2 posts tagged “antebellum”
Melville, Herman. "The Piazza," "Benito Cereno," "The Encantadas," "The Bell-Tower." In Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories. New York: Bantam, 1984 (1856).
This Billy Budd edition is rounded out with the entire contents (minus "The Lightning-Rod Man") of the only story collection Melville published in his lifetime. The famous ones are "Bartleby," which was never a huge favorite of mine, and "Benito Cereno," which what do you say about "Benito Cereno," but "The Piazza" is one of the weirdest versions of pastoral I've ever read; the whimsical narrator superimposed on a scene of actual hardship strikes (and strikes hard) that difficult, uneasy note that the early Wordsworth is always trying for. "The Encantadas" is an amazing series of sketches on the Galapagos islands with a lot of quotes from Spenser; Melville allegorizes the Galapagos tortoise with no less ingenuity, though at far less length, than he allegorizes his whale, and then there are these sorts of inimitable moments:
This Billy Budd edition is rounded out with the entire contents (minus "The Lightning-Rod Man") of the only story collection Melville published in his lifetime. The famous ones are "Bartleby," which was never a huge favorite of mine, and "Benito Cereno," which what do you say about "Benito Cereno," but "The Piazza" is one of the weirdest versions of pastoral I've ever read; the whimsical narrator superimposed on a scene of actual hardship strikes (and strikes hard) that difficult, uneasy note that the early Wordsworth is always trying for. "The Encantadas" is an amazing series of sketches on the Galapagos islands with a lot of quotes from Spenser; Melville allegorizes the Galapagos tortoise with no less ingenuity, though at far less length, than he allegorizes his whale, and then there are these sorts of inimitable moments:
If now you desire the population of Albemarle, I will give you, in round numbers, the statistic, according to the most reliable estimates made upon the spot:
Men..............none
Anteaters......unknown
Man-haters....unknown
Lizards.........500,000
Snakes........500,000
Spiders.....10,000,000
Salamanders....unknown
Devils...........unknownMaking a clean total of.........11,000,000
exclusive of an incomputable host of fiends, anteaters, man-haters, and salamanders.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature and Essays: First Series. In Essays and Lectures, ed. Joel Porte. New York: Library of America, 1983 (1836, 1841).
Mooxyjoo was right about Nature being the one to check out. Yes sir. Love that prose, even lacking his version of faith. The Essays are awesome when they are about things I find awesome, like Circles. I am not quite as enamored of Heroism, and so lack of faith occasionally becomes a problem.
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*I didn't remember this line from Euripides offhand and couldn't find a version of it anywhere - maybe from one of the lost plays, if there's anything at all to the story? These are some other versions of what Brutus said:
"O Virtue, thou art but an empty name!" - Helvetius, De l'esprit
"O Virtue! I sought thee as a substance, but I find thee an empty name!" -Godwin, Caleb Williams
"After taking breath for a little time, he cast his eyes up to heaven, that was all spangled with stars; he repeated a line from Euripides, containing a wish to the Gods, 'that guilt should not pass in this life without punishment.' To this he added another from the same poet: 'O virtue! thou empty name, I have worshipped thee as a real good, but thou art only the slave of fortune.'" -Oliver Goldsmith, The Roman History
The original source for all this seems to be the Roman History of Dio Cassius, composed in Greek circa 200 AD, whose book 47, chapter 49 reads (in one English version):
Mooxyjoo was right about Nature being the one to check out. Yes sir. Love that prose, even lacking his version of faith. The Essays are awesome when they are about things I find awesome, like Circles. I am not quite as enamored of Heroism, and so lack of faith occasionally becomes a problem.
Maybe it was juvenile to find myself siding with (possibly apocryphal) Euripides and (historical construction of) Brutus rather than with Emerson? But dear Ralph Waldo, you would not want me to smother the instinctive counsel of my outleaping heart?It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword, after the battle of Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides,--"O virtue! I have followed thee through life, and I find thee at last but a shade."* I doubt not the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness.
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*I didn't remember this line from Euripides offhand and couldn't find a version of it anywhere - maybe from one of the lost plays, if there's anything at all to the story? These are some other versions of what Brutus said:
"O Virtue, thou art but an empty name!" - Helvetius, De l'esprit
"O Virtue! I sought thee as a substance, but I find thee an empty name!" -Godwin, Caleb Williams
"After taking breath for a little time, he cast his eyes up to heaven, that was all spangled with stars; he repeated a line from Euripides, containing a wish to the Gods, 'that guilt should not pass in this life without punishment.' To this he added another from the same poet: 'O virtue! thou empty name, I have worshipped thee as a real good, but thou art only the slave of fortune.'" -Oliver Goldsmith, The Roman History
The original source for all this seems to be the Roman History of Dio Cassius, composed in Greek circa 200 AD, whose book 47, chapter 49 reads (in one English version):
According to our translator Herbert Baldwin Forster, these lines appear in no extant play. But only one Herakles play by Euripides survives; there might have been more.Brutus, who had reached in flight a steep and lofty spot,
undertook to break through in some way to the camp. In this he was
unsuccessful, and on learning that some of his soldiers had made terms
with the victors he had no further hope, but despairing of safety and
disdaining capture he himself also took refuge in death. He uttered aloud
this sentence of Heracles:
"Unhappy Virtue, thou wert but a name, while I,
Deeming thy godhead real, followed thee on,
Who wert but Fortune's slave."
Then he called one of the bystanders to kill him.
