in his early work, Mardi: "One only constellation was beheld; but every star was brilliant as the one, that promises the morning [Venus, the Morning Star]. That constellation was the Crux-Australis, - the badge, and type of Alma [Christ]" (552-3). To these examples we can add J. Swett's "The Southern Cross," published in Knickerbocker in October 1854 (from which I quote two of five stanzas): When man first traversed Southern seas, Which wash the cold Antarctic pole, And spread the sail to favoring breeze Where the Pacific's blue waves roll, From unknown wastes he turned his eye To the blue ocean, hung above, And saw upon the star-lit sky The symbol of a SAVIOUR'S love! The hardened sailor's gaze was turned, Amid the lightning's lurid glare, To where the holy emblem burned, And courage triumphed o'er despair: He saw no more the Polar star; Another guide to him was given, The Southern Cross, that beamed afar, Symbol of home, and hope, and heaven! (44-4)

Some of the same motifs in this poem we see in Clarel: the stars as symbols of God and as guides for the traveler. In short, the poem is an expression of natural religion. Just as the symbolism of the Star of Bethlehem is threatened in Clarel, however, so the emblematic Southern Cross suffers too. Like the Star of Bethlehem, the Cross is absent from the skies over the Judaean wilderness. Allen says "it is not now entirely visible above 27°3o' of north latitude. It was last seen on the horizon of Jerusalem - 3i°46'45" - about the time that Christ was crucified" (185). When the pilgrims encounter the symbol, therefore, it is only on a large rock, on a chart, and in Rolfe's memory: "Looks like the Southern Cross to me," Said Clarel; "so 'tis down in chart."

53 Stars and Spiritual Navigation "And so," said Rolfe, "tis set in sky Though error slight of place prevail In midmost star here chalked. At sea, Bound for Peru, when south ye sail, Startling that novel cluster strange Peers up from low; then as ye range Cape-ward still further, brightly higher And higher the stranger doth aspire, Till off the Horn, when at full hight Ye slack your gaze as chilly grows the night." (2.31.27-38) It is appropriate that the ex-sailor Rolfe confirms Clarel's identification of the sign, for a sailor would be well-versed in uranography (see figure 5).2 Yet it is Derwent, interestingly, who is in a position to read the writing etched in the stone above and below the pictograph. I say "interestingly" because, as a natural theologian, he is most given to reading God in Nature, but an implied meaning of the inscription is that it may no longer be possible to detect the Author of the book of Nature. Derwent reads the writing above the sign first - "By one who wails the loss, I This altar to the Slanting Cross" (43-4) - and then the longer inscription: "'Emblazoned bleak in austral skies A heaven remote, whose starry swarm Like Science lights but cannot warm Translated Cross, hast thou withdrawn, Dim paling too at every dawn, With symbols vain once counted wise ... Aloft, aloof, a frigid sign: How far removed, thou Tree divine, Whose tender fruit did reach so low Love apples of New-Paradise! About the wide Australian sea The planted nations yet to be When, ages hence, they lift their eyes, Tell, what shall they retain of thee? But class thee with Orion's sword? In constellations unadored, Christ and the Giant equal prize? The atheist cycles - must they be?"' (50-69)

Figure 5 The Southern Cross (Crux) and other south circumpolar stars

55 Stars and Spiritual Navigation The unknown writer of the inscription seems to know that the Cross can no longer be seen from the latitude of the rock and, more significantly, knows that the symbolism of Crux is being lost, is dying. Derwent, characteristically, refuses to heed a dismal message: "Mad, mad enough," he says. Surely he will not consider the possibility that in the future the religious symbolism of the Southern Cross may lose its meaning and be as empty of spiritual significance as the pagan constellation of Orion. What has slanted the Cross and threatened its symbolism is revealed in Margoth's etching of a large geological hammer and his own inscription: "I, Science, I whose gain's thy loss, 11 slanted thee, thou Slanting Cross" (99-100). In the late nineteenth century, then, it is science - the same thing that had been used by many scientists and natural theologians in the first half of the century to support faith it is science that is the faith-destroying monster. Tyrus Hillway, who has written extensively on Melville's knowledge of and attitudes toward science, notes Melville's disquietudes about that approach to understanding the world. Like the Poe of "Sonnet - to Science," "Melville is not happy to see science destroy the pleasant illusions which once filled human life with wonder and joy. Though legends and fables, once the delight of men's hearts and imaginations, may not adhere strictly to fact, their value lies in spiritual truths that science cannot reach" ("Nineteenth-Century Science," 193). Melville knows, though, that it is not only the geology of men like Lyell and the biology of men like Darwin that can be blamed, for so can astronomy, which is subjected to some mild disparagement in Clarel. As proof we can cite Rolfe's complaint that the critical spirit of nineteenth-century science "reaches toward Diana's moon, / Affirming it a clinkered blot, / Deriding pale Endymion" (1.34.26-8). Astronomy is implied to be the specific culprit that would destroy the beautiful old romantic myths concerning the moon. Hillway quotes another passage: The abbot and the palmer rest: The legends follow them and die Those legends which, be it confessed, Did nearer bring to them the sky Did nearer woo it to their hope Of all that seers and saints avow Than Galileo's telescope Can bid it unto prosing Science now. (1.35.108-115)

56 Herman Melville: Stargazer

Now, not just pagan myths but the legends of humanity's religions are being threatened by scientific study. Science "leaves unsatisfied the spiritual and esthetic sensibilities of man/' Hillway concludes ("Melville as Critic," 414). Interestingly, astronomy itself inspired its own myths and lore, and to an extent Melville made imaginative use of pagan constellatory myths, especially in Mardi. In Clarel, however, an older Melville acknowledges that astronomy, like other sciences, can also destroy myths and religions. Another passage in Clarel proves that, to a certain degree, Melville kept himself informed of new astronomical revelations and techniques that could be seen to threaten the ancient bastions of faith. In an argument with Derwent, Rolfe mentions "The claims of stellar chemistry" (2.21.34). This is surely an allusion to the findings of what was in the iSoos the relatively new science of spectroscopy. As I explained earlier, the spectroscope is a prism that divides light into its constituent colours and Frauenhofer lines; when applied to the sun and other stars it can tell astronomers much about the star under scrutiny, such as its chemical composition (what elements are in the star). The single line of poetry just quoted, coupled with the materialist Mortmain's assertion that "stars must go / Or change!" because "All's chymestry" (2.39.66-7), shows that Melville was aware of the marriage between physics and astronomy. As the telescope showed the moon to be simply a clinkered blot, so the spectroscope deprived the stars of much of their sublime mystery: those celestial objects were no longer a symbol of the Divine but merely chemical soups held together by gravity. Because of the critical spirit of astronomers and other scientists, as well as the study of comparative religion and the "higher criticism" of men like David Strauss and Ernest Renan, Nietzsche's proclamation "God is dead!" hovers over Clarel as a distinct possibility; it is the poem's donne'e. The chance that God may be dead is suggested in the second-last stellar image in the poem. It comes, ironically, after the final, and hopeful, reference to the Star of Bethlehem. The pilgrims are making their way through Bethlehem - labelled, appropriately, "the deicide town" (4.29.127) - when the narrator describes the sleeping valley: "Oppressive, roofed with awful skies / Whose stars like silver nailheads gleam / Which stud some lid over lifeless eyes" (150-2). This is as "metaphysical" a conceit as Melville could have found in Sir Thomas Browne, and it can be interpreted to mean that the stars may be the nails of God's coffin and that those "lifeless eyes" may be His.3 Melville's use of the stellar imagery here is an inversion of the usual way he employs it in the rest of Clarel. Whereas in most of the poem the stars signify the possibility of a living God and of religious

57 Stars and Spirituastability for Clarel, the symbols of the Slanted Cross and the stars as coffin nails suggest the absence of God and the emptineess of the

stability for Clarel, the symbols of the Slanted Cross and the stars as coffin nails suggest the absence of God and the emptiness of the religions that for thousands of years have worshipped Him. Melville perhaps employed the stellar imagery in Clarel against the backdrop of the natural theology of men like Paley, Chalmers, Whewell, and Thomas Dick because he was looking back nostalgically to a time in the nineteenth century when faith was still vibrant and when people could believe with the psalmist that "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." But Melville shows astronomy in both its roles - as a pursuit that once reinforced faith and as a study now threatening it. Perhaps it was his realization of the negative impact late nineteenth-century astronomy could have on a person of fancy and religious sensibility that compelled the Melville of Billy Budd to turn away from contemporary astronomical knowledge to his old favourite,

CHAPTER

FOUR

Astronomical Imagery and Symbolic Antitheses in Billy Budd

That Melville occasionally associates characters in his works with astronomical objects such as the sun, moon, comets, meteors, stars, and constellations is maintained by several scholars, including Moore, Mills, Leonard, Gretchko, Franklin, Finkelstein, and Dillingham. Certainly every reader of Billy Budd recognizes the astronomical imagery in that book - what little of it there is - but scholars do not seem to know what to make of it. As far as I know only Reinhard Friederich has written a full-length article on the astronomy; in "Billy Budd in a Symbolist Context" he notes the "number of different star references which accompany all the major characters in the narrative. Frequent references to stars are appropriate for a sea story, and therefore they help tighten and reinforce the basic narrative pattern" (263). However, as Friederich goes on to admit, "even though this common ground of character attributions suggests that they complement each other and point to permanent bonds among the protagonists, their significance is unclear" (264). Perhaps "their significance is unclear" partly because Billy Budd is an "unfinished" work - at least, it was so characterized by Mrs Melville (Hayford and Sealts, preface to Billy Budd, vi). It is not unreasonable to suppose that patterns of imagery and symbolism in the incomplete, although "heavily revised" (Hayford and Sealts, 12), literary production of an acknowledged symbolist may not be fully fleshed out. Such may indeed be the case with some of the astronomical imagery and symbolism in Billy Budd. What Melville was doing with the astronomy in his final work can best be understood in the context of the novel's larger pattern of antitheses - through which the astronomical symbolism runs "like the King's yarn in a coil of navy rope" - and by recalling one of the ways in which Milton uses astronomical imagery and symbolism in

59 Imagery and Symbolic Antitheses Paradise Lost. Like the two principal combatants in Milton's epic, Christ and Satan, the two main protagonists in Billy Budd are associated with celestial symbols that are opposites in the heavens and opposites connotatively. Specifically, Billy, Melville's Christ figure, is associated with the sun, the star Aldebaran, and the constellation Taurus high above the celestial equator on the ecliptic (the ring of zodiacal constellations through which the sun seems to move), while John Claggart, Melville's Satan figure, is linked to the full moon and the constellation Scorpio far below the celestial equator. At the end of the tale, as the hanged Billy is being hoisted high into the air, the sun with which he is associated is in Taurus and both sun and star group are rising just as Billy does. In contrast, as Claggart's corpse is descending deep into the ocean, the full moon with which he is linked is in Scorpio and both moon and star group are sinking in the western horizon just as Claggart sinks. Milton employs similar moral and uranographical antitheses in Paradise Lost. Melville's extensive use of Milton, in Billy Budd and elsewhere, has been demonstrated amply by several scholars,1 and Melville also seems to have borrowed from Milton with regard to astronomy.2 To begin, we need to establish the large pattern of nonastronomical opposites in Billy Budd. This pattern is based primarily on Billy and Claggart, the master-at-arms. The first imagistic and symbolic antithesis concerns height and depth, and as soon as Billy is impressed into the Bellipotent the imagery of height commences as he takes his place at "the starboard watch of the foretop" (49). "Life in the foretop well agreed with Billy Budd," we are told later. "There, when not actually engaged on the yards yet higher aloft," he and the topmen "constituted an aerial club lounging at ease ... like the lazy gods, and frequently amused with what was going on in the busy world of the decks below" (68). Billy, then, is associated with height, with the upper reaches of the ship and with the sky. He also has "welkin eyes" (71; see also 44, 78) and is compared to birds (45, 52, 98, 123). If the foretop represents the sky beneath it the upper deck of the ship - in the middle between height and depth - represents the surface of the earth, the world; this is a conceit that appears elsewhere in Melville (Moby-Dick, 40; White-Jacket, 115, 398). Billy's moral opposite, Claggart, is associated with depths rather than with heights. The master-at-arms finds his station, his milieu, "on the populous lower gun decks" of the warship, in "seclusion from the sunlight" (64). Other examples of diction and imagery suggest profundity: Melville writes of the "wires of underground influence" under Claggart's control (67), of his "subterranean fire" (90), of his occasional ascension "from his cavernous sphere" (91), and of

60 Herman Melville: Stargazer his eyes being "like the alien eyes of certain uncatalogued creatures of the deep" (98). If we recall the work of the many scholars who demonstrate Claggart's link with Satan, these images of fiery subterranean depths suggest Dante's Devil imprisoned at the centre of the world in Hell; but as far as astronomical imagery is concerned, it is the Satan of Paradise Lost with whom Claggart can be compared. Returning, then, to the astronomical imagery, we note that Billy is associated with the sun through allusions to various mythological sun gods - Apollo (48), Hyperion (88), and a Celtic god. H. Bruce Franklin elaborates on the less well-known Celtic divinity and on his relation to the sun: "The god known as Hu, Beli, and Budd was seen 'as the greatest God, and viewed as riding on the sunbeams, or personified in the great luminary.' He is 'expressly identified with Apollo, the solar divinity ... He has also the name of Budd, Victory, and Buddugre, the ' god of victory, the king who rises in light, and ascends the sky'" (195). As Franklin's examination implies, the pagan myths add to the symbolic richness of Billy Budd, but here we are more concerned with showing that for Milton and for Melville, Christ, too, can be linked with the sun. Appropriately, Christ-like Billy will indeed rise in light with the morning sun, symbolic victor over his evil adversary. That evil opponent, Claggart, is associated with the moon. In his other writings Melville occasionally links an evil character such as Claggart with the moon: for instance, there are two passages linking Hautia with the lunar sphere in Mardi. In that book Melville apparently uses the moon as a symbol to associate the wicked seductress with Ashtaroth (Astarte), the ancient Mediterranean goddess of fertility, sexual rituals, and prostitution (cf. Clarel: "When Ashtoreth [the moon] her zenith won," 2.16.139; an(^ 2-37-8 for "Astarte"). So the moon is clearly a negative symbol when Melville uses it in conjunction with Hautia: "She glided on: her crescent brow calm as the moon, when most it works its evil influences" (646; see also Mardi, 567). As for Claggart, the editors of the Chicago edition of Billy Budd provide some external evidence to relate Claggart to the moon by comparing Melville's description of his "pinching and shriveling ... visage" (88) with a line from "The Haglets": "The wan moon shows in plight forlorn; / Then, pinched in visage, fades and fades" (227). Early in the novel we are told that Claggart's complexion is one of "pallor"; we may connect this description with "the pale moonshine" described later (119). Another piece of evidence that establishes a connection between the master-at-arms and the lunar orb depends on the idea of "moon madness" - "lunacy." This notion first appears in Mardi: "'He's stark, stark mad!' sighed Yoomy. 'Ay, the moon's at full/ said Media" (421). Moon madness also figures in chapter 11 of

61 Imagery and Symbolic Antitheses

Billy Budd when Melville is trying to explain such enigmatic beings as Claggart: "Toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of atrocity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgment sagacious and sound. These men are madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their lunacy is not continuous, but occasional, evoked by some special object ... Now something such an one was Claggart" (76; my italics). That Melville uses "lunacy" only eight words after "madmen" and that he uses "lunacy" instead of a synonym such as "madness" suggests he was thinking particularly of the tradition in which madness is associated with the moon. Since the moon is used as a symbol for the masterat-arms, then, we can understand the significance of the "temptation scene" in which one of Claggart's underlings, an afterguardsman, tries to involve Billy in a mutinous plot invented by Claggart to incriminate the young man: "There was no moon as yet" (82). That is, Claggart does not yet confront Billy directly but sends one of his inferiors to do his dirty work.3 Leaving the solar and lunar imagery, let us now consider the stellar imagery. Friederich is quite correct when he suggests that the astronomical imagery is one thing all the main characters in Billy Budd have in common. However, the celestial associations connected with Captain Vere (and with Horatio Nelson) do not seem to fit into the patterns I am about to uncover, so a few words about them here should suffice. Nelson, of course, is commemorated by "the star inserted in the Victory quarter-deck designating the spot where the Great Sailor fell" (57); and the captain of the Bellipotent "In the navy ... was popularly known by the appellation 'Starry Vere'" (61). Melville occasionally associated heroic, often military, men with the stars and constellations (the idea of astral apotheosis - catasterism is sometimes behind the conceit). Certainly Vere and Nelson fit into this usage, although compared with Nelson, Vere is only a "star" of inferior magnitude: "whatever his sterling qualities [he] was without any brilliant ones" (61). More obviously associated with the stars is Billy, and before introducing him as an example of the Handsome Sailor, Melville first describes that type as seen among his admiring followers: "In certain instances they would flank, or like a bodyguard quite surround, some superior figure of their own class, moving along with them like Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his constellation" (43). Elijah Burritt tells us that "Aldebaran is of Arabic origin, and takes its name from two words which signify, 'He went before, or led the way'" (40). Certainly Melville's description of the Handsome Sailor, and of "the homage of his shipmates," suggests the etymology of "Aldebaran,"

62 Herman Melville: Stargazer for the Handsome Sailor is obviously a natural leader of men. The type is not only associated with the first-magnitude star Aldebaran, though, but also with the constellation to which it belongs - Taurus the Bull - as Melville goes on to show: "Close-reefing topsails in a gale, there he was, astride the weather yardarm-end ... A superb figure, tossed up as by the horns of Taurus against the thunderous sky" (44; see figure 6). Melville then proceeds from the type to the example as Billy is introduced. In many respects - in his strength, beauty, and "moral nature," and in his association with height and the sky (as we have seen) - Billy is certainly the Handsome Sailor. Melville adds to the stellar imagery already employed by referring to the Handsome Sailor generally and to Billy particularly as a "cynosure" (44). A cynosure, of course, is any person or object that attracts notice and admiration; but it is also something that guides - like the Handsome Sailor leading his comrades or a star of great navigational importance like Aldebaran. And as a symbol of Christ, or as a Christ-like figure, Billy is an astral guide for moral navigators too. Graveling, the captain of the Rights-of-Man, pleads with Ratcliffe not to transfer Billy onto the Bellipotent: "Before I shipped that young fellow, my forecastle was a rat-pit of quarrels. It was black times, I tell you, aboard the Rights here ... But Billy came; and it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shindy. Not that he preached to them or said or did anything in particular; but a virtue went out of him, sugaring the sour ones. They took to him like hornets to treacle ... Ay, Lieutenant, you are going to take away the jewel of 'em; you are going to take away my peacemaker!" (46-7). Conveyed to "the ampler and more knowing world of a great warship," however, Billy-Christ-Aldebaran is not quite so influential: "hardly here was he that cynosure he had previously been among those minor ship's companies of the merchant marine" (50). Even on a warship, though, Billy is still popular, still shines brightly. Also important for an understanding of the way Melville uses astronomy in Billy Budd is the position in the zodiac of the star and constellation with which Billy, as an example of the Handsome Sailor, is associated. Taurus, with Aldebaran, occupies that position on the ecliptic very near to what Mattison labels the "solstitial" (figure 6). The solstitial point is where the sun reaches its highest, its maximum, declination in the northern sky - the summer solstice. I stress the word "highest" to remind the reader of the imagery of height associated with Billy.

Figure 6 Taurus with Aldebaran

64 Herman Melville: Stargazer Let us stop and review briefly the patterns of antitheses we have been exploring. So far we have seen that Billy is linked with four associations relevant to this argument: height, Christ, the sun, and Aldebaran/Taurus near the highest point on the ecliptic. Claggart, Billy's moral and symbolic opposite, is associated with depth, with Satan, and with the moon. The fourth correspondence remains to be suggested, and in order to parallel but contrast with the fourth item connected with Billy, it must be a constellation near the lowest point on the ecliptic. A glance at Mattison's Atlas (figure 7) shows Sagittarius the Archer and Scorpio the Scorpion. Sagittarius does not seem relevant in any way here, so we must disqualify it. That leaves Claggart to be associated with Scorpio. There is indeed evidence in Billy Budd to suggest that the masterat-arms is connected with a scorpion. It comes at the end of a passage in which Melville makes another attempt to explain and to understand Claggart: "With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it... a nature like Claggart's ... what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it" (78). Some scholars have pointed out the Miltonic echoes in the passage; they have noted that the word "recoils" appears a few times in Paradise Lost, for instance, and that there Milton employs it to describe the evil of Satan.4 The important connections here, then, are Claggart-Satan-scorpion. That Melville, like Milton, certainly identified the scorpion with the Devil is confirmed by some lines from Clarel: A crabbed scorpion, dingy brown, With nervous tail slant upward thrown (Like to a snake's wroth neck and head Dilating when the coil's unmade Before the poor affrighted clown Whose foot offends it unbeknown) Writhing, faint crackling, like wire spring, With anguish of the poisonous bile Inflaming the slim duct, the while In act of shooting toward the sting; This, the unblest, small, evil thing. (4.4.5-15) Rolfe calls the creature a "small epitome of devil" (22). So Melville may have taken the identification of the scorpion with the demonic from Paradise Lost (see also book 10: 524).

Figure 7 Scorpio and Sagittarius

66 Herman Melville: Stargazer

To return to the astronomical imagery: in Paradise Lost Satan is associated with the constellation Scorpio on two occasions, the first of which comes in book 4: "Th' Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen Betwixt Astraea and the Scorpion sign, Wherein all things created first he weighed. (996-9)

In this passage Satan is preparing to do battle with God's angels; the good angels are represented by Astraea/Virgo on one side of the constellation Libra ("scales") - Astraea is the goddess of justice, and as such is appropriate to represent God's angels - while Satan is symbolized by Scorpio on the other side. Like Milton, astrologers also considered Scorpio "the accursed constellation," says Allen (363); it was seen as "the baleful source of war and discord" (364) and as such is the suitable symbol for Claggart, the master-at-arms, as well as for Milton's Satan. Only at the end of Billy Budd, in and just before the climactic hanging scene, do all the symbolic associations come together - that is, Billy-Christ-sun-Aldebar an/Taurus and Claggart-Satan-moonScorpio. The nonastronomical pattern of symbolic antitheses is carried on and reinforced one more time immediately prior to the climactic scene when, after Billy has felled Claggart, Vere asks the surgeon to help him remove Claggart's corpse to a compartment, "designating one opposite that where the foretopman remained immured" (101). Even in the captain's quarters Billy and the masterat-arms are opposite one another. This opposition culminates in a metaphysical and astronomical sense in chapters 23 to 25. We must determine the relative positions of the sun and moon, Billy and Claggart, and the constellations with which they are associated at the time of Billy's hanging. All hands are summoned to witness punishment at four o'clock in the morning (122), just as the sky is beginning to show signs of the approaching sun. For the sun's light to appear as early as 4 A.M. at a Mediterranean latitude, it must be June (Melville calls it "summer," page 54). We can be even more precise as to the date: the naval chronicle report published a month after the incident aboard the Bellipotent maintains that the events happened on "the tenth of the last month" (130). To determine the positions of the constellations for this date, time and location, I set a planisphere (a rotating star map) for a Mediterranean latitude and positioned it for 4 A.M. for 10 June. I discovered that on

67 Imagery and Symbolic Antitheses

that day the sun would be right in the middle of the horns of Taurus. Recall Melville's description of the Handsome Sailor (Billy, specifically and symbolically) "tossed up as by the horns of Taurus" (44). Thus, on the day of Billy's execution the sun is exactly in the same location as Billy has been described as occupying - in this way Melville further reinforces the sun-Billy association. The sun's actual disc would be appearing on the horizon around 4:30 or shortly thereafter. As for Claggart and his astronomical associations, we have been told earlier that the moon is nearly full (116), and for it to be so it must be sinking on the horizon opposite the rising sun. The planisphere shows that if Billy's ascending sun is in easterly Taurus, Claggart's descending moon would be close to the westerly constellation of Scorpio, diametrically opposed to Taurus in the sky).5 Thus, as mentioned at the beginning of the chapter (and not to forget the biblical symbolism), "crucified" Billy-Christ is hauled up to the high yardarm of the mainmast while devilish Claggart, having been previously buried at sea, is sinking lower into the depths. Billy attains his Christ-like apotheosis just as demonic Claggart is "put down" for good. Billy's rising is Claggart's fall - the same is true of Christ and Satan respectively, and in Paradise Regained Christ tells Satan: "Know'st thou not that my rising is thy fall?" (y.2oi).6 I suspect that Melville may have taken the combined ideas of height and depth and astronomical antitheses from a passage in Paradise Lost in which the Arch-Fiend is beheld flying to Eden "Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steering / His zenith [actually Milton means 'nadir'], while the Sun in Aries rose" (10:328-9). To be between the constellations of the Centaur (Sagittarius) and the Scorpion, Satan must be in the western sky opposite to the rising sun in Aries. ("Sun," by the way, also refers to the Son, Christ, who is therefore identified with Aries as well - recall Melville's reference to the "fleece of the Lamb of God," 124). Like Billy's rising Taurus, Christ's rising Aries is opposite to where Satan's setting constellations are in the prelapsarian sky. Here, once more, is imagery of height and depth combined with constellatory imagery and symbolism. Newton Arvin calls Billy Budd a "late-nineteenth-century Paradise Lost" (296), and we see now that this is also true of the novel even with regard to astronomy. The pattern of symbolic cosmic antitheses is the climax, the culmination, of something like Manichean polarities in Melville's final work. If he had lived to complete Billy Budd, he might have strengthened the astronomical associations that are there. Yet even with the unfinished novel we have been able to detect the patterns Melville

68 Herman Melville: Stargazer

apparently had in mind, as far as astronomy is concerned. Such detective work required that we recognize the antitheses that pervade the entire work and that we remember the profound influence Milton had on Melville's artistry. It is indeed true, as other scholars have shown, that the drama between Christ-like Billy and Satanic Claggart is Melville's version of the archetypical conflict between good and evil as Milton presents it in Paradise Lost. The difference is that Milton's battle begins in a prelapsarian universe, while Melville's is a reenactment of the conflict in a fallen world. Melville's use of solar, lunar, stellar, and especially constellatory imagery adds a depth of symbolic meaning that takes a tale of nautical misadventure and places it within the cosmic scope of Christian epic. Our understanding of the astronomical imagery in Billy Budd reinforces what scholars have identified as the characteristic Melvillean themes of good and evil, human innocence and treachery - and, more generally, what Melville sometimes referred to as "the problem of the universe." In Billy Budd, as in Mardi and Clarel, astronomical imagery helps to illustrate theological/philosophical concerns. At the same time, however, our examination of the celestial imagery and symbolism might be seen to reopen (if it were ever closed) that old debate about whether Billy Budd is Melville's "testament of acceptance" or resistance. Briefly - since a detailed summary of the debate is hardly necessary for Melvilleans - the issue hinges on whether Billy can be seen as Melville's spokesman when he blesses Captain Vere, who is preparing to hang him, or whether Melville is in fact severely critical of Vere. Billy's benediction has been taken by some scholars as suggesting Melville's final affirmation - "his everlasting yea" - that the existence of evil in the social-political world and in the cosmos at large is tragically necessary. Opposing scholars see the benediction in an ironic light and conclude that Melville never would have "mellowed" to the point where he came to accept human and cosmic evil: he would rail against it even on his deathbed. No scholar in either camp has explored the implications of the celestial geometry at the end of Billy Budd, however. Like Milton's epic, Melville's novel is comedic in the Dantean sense: that is, the movements of the zodiacal constellations suggest a happy ending involving a final cosmic triumph of good over evil. Milton's purpose is to "justify the ways of God to men": he shows that God permitted His son to be sacrificed for the greater good of His children - knowing full well that Christ would have the final victory over the Devil. Perhaps Billy Budd is Melville's theodicy - it justifies the ways of Vere ("God") to men. Vere has Billy sacrificed for the greater good of naval discipline and, ultimately, of national security; and the movement of

69 Imagery and Symbolic Antitheses the constellations signifies that Christ-like Billy, though sacrificed, will also have the final victory. He will rise and achieve his zenith while his foe will descend once and for all. Of course, scholars have seen the possibility of this interpretation in the biblical imagery at the end of the novel; it is there even without the uranography and celestial geometry. But the case for seeing Billy Budd as Melville's testament of acceptance is further strengthened by the zodiacal movements - and by the ancient association between the stars and the concept of fate, predestination. Several times in his works Melville depends on this association.7 He is doing the same in Billy Budd: Billy's crime, his punishment, his execution - all are written "in the stars," just as God has foreordained Christ's crucifixion. It was meant to be. Like Ahab, Billy might have said to Vere, "This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled" (Moby-Dick, 561). Perhaps those early critics were right in seeing Melville's final parable of the human condition as his ultimate testament of acceptance: the way he employs the constellations in Billy Budd suggests that the clash of good and evil, the temporary destruction of the good and the final cosmic triumph of the good, are part of the way the cosmos works. Billy seems to accept this fate, and his Nietzschean amor fati may be Melville's too. If it is not Melville's, if the novel is indeed his testament of resistance, then the symbolic significance of the celestial geometry in Billy Budd is at odds with his philosophical position of continuing protest.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Final Thoughts on Melville and Astronomy

In chapter i we saw how extensive Melville's knowledge of astronomy was, and in the following chapters I showed how he exploited that science for literary purposes (thematically, symbolically, and allegorically). Some final observations and some speculations about Melville's attitude toward astronomy remain to be made. In his dissertation and in some articles published after he completed it, Tyrus Hillway discusses what Melville's attitude toward science in general might have been. By the time he wrote Moby-Dick, says Hillway, Melville had dissociated himself from the earlier writer of the romantic novels Typee and Omoo and "allied himself with the scientists who destroyed [the] pleasant view" of the romanticists who saw Nature as humanity's friendly tutor and benefactor ("Spirit of Science," 83). Melville's so-called alliance with the scientists was far from unqualified, though, and in fact he could be very critical of science and its practitioners. Hillway has concluded that Melville was hostile toward science and its devotees for several reasons: "He ridiculed, first of all, the apparent esotericism and mysteriousness of science, which he interpreted as pretty largely humbug. He denounced, secondly, the coldness and inhumanity of the scientific mind [as did Hawthorne]. Thirdly, he mistrusted the absurd overconfidence of the enthusiasts who thought science would solve every human problem. Fourthly, he saw the analytical methods of the scientists resulting in the destruction of beauty. And he deplored, finally, the struggle between science and religious faith" ("Melville as Critic," 411). The geologist Margoth, in Clarel, exemplifies the kind of scientist whom Hillway says Melville deplored. He also disliked the cold objectivity and insensitivity of medical men ("NineteenthCentury Science," 178-82).

71 Final Thoughts

If geology and scientific medicine are examples of specific sciences with which Melville had some quarrel, what can we determine about his feelings regarding astronomy? If he could be critical about scientists and their fields of expertise generally, did his criticisms also apply to the specific study and students of astronomy? Although there seem to be no direct statements outside his literary works that prove with certainty what Melville's attitude toward astronomy was, I sense that his feelings of hostility toward science were qualified when it came to astronomical science. At least until the writing of Clarel, anyway Melville nurtured a fondness for astronomy that he did not seem to display toward other sciences. Realizing the danger of equating the sentiments of a fictitious character with those of the author, I shall not assert dogmatically and authoritatively that Taji's exclamations in Mardi - "Wondrous worlds on worlds! ... all glorious, vivid constellations, God's diadem ye are! To you ye stars, man owes his subtlest raptures" (179) - reflect the feelings Melville had when he beheld the stars. Yet my suspicion, based in part on Melville's mostly sympathetic literary treatment of astronomy, is that these indeed are the sentiments of the young writer. Furthermore, the man who gave up going to the opera in order to "study the stars" (Correspondence 159) does not strike me as someone who felt antipathy toward astronomers like Maria Mitchell or toward the subjects of astronomical enquiry. We must remember, too, that astronomy is apparently the only science in which he ever took part: the young sailor who learned uranography, navigation, and celestial geometry was in fact engaging in observational astronomy. Contemporary astronomical knowledge and hypotheses fired Melville's imagination, especially by the time he wrote his third book. There are hardly any references to things astronomical in Typee and Omoo, but suddenly Mardi explodes with references to celestial bodies, the cosmos, astronomers, their instruments and theories, and beings who inhabit other worlds. Mardi is fundamentally a Romantic quest and as such has many precedents; but, apparently inspired by the lectures given by Nichol and O.M. Mitchel in New York during the winter of 1847-48, Melville set the Romantic quest in a larger context by placing it against the backdrop of the entire universe and employing astronomical speculations and the latest discoveries in astronomy. Despite the implications of some of those - recall Babbalanja's despair concerning the theory of a plurality of worlds - Melville's enthusiasm for astronomy does not appear to have suffered any damage. Significantly, the number of references to things astronomical peaks in the book that was written at the same time that interest on

72 Herman Melville: Stargazer

the part of his fellow Americans in astronomy also peaked (see chapter 1 of my "Uranic Muse"). I think one reason why Melville decided to use astronomy so extensively in Mardi is because he was fully aware of its immense popularity, and he seems to have believed that by exploiting a topic of such current interest, he would increase the chances of making Mardi a popular book. Mardi failed nevertheless, but the American public and some of Melville's contemporary authors remained fascinated with astronomy after the 18405 - and so did Melville, as demonstrated by the prose and poetry he wrote until the end of his life. We know now how broad Melville's knowledge of astronomy is and how varied his literary use of that science is. For instance, he employs the stars navigationally (uranographically), or he uses them for the sake of constellatory lore or in Petrarchan conceits or to symbolize America1 or to suggest apotheosis or to hint at fate. His use of the moon is equally varied: she can be Cynthia (Mardi, 22), Diana, the evil Ashtoreth, or a "clinkered blot" - the moon is in fact all of these last three within the same work (Clarel). Comets and meteors in the Melvillean canon can be either traditional symbols of ill omen or objects of scientific scrutiny. In other words, sometimes Melville appeals to the "reason" by using the discoveries and speculations of astronomy, while at other times he appeals to the imagination by using the poetry and myths it has inspired - that is, he uses astronomy romantically. Sometimes astronomical allusions are merely incidental - as when young Wellingborough in Redburn reports that "the stars peeped out, plain enough to count one by one" (45) - while elsewhere they are only ornamental. In both cases those allusions add nothing to the meaning of the literary works in which they are found. Other times they are centrally relevant to the themes of the works in which they appear. The conclusion I come to inevitably about Melville's relation to astronomy recalls something Sherman Paul says about Emerson that astronomy was "one of the imaginative constituents of Emerson's vision." Scholars have long recognized that astronomical allusions also appear in Melville's writings and, as we have seen, a few Melvilleans have commented on the subject. No one, however, has documented the breadth and depth of Melville's astronomical knowledge or done a systematic exploration of the extent to which astronomy functions in the Melville canon. It is my hope that this book has increased our understanding of Melville the man and of Melville the author, and has suggested possible new dimensions for scholarly interpretations of Mardi, Clarel, and Billy Budd. Astronomy is, indeed, "an imaginative constituent" of those important works.

73 Final Thoughts

After Typee and Omoo Melville wanted to write mighty books with mighty themes, and it is appropriate that astronomy - because it engenders philosophical questions about humanity's relation to the rest of a cosmos that may be teeming with life, that seems to be filled with good and evil, and that may or may not have been made by God - it is appropriate that astronomy became an integral part of the vision of the author for whom the "problem of the universe" was a vital ongoing concern.

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APPENDIX

ONE

Catalogue of References to Astronomical Subjects in Melville's Writings

I have compiled this catalogue (which as far as I can tell is complete) because I think it constitutes a useful piece of scholarship in itself. I have arranged the excerpts by headings ("Stars," "Planets," for example) and chronologically according to dates of publication. Some of the more obscure titles of Melville's works, when they are listed the first time, are accompanied by the dates of original publication; dates for the major works are not listed because they are well known to Melvilleans. The way I arrange the catalogue allows us to follow Melville's interest in astronomy as he grew as a writer. Certain patterns may emerge that could suggest a different way of ordering the catalogue, but I am content to let other scholars detect those patterns. I should also say that, while I often reproduce passages from the catalogue for the chapters of this book, Ido not presume to be able to explain, to offer a literary explanation for, every astronomical reference listed. Again, I am content to let other Melvilleans examine the catalogue for themselves to see what they can make of it. I do not make a point of identifying characters who are referred to by pronouns in the excerpts; neither do I think it is always necessary to quote full sentences - so some excerpts are mere fragments (usually these fragments represent astronomical allusions that seem to have no real thematic significance in the works in which they appear). I have also omitted ellipses at the beginning and end of such passages because the fragmentary nature of the quotations is selfevident. Finally, while I list references to "star" and "stars," for instance, I do not always list adjectives or nouns that either have nothing to do with astronomy or that seem incidental - things such as "star-fish," "starboard," "starless," "starlight," "starred," "starriest," "starry." Occasionally, especially in Mardi, Melville uses the

76 Appendix One word "moon" as a synonym for "month/' and I generally do not list these references either. I would refer the reader to the concordances available to Melville's works. Page references are from the Chicago edition of Billy Budd and the Russell and Russell edition of Melville's Poems (vol. 16 of Works). Page references for "Daniel Orme," "The Marquis de Grandvin," and "Fragment" are from the Russell and Russell edition of Billy Budd, and Other Prose Pieces, edited by Raymond Weaver (vol. 13 of Works). Except where noted otherwise, all other page references are from the Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Writings of Herman Melville; passages from the short stories, lectures, and other sketches and pieces attributed to Melville are from the Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860. STARS (162 references) Typee 1 her strange blue eyes ... when illuminated by some lively emotion, they beamed upon the beholder like stars. (86) 2 the ill-starred inhabitants of that group (165) Omoo 3 and some of the stars ... The mate's tremulous attempts to level his instrument at the star he was after, were comical enough. For my own part, when he did catch sight of it, I hardly knew how he managed to separate it from the astral host revolving in his own brain. (62) Mardi 4 who rounded the Polar Star as Cape Horn. (13) 5 and the dark purple haze, sometimes encountered at night near the Line, half shrouded the stars from view. (26) 6 But the dawn was too strong for the stars; which, one by one, had gone out, like waning lamps after a ball. (48) 7 By night it must have been her guardian star; for frequently she gazed up at a particular section of the heavens (no) 8 And again the priest came, and brought her a milk-white bird, with a bill jet-black, and eyes like stars. (156) 9 I stole without into the magical starlight ... But how tranquil the wide lagoon, which mirrored the burning spots in heaven! (178) 10 Oh stars! oh eyes, that see me, wheresoe'er I roam: serene, intent, inscrutable for aye, tell me Sybils, what I am. - Wondrous worlds on worlds! Lo, round and round me, shining, awful spells: all glorious, vivid constellations, God's diadem ye are! To you, ye stars, man owes his subtlest raptures, thoughts unspeakable, yet full of faith.

77 References to Astronomical Subjects But how your mild effulgence stings the boding heart. Am I a murderer, stars? (179) 11 Not wholly is our world made up of bright stars and bright eyes (180) 12 Or do the minster-lamps that burn before the tomb of Charlemagne, show more of pomp, than all the stars, that blaze above the shipwrecked mariner? (192) 13 In all the universe is but one original; and the very suns must to their source for their fire (229) 14 than when old Aldebaran rolled forth from his hand. (230) 15 heavenward only; gazing at the torch-light processions in the skies, when, in state, the suns march to be crowned. (240) 16 Donjalolo predicts the true time of the rising and setting of all his stars. (242) 17 "The little eyes of the people of Tupia were very strange to behold; full of stars, that shone from within ... And like the stars, they were intolerant of sunlight" (282) 18 blood-red star in Bootes. (306) 19 a sort of nocturnal Paradise, where the sun and its heat are excluded: one long, lunar day, with twinkling stars to keep company. (314) 20 one species rises at night with the stars (358) 21 "But look, the stars come forth" (423) 22 "Here's to thee, old Arcturus! To thee, old Aldebaran! who ever poise your wine-red, fiery spheres on high. A health to thee, my regal friend, Alphacca, in the constellation of the Crown: Lo! crown to crown, I pledge thee! I drink to ye, too, Alphard! Markab! Denebola! Capella!" (431) 23 In good round truth, and as if an impartialist from Arcturus spoke it (472) 24 "Pooh, pooh!" said Mohi, "who does not see stars at such times?" (489) 25 "Tell me, if Verdanna may not claim full many a star along King Bello's tattooed arm of Fame?" (493) 26 except by the tattooing on his forehead - stars, thirty in number (521) 27 "And though crimson republics may rise in constellations, like fiery Aldebarans, speeding to their culminations; yet, down must they sink at last" (527) 28 "But, as in stars you have written it on the welkin, sovereign-kings! you are a great and glorious people." (528) 29 "We can say, the stars are wrongly marshaled." (534) 30 "But free Vivenza! Is she not the star, that must, ere long, lead the constellations, though now unrisen?" (542) 31 And every night, We steer aright, By golden stars unwaning! (546) 32 Like stars in multitude, bright islets multiplied around. (549)

78 Appendix One 33 worlds, suns, and stars all wend! - West, West! - Oh boundless boundary! Eternal goal! Whitherward rush, in thousand worlds, ten thousand thousand keels! Beacon, by which the universe is steered! Like the north-star, attracting all needles! Unattainable forever. (551) 34 "worshipping the stars." "the Heavens blaze not here with stars, as over Dominora's land, and broad Vivenza." One only constellation was beheld; but every star was brilliant as the one, that promises the morning. (552-3) 35 to some old king-astronomer, - say, King of Rigel, or Betelgeuse (556) 36 So Yillah looks! her pensive eyes the stars ... All the stars laugh When upward she looks (560) 37 the star that erewhile heralded the dawn, presaged the eve [actually a reference to Venus as Morning and Evening "Star"] ... the night without stars (567) 38 "'Who in Arcturus hath heard of us?'" (575) 39 "But the universe is all over a heaven: nothing but stars on stars, throughout infinities of expansion. All we see are but a cluster." (576) 40 "'the people in Bellatrix'" (577) 41 "'There was a time, when near Cassiopeia, a star of the first magnitude, most lustrous in the North, grew lurid as a fire, then dim as ashes, and went out. Now, its place is a blank. A vast world, with all its continents, say the astronomers, blazing over the heads of our fathers ... Who now thinks of that burning sphere?'" (577) 42 '"Sirius, the Dog-star, would still flame in the sky.'" (578) 43 "Stars laugh in the sky" (613) 44 At that instant, down went the fiery full-moon, and the Dog-Star (614) 45 "In me, in me, flit thoughts participated by the beings peopling all the stars." (615) 46 "Ho! let's voyage to Aldebaran. - Ho! indeed, a ruddy world" (616) 47 "now, the fixed stars are not more remote than he" (618) 48 "No new stars appear in the sky" (619) 49 And hither point fix'd stars of light! (623) 50 "every star and flower." (629) 51 "and stars come out of nighf s black concave at his great command." (630) 52 "the tropical stars glistening in heaven, like drops of dew among violets ... I saw a shining spot, unlike a star." (632) 53 "We clove the air; passed systems, suns, and moons: what seem from Mardi's isles, the glow-worm stars." (633) 54 "Her, will I seek, through all the isles and stars" (638) 55 Of all the stars, only red Arcturus shone. (654)

79 References to Astronomical Subjects Redburn 56 it became a soft moonlight; and the stars peeped out, plain enough to count one by one (45) 57 I would have given the whole world, and the sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been mine (51) 58 and almost put the eyes of the stars out (77) 59 and bidding good-by forever to the moon and stars (117) 60 it stood full in the middle of the quarter-deck, radiant with brazen stars (119) 61 the ceiling is like a small firmament twinkling with astral radiations. (167) 62 here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas lights (228) 63 It was not an eye like Harry's ... It shone with a soft and spiritual radiance, like a moist star in a tropic sky (247) 64 At midnight, the wind went down; leaving ... a clear, starry sky. (289) Journal of a Voyage from New York to London, 1849 65 [corposant balls] resembled large, dim stars in the sky. (6) White-Jacket 66 I am of a meditative humour, and at sea used often to mount aloft at night, and, seating myself on one of the upper yards, tuck my jacket about me and give loose to reflection. In some ships in which I have done this, the sailors used to fancy that I must be studying astronomy - which, indeed, to some extent, was the case ... Then, to study the stars upon the wide, boundless sea, is divine as it was to the Chaldean Magi, who observed their revolutions from the plains. And it is a very fine feeling, and one that fuses us into the universe of things, and makes us a part of the All, to think that, wherever we ocean wanderers rove, we have still the same glorious old stars to keep us company; that they still shine onward and on, forever beautiful and bright, and luring us, by every ray, to die and be glorified with them. Ay, ay! we sailors sail not in vain. We expatriate ourselves to nationalise with the universe; and in all our voyages round the world we are still accompanied by those old circumnavigators, the stars, who are shipmates and fellow-sailors of ours - sailing in heaven's blue, as we on the azure main. (76-7) 67 But the stars look forth in their everlasting brightness - and that is the everlasting, glorious Future, forever beyond us. (396) Letter to Evert A. Duyckinck, 7 March 1850 [?], New York 68 I should have gone - as I love music - were it not that having been shut up all day, I could not stand being shut up all the evening - so I mounted my green jacket & strolled down to the Battery to study the stars. (159)

8o Appendix One Moby-Dick 69 At their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which every evening leads on the host of light [perhaps Venus as the Evening Star, Hesperus]. (191) 70 and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. (412) 71 for not only do they believe that the stars are isles (478) 72 as stars that shine upon the Niger's unknown source (497) 73 [corposants] like a far away constellation of stars (506) 74 As the unsetting polar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months' night sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze; so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew. (536) 75 "nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power" (545) 76 "Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost." (571) 77 A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars (572) Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, i June [?] 1851, Pittsfield 78 bring to yourself the tinglings of life that are felt in the flowers and the woods, that are felt in the planets Saturn and Venus, and the Fixed Stars. (193) Pierre

79 "See I lakes, or eyes?" cried Lucy, her own gazing down into his soul, as two stars gaze down into a tarn. (33) 80 "Thou art my heaven, Lucy; and here I lie thy shepherd-king, watching for new eye-stars to rise in thee." (36) "The Encantadas: Sketch First" (1854) 81 the remotest seas reflect familiar stars even as Lake Erie does (126) "The Piazza" (1856) 82 The circle of the stars cut by the circle of the mountains, (i) "I and My Chimney" (1856) 83 an adequate conception of the magnitude of this chimney is only to be got at by a sort of process in the higher mathematics, by a method somewhat akin to those whereby the surprising distances of fixed stars are computed. (358)

8i References to Astronomical Subjects Journal 1856-57 84 Upon entering Cairo, saw the crescent & star - arms of Sultan in the sky [moon and star or bright planet, or flag?]. (76) 85 Frescoed ceilings which, like starry skies, no man regards - so plentiful are the splendors, (no) Journal Kept on board Ship "Meteor" 1860 86 the North Star sensibly sinking (132) Letter to Henry Sanford Gansevoort, 10 May 1864, New York 87 May two small but choice constellations of stars alight on your shoulders ... And after death ... may that same name be transferred to heaven bestowed upon some new planet or cluster of stars of the first magnitude. (393) "Lyon" (1866) 88 Star-browed Orion [a horse] (16) "Dupont's Round Fight" (1866) 89 Evolving rhyme and stars divine Have rules, and they endure. (19) "Stonewall Jackson (Ascribed to a Virginian)" (1866) 90 His fate the fatalist followed through; In all his great soul found to do Stonewall followed his star. (60) "The House-Top" (1866) 91 Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya ... Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, Balefully glares red Arson - (64) "The Swamp Angel" (1866) 92 Through the darkness a star soareth on; There's a scream that screams up to the zenith (77) "The Battle for the Bay" (1866) 93 A summer night; the stars withdrawn look down Fair eve of battle grim. (79) The Admiral ... He lashed himself aloft, and shone Star of the fight (80)

82 Appendix One "At the Cannon's Mouth" (1866) 94 but he The star ascended at his nativity (92) Letter to Peter Gansevoort, 9 June 1869, New York 95 My love and Lizzie's to Kate, and tell her to hasten her preparations, and come down before the Dog Star [Sirius] rageth. (410) Clarel 96 'Twas moonlight, With stars (1.2.131-2) 97 In there day peeps, there stars go by (1.3.172) 98 Drowned out with Heaven's last feeble star. (1.5.115) 99 Born under that severer star The landing patriarchs knew. (1.17.33-4) 100 (Like ship-boy at mast-head alone) Watching the star-rise. (1.18.41-2) 101 The Hebrew rose, And, kindled by the starry sky (1.18.77-8) 102 They be above us like a star, Those Paschal words. (1.26.55-6) 103 so long as spins This star of tragedies (1.31.178-9) 104 Mid chaplets, stars, and halcyon wings (1.36.17) 105 Bethel high Saw Jacob, under starry sky (2.10.5-6) 106 Beholding all the pomp of night Bee'd thick with stars in swarms how bright (2.11.5-6) 107 "Mute then my face I lifted to the starry space; But the great heaven it burned so bright, It cowed me, and back fell my sight. Then he: 'Is yon the Father's home?.... 'Tis bravely lighted, yonder dome.'" (2.18.93-9) 108 "The claims of stellar chemistry." (2.21.34) 109 But trusting in their star, Onward a space the party push (2.23.72-3) no three stars in a row Upright, two more for thwarting limb Which drooped oblique... "And so," said Rolfe, "'tis set in sky Though error slight of place prevail In midmost star here chalked"...

83 References to Astronomical Subjects They called: "What's that in curve contained Above the stars?" (2.31.21-42) 111 the star dips down (2.34.35) 112 and the skies Reveal beyond the lake afar One solitary tawny star Complexioned so by vapors dim ... What star is yon?" And pointed to that single one Befogged above the sea afar... "It is the star Called Wormwood. Some hearts die in thrall Of waters which yon star makes gall" (2.36.2-24) 113 "Black slaver steering by a star" (2.36.76) 114 "Look how his ray," Said Rolfe, "too small for stars to heed" (2.37.73-4) 115 Nor influence of that Wormwood Star (2.39.41) 116 "He's gone/' said the Jew; "czars, stars must go Or change! All's chymestry." (2.39.66-7) 117 And heaven remands the flower and star. (3.1.117) 118 "Your gentler influence, ye stars?" (3.3.25) 119 "My dame beneath Our Lady's star" (3.4.72) 120 while tapers glow Small in the depths, as stars may show Reflected far in well profound. (3-9.59-61) 121 "For I, the wretched timoneer, By fitful stars yet tried to steer" (3.12.98-9) 122 Holding to now, swearing by here, His course conducting by no keen Observance of the stellar sphere (3.13.40-2) 123 "'Under liquid light of Mary's Mellow star of eventide'" (3.13.110-11) 124 "'Never blenched Our Lady's star!'" (3.13.127) 125 And stars come up. (3.15.15) 126 "Pitt's sibyl-niece, who made sojourn In Libanus, and read the stars" (3.15.85-6) 127 Appealed to turret, crag and star (3.16.122) 128 "But who so feels the stars annoy" (3.29.72) 129 In cloud thus caught, Her image labored like a star Fitful revealed in midnight heaven (3.30.6-8) 130 What stillness in the almoner's face: Nor Fomalhaut more mild may reign (3.30.74-5)

84 Appendix One 131 Or in yon worlds of light is known The clear intelligence alone? (3.31.33-4) 132 They failed not, for a light was given The light and pilotage of heaven: A light, a lead, no longer won By any, now, who seekers are: Or fable is it? but if none, Let men lament the foundered Star. (4.1.13-18) 133 And under these a star was set (4.2.58) 134 "And Star - the Sign! - Jerusalem's" (4.2.69) 135 "This star - the star of Bethlehem." ... "While now for Bethlehem we aim, Our stellar friend the post should claim Of guide. We'll put him in the van Follow the star on the tattooed man, We wise men here." (4.2.135-43) 136 "Now night enthrones Arcturus and his shining suns" (4.7.94-5) 137 "Survives yet under Asia's star" (4.9.88) 138 "Dark Middle Ages, time's midnight!" "If night, it was no starless one" (4.10.138-9) 139 They came unto a silver star In pavement set which none do mar ... In cirque about that silver star (4.13.58-67) 140 Beneath the star in pavement-tract (4.13.188) 141 "Like magi of the old Chaldasa, Viewing Rigel and Betelguese [sic]" (4.16.138-9) 142 "Beneath no kind auspicious star" (4.18.75) 143 "'Tis no astrologer and star." (4.21.65) 144 "Should fortune's favorable star Avert it?" (4.21.118-19) 145 "From hearts that with the stars advance" (4.22.49) 146 Yet, yet there gleams one beckoning star So near the horizon, judge I right That 'tis of heaven? (4.22.68-70) 147 "Born under such a lucky star" (4.26.612) 148 the Magi here Watered their camels, and reclaimed The Ray, brief hid. Ere this they passed Clarel looked in and there saw glassed Down in the wave, one mellow star; Then, glancing up, beheld afar Enisled serene, the orb itself: Apt auspice here for journeying elf. (4.29.116-23)

85 References to Astronomical Subjects 149

roofed with awful skies Whose stars like silver nail-heads gleam Which stud some lid over lifeless eyes. (4.29.150-2) 150 The running battle of the star and clod Shall run forever - if there be no God. (4.35.16-17) "The Haglets" (1888) 151 'Ay, let the starlight stay withdrawn. (229) And up from ocean stream, And down from heaven far, The rays that blend in dream The abysm and the star. (231) "Crossing the Tropics" (1888) 152 While now the Pole Star sinks from sight ... Nor these, nor Gama's stars to me (239) "Timoleon" (1891) 153 Wandering lights Confirmed the atheist's standing star (251) "After the Pleasure Party" (1891) 154 Ye stars that long your votary knew Rapt in her vigil, see me here! ... But lo, your very selves do wane (257) "Michaelmas Daisies: Field Asters" 155 Like the stars in commons blue Peep their namesakes, Asters here ... No star-gazers scrutinise. (315) "At the Hostelry" 156 Wise statesmanship, a ruling star Made peace itself subserve the war. (357) "The Marquis de Grandvin" (written after 1886?) 157 yet thy brow is among the stars (351) Bitty Budd 158 moving along with them like Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his constellation. (43) 159 prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the Victory's quarter-deck designating the spot where the Great Sailor fell (57) 160 the appellation "Starry Vere." (61; also 103, 109)

86 Appendix One MOON AND LUNAR ECLIPSES (76 references) "Fragments from a Writing Desk" (1839) 1 I picked up an elegant little, rose-coloured, lavender-scented billetdoux, and hurriedly breaking the seal (a heart, transfixed with an arrow) I read by the light of the moon (197) Typee 2 the young men assembled near the full of the moon (206) Mardi 3 The moon must be monstrous coy ... that when Cynthia shows a round and chubby disk ... The gentle planet was in her final quarter, and upon her slender horn (22) 4 so, often, in snowy moonlight, or ebon eclipse, dozed Mark, our harpooneer. (23) 5 there was no trace of a moon (26) 6 almost led Samoa to fancy that we were ... a couple of men from the moon. (86) 7 Moon after moon passed away, and at last, only four days gone by (138) 8 the hazy-harvest moon. (178) 9 But the moon's bright wake was still revealed: a silver track, tipping every wave-crest in its course (179) 10 According to Mohi, this tree was truly wonderful; its seed having been dropped from the moon; where were plenty more similar forests, causing the dark spots on its surface. (226) 11 he had wives thirty in number, corresponding in name to the nights of the moon. (241) 12 Velluvi the Third Night of the Moon; and so on, even unto the utter eclipse thereof ... This Moon of wives was lodged in two spacious seraglios ... when the entire Moon of wives, swallow-like, migrated back whence they came (242) 13 who assuming the denomination of the vacated Night of the Moon, thenceforth commenced her monthly revolutions in the king's infallible calendar (243) 14 seeds dropped by a bird from the moon (272) 15 But it was chiefly when the moon was at full, that they were mostly in spirits. (282) 16 "they toiled all night long at braiding the moonbeams together, and entangling the plaited end to a bough; so that at night, the poor planet had much ado to set." (283)

87 References to Astronomical Subjects 17 Man has a more comprehensive view of the moon, than the man in the moon himself. We know the moon is round; he only infers it. (297) 18 'Tis aye afternoon of the full, full moon (314) 19 an ant-hill in the moon. (381) 20 It was night. But the moon was brilliant, far and near illuminating the lagoon ... A ray of the moon on the dancing waves (414) 21 and silvered by the moon. (415) 22 "He's stark, stark mad!" sighed Yoomy. "Ay, the moon's at full," said Media. (421) 23 It was yet moonlight when we pushed from the islet. But soon, the sky grew dun; the moon went into a cavern among the clouds ... "Babbalanja, I grieve the moon is gone." (422) 24 Pale Cynthia begets pale specter shapes; and her frigid rays best illuminate (432) 25 Buried in clouds the face of the moon; Tears stand in the eyes of the starry skies (453) 26 a province of the moon (477) 27 "She stands a mastiff baying at the moon." (494) 28 neap tides and their alleged slavish vassalage to the moon. (503) 29 The full red moon was rising (550) 30 No moon, eclipsed in Egypf s skies, looked half so lone. (553) 31 hooded Night ... But high on her brow, still shone her pale crescent; haloed by bandelets - violet, red, and yellow. So looked the lone watcher through her rainbow-iris (567) 32 beneath the Iris round the moon, shone now another: - Hautia's flowery flag! (568) 33 Moon followed moon (572) 34 "colonize the moon" (580) 35 "the last lunar eclipse" (583) 36 the harvest-moon now rose; and in that pale and haggard light (611) 37 "some wine! and let us make glad, beneath the glad moon. Look! it is stealing forth from its clouds. Perdition to Hautia! ... See! the round moon is abroad." (612) 38 At that instant, down went the fiery full-moon (614) 39 "we behold many strange things beneath the moon" (619) 40 "My eyes did wane, like moons eclipsed" (635) 41 She glided on: her crescent brow calm as the moon, when most it works its evil influences. (646) Redburn 42 to have come from the moon (41) 43 the sun and moon (51) 44 the moon and stars (117)

88 Appendix One 45 the navies of the moon (139) 46 like a man from the moon (172) 47 as if every porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was the moon-lit garden of Portia (228) 48 on a moon-lit sward (249) White-Jacket 49 The meagre moon is in her last quarter - that betokens the end of a cruise that is passing. (396) Moby-Dick 50 For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. (64) Israel Potter 51 For nearly the whole of the distance, you have the continual sensation of being upon some terrace in the moon. (3) 52 the incendiary; thinking him some sudden pirate or fiend dropped down from the moon. (103) 53 the mountains in the moon. (115) 54 The lamp was the round harvest moon ... Through this sardonical mist, the face of the Man-in-the-Moon - looking right towards the combatants ... Aided now a little by the planet [moon] (123-4) "The Piazza" 55 a hanging orchard, where maidenly looked down upon me a crescent moon, from morning. (7) 56 Turned out in aerial commons, pasture for the mountain moon. (8) Clarel 57 Against the quarter-moon's low tide (1.1.50) 58 And the moon comes up from Paradise. (1.18.35) 59 That lava glen in Luna's sphere, More lone than any earthly one (1.25.11-12) 60 And, dreamy in her morning swoon, The lady of the night, the moon, Looks pearly as the blossoming (1.28.5-7) 61 "Ay, reaches toward Diana's moon, Affirming it a clinkered blot, Deriding pale Endymion." (1.34.26-8) 62 Images he the ascending Lord Pale as the moon which dawn may meet (1.36.13-14)

89 References to Astronomical Subjects 63 That is not lackey to the moon Of fate. (2.4.94-5) 64 Launched up from Nebo far away Balloon-like rose the rubbled moon Nibbled, being after full one day. Intent they watched the planet's rise Familiar, tho' in strangest skies. The ascending orb of furrowed gold, Contracting, changed, and silvery rolled In violet heaven. (2.16.18-25) 65 "Yon moon in pearl-cloud: look, her face Peers like a bride's from webs of lace." (2.16.122-3) 66 When Ashtoreth her zenith won (2.16.139) 67 Full night. The moon has yet to rise (2.36.1) 68 Astarte ... her vigil keeps (2.37.8-9) 69 "But yon strange orb - can be the moon?" (2.37.82) 70 Thrown in the moon-glade by the palm. (4.31.19) "The Haglets" 71 The wan moon shows in plight forlorn; Then, pinched in visage, fades and fades Like to the faces drowned at morn (227) Billy Budd 72 Slowly he uncovered his face; and the effect was as if the moon emerging from eclipse should reappear with quite another aspect than that which had gone into hiding. (99-100) 73 There was no moon as yet; a haze obscured the star-light. (82) 74 and the moon, newly risen and near to being at its full, silvered the white spar deck (116) 75 the pale moonshine (119) "Daniel Orme" (omitted from Billy Budd) 76 his tanned brow showed like October's tawny moon revealed in crescent above an ominous cloud. (118) CONSTELLATIONS AND THE ZODIAC (66 references) Mardi 1 Jarl hailed from the isle of Skye, one of the constellated Hebrides. (12) 2 the thrones and principalities in the zodiac (12) 3 by the cavalry captains in Perseus ... by the old hunters, who eternities ago, hunted the moose in Orion ... give ear to the voyagers who have circumnavigated the Ecliptic (13)

90 Appendix One 4 the constellation Pisces was in the ascendant. (39) 5 they go flying into the air, as if tossed from Taurus' horn. (42) 6 But that we were not removed any considerable distance from the Line, seemed obvious. For in the starriest night no sign of the extreme Polar constellations was visible; though often we scanned the northern and southern horizon in search of them. So far as regards the aspect of the skies near the ocean's rim, the difference of several degrees in one's latitude at sea, is readily perceived by a person long accustomed to surveying the heavens. (108) 7 floated on the sea, like constellations in the heavens, innumerable Medusae (121) 8 innumerable islands ... like purple steeps in heaven at set of sun, stretched far away, what seemed lands on lands, in infinite perspective ... grouped within a milk-white zone of reef, so vast, that in the distance all was dim ... Bravo! good comrades, we've discovered some new constellation in the sea. (160) 9 golden clusterings. Oh stars! ... Wondrous worlds on worlds! Lo, round and round me, shining, awful spells; all glorious, vivid constellations, God's diadems ye are! (179) 10 crosscut by twelve grand avenues symbolizing the signs of the zodiac, all radiating from the sun-dome in their midst. (228) 11 the sun wheels through the zodiac, and the zodiac is a revolution. (238) 12 the universe-rounded, zodiac-belted (240) 13 sparkled the nodding crowns of the kings, like the constellation Corona-Borealis, the horizon just gained (253) 14 As the spheres, with a roll, some fiery of soul, Others golden, with music, revolve round the pole; So let our cups, radiant with many hued wines, Round and round in groups circle, our Zodiac's Signs (258) 15 "The little eyes of the people of Tupia were very strange to behold; full of stars, that shone from within, like the Pleiades" (282) 16 yet after him they blindly steered by day and by night: steering by the blood-red star in Bootes. (306) 17 the Capricorn Solstice (332, 333) 18 bursting forth in dazzling constellations of blossoms (358) 19 But Yoomy vouchsafed no reply, he was ten thousand leagues off in a reverie: somewhere in the Hyades perhaps. (394) 20 becalming all the clouds in heaven, vailing [sic] the constellations. (424) 21 "in the constellation of the Crown ... sailing Cygnus! Aquila soaring!" (431) 22 "He says so himself. In his roundabout chapter on Cycles and Epicycles, with Notes on the Ecliptic" (460)

91 References to Astronomical Subjects 23 "it is then that I have all Mardi under my feet, and the constellations of the firmament in my soul." "Superb!" cried Yoomy. "Pooh, pooh!" said Mohi, "who does not see stars at such times? I see the Great Bear now, and the little one, its cub; and Andromeda, and Perseus' chain-armor, and Cassiopea in her golden chair, and the bright, scaly Dragon, and the glittering Lyre, and all the jewels in Orion's sword-hilt." (489) 24 "And though crimson republics may rise in constellations" (527) 25 "But free Vivenza! Is she not the star, that must, ere long, lead up the constellations, though now unrisen?" (542) 26 One only constellation was beheld; but every star was brilliant as the one, that promises the morning. That constellation was the CruxAustralis, - the badge, and type of Alma. (552-3) 27 Part and parcel of the Mardian isles, they formed a cluster by themselves; like the Pleiades, that shine in Taurus, and are eclipsed by the red splendor of his fiery eye, and the thick clusterings of the constellations round. And as in Orion, to some old king-astronomer, - say, King of Rigel, or Betelgeuse, - this Earth's four quarters show but four points afar; so, seem they to terrestrial eyes, that broadly sweep the spheres. And, as the sun, by influence divine, wheels through the Ecliptic; threading Cancer, Leo, Pisces, and Aquarius; so, by some mystic impulse am I moved, to this fleet progress, through the groups in white-reefed Mardi's zone. (556) 28 "'In respect of the universe, mankind is but a sect,' saith Diloro; 'and first principles but dogmas.' What ethics prevail in the Pleiades? What things have the synods in Sagittarius decreed?" (574) 29 '"the universe is all over a heaven: nothing but stars on stars, throughout infinities of expansion. All we see are but a cluster. Could we get to Bootes, we would be no nearer Oro ... Already, in its unimaginable roamings, our system may have dragged us through and through the spaces ... Do the archangels survey aught more glorious than the constellations we nightly behold?'" (576) 30 "'There was a time, when near Cassiopeia'" (577) 31 "Like the Zodiac his table was circular, and full in the middle he sat, like a sun; - all his jolly stews and ragouts revolving around him." (606) 32 "the blazing zodiac his diadem!" (628) 33 "and, for one golden moment, gauze-vailed in spangled Berenice's Locks. "Then, as white flame from yellow, out from that starry cluster it emerged; and brushed the astral Crosses, Crowns, and Cups." (632)

92 Appendix One 34 "Thou art most magical, oh queen! about thee a thousand constellations cluster." "They blaze to burn," whispered Mohi. "I see ten million Hautias! - all space reflects her, as a mirror." (647) 35 Then wending through constellations of flowers (650)

White-Jacket 36 Both Englishman and Frenchman were resolved on a race; and we Yankees swore by our topsails and royals to sink their blazing banners that night among the southern constellations we should daily be extinguishing behind us in our run to the north. "Ay," said Mad Jack, "St George's banner shall be as the Southern Cross, out of sight, leagues down the horizon, while our gallant stars, my brave boys, shall burn all alone in the north, like the Great Bear at the Pole! Come on, Rainbow and Cross!" (269) Letter to Evert A. Duyckinck, 6 October 1850 37 it must be harvest-home with the angels, & Charles' Wain [the Big Dipper] be heaped high as Saddle-Back with Autumn's sheaves. (170) Moby-Dick 38 What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters (10) 39 and beneath constellations never seen here at the north (73) 40 No dignity in whaling? The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! (111) 41 Moby Dick had been periodically descried, lingering in those waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign of the Zodiac. (200) 42 Nor ... can you fail to trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them ... Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish. (271) 43 the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (431) 44 "Methinks now this coined sun ... enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries!" (431-2) 45 Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull; - and Jimini! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he wheels among 'em. Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing the threshold between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books

93 References to Astronomical Subjects must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts ... Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders! There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist - hark! By Jove, I have it! Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter; and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram - lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull - he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins - that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path - he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales - happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. (432-3) 46 here comes Queequeg - all tattooing - looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself ... And, by Jove, he's found something there in the vicinity of his thigh - I guess it's Sagittarius, or the Archer. (434 47 Stubb longs for vermillion stars to be painted upon the blade of his every oar ... the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation. (467) 48 "Shake yourself; you're Aquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask" (510) Israel Potter

49 you seem to be Bootes [sic] driving in heaven. (4) 50 a huge claw-footed old table, round as the zodiac. (38) "The Piazza" 51 Orion in the zenith flashed down his Damocles' sword to him some starry night, and said, "Build there." (2) 52 a wigged old Aries, long-visaged, and with crumpled horn, came snuffing up; and then, retreating, decorously led on along a milky-way of white-weed, past dim-clustering Pleiades and Hyades, of small forget-me-nots; and would have led me further still his astral path ... Aries (6-7)

94 Appendix One Journal Kept on board Ship "Meteor" 1860 53 and last night saw the Southern Cross (132) Letter to Henry Sanford Gansevoort, 10 May 1864, New York 54 May two small but choice constellations of stars alight on your shoulders. (393) "The Fall of Richmond" (1866) 55 Honour to Grant the brave, Whose three stars now like Orion's rise (98) "America" (1866) 56 I saw a Banner in gladsome air Starry, like Berenice's hair - (119) "The Armies of the Wilderness" (1866) 57 Pleiads dim, see the tents through the storm - (71) "The Scout toward Aldie" (1866) 58 The Pleiads, as from ambush sly, Peep out - Mosby's men in the sky! (155) Clarel 59 Big there between two scrawls, below And over - a cross; three stars in a row Upright, two more for thwarting limb Which drooped oblique ... "Looks like the Southern Cross to me," Said Clarel; "so 'tis down in chart." "And so," said Rolfe, "'tis set in sky Though error slight of place prevail In midmost star here chalked. At sea, Bound for Peru, when south ye sail, Startling that novel cluster strange Peers up from low; then as ye range Cape-ward still further, brightly higher And higher the stranger doth aspire, 'Till off the Horn, when at full hight Ye slack your gaze as chilly grows the night. But Derwent - see!" The priest having gained Convenient lodge the text below, They called: "What's that in curve contained

95 References to Astronomical Subjects Above the stars? Read: we would know." "Runs thus: By one who wails the loss, This altar to the Slanting Cross" ... '"Emblazoned bleak in austral skies A heaven remote, whose starry swarm Like Science lights but cannot warm Translated Cross ... Aloft, aloof, a frigid sign ... But class thee with Orion's sword? In constellations unadored, Christ and the Giant equal prize?"' (2.31.20-68) 60 (The sun on his heraldic track Due sign having gained in Zodiac) (3.5.4-5) 61 "And lo, Job's chambers of the South: How might his hand not go to mouth In kiss adoring ye, bright zones?" (4.7.96-8) 62 Dim pendent lamps, in cluster small Were Pleiads of the mystic hall (4.13.113-14) "Crossing the Tropics" 63 The Southern Cross it climbs the sky (239) "After the Pleasure Party" 64 and fable chased Till, fool, I hailed for sister there Starred Cassiopeia in Golden Chair. (256 Whither is gone the spell ye threw When rose before me Cassiopeia? (257) Bitty Budd 65 A superb figure, tossed up as by the horns of Taurus against the thundrous sky (44) EARTH AND OTHER PLANETS (49 references) Omoo 1 Here the famous Transit of Venus was observed, in 1769. (66) 2 Point Venus. (g8n) Mardi 3 [Captain Cook] was hailed by the Hawaiians as one of their demigods, returned to earth, after a wide tour of the universe. (174) 4 Near by was one belted round by a frothy luminous reef, wherein it lay, like Saturn in its ring. (178)

96 Appendix One 5 Deep down into its innermost heart penetrated the slanting rays of Hesperus [Venus as Evening Star] like a shaft of light (178-9) 6 planets, duke-like, dancing attendance, and baronial satellites in waiting. (183) 7 day by day new planets are being added to elder-born Saturns, even as six thousand years ago our own Earth made one more in this system ... And if time was, when this round Earth (229-30) 8 and like the jolly round Earth, roundest and biggest about the Equator. A girdle of red was his Equinoctial Line (285) 9 a denizen of earth; a sublunarian (333) 10 warring worlds crossing orbits (366) 11 "Here we read how worlds are made" (415) 12 "think you it is nothing to be a world? one of a herd, bison-like, wending its way across boundless meadows of ether?" (458) 13 "and tell us should you discover a new planet." (489) 14 "but the world may not be moved from out the orbit in which first it rolled." (542) 15 On golden axles worlds are turning (546) 16 "Granite continents," cried Babbalanja, "that seem created like the planets" (554-5) 17 till, at last, the star that ere while heralded the dawn, presaged the eve; to us, sad token! [probably Venus as Morning Star and then Evening Star] (567) 18 "'Fellow-men! we must go, and obtain a glimpse of what we are from the Belts of Jupiter and the Moons of Saturn, ere we see ourselves aright.'" (577) 19 "Mardi could not stand long; have to annex one of the planets" (580) 20 "she wedded at the first Transit of Venus." (588) 21 "his paw had stopped a rolling world." (593) 22 "it would marvel more at our primal chaos, than at the round world thence emerging." (599) 23 "But so the great world goes round, and in one somerset, shows the sun twenty-five thousand miles of a landscape!" (614) 24 "Saturn, and Mercury, and Mardi, are brothers, one and all; and across their orbits, to each other talk, like souls ... Worlds pass worlds in space" (616) 25 "This Mardi is not our home. Up and down we wander, like exiles transported to a planet afar" (619) Redburn 26 and went reeling on and on with the planets in their orbits (66) 27 as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis (95)

97 References to Astronomical Subjects 28 my nerves became as steady as the earth's diameter (115) 29 almost every thing would stop here on earth except its revolution on its axis (139) 30 What excessive effrontery, to lay sole claim to a solid piece of this planet, right down to the earth's axis (210) 31 our mother Earth (294) White-Jacket 32 We rolled on our way, like the world in its orbit (115) 33 We perceived ... how that in other planets (186) Moby-Dick 34 or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets (81) 35 over and over slowly revolved like a waning world (358) 36 Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn (466) Letter to N. Hawthorne, i June [?] 1851, Pittsfield 37 that are felt in the planets Saturn and Venus (193) Pierre 38 Ha! I see Venus' transit now; - lo! a new planet there (36) 39 we can not overshoot the earth's orbit, to receive the attractions of other planets; Earth's law of gravitation extends far beyond her own atmosphere. (261) 40 the great planet Jupiter in his stated and unalterable revolutions. He has found his orbit, and stays in it; he has timed himself, and adheres to his periods. (298) 41 Still his book, like a vast lumbering planet, revolves in his aching head. He can not command the thing out of its orbit (305) The Confidence-Man 42 one planet to one orbit (239) 43 swung other lamps, barren planets (240) Letter to Henry Sanford Gansevoort, 10 May 1864, New York 44 And after death ... may that same name be transferred to heaven bestowed upon some new planet (393) "The Battle for the Bay" 45 Let her come; She challenges the planet of Doom (81)

98 Appendix One "The Frenzy in the Wake" (1866) 46 The Northern faces - true To the flag we hate, the flag whose stars Like planets strike us through. (96) Clarel 47 "It might be Mars, so red it shines" (2.36.20) 48 "Venus burned both large and bright" (3.20.7) THE SUN, SUNSPOTS, AND SOLAR ECLIPSES (37 references) "Authentic Anecdotes of 'Old Zack'" (1847) 1 several minute specks are observable in the pupil of the sinister orbit But this detracts not from the majesty of its expression: the sun even has its spots. (220) Mardi 2 Save ourselves, the sun and the Chamois seemed all that was left of life in the universe. We yearned toward its jocund disk ... And was not the sun a fellow-voyager? (38) 3 "I come from the sun. When this morning it rose and touched the wave, I pushed my shallop from its golden beach, and hither sailed before its level rays. I am Taji" ... The gentle Yillah was a seraph from the sun; Samoa I had picked off a reef in my route from that orb ... we were all strolling divinities. (166) 4 till, like the sun, up comes the soul, and sheds its rays abroad. When thus my Yillah did daily dawn, how she lit up my world (179) 5 A king on his throne! It is the sun over a mountain; the sun over lawgiving Sinai; the sun in our system (183) 6 on his ... brow Sol's rays never shining. (235) 7 Ohonoo looks like the first steps of a gigantic way to the sun. (272) 8 God is my Lord; and though many satellites revolve around me, I and all mine revolve round the great central Truth, sun-like, fixed and luminous forever in the foundationless firmament. (368) 9 Being told, that Taji was lately from the sun, they manifested not the slightest surprise; one of them incidentally observing, however, that the eclipses there, must be a sad bore to endure. (404) 10 Thinking she might be curious concerning the sun, he made some remote allusion to that luminary as the place of his nativity ... She replied that ... she had never beheld it ... Wherefore, she had always abstained from astronomical investigations. (406) 11 whether his Solar Majesty had yet made a province of the moon ... whether the people in the sun (477)

99 References to Astronomical Subjects 12 "and leave the old sultan-sun in the sky; in time, again to be deposed." (527) 13 "invade the great sun" (580) 14 "With Oro, the sun is co-eternal; and the same life that moves the moose, animates alike the sun and Oro." (615) 15 "toward the rising sun we steered. But now, beneath autumnal nightclouds, we hasten to its setting." (617) 16 "eclipsing our setting suns" (620) 17 while like a rounding sun, before me Hautia magnified magnificence (652) Pierre 18 Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun (284) 19 a shadow, like that thrown by an eclipse (97) 20 As in eclipses, the sun was hidden (159) Letter to Catherine Gansevoort (Lansing), 17 February 1863, Pittsfield 21 Photographically rendered, he seems under a sort of eclipse, emblematic perhaps of the gloom which his spirit may feel (383) Clarel 22 "and yet first view Brings this eclipse." (1.1.65-6) 23 Thro' the eclipse with these she moves (1.3.187) 24 But, crying out in death's eclipse (1.13.44) 25 Or dim eclipse would steal thereon (1.20.37) 26 For whom the spots enlarge that blot the golden sun. (2.33.111) 27 (The sun on his heraldic track Due sign having gained in Zodiac) (3.5.4-5) 28 This change, this dusking change that slips (Like the penumbra o'er the sun), Over the faith transmitted down; Foreshadows it complete eclipse? (3.5.60-3) 29 The eclipse that cry of cries brought down (3.7.4) 30 Parhelion orb Of faith autumnal, may the dew Of earth's sad tears thy rays absorb? [sundog] (3.21.66-8) 31 "Sol goes round, and the mill-horse too" (3.27.157) 32 Toward him they look, for his eclipse There gave way for the first (4.2.157-8) 33 Rumors that vast eclipse, if slow, Whose passage yet we undergo, Emerging on an age untried. (4.8.112-14)

ioo Appendix One 34 Sun-worship over, they came down (4.9.19) 35 "Ay, quench the true, the mock sun [sundog, or parhelion] fails" (4.20.76) 36 Upon the pilgrims strangely fall Eclipses (4.29.30-1) "Timoleon" 37 If so, and wan eclipse ensue (247) ASTRONOMERS AND THEIR INSTRUMENTS (34 references) Omoo

1 [Point Venus] The most northerly point of the island; and so called from Cook's observatory being placed there during his first visit (g8n) "Authentic Anecdotes of 'Old Zack'" 2 His eye is Websternian, though grey. The left organ somewhat affects the dexter side of the socket, while examined by a powerful telescope several minute specks are observable in the pupil of the sinister orbit. (220) Mardi

3 for aught Copernicus can tell. (22) 4 Oh-Oh conducted us to an arbor, to show us the famous telescope, by help of which, he said he had discovered an ant-hill in the moon. It ... was a prodigiously long and hollow trunk of a Palm; a scale from a sea-kraken its lens. (381) 5 "the telescope sets us longing for some other world." (381) 6 "the astronomers maintain that Mardi moves round the sun ... Yet even thus blindly does all Mardi subscribe to an astronomical system, which not one in fifty thousand can astronomically prove. And not many centuries back, my lord, all Mardi did equally subscribe to an astronomical system, precisely the reverse of that which they now believe." (455) 7 "Ay," cried Media, "the study of astronomy is wonderfully facilitated by wine. Fill up, old Ptolemy" (489) 8 "On the map that charts the spheres, Mardi is marked 'the world of kings/" (542) 9 some old king-astronomer (556) 10 '"A vast world, with all its continents, say the astronomers'" (577) "Mr Parkman's Tour" (1849) 11 despised not the savages; and had Newton or Milton dwelt among them, they would not have done so. (231)

ioi References to Astronomical Subjects Redburn 12 In such a sphere, and under such conditions, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon would be sea-clowns and bumpkins (257) Journal Of a Voyage from New York to London, 1849 13 I shall not forget Adler's look when he quoted La Place the French astronomer - "It is not necessary, gentlemen, to account for these worlds by the hypothesis" &c. (8) 14 Walked in Greenwich Park. Observatory. (23) White-Jacket 15 detailed for pen-and-ink work at observatories (113) Moby-Dick 16 the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes ... those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars (155) 17 But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope (33i) 18 the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy (434) 19 a sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins, and dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe of the moderns. (457) Pierre 20 the Copernican astronomers (208) 21 the movements of the stars ... the astronomers assure us that they are the most rigidly methodical of all the things that exist. (298) Israel Potter 22 A small hole, of the girth of one's wrist, sunk like a telescope (71) 23 Poor Israel, standing on the top of this poop, spy-glass at his eye, looked more an astronomer than a mariner; having to do, not with the mountains of the billows, but the mountains in the moon. Galileo on Fiesole. (115) "The Piazza" 24 Downwards, directed by the tunneled pass, as through a leveled telescope, I caught sight of a far-off, soft, azure world. (9) "I and My Chimney" 25 Standing well up a hill-side, my chimney, like Lord Rosse's monster telescope, swung vertical to hit the meridian moon (352)

102 Appendix One "The Apple-Tree Table" (1856) 26 a profuse litter of indescribable old rubbish - among which was a broken telescope, and a celestial globe staved in (380) Clarel 27 Whereto they Tycho's name have given (1.25.13) 28 Than Galileo's telescope (1.35.114) 29 "But Newton and his gravitation!" (2.21.25) 30 The Church's reign ... whose strenuous will Made Galileo pale recite The Penitential Psalms (3.5.67-9) "After the Pleasure Party" 31 And kept I long heaven's watch for this, Contemning love, for this, even this? O terrace chill in Northern air, O reaching ranging tube I place Against yon skies (255) "The Lake" 32 Even stars, Chaldaeans say, fade from the starry space (432) Billy Budd 33 as an astronomer knows about a comet's travels (67) DOCTRINE OF A PLURALITY OF WORLDS (22 references) Typee 1 the natives multiplied their acts of kindness and attention towards myself, treating me with a degree of deference which could hardly have been surpassed had I been some celestial visitant. (109) Mardi 2 the shades that roam throughout space (12) 3 by the calvalry captains in Perseus ... rounded the Polar Star as Cape Horn. (13) 4 ascribed to beings of her complexion a more than terrestrial origin. (146) 5 As a race, the Tullas die early. And hence the belief, that they pertain to some distant sphere, and only through irregularities in the providence of the gods, come to make their appearance upon earth (153) 6 the nameless affinities between us, were owing to our having in times gone by dwelt together in the same ethereal region. (158)

103 References to Astronomical Subjects 7 "those strangers, that came to Mondoldo prove isles afar, as a philosopher of old surmised, but was hooted at for his surmisings. Nor is it at all impossible, Braid-Beard, that beyond their land may exist other regions, of which those strangers know not; peopled with races something like us Mardians; but perhaps with more exalted faculties, and organs that we lack. They may have some better seeing sense than ours; perhaps, have fins or wings for arms." (420) 8 In good round truth, and as if an impartialist from Arcturus spoke it (472) 9 the people in the sun (477) 10 some old king-astronomer, - say, King of Rigel, or Betelgeuse (556) 11 "'What ethics prevail in the Pleiades? What things have the synods in Sagittarius decreed?'" (574) 12 "'Who in Arcturus hath heard of us? They know us not in the Milky Way.'" (575) 13 "'Curiosity apart, do we really care whether the people in Bellatrix are immortal or no?'" (577) 14 "'A vast world, with all its continents'" (577) 15 "In me, in me, flit thoughts participated by the beings peopling all the stars ... Hail, furthest worlds! and all the beauteous beings in ye!" (616) Redburn

16 he looked strange enough to me, then, to have come from the moon (41) 17 were they to emigrate in a body to man the navies of the moon (139) 18 his experiences are like a man from the moon - wholly strange, a new revelation. (172) White-Jacket

19 this semi-savage, wandering about the gun-deck in his barbaric robe, seemed a being from some other sphere. (118) 20 We perceived ... how that in other planets, perhaps, what we deem wrong, may there be deemed right (186) Moby-Dick

21 or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets (81) Lecture: "The South Seas" (1858) 22 There are many places where a man might make himself a sylvan retreat and for years, at least, live as much removed from the life of the great world as though its people dwelt upon another planet. (169)

1O4 Appendix One THE MILKY WAY (18 references) Mardi 1 by the minstrels, who sang in the Milky Way when Jesus our Saviour was born. (13) 2 From earth to heaven! High above me was Night's shadowy bower, traversed, vine-like, by the Milky Way (179) 3 Shoals, like nebulous vapors, shoreing the white reef of the Milky Way, against which the wrecked worlds are dashed (367) 4 "Why, my good lord, my friend Annonimo is laying out a new Milky Way, to intersect with the old one" (418) 5 "'They know us not in the Milky Way.'" (575) 6 "behind the vision, gleamed another Milky-Way." (633) White-Jacket 7 "Consider how it shines of a night, like a bit of the Milky Way." (78 8 We perceived that ... our man-of-war world itself was as eligible a round-sterned craft as any to be found in the Milky Way. (186 9 I felt like the foremost of a flight of angels, new-lighted upon earth, from some star in the Milky Way. (212) 10 As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing, never-sinking, world-frigate, of which God was the ship-wright; and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet (398) Moby-Dick 11 Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? (195) 12 and so form the white breakers of the milky way (478) 13 while all between float milky-ways of coral isles (482-3) "The Piazza" 14 led on along a milky-way of white-weed (6) Lecture: "The South Seas" 15 The islands, too, are an endless theme; thick as the stars in the Milky Way. (166) "The Muster" (1866) 16 O Milky Way of armies Star rising after star (108)

1O5 References to Astronomical Subjects Clarel 17 "Since thus he aims to level all, The Milky Way he'll yet allot For Appian to his Capital." (1.34.29-31) "The Haglets" 18 The eddying waters whirl astern ... The Black hull leaves a Milky Way (224) METEORS AND METEORITES (17 references) Mardi -L vitreous stones fallen from the skies in a meteoric shower. (236) 2 Soon, there shot into the air a vivid meteor, which bursting at the zenith, radiated down the firmament in fiery showers (498) 3 "worlds revolving - and in his eyes - like unto heavens - soft falling stars are shooting." (616) 4 into the air Hautia flung her flambeau; then bounding after, - in the lake, two meteors were quenched. (651) Moby-Dick 5 the men, like shooting stars, slid to the deck (558) Pierre 6 before his eyes a million green meteors danced (341) "The Two Temples" (written sometime around 1853-54) 7 Gothic windows of ... sun-rises and sun-sets, lunar and solar rainbows, falling stars (304) "The Portent" (1866) 8 But the streaming beard is shown (Weird John Brown), The meteor of the war. (5) "The Swamp Angel" 9 Then the poise of a meteor lone (77) "On Sherman's Men" (1866) 10 And Glory - 'twas a fallen star! (127) Clarel 11 That shooting star to gaze upon. (1.11.79)

io6 Appendix One 12 Nor flying meteors of the night (4.9.34) "The Haglets" 13 On nights when meteors play And light the breakers' dance (231) "Naples in the Time of Bomba" 14 Arching he made his meteors play (389) Bitty Budd 15 the enemy's red meteor of unbridled and unbounded revolt. (54) "Daniel Orme" 16 In short, in most instances he turns out to be like a meteoric stone in a field. There it lies. The neighbours have their say about it ... But what is it? Whence did it come? In what unimaginable sphere did it get that strange, igneous, metallic look (117) COMETS (15 references) Mardi 1 We were going, it seemed, to illustrate the Whistonian theory concern ing the damned and the comets; - hurried from equinoctial heats to arctic frosts. (5) 2 And my soul sinks down to the depths, and soars to the skies; and comet-like reels on through such boundless expanses, that methinks all the worlds are my kin, and I invoke them to stay in their course. (367) 3 "and facilitate cross-cuts among the comets." (418) 4 "Mardi's peaces are but truces. Long absent, at last the red comets have returned. And return they must, though their periods be ages." (529) Redburn 5 The former were a timid, silent trio, who used to revolve around their mother's waist, and seldom quit the maternal orbit; whereas, the O'Regans were "broths of boys," full of mischief and fun, and given to all manner of devilment, like the tails of the comets. (267) Moby-Dick 6 the curving comet of his tail (191) 7 But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets (250) Israel Potter 8 Israel dropped like a comet into the stern-sheets (86)

107 References to Astronomical Subjects Journal Kept on board Ship "Meteor" 1860 9 A comet made its appearance to the N.W. the other night, & was still visable [sic] last night. (133; see Journals 53on) "The Conflict of Convictions" (1866) 10 Though comets, gone a thousand years, Return again (8) Clarel

11 Upon the future's trembling rim The comet hovered. (2.4.41-2) 12 While now the armed world holds its own, The comet peers (2.34.34-5) 13 A comet shall resume its path Though three millenniums go. But faith? (3.14.111-12) "The Marquis de Grandvin" (written after 1886?) 14 As well ransack the museums of Natural History for the bottled-up tail of Encke's comet. (351) Billy Budd

15 as an astronomer knows about a comet's travels prior to its first observable appearance in the sky. (67) NORTHERN LIGHTS (AURORA BOREALIS) (9 references) Mardi

1 the spears of the Northern Lights charging over Greenland. (104) 2 [the whale] whose lofty spoutings of flame were still visible upon the distant line of the horizon; showing there, like the fitful starts of the Aurora Borealis. (122) 3 "Naught but the false and flickering lights which sometimes mock Aurora in the north!" (542) Moby-Dick

4 What a fine frosty night ... what northern lights! ... But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? (10-11) Clarel

5 But lo - as when off Tamura The splash of north-lights on the sea Crimsons the bergs - so here start out Some crags aloft how vividly. (1.14.37-40)

io8 Appendix One 6 Vine's brow shot up with crimson lights As may the North on frosty nights Over Dilston Hall and his low state The fair young Earl whose bloody end Those red rays do commemorate (3.14.15-19) 7 It dies; and, half around the heavenly sphere, Like silvery lances lightly touched aloft Like Northern Lights appealing to the ear (4.15.78-80) 8 A dancing ray, Auroral light. (4.33.36) "The Haglets" 9 Ha - yonder! are they Northern Lights? (230) ASTEROIDS (4 references) Mardi 1 on all sides, a sea-gale operates as if an asteroid had fallen into the brine (49) 2 systems and asteroids (238) 3 "At a word we turn you out whole systems, suns, satellites, and asteroids included." (418) 4 "I faint: - back, back to some small asteroid." (616) EXCERPT FROM MELVILLE'S LATE PROSE

"Fragment" (written after 1886?) did the Magnanimous call out the worlds? Two or three hundred years ago [1572, to be exact], to the amazement of the telescopes [Melville errs here - there were no astronomical telescopes in 1572], a strange star appeared in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and shining there like a planet for a brief term, abruptly disappeared, and was seen no more. Nor was any star-dust left to tell of the fleet passage. True, out of the same Unknown or Nothing, and back into it again, millions of small meteors come and go; but extinction is signalised in the instance of stars of magnitude; and in corresponding degree the glory of God is magnified, who can work such wonders, to whom the planets are of even less consideration than to the Grand Mogul his golden buttons. (381) EXCERPTS FROM PIECES ATTRIBUTED TO MELVILLE

"The New Planet." Yankee Doodle 2.42 (24 July 1847) Dear Sir: I have observed, for several nights past, a strange light in the southwestern quarter of the sky, inclining to the south. I find it laid down

109 References to Astronomical Subjects in none of the astronomical charts in my possession, nor am I able to fix it in any constellation or group. I recollect observing a similar appearance and pointing it out to Professor Mitchell of the Cincinnati Observatory on his visit to this city last winter. He could make nothing of it. Perhaps you, who have the range of the sideral [sic], as well as the terrestrial sphere, will be able to help me. Yours respectfully, Prof, of Astronomy and Celestial Trigonometry, Columbia College, N.Y. (445) [The reply to this hoax refers to "this new planet," "a most potential planet," "this star," and "the natal star" (446).] "A New Comet." Yankee Doodle 2.43 (31 July 1847) Another one of these very large sky rockets has lately been discovered from the Boston observatory - being the fifth, first seen from that position [this was the comet designated 1847!!!, or 1847^. Speeding hitherward from beyond, far beyond, the distant regions, amid which the planet Le Verrier in its immense orbit causes the far-off Georgian Sidus to oscillate with "a short, uneasy motion," it would be quite pleasant if the "long tailed stranger" would pass within hail, like the Chinamen, and answer a few questions - for instance, is Le Verrier a verity? and, What motive power is used in regions stellar, And what's thought there about the screw propeller? (435) "The Junk is Genuine." Yankee Doodle 2.46 (21 August 1847) Wang Taou, Emperor of the Celestials, and brother to the Constellation of the Great Bear [Ursa Major], with the little star in his tail, to Doodle, king of the Yankees; Greeting: light of twenty-nine stars ... I could not order in time, the right moon for her to sail with (437)

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APPENDIX TWO

More Maps and Drawings from Hiram Mattison's Atlas Designed to Illustrate Burritt's Geography of the Heavens

Figure AI Canis Major, Argo Navis, and other constellations

Figure A2 Capricornus, Cygnus, Aquila, Lyra, and other constellations

Figure A3 Virgo, Berenice's Hair, Leo Major, Leo Minor, Sextans, Crater the Cup, and Corvus the Crow

Figure A4 Ursa Major (with the Big Dipper), Ursa Minor, Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and other north circumpolar constellations

Figure A5 Pegasus, Aquarius, Pisces, and other constellations

Figure A6 Great Refracting Telescope at Cambridge, MA

Figure Ay Drawings of celestial objects

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1 Here is the best place to elaborate on what I mean by "astronomy." According to historian Agnes Clerke, "We can distinguish three kinds of astronomy, each with a different origin and history, but all mutually dependent, and composing, in their fundamental unity, one science" (History of Astronomy, i). The oldest branch is "observational," or "practical astronomy": this term, says another historian, Michael Mendillo, "refers to that fundamental part of the science concerned with recording the exact positions of heavenly bodies and applying this knowledge to such practical concerns as timekeeping and surveying" ("Practical Astronomy," 34). Certainly this kind of astronomy would also be practised by sailors (like the young Melville) who rely on a knowledge of uranography - the study of the map of the stars and constellations - for navigational purposes. The second kind of astronomy, founded by Sir Isaac Newton, is "gravitational," also called "theoretical astronomy." It involves "the application of rigorous mathematical techniques to celestial motions." The third division of the science is termed "physical and descriptive astronomy" and is concerned with discovering the physical makeup of the heavenly bodies. This branch of astronomy came into being with the invention of the telescope, and so was originated by Galileo; however, by the late nineteenth century new techniques involving spectroscopy and photography extended the domain of physical astronomy, notes Clerke (2). 2 There has been some scholarship on Melville and sciences other than astronomy. Elizabeth Foster has published on Melville and geology, for instance. Even earlier, Tyrus Hillway completed his dissertation, "Melville and Nineteenth-Century Science," but because it is mostly concerned with cetology, geology, phrenology, and physiognomy, there

lao Notes to page xiv is very little on astronomy - only about five pages. From his dissertation Hillway has extracted and published several articles on Melville and various sciences, but none on astronomy. In fact, until now not much has been written on astronomy in Melville's works. A recent book that extends Hillway's work is Richard Smith's Melville's Science: "Devilish Tantalization of the Gods!" (1993). Smith moves patiently from Typee through the entire Melville canon, ending, as he must, with Billy Budd. Smith's knowledge of science and the history of science is profound, broad, and impressive. His typical method is to take a reference to science or a scientist in a Melville production and establish the larger context in the history of science or, even more generally, the history of ideas; but sometimes, instead, he simply explains the science involved in the reference. The book is not devoted solely to astronomy or any other single scientific field, but Smith also demonstrates a respectable understanding of astronomy and its branches, especially in his chapters on Mardi (18-19, 2&~9> 4°/ 56-61, 65-6, 70, 72-6, 81) and Moby-Dick (124-5). The central flaw of Melville's Science is that the book focuses so heavily on the explanation of scientific references and the history of science that Melville gets lost, and the attempts Smith makes to relate the writer to his scientific references are often exceedingly weak. There is frequently an incidental sense about them, and because the book is feeble exegetically, we learn very little about how the references to science relate to Melville's characteristic themes. Furthermore, Smith's conclusions about Melville's attitude toward science really do not seem to go beyond those Hillway arrived at many decades earlier. Finally, while Smith covers many of the same concepts as I do here, in his chapter on Mardi he makes no attempt to acknowledge the groundbreaking work in my dissertation (1988) and in my subsequently published essay "The Cosmic Drama of Melville's Mardi" (1990), both of which were available years before Melville's Science. 3 I have deliberately been a little negligent in my cataloguing of references to the sun in Melville's works for several reasons: first, frequently when he mentions the sun no real astronomical knowledge is demonstrated; second, many references to the sun are listed in the concordances to Moby-Dick and Clarel; and third, an entire dissertation has been written on Melville's literary use of the sun in Moby-Dick and other prose works - Martha Frances Nichols' "Sun Imagery in the Novels of Herman Melville." Anyone seeking more information about Melville's literary use of the sun is encouraged, therefore, to consult the concordances and Nichols' work. 4 One last caveat is in order. I am concerned in this project with the science of astronomy, not with the pseudo-science of astrology. Scholars

121 Notes to pages 3-16 interested in literary interpretations of Melville's work from an astrological point of view may want to read, for instance, Maxine Moore's That Lonely Game: Melville, Mardi, and the Almanac. A more recent study is John Birk's dissertation, "Fate is the Handspike: The Astrological Framework of Moby-Dick." CHAPTER

ONE

1 See the introduction to "The Uranic Muse." 2 Unless otherwise indicated, all references are to the NorthwesternNewberry edition of the Writings of Herman Melville. 3 Any good planisphere, such as the Star and Planet Locator, published by Edmund Scientific Company, will be able to confirm the accuracy of Melville's uranographical descriptions. The computer software, by Mark Haney, is a product of Klassm Software (1990). 4 All page references accompanying the short poems are taken from the Russell and Russell edition of Melville's Poems. Emily Dickinson also knew the truth about the "Seven" Sisters, as she shows in two of her poems: I had a star in heaven One "Pleiad" was its name And when I was not heeding, It wandered from the same. (#5) How noteless Men, and Pleiads, stand, Until a sudden sky Reveals the fact that One is rapt Forever from the Eye - (#80) 5 See also Metcalf, Herman Melville, 137. Maria Mitchell's fame rests on her discovery of a comet in 1847. On tne evening of i October, twentynine-year-old Maria was sweeping in the observatory of her father. She swept, not the floor with a broom, but the skies with a telescope hoping to discover a comet. At 10:30 she noticed a fuzzy object not far from the North Star that indeed turned out to be what she had been seeking. Maria and William attempted to notify the appropriate authorities, but her claim to priority was challenged by the Italian astronomer De Vico, who had detected the object on the 3 October. The parties involved were haggling over more than priority, however, for a prize was at stake: in the early 18303 the King of Denmark, Frederick VI, had instituted the distribution of a gold medal to all discoverers of new telescopic comets. Yet, as the well-known American educator, orator, and statesman Edward Everett wrote to H. Schumacher on 15 January 1848, "The regulations relative to the King of Denmarks [sic] medal have not hitherto been understood in this country. I shall take care to

122 Notes to pages 19-22 give publicity to them. Not only has M. Bond lost the medal to which you think he would have been entitled; but I fear the same has happened to Miss Mitchell of Nantucket who discovered the comet of last October on the ist day of that month. It was not, I think, seen in Europe till the 3d." (A copy of this letter, from the Everett Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, is in my possession.) Nevertheless, Everett and others eventually succeeded in convincing the world of Maria's priority. A year after the first sighting of the comet, Frederick VI acknowledged her claim to the award and thereafter the medal itself arrived in Nantucket. Maria Mitchell became a celebrity overnight; "notices of the 'Lady Astronomer' were printed in papers throughout the land," says Helen Wright (Sweeper in the Sky, 65). In his book The Recent Progress of Astronomy (1851), Loomis devotes a whole chapter to Maria's discovery and concludes: "This is the first instance in which the gold medal ... has been awarded to an American; and the first instance in which it has been awarded to a lady in any part of the world" (112). 6 See appendix i of my "Uranic Muse" for some notes on the appearance of the doctrine of a plurality of worlds in the writings of some of Melville's contemporary authors. 7 The final three pages of my catalogue in appendix i reproduce some excerpts that have been attributed to Melville. These appear in the Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces. Among them is a short article, "A New Comet," which mentions "the planet Le Verrier" and "the far-off Georgian Sidus." The first refers to Neptune; in early October 1846, Le Verrier rejected his original suggestion of naming the planet he had discovered "Neptune" and decided instead that he wanted the planet named after himself (Grosser, Discovery of Neptune, 125). "Georgian Sidus" was, by the time Melville began writing, soon to become an entirely obsolete name for Uranus (22-3). If Melville did indeed write the article, then it can be said that he does allude in his writings to Uranus and Neptune. 8 The Cassiopeia supernova is in fact Edgar Allart Foe's "Al Aaraaf," and Foe gives the following note to his poem explaining the celestial object: "A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared suddenly in the heavens - attained, in a few days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter - then as suddenly disappeared, and has never been seen since" (7: 23n; cf. Mitchel, Planetary and Stellar Worlds, 293). Melville refers to the supernova in a late sketch (see "Fragments," in appendix i). 9 Another short article attributed to Melville in the Northwestern-Newberry Piazza Tales is called "The New Planet." This is an apparently bogus letter in which the author speaks of "Professor Mitchell [sic] of the Cincinnati Observatory." Whether Melville wrote the letter or not, the editors state correctly that "The astronomical language anticipates

123 Notes to pages 23-30 the imagery of Melville's later work, beginning with Mardi (1849)" (787). More intriguing is their assertion that Melville "was to meet Professor William Mitchell, the astronomer, and his astronomer daughter Maria at Nantucket Island in July of 1852." While this is true, I am left with the impression that the editors are confusing William Mitchell with Professor Orsmby MacKnight Mitchel (note that he spells his name with one "1") of Cincinnati. 10 Emerson's response to the laws unveiled by Newtonian astronomy was considerably more optimistic than Melville's: "The Newtonian ordering of the universe in terms of gravitational concepts allowed a confident Emerson to contemplate the earth moving serenely in its established orbit" (Lindner, "Newtonianism in Emerson's Nature," 264). CHAPTER TWO

1 I do not mean to suggest the type of allegory in which literal characters and things represent abstract concepts - the "allegory of ideas." I mean that in Mardi Melville uses the other kind of allegory in which things signify other literal things. Abrams makes the distinction in A Glossary of Literary Terms (5). 2 Merrell Davis has suggested that Melville may have taken Taji's name from a comet. He mentions Edward Everett's correspondence "with Le Verrier concerning Textrait de votre noble memoire sur les cometes [sic] de Taije et de Vico'" (69). Davis could not strengthen his theory by finding a reference to such a celestial body in the Comptes Rendus - the scientific journal that published several of Le Verrier's researches on comets. This is not surprising, for a comet named "Taije" simply does not exist. Dorothee Finkelstein has made the same deduction: "It is obvious from Leverrier's [sic] 'memoires' in the 'Comptes Rendus de 1'Academie des Sciences' that the reference is to 'les cometes de Faye et de Vico/ i.e. the two comets discovered by Faye and Vico respectively, in 1843 and 1844, which bear their names" (i95n). Finkelstein is correct. Le Verrier published several times on periodic comets such as Faye's. Finkelstein suggests that Davis's mistake "is based on a typographical error" (195). In following up my hunch that the reference to comet Taije is really to comet Faye, I obtained from the Massachusetts Historical Society photocopies of the Everett-Le Verrier correspondence. It is impossible to tell from Everett's handwriting whether the name he mentions is "Faye" or "Taije"; however, the Le Verrier letter makes it quite clear that both he and Everett are discussing the comet "de faye." Interestingly, both the French astronomer and the Boston professor are to be blamed for Davis's error: for some reason Le Verrier placed an umlaut over the "y" in "Faye," making his written "y" look

124 Note to page 31 like an "if; and to make matters worse, Everett not only copied the umlaut when he mentioned the comet, but his "f" could easily be taken for a "T." Thus, instead of reading "Faye" in Everett's letter, Davis read "Taije." To conclude, Melville certainly did not take Taji's name from a comet. 3 Franklin also quotes these passages in chapter 2 of The Wake of the Gods (42). Although Taji's name is not that of a comet, as I show in note 2, Franklin relies on internal evidence from Mardi to argue that the main character is indeed, in "some sort of allegorical or metaphorical sense," a comet. Franklin cites the passage at the beginning of Mardi in which the narrator (not yet Taji) has been told that the Arcturion will leave the equatorial regions to sail north toward the Bay of Kamchatka. Says the narrator, "We were going, it seemed, to illustrate the Whistonian theory concerning the damned and the comets; - hurried from equinoctial heats to arctic frosts" (5). Franklin maintains that this excerpt applies to Taji himself and that therefore Taji is a comet - a damned one, in fact. Franklin also tries to account for Yillah and Hautia in the astronomical allegory: Hautia is the moon and Yillah is the sun - but the latter "is a false sun, whose pursuit leads to destruction and damnation." The true sun, Franklin believes, is the true Christ, Alma (46). Leonard is basically content with Franklin's allegorical identifications, but he adds his own interpretation. Taji is certainly a comet, according to Leonard, but he disagrees with Franklin that comet-Taji is a Whistonian damned soul. He suggests instead that Taji is a comet that has become caught within the solar system and begun to orbit the sun - once more represented by Yillah. And again, Hautia is the moon, while she and her three heralds are lunar satellites who orbit Taji the comet continuously. The twist that he adds to the astronomical allegory is based on Cartesian cosmology. The Mardian universe, Leonard tells us, is filled with whirlpools of matter, Cartesian vortices, each one a solar system with its sun in the centre and its planets, moons, and comets circling nearer the outer edges of the vortex. But there is a kind of hellish torment of endless circling here too, as in Franklin's theory, for the three characters are trapped by "the Cartesian physical laws of vortical motion that govern all objects of the cosmos" (14). I feel neither obligated to refute Leonard's and Franklin's theories nor compelled to reconcile them with my own interpretation of the cosmic drama of Mardi. It is conceivable, though, that several different hypotheses could be valid simultaneously; Mardi is rich enough, both symbolically and allegorically, to accommodate many levels of meaning. Yet I do have a reservation about the theories of the two scholars: I believe they are treating symbolism as allegory. That Taji, Yillah, and Hautia are perhaps associated with comets, the sun, and the moon respectively,

125 Notes to pages 32-9 does not necessarily make them these astronomical objects on an allegorical level. That so-called moon, Hautia, is compared to meteors as well (651) and to the sun (652). That alleged comet, Taji, is also associated with the sun, as he calls himself Taji the sun-god (see also 556); he seems at another point to liken himself to a planet (368); he is linked symbolically with Arcturus (306, 654) and, as a hunter, with the constellation Bootes too (306, 423, 637, 638). There is also a connection between that supposed sun, Yillah, and the constellation Virgo (see chapter 3, sect. 5, of "The Uranic Muse"). We must not confuse the astronomical symbolism in Mardi with the astronomical allegory. 4 Melville was still thinking about the star-island equation when he wrote his lecture on the South Seas: "The islands, too, are an endless theme; thick as the stars in the Milky Way" (The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, in Writings, 414). 5 The doctrine of the plurality of worlds certainly did not originate in the nineteenth century. In The Great Chain of Being Lovejoy shows that the doctrine is as old as Western philosophy but that it "gained ground" in the sixteenth century and came to be generally accepted by the end of the seventeenth. Lovejoy goes on to provide examples of the many thinkers who accepted the notion. Among them is Robert Burton. Melville had purchased a volume of selections from The Anatomy of Melancholy (1651) in April 1847; there he might have read a passage from the "Second Partition" in which Burton discusses the idea of extraterrestrials (53-4). 6 Melville began reading Sir Thomas Browne in early 1848. If he came across sections 33 and 34 of Religio Medici, he would have found a discussion of the Great Chain of Being: "there is in this Universe a Staire, or manifest Scale of creatures, rising not disorderly, or in confusion, but with a comely method and proportion" (43). The Great Chain of Being was a Renaissance commonplace. If Melville knew the work of the Italian NeoPlatonic philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, for instance, he would also have found a reference to the Great Chain in his Oratio de dignitate hominis ("Oration on the Dignity of Man"): "man is the intermediary between creatures, the intimate of higher beings and the king of lower beings, the interpreter of nature by the sharpness of his senses, by the questing curiosity of his reason, and by the light of his intelligence, the interval between enduring eternity and the flow of time ... a little lower than the angels" (The Portable Renaissance Reader, 476). God the Architect "adorned the region beyond the heavens with Intelligences, He animated the celestial spheres with eternal souls, and He filled the excrementary and filthy parts of the lower world with a multitude of animals of all kinds" (477). This is very much the universe of Mardi. Pico maintains, however, that, unlike the

126 Notes to pages 47-56 angels and beasts, who are static in the Great Chain, humans, through free will, can move up or down the hierarchy of Creation. He imagines God telling humanity "You shall be able to descend among the lower forms of being, which are brute beasts; you shall be able to be reborn out of the judgment of your own soul into the higher beings, which are divine" (478). Taji certainly believes in his own mutability - his dynamic ability to move up the Chain through an act of will. CHAPTER THREE

1 Although Derwent and Ungar both see God in Nature, that Ungar recalls the Book of Job when he examines the night sky actually differentiates him from the Anglican priest. When pessimistic Ungar looks at the stars of the natural world, he sees the awesome power of the God of Job and the Old Testament. The faith of optimistic Derwent, on the other hand, "has no place for Job" (Kenny, 170); when Derwent looks at the natural world, he sees the benevolent God of the deists. 2 Furthermore, Rolfe is also quite correct in noting the slight error in the cross depicted on the rock. It is a proper cross, having a "midmost star" to join the horizontal and vertical beams. In the constellation it is supposed to resemble, the bright star that should join the vertical and horizontal beams is well off centre. The star-pattern looks like "a badly made kite rather than ... a cross" (Allen 185). Rolfe's uranographical accuracy is testimony to Melville's close familiarity with the nocturnal skies. 3 Stan Goldman, however, in his recent and quite readable book, Melville's Protest Theism: The Hidden and Silent God in Clarel (1993), goes against this commonly held pessimistic interpretation. He claims to have found evidence in Clarel for "the theological values of reverence, charity, hope, and faith rather than the self-sufficiency, endurance, despair, pessimism, and agnosticism that have usually been read from the poem" (3-4). Instead, he insists that, although God remains mysterious and unknowable by the end of Clarel, he is not absent or dead so much as silent and hidden - "a central biblical metaphor and idea of the Hebrew Bible" (8). God is therefore playing hide-and-seek with His own creation. In presenting this idea of the Deity, Melville is questioning "the assumptions of orthodox theology: the presence and accessibility of God" (13). Some of the characters would prefer a personal God who appears from time to time in Nature or some other manifestation; they desire a theophany. They do not get one, however - no unambiguous revelation, no ocular proof, no verifiable miracles - but with the absence of such external aids to faith and with the rejection on the part of some of creed and church, the characters have no choice but to turn

127 Notes to pages 59-61 inwards to seek the small voice of God within the human heart. Melville, therefore, goes beyond the position of existential alienation and cosmic estrangement; he does offer "a way to faith based on divine immanence and a theology of hope" (189). Goldman's book is an extremely important contribution to Clarel studies and must be taken seriously. Unfortunately, perhaps, his study says nothing extensive about the poem's stellar imagery and so fails to consider its hermeneutical implications. Goldman's list of Clarel essays covers only those published by 1991; he apparently refused to examine dissertations and so missed, neglected, the early version of my own treatment of Clarel. Still, my thesis and Goldman's are not necessarily irreconcilable: if we want to do justice to Goldman's findings we could conclude that because of the absence of stellar symbols that suggest, even confirm, faith - an absence that contributes to "divine hiddenness and an unsatisfied heart" (169) - Melville recommends interior rather than exterior guides: the loving heart and inner voice of God to replace the Southern Cross and Star of Bethlehem. CHAPTER

FOUR

1 See, for example, Pommer, Sheldon, and Perry. Scholars who argue the association of Billy with Christ, for instance, include Freimarck, Stern, Chase, Mason, Franklin, Brumm, and Nathalia Wright. 2 That Melville may have borrowed astronomical imagery from Paradise Lost in an even earlier work than Billy Budd is suggested by a passage from Israel Potter. "Poor Israel, standing on the top of this poop, spyglass at his eye, looked more an astronomer than a mariner; having to do, not with the mountains of the billows, but the mountains in the moon. Galileo on Fiesole" (115). Compare with the following from Milton's epic: the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. (1:287-91) Common to both excerpts are Galileo ("the Tuscan artist"), the telescope, "Fiesole," and imagery of the moon, of lunar mountains/and of water. 3 The moon is also mentioned in relation to Satan in Paradise Lost: He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,

128 Notes to pages 64-9 Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon. (1:283-7) 4 Beaver (in the notes to his Penguin edition of Billy Budd) and Hayford and Sealts (Billy Budd, 166) draw our attention to Paradise Lost. In book 4, as he approaches Eden, Satan "Begins his dire attempt; which ... boils in his tumultuous breast, / And like a devilish engine back recoils / Upon himself" (lines 15-18). Later, with regard to Satan, we find the lines: "Revenge, at first though sweet, / Bitter ere long back on itself recoils" (9:171-2). Also compare with Comus: "But evil on itself shall back recoil" (line 593). 5 A reproduction of the planisphere, the Star and Planet Locator, appears in the original publication of this chapter. See my article "Astronomical Imagery," 11. Mr Robert M. Edmund, President of Edmund Scientific Company, kindly gave his permission to reproduce the Star and Planet Locator in that article. 6 Charles Zarobila has noticed balance imagery in Melville's works, images approximating "a literal balance beam, either fixed or rocking, and a pendulum" (89). The one that concerns me here is the image of the balance beam; Zarobila offers several examples from Billy Budd and Melville's other works but does not cite the cosmic one I have been discussing. We can imagine the earth - more specifically, the Bellipotent as the fulcrum of a cosmic scale or teeter-totter, seesaw, with Taurus/ the sun/Billy on one end and Scorpio/the moon/Claggart on the other. This seesaw moves as Billy and his cosmic symbols rise while Claggart and his cosmic symbols descend. 7 In his Civil War poem "Stonewall Jackson (Ascribed to a Virginian)" Melville writes: "His fate the fatalist followed through; / In all his great soul found to do / Stonewall followed his star" (Poems 60). Stubb's interpretation of the zodiac, in Moby-Dick, also concerns fate: "Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter"; and he proceeds to explain the significance of each zodiacal constellation. He finishes with the following: "Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven" (433). Stubb's fatalistic exegesis is in fact prophetic. Ahab, too, is a fatalist, and the attempts made by his first mate to turn the captain from what that madman believes is destiny underline the significance of Starbuck's name. Starbuck would buck the stars - he would resist fate. Like some Calvinist, however, Ahab holds that events are predestined: "Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders" (561).

129 Note to page 72 CHAPTER FIVE i In Mardi someone asks about the United States (Vivenza): "Is she not the star, that must, ere long, lead up the constellations, though now unrisen?" (542). The anonymous writer of the scroll had earlier criticized the boastfulness of Americans, however, and had predicted that "though crimson republics may rise in constellations, like fiery Aldebarans, speeding to their culminations; yet, down must they sink at last" (527).

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Bibliography

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132 Bibliography Chase, Richard. Herman Melville: A Critical Study. New York: MacMillan 1949. Clark, Harry H. "Emerson and Science." Philological Quarterly 10 (July 1931): 225-60. Clerke, Agnes M. A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh 1885. Cohen, Hennig. Foreword to That Lonely Game: Melville, Mardi, and the Almanac. By Maxine Moore. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press 1975. Cohen, J.M. Introduction to Essays. By Michel de Montaigne. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1958. Connor, Frederick W. "Poe and John Nichol: Notes on a Source of Eureka." ... All These to Teach. Ed. Robert A. Bryan et al. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press 1965. 190-208. Cooke, Alice Lovelace. "Whitman's Indebtedness to the Scientific Thought of His Day." University of Texas Studies in English 8 (July 1934): 89-115. Crowe, Michael J. The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750-1900: The Idea of a Plurality of Worlds from Kant to Lowell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986. Cummings, Sherwood. "Mark Twain's Acceptance of Science." Centennial Review 6 (1962): 245-61. Davis, Merrell R. Melville's Mardi: A Chartless Voyage. 2nd ed. Yale Studies in English 119. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1967. DeVorkin, David. "Astrophysics Is Born: 1840-1900." Astronomy 4, no.7 (July 1976): 50-63. Dick, Thomas. Complete Works. 2 vols. Cincinnati, OH: 1858. Dickinson, Emily. Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Toronto: Little 1961. Dillingham, William B. An Artist in the Rigging: The Early Work of Herman Melville. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 1972. Dugdale, Clarence. "Whitman's Knowledge of Astronomy." University of Texas Studies in English 8 (July 1936): 125-37. Elliott, Clark A. Biographical Dictionary of American Science: The Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Centuries. Westport, CT: Greenwood 1979. Ellis, William. Polynesian Researches. 2 vols. The Colonial History Series. 1829. London: Dawsons 1967. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Astronomy," in Young Emerson Speaks: Unpublished Discourses on Many Subjects by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Jr. Boston, MA: Houghton 1938. Ferguson, James. An Easy Intoduction to Astronomy for Young Gentlemen and Ladies. 8th ed. Dublin 1808. Finkelstein, Dorothee Metlitsky. Melville's Orienda. New York: Octagon 1971. Foster, Elizabeth S. "Melville and Geology."American Literature 17 (Mar. 1945): 50-65.

133 Bibliography - "Another Note on Melville and Geology." American Literature 22 (Jan. 1951): 479-87Franklin, H. Bruce. The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1963. Freimarck, Vincent. "Mainmast as Crucifix in Billy Budd." Modern Language Notes 72 (Nov. 1957): 496-7. Friederich, Reinhard H. "Comet, Stars, and Cynosure: Billy Budd in a Symbolist Context." Essays in Literature 9, no.2 (fall 1982): 261-8. Goldman, Stan. Melville's Protest Theism: The Hidden and Silent God in Clarel. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press 1993. Gretchko, John M.J. "Herman Melville's Closet Astronomy Source." Stonehenge Viewpoint 52 (March-April 1983): 20-1. - Melvillean Ambiguities. Cleveland, OH: Falk and Bright 199. - Melvillean Loomings: Essays on Moby-Dick. Cleveland, OH: Falk and Bright 1992. Grosser, Morton. The Discovery of Neptune. Boston, 1962. Reprint, Toronto: General 1979. Haney, Mark A. Skyglobe. Vers. 1.3. Computer Software. Klassm Software 1990. Hayford, Harrison, and Merton M. Sealts, Jr. Preface to Billy Budd, Sailor. By Herman Melville. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. v-vii. Heflin, Wilson L. "Melville, Celestial Navigation, and Dead Reckoning." Melville Society Extracts 29 (1977): 3. Hillway, Tyrus. "Melville and Nineteenth-Century Science." PHD diss., Yale University, 1944. - "Melville and the Spirit of Science." South Atlantic Quarterly 48 (Jan. 1949): 77-88. - "Melville as Critic of Science." Modern Language Notes 65 (June 1950): 411-14. Hogg, Helen. The Stars Belong to Everyone: How to Enjoy Astronomy. Toronto: Doubleday 1976. Howard, Leon. Herman Melville: A Biography. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press 1951. Jaffe, David. "Some Sources of Melville's Mardi." American Literature 9 (March 1937): 56-69. J.D.W. "Star-Gazing." Knickerbocker 38, no.2 (Aug. 1851): 160. J.O.W. "The Joy of the Stars." Knickerbocker 19, no.6 (June 1842): 526. Kenny, Vincent. Herman Melville's Clarel: A Spiritual Autobiography. Hamden, CT: Archon 1973. Knapp, Joseph G. Tortured Synthesis: The Meaning of Melville's Clarel. New York: Philosophical 1971. Kremenliev, Elva Baer. "The Literary Uses of Astronomy in the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe." PHD Diss. University of California, Los Angeles, 1963.

134 Bibliography Leonard, David Charles. "Descartes, Melville, and the Mardian Vortex." South Atlantic Bulletin 45, no.2 (May 1980): 13-25. Lindner, Carl M. "Newtonianism in Emerson's Nature." Emerson Society Quarterly 20 (1974): 260-9. Loomis, Elias. The Recent Progress of Astronomy: Especially in the United States. 1851. Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1936. Lovi, George. Star and Planet Locator. 1966. Barrington, NJ: Edmund 1977. McCormmach, Russell. "Ormsby Macknight Mitchel's Sidereal Messenger, 1846-1848." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society no, no.i (Feb. 1966): 35-47. Mason, Ronald. The Spirit above the Dust: A Study of Herman Melville. London: Lehmann 1951. Mattison, Hiram. Atlas Designed to Illustrate Burritt's Geography of the Heavens. New York 1856. Meadows, A.J. The High Firmament: A Survey of Astronomy in English Literature. Leicester: Leicester University Press 1969. Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor. Ed. Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 1962. - The Works of Herman Melville. The Standard Edition. 16 vols. New York: Russell 1963. - The Writings of Herman Melville. Ed. Harrison Hayford et al. The Northwestern-Newberry Edition. 15 vols. to date. Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library 1968-. Mendillo, Michael. "Comets and Transits: 1620-1776." Astronomy 4, no. 7 (July 1976): 23-31. - "Practical Men, Practical Astronomy: 1776-1825." Astronomy 4, no_7 (July 1976): 34-43. Metcalf, Eleanor Melville. Herman Melville: Cycle and Epicycle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1953. Mills, Gordon. "The Significance of 'Arcturus' in Mardi." American Literature 14 (May 1942): 158-61. Milton, John. Paradise Lost and Selected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Northrop Frye. Toronto: Holt 1951. - Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Ed. Christopher Ricks. New York: NAL 1968. Mitchel, Ormsby Macknight. The Planetary and Stellar Worlds: A Popular Exposition of the Great Discoveries and Theories of Modern Astronomy. In a Series of Ten Lectures. 1848. Three Centuries of Science in America. New York: Arno 1980. Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Works of Montaigne. Trans. Donald M. Frame. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 196.

135 Bibliography Moore, Maxine. That Lonely Game: Melville, Mardi, and the Almanac. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press 1975. Nichol, John Pringle. Views of Astronomy: Seven Lectures Delivered before the Mercantile Library Association of New York ... New York 1848. Nichols, Martha Frances. "Sun Imagery in the Novels of Herman Melville." PHD diss., Tulane University, 1968. Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain, A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Vol. 33 of The Writings of Mark Twain. The Stormfield Edition. New York: Harper 1912. Paul, Sherman. Emerson's Angle of Vision: Man and Nature in American Experience. 1952. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1969. Percival, James G. "The Stars: An Extract." Knickerbocker 9, no.i (Jan. 1837): 73. Perry, Robert L. "Billy Budd: Melville's Paradise Lost." Midwest Quarterly 10, no. 2 (Jan. 1969): 173-85. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. "Oration on the Dignity of Man." In The Portable Renaissance Reader. Ed. James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin. The Viking Portable Library. New York: Penguin 1981. 476-9. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. James A. Harrison. 16 vols. 1902. New York: AMS 1965. Pommer, Henry F. Milton and Melville. Univertisy of Pittsburgh Press 1950. Review of The Sidereal Messenger, ed. O.M. Mitchel. The American Whig Review 6, no. 2 (Aug. 1847): 218-19. Scholnick, Robert J. "'The Password Primeval': Whitman's Use of Science in 'Song of Myself.'" Studies in the American Renaissance. Ed. Joel Myerson. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia 1986. 385-426. Sealts, Merton M. Historical Note. In The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces: 1839-1860. Ed. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle et al. Vol. 9 of The Writings of Herman Melville. The NorthwesternNewberry Edition. Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library 1987. 457-533. - Melville's Reading. Revised and enlarged edition. 1966. Columbia, sc: University of South Carolina P. 1988. Sheldon, Leslie Elmer. "The Illimitable Ocean: Herman Melville's Artistic Response to Paradise Lost in Moby-Dick, Typee, and Billy Budd." PHD diss., University of Toronto, 1980. Smith, Richard Dean. Melville's Science: "Devilish Tantalization of the Gods!" New York and London: Garland 1993. Stern, Milton R. The Fine Hammered Steel of Herman Melville. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press 1957. Swett, J. "The Southern Cross." Knickerbocker 44, no. 4 (Oct. 1854): 379. Tanner, Stephen L. "Star-Gazing in Whitman's Specimen Days." Walt Whitman Review 19, no. 4 (Dec. 1973): 158-61.

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Index

"After the Pleasure Party" (Melville), 16-17 Aldebaran in Taurus (star), 9, 10, 33, 34, 77, 78, 91, 129111; associated with Billy Budd, 59, 61-4, 66, 85 Allen, Richard Hinckley, 47, 51-2, 66, I26n2 Alphacca in the Northern Crown (star), 10, 33, 77 Alphard in Hydra (star), io/ 33, 77 "Amoroso" (Melville), 9 Andromeda (constellation), 8, 17, 33, 91 Apology for Raymond Sebond, The (Montaigne), 38 Aquarius the Water-Bearer (zodiacal constellation), 8, 116; in Mardi, 32, 91; in Moby-Dick, 93, I28n7 Aquila the Eagle (constellation), 8, 33, 90, 113 Arcturion (ship in Mardi), 10, 30-1, I24n3 Arcturus in Bootes (star), 9, 10; in Clarel, 47, 84; in Mardi, 33, 38, 77, 78, 90, 103; Taji from, 30-1, 37, I25n3 Arcturus (magazine), 30 Argo-Navis (constellation), 5, 8, 92, 112

Aries the Ram (zodiacal constellation), 8, 26; in Moby-Dick, 17, 24, 92, 93; in Paradise Lost, 67 Aristotle, 38, 39 Arvin, Newton, 67 asteroids, 15, 20, 34, 108 astral photography, ngni astrology and astrologers, 84, I2on3 Astronomical Discourses (Chalmers), 44 "Astronomical Imagery and Symbolic Antitheses in Melville's Billy Budd" (Zimmerman), I28n5 "Astronomy" (Emerson), 45 astronomy: mathematical (Newtonian, gravitational, theoretical), 22-4 26, ngni, i23nio; Melville's attitude toward, 71; observational ("practical"), 310, 26, 71, 79, ngni; physical ("descriptive"), 20, 28, ngni. See also astral photography, spectroscope and spectroscopy, uranography Astronomy and General Physics Considered with

Reference to Natural Theology (Whewell), 44 Atlas Designed to Illustrate Burritt's Geography of the Heavens (Mattison), 6, 11-13, 26, 64; maps and diagrams from, 112-18 Auriga the Charioteer (constellation), 10 Aurora Borealis. See Northern Lights Bacon, Francis, 101 Beaver, Harold, 128114 Beaver, Joseph, xiii, 3, 5, 17 Beegel, Susan, 16 Bellatrix in Orion (star), 10, 37, 78, 103 Berenice's Hair (constellation), 8, 91, 94, 114 Betelgeuse in Orion (star), 10; as navigational aid, 50, 84; and plurality of worlds, 36, 78, 91, 103 Bezanson, Walter, 43, 47 Big Dipper (Charles' Wain), 92, 115 Billy Budd (Melville), 7, 8, 9, 23, 43, 57-69, 72; as testament of acceptance, 68-9 Birk, John, 120-1114 Blake, John Lauris, 13

138

Bootes the Herdsman (constellation), 8, 10; as Arctophylax, the BearDriver, 17, 93; in Mardi, 30, 34, 77, 90, 91; Taji associated with, 125^ Bowditch, Nathaniel, 10, 23, 26 Brahe, Tycho. See Tycho Bridgewater Treatises, 44 Brooks, Albert, 44 Browne, Sir Thomas, 56, I25n6 Brumm, Ursula, 127m Burritt, Elijah Hinsdale, 10, 11-12, 26, 44, 61 Burton, Robert, 125^ Cancer the Crab (zodiacal constellation), 5, 8, 32, 91/93 Canis Major, the Great Dog (constellation), 7, 10, 112 Capella in Auriga (star), 10, 33, 77 Capricorn the Goat (zodiacal constellation), 8, 90, 93, 113 Cassiopeia the Queen (constellation), 8, 115; associated with Maria Mitchell, 16, 95; in Mardi, 17, 33, 91. See also supernova in Cassiopeia catasterism (astral apotheosis), 72, 81, 85, 94, 97; associated with Vere and Nelson, 61 celestial geometry. See uranography Cepheus the King (constellation), 115 Cetus the Whale, or Sea Monster (constellation), 5, 6, 8, 92 Chaldaean astronomers, 21, 102 Chalmers, Thomas, 44, 57 Charles' Wain (Big Dipper). See Big Dipper

Index

Chase, Richard, i27ni Christ, 48, 50-3, 95, 104, I24n3; associated with Billy Budd, 59-60, 62, 64, 66-9, I27ni Clarel (Melville), 43-57, 64, 68, 70, 71; Galileo in, 22; moon in, 18, 24, 60, 72; Newton in, 23; Southern Cross in, 8; stellar chemistry in, 20 Clark, Harry H., 3 Clemens, Samuel, 3 Clerke, Agnes, ngni Cohen, Hennig, 30 Cohen, J.M., 37 comets, 23, 40, 45, 72, 102, 106, 107; 1847!!!, or 18470, 109; Encke's, 107; Faye's, 123-4^; Maria Mitchell's, I2i-2n5; Taji as, I23~4n2, 125^; Whistonian theory of, 106, I24n3 Comptes Rendus de I'Academie des Sciences, 123112 Connor, Frederick W., 3 constellations, 89-95; (cu"~ cum)polar, 5, 54, 90, 115. See also under individual names Cooke, Alice Lovelace, 3 Copernicus, Nicolas, 22, 100, 101 Corona Australis. See Southern Crown Corona Borealis. See Northern Crown Correspondence (Melville), 4, 10, 71 Corvus the Crow (constellation), 114 "Cosmic Drama of Melville's Mardi, The" (Zimmerman), I2on2 cosmologies: Cartesian, I24n3; Copemican (heliocentric), 22, 37, 100; Ptolemaic (geocentric), 22, 100 Crater the Cup (constellation), 8, 91, 114

Cross of the South (Hemans), 52 "Crossing the Tropics" (Melville), 5 Crowe, Michael J., 44 Crux Australis. See Southern Cross cultural relativism, 29, 368, 91, 97, 103 Cummings, Sherwood, 3 cycles and epicycles, 90 Cygnus the Swan (constellation), 8, 33, 90, "3 Darwin, Charles, 48, 55 Davis, Merrell, 13, 31, I23~4n2 Denebola in Leo (star), 10, 33/77 DeVorkin, David, 20 Dick, Thomas, 26, 44, 57 Dickinson, Emily, 9, 121114 Dillingham, William B., 30, 32, 58 "Discoveries in the Moon" (Locke), 18 Discovery of Neptune, The (Grosser), I22n7 Dog-Star. See Sirius Draco the Dragon (constellation), 8, 33, 91 Draper, Henry, 20 Dugdale, Clarence, 3, 5, 7, 21 Earth, 23, 33, 40, 41, 95, 102, 104; atmosphere's effect on moon, 18; Bellipotent as, 59, I28n6; diameter of, 97; in the Great Chain, 39; Mardi as allegorical representation of, 29; movement through space, 20, i23nio; orbit used for parallax, 22; as one of a plurality, 36-7, 91, 96, 103; shadow during eclipse, 24 Easy Introduction to Astronomy for Young

139 Index Jaffe, David, 18 Gemini the Twins (zodiaJob as constellation, 47, 95 cal constellation), 8, 17, Journals (Melville), 5 92,93 Jupiter (planet), 15, 23, 97, Geography of the Heavens, I22n8; atmospheric and Class-Book of Astronbelts of, 20, 34, 38, 96 omy, The (Burritt), 1112,44 Kenny, Vincent, 43, 51, Goldman, Stan, 126-7^ 12601 Great Bear. See Ursa Major Knapp, Joseph, 43 Great Chain of Being, 29, Knickerbocker (magazine), 38-42, 125-606 46,52 Great Chain of Being, The Kremenliev, Elva Baer, 3 (Lovejoy), 12505 Gretchko, John M.J., xiii, "Lake, The" (Melville), 21 3, 11, 47, 58 Laplace, Pierre Simon, Marquis de ("La "Haglets, The" (Melville), Place"), 22, 101 60 Lecture on the Great UnfinHarper's New Monthly ished Problems of the UniMagazine, 15-16 verse (Mitchel), 45 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 3, Leo the Lion (zodiacal *6, 37, 7«, 97 constellation), 8, 10, 32, Hayford, Harrison, 58, 12804 91, 93, 114 Leo Minor (constellation), Heflin, Wilson L., 23 "Fall of Richmond, The" Hercules (constellation), 114 (Melville), 9 Leonard, David Charles, 20 "Fate is the Handspike: 58, I24n3 The Astrological Frame- Herschel, Caroline, 16 work of Moby-Dick" Leverrier, Urbain Jean Herschel, John, 18-19, 22> (Birk), 120-104 Joseph ("Le Verrier"), 101 Ferguson, James, 13, 26 12207, I23n2 High Firmament, The Finkelstein, Dorothee (Meadows), xiii Libra the Scales (zodiacal Metlitsky, 58, I23n2 Hillway, Tyrus, 55-6, 70, constellation), 8, 24, 26, First Book in Astronomy 11902-120 66,93 Applied to the Use of Lindner, Carl M., 3, Hogg, Helen, 4 Common Schools (Blake), "House-Top: A Night i23nio 13 Piece, The" (Melville), Literary World, The (DuyFomalhaut in Pisces Aus9-10 ckinck), 15 tralis (star), 10, 49, 83 Howard, Leon, 16 Little Bear. See Ursa Minor Foster, Elizabeth, ii9ni Hyades (loose star cluster) Locke, Richard Adams, 18 Franklin, H. Bruce, 58, 60, in Taurus, 7, 8, 90, 93 Loomis, Elias, 15, 12205 I24n3, I27ni Hydra the Sea Serpent Lovejoy, Arthur O., 38, 39, Freimarck, Vincent, i27ni (constellation), 10 12505 Friederich, Reinhard, 58, Hydrus the Water Snake Luther, Martio, 48 61 (constellation), 5, 8, 92 Lyell, Charles, 55 Lyra the Lyre (constellagalaxy and galaxies, 30, "I and My Chimney" tion), 8, 24, 33, 91, 113 39, 79. See also Milky (Melville), 22 Way Indus the Indian (constel- McCormmach, Russell, 45 Galileo Galilei, 15, 55, 101, lation), 47 Mardi (Melville), 5, 29-43, 102, ngni, I27n2; and Israel Potter (Melville), 17, 68, 72, 75; constellatory heliocentric system, 22 18, 24 myths in, 56; Hautia in,

Gentlemen and Ladies (Ferguson), 13, 26 eclipse(s), 86, 100; lunar, 24, 87, 89; solar, 24, 89, 98, 99 ecliptic, 32, 34, 59, 62, 64, 89, 90, 91 Elliott, Clark, 11 Ellis, William, 18 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 3, 9, 28, 45-6, 72, i23nio equinox(es): autumnal, 7, 24, 27, 92; precession of the, 24-6; vernal, 24-5, 92 Everett, Edward, I2in5, i23-4n2, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature (Paley), 44 extraterrestrials. See plurality of worlds

140

60; Melville's astronomical knowledge demonstrated in, 7, 9, 10, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24; Mitchel's possible influence on, 13-15; natural theology in, 46, 71; Southern Cross in, 8, 52 Mark Twain. See Clemens, Samuel Markab in Pegasus (star), 10, 33' 77 Mars (planet), 15, 20, 98 Maskelyne, Nevil, 10 Mason, Ronald, i27ni Mattison, Hiram, 6, 11-12, 64 Meadows, A.J., xiii Melville's Science: "Devilish Tantalization of the Gods!" (Smith), i2on2 Mendillo, Michael, 11, 21, ngni Mercury (planet), 20, 21, 96 meteors and meteorites (shooting or "falling" stars), 72, 105-6, 108; and Hautia, 125^ Milky Way, 45, 93, 104-5, i25rk(.; in Mardi, 29, 345, 37, 42, 103. See also galaxy and galaxies Mills, Gordon, 30, 58 Milton, John, 58, 59, 60, 64, 66, 68, 100 Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della, I25~6n6 Mitchel, O.M., 20, 26, 109, I22n8-i23n9; and natural theology, 45; possible influence on Mardi, 13-15' 3i' 7i Mitchell, Maria, 3, 16-17, 71, I2i-2n5, I23n9 Mitchell, William, 3, 16, I2in5, I23ng Moby-Dick (Melville), 15, 21, 69, 70; Ahab's ignorance of precession of the equinoxes in, 24-6; Melville's knowledge of

Index

constellations shown in, 5, 7, 9, 10, 17; Milky Way in, 34; plurality of worlds in, 19; ship as Earth in, 59 Montaigne, Michel de, 368 moon, 17-19, 76, 86-9, 100, 101, 109, I27n2; as Ashtoreth, 60, 72, 89; as Astarte, 60, 89; as Cynthia, 72, 86, 87; as Diana, 55, 72, 88; associated with Claggart, 59, 60-1, 64, 66, 67, I28n6; associated with Hautia, 60, 87; associated with Satan, 127-8^; as Luna, 18, 88; Harvest Moon, 7, 86, 87, 88; lunar inhabitants, 19, 35, 36, 86, 87, 88, 103; moon madness ("lunacy"), 60-1, 87; phases of, 7, 18, 78, 86, 87, 88, 89; as "planet," 24, 88, 89; tides, 87; topography of, 18, 101, I27n2 Moore, Hamilton, 10, 11 Moore, Maxine, 30, 58, 120-1114 "Naples in the Time of Bomba" (Melville), 9 natural theology, 43-8, 53, 57, I26ni nebulae, 40 nebular hypothesis, 28 Neptune (planet), 20, 21; as "Le Verrier," 109, I22n7 New American Practical Navigator: An Epitome of Navigation, The (Bowditch), 10-11, 23, 26 New Practical Navigator (H. Moore), 10 Newton, Isaac, 23, 100, 101, 102, H9ni Nichol, John Pringle, 3, 3i' 45' 7i

Nichols, Martha Francis, I2on3 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 56, 69 North Star in Ursa Minor, 5, 9, 10, 78, 81, 85, I2in5; and Ahab, 80; relative to Arcturus, 30i; and space-travellers in Mardi, 34, 76, 102 Northern Cross (constellation), 7, 91 Northern Crown (constellation), 7, 8, 10, 33, 77, 90, 91 Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis), 107-8 observatories, 100-1; Boston, 109; Captain Cook's, 21, 100; Cincinnati, 45, 109, I22ng; Greenwich, 101; Maria and William Mitchell's, 16, I2in5; Perkins, 11 Olmsted, Denison, 44 Omoo (Melville), 21, 30, 33, 36, 70, 71, 72 Orion the Hunter (constellation), 8, 10, 50, 55, 81, 92, 94; belt of, 9; natural theology and, 47; plurality of worlds and, 17, 34, 36, 89; sword of, 33' 53' 9i' 93' 95 Paine, Albert Bigelow, 3 Paley, William, 44, 57 Paradise Lost (Milton), 57, 60, 64, 66, 67, 88, I27n2, 12804 Paradise Regained (Milton), 67 parallax, 22, 80 Paul, Sherman, 3, 72 Pavo the Peacock (constellation), 47 Pegasus the Winged Horse (constellation), 10, 17, 33, 116 Perry, Robert L., i27ni

141

Perseus (constellation), 8, 33, 91; and plurality of worlds, 17, 34, 89, 102 Pierre (Melville), 16, 22, 23 Pisces Australis, or Austrinus, the Southern Fish (constellation), 10, 49 Pisces the Fish (zodiacal constellation), 7, 8, 31, 32, 90, 91, 93, 116, I28n7; and vernal equinox, 24 Pisces Volans, the Flying Fish (constellation), 5, 8, 92 Planetary and Stellar Worlds, The (Mitchel), 20, 31, I22n8-n9; imaginary cosmic journeys in, 14-15; natural theology in, 45; precession of the equinoxes in, 26 planets, 20-1, 45, 95-8, 108. See also individual names planispheres (celestial charts, globes, or maps), 101, 102, 109; used to check Melville's knowledge of uranography, 7, 66-7, I2in3, I28n5 Plato, 38 Pleiades (loose star cluster) in Taurus, 7, 8-9, 32, 90, 91, 93, 95; and catasterism, 94; and cultural relativism, 37, 103; in Dickinson's poetry, I2in4; and natural theology, 47 plurality of worlds, theory of (extraterrestrials), 19, 97, I22n6, I25n5; in Mardi, 29-30, 34-9, 71, 77, 78, 102-3. See also moon Poe, Edgar Allan, 3,13, 28, 55; Cassiopeia supernova in "Al Aaraaf," I22n8; mathematical knowledge of, 23

Index

Polaris. See North Star Pole Star. See North Star Polynesian Researches (Ellis), 18 Pommer, Henry E, 127111 Popular History of Astronomy during the 'Nineteenth Century, A (Clerke), 119111 Practical Navigator (H. Moore), 10 Ptolemy, 22, 100 Recent Progress of Astronomy, The (Loomis), 122115 Redburn (Melville), 11, 13, 72 Renan, Ernest, 56 Requisite Tables for the Nautical Almanac (Maskelyne), 10 Rigel in Orion (star), 10; as navigational aid, 50, 84; and plurality of worlds, 36, 78, 91, 103 Rosse, William Parsons, 22, 101 Sagittarius the Archer (zodiacal constellation), 8, 64, 65, 93; and cultural relativism, 37, 91, 103; in Paradise Lost, 67 Satan, 47; associated with Claggart, 59, 60, 64, 66, 67, 68, I28n4 Saturn (planet), 20, 80, 96; moons of, 34, 38, 97; rings of, 32, 95 Schiller, Julius, 47 Scholnick, Robert ]., 3 science and scientists, Melville's attitude toward, 70-1 Scorpio the Scorpion (zodiacal constellation), 8, 93; associated with Claggart, 59, 64, 66, 67, I28n6 Sealts, Merton M., 11, 13, 15, 22, 58, i28n4

Seven Sisters. See Pleiades Sextans (constellation), 114 Sheldon, Leslie Elmer, i27m Sidereal Heavens (Dick), 26 Sidereal Messenger (Mitchel), 45 Sirius in Canis Major (star), 7, 9-10, 78, 81, 82 Skyglobe, computer software (Haney), 7, I2in3 Smith, Richard Dean, 12On2

solstice(s), 26, 62, 90 "South Seas, The" (Melville), 19 Southern Cross (constellation), 5, 7-8, 78, 92, 94, I26n2; as symbol of Christ, 43, 51-3, 55, 57, 82, 91, 95, I26~7n3 "Southern Cross, The" (Swett), 52 Southern Crown (constellation), 7, 91 spectroscope and spectroscopy, 20, 28, 56, ngni Star of Bethlehem, 43, 50i, 52, 56, 83, 84, 126-7113 Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning (Allen), 47 stars, 76-85; and fate, 69, 72; as navigational and spiritual guides, 9, 10, 49-55, 62, 72, 84, 1267n3_ See also individual stars stellar chemistry, 20, 56, 82,83 stellar lore, 17, 56, 66, 72 Stellar Universe, The (Nichol), 31 Stern, Milton R., i27ni "Stonewall Jackson (Ascribed to a Virginian)" (Melville), I28n7 Strauss, David, 56 sun, 90, 91, 93, 95, 98-100, I2on3; associated with Billy Budd, 59, 60, 64, 66, 67,128n6; movement

142

Index

through the equinoxes, That Lonely Game (M. 24-6; movement Moore), 30, I2o-in4 through space, 20, 98; Timoleon (Melville), 17 movement through the Treadwell, Theodore, 44 zodiac, 32, 99; and Tycho, I22n8; as lunar crater, 18, 102 plurality of worlds, 34, 35, 36, 98, 103; sundogs, Typee (Melville), 19, 36, 70, 99,100; sunspots, 98, 99. 7i' 72 See also eclipses "Sun Imagery in the "Uranic Muse, The" (Zimmerman), 72, I2on2, Novels of Herman I2ini, I22n6, I25n3 Melville" (Nichols), uranography, 4-13, 26, 32I2on3 3, 53, 71, 72, ngni, supernova in Cassiopeia, I2in3, I26n2; and celes21, 37, 78, 108, I22n8 tial geometry, 5, 7, 59, Sweeper in the Sky 66-9 (Wright), 16, I22n5 Uranus (planet), 20, 21; as "Georgian Sidus," 109, Tanner, Stephen L., 3 I22n7 Taurus the Bull (zodiacal Ursa Major, the Great constellation), 8, 10, 17, Bear (constellation), 8, 32, 90, 92, 93; associ17, 33, 91, 92, 109, 115 ated with Billy Budd, Ursa Minor, the Little 59, 62-3, 64, 66, 67, 85, Bear (constellation), 8, 95, I28n6 10, 33, 91, 115 telescope(s), 100-2, 108, ngni; Galileo's, 55, Venus (planet), 98, 100; as I27n2; great refracting Hesperus the Evening telescope at Cambridge, Star, 20, 78, 80, 96; as MA, 117; Herschel's, 18Morning Star, 52, 78, 96; 19; Maria and William transit of, 21, 95, 97 Mitchell's, I2in5

Views of Astronomy (Nichol), 45 Virgo the Virgin (zodiacal constellation), 7, 8, 26, 93, 114; as Astraea, 66; Yillah associated with, I25n3 Waggoner, Hyatt Howe, 3 Walt Whitman - Poet of Science (Beaver), xiii Whewell, William, 44, 57 Whitall, Henry, 3 White-Jacket (Melville), 4, 19, 20, 37, 59 Whitman, Walt, 3, 13, 28; and the moon, 17; and planets, 21; Pleiades in, 9; uranographical knowledge of, 5, 7, Whittier, John Greenleaf, 52

Wright, Helen, 16, i22n5 Wright, Nathalia, i27ni Zarobila, Charles, I28n6 zodiac: in Billy Budd, 62, 68, 69; in Clarel, 95, 99; in Mardi, 32, 39, 89, 90, 91; in Moby-Dick, n, 17, 26, 92-3, I28n7