Customer Reviews

Mardi : and a Voyage Thither

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Apologies and thanks to a previous reviewer (1999), from whom I borrowed the idea of the 'nutty middle ground' between Typee and The Whale. What a whale of a book! what a mess! what great fun!

Typee and Omoo were , well, non-fictional accounts of young Melville's travels in the South Pacific. He wrote in the Mardi foreword, that nobody believed him, so he made up some fiction and was sure to be believed this time. Not likely.

The book was a flop in the commercial sense, like all future Melville books would be. What an idiot the market can be.

The 'story': the hero of the 2 previous adventure tales takes off from an island on a small whaling ship, to go home, and true to his personal tradition, runs away from it, with a fellow sailor in a whaling boat. (The fact that he actually steals the boat in the process, not to mention breaks his contract, seems irrelevant to the young man.)

They meet a small and nearly deserted ship, take it over, find an odd couple on it, Samoa and Annatoo, have adventures with them sailing the ship, lose the ship and Annatoo, then the 3 men are again on the boat, they meet some natives in a prao, save a beautiful virgin from human sacrifice. She turns out to be a kind of goddess, so the hero has to promote himself to play in the same league, then they land on the island group called Mardi, and the story gets very long and tedious, but never quite stops being fun. Mardi is supposed to mean the 'world', by the way. See the allegoric meaning?

The structure of the short chapters (nearly 200 of them) helps to maintain momentum. The chapters are half way to Moby Dick: some are plain story telling, some are ruminations on God and the World, some are observations of nature, some are the mystical phantasies of the South Seas mythology that M. created for the purpose of this book.

And it is a collection of aphorisms, that would make the visit worth while on their own.

The whale's brain enlightens the world.

Death has a mouth as black as a wolf's.

He looked infernally heartless.

He who hates is a fool. Yet some dislikes are spontaneous.

Some revelations show best in twilight.

One of my AFs said that nothing prepares the reader of Typee and Omoo for the Melville of later years. I would add, that Mardi already breaks the barriers. Sometimes he comments on his own text in the text: e.g. ...which sentence reads like a pattering of hailstones.

If you can, don't read it without access to Google, otherwise the constant allusions to the world of history and literature make you lose a lot of the contents (unless you are an encyclopedia yourself).

P.S. and not to forget, greetings to the hermit goats that they spotted on the island of Massafuero. Wherever that is, if it is anywhere.

Mardi, the forgotten child ,is yet entirely singular and needs to be read by those who have fallen under the spell of Melville. An encyclopaedic romp through an almost fantastical landscape of isles and warriors; Melville attempts to pull off one the most extraordinary acts of metaphysical fiction ever. He doesn't quite rein it all in but the experience of reading Mardi is utterly disorientating in the best way. Coming after Typee and before Moby Dick, it is somewhat of a nutty middle ground. The anthropological concerns of Typee are stretched to the limit. Like the stars in the sky, Mardi is vast; (the word is Polynesian for the world)--and as full of wonder.

Although on its surface it appears to be a travelogue like his first two books (TYPEE and OMOO), MARDI is actually much more than that: it's a commentary on the age in which it was written, it's a quest story, it's an allegory, it's a love story. It's about many strange things and is not an easy book to follow, mainly because of Melville's use of allusions and digressions. Like Joyce's ULYSSES it almost requires a guide to help interpret what's in the book. As always with Melville its strength is in its language: the descriptions that are almost like poetry and the "borrowings" from favorite authors such as Shakespeare and Swift.

Basically, the story involves a shipwreck in the South Pacific, an attack by native islanders, and the falling in love of the narrator (Taji) with one of the native woman (Yillah). The make their way to the island of Mardi where they live happily for a while, until Yillah disappears. Taji searches for her throughout the islands with some companions; during this search they discuss many topics (here Melville satirizes life in America and England - slavery, politics, Indian policy, the war with Mexico, and also the failures of Christians to follow the love of Christ), until they find Yillah on an island transformed into a handmaiden. Implored to stay there with her, Taji decides to sail on in his endless quest for . . . truth?

The novel sold poorly during Melville's day (the London publisher lost money on it), with the public put off by its utter strangeness. Language lovers will appreciate this novel, however, and perhaps those who enjoy interpreting symbols and allusions. Not an easy book, but worth the effort to get a better picture of what Melville was all about as a great novelist.

Anyone who loves Moby Dick and is looking for another Melvillean challenge, buy a copy of "Mardi and a Voyage Thither". Alas! many marvels await thee whosoever has the time and fortitude to muse through this early Melville Masterpiece! Reading this novel is like watching Melville's genius grow, while you voyage through his mystical, metaphysical world. The following are some excerpts of what to expect on this joyous journey:

"We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow; and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound. Out spreads the canvas -- alow, aloft -- boom-stretched, on both sides, with many a stun' sail; till like a hawk, with pinions poised, we shadow the sea with our sails, and reelingly cleave the brine."

"But how fleeting our joys. Storms follow bright dawnings. -Long memories of short-lived scenes, sad thoughts of joyous hours -how common are ye to all mankind. When happy, do we pause and say - "Lo, thy felicity, my soul?" No: happiness seldom seems happiness, except when looked back upon from woes. A flowery landscape, you must come out of, to behold."

"For there is more likelihood of being overrated while living, than of being underrated when dead. And to insure your fame, you must die."

"My cheek blanches white while I write; I start at the scratch of my pen; my own mad brood of eagles devours me; fain would I unsay this audacity; but an iron-mailed hand clenches mine in a vice, and prints down every letter in my spite. Fain would I hurl off this Dionysius that rides me; my thoughts crush me down till I groan; in far fields I hear the song of the reaper, while I slave and faint in this cell. The fever runs through me like lava; my hot brain burns like a coal; and like many a monarch, I am less to be envied, than the veriest hind in the land."

"Of the highest order of genius, it may be truly asserted, that to gain the reputation of superior power, it must partially disguise itself; it must come down, and then it will be applauded for soaring...that there are those who falter in the common tongue, because they think in another; and these are accounted stutterers and stammerers."

"The catalogue of true thoughts is but small; they are ubiquitous; no man's property; and unspoken, or bruited, are the same. When we hear them, why seem they so natural, receiving our spontaneous approval? why do we think we have heard them before? Because they but reiterate ourselves; they were in us, before we were born. The truest poets are but mouth-pieces; and some men duplicates of each other;"

"Faith is to the thoughtless, doubts to the thinker."

"Some joys have thousand lives; can never die; for when they droop, sweet memories bind them up."

"Now, I am my own soul's emperor; and my first act is abdication! Hail! realm of shades!" -- and turning my prow into the racing tide, which seized me like a hand omnipotent, I darted through. Churned in foam, the outer ocean lashed the clouds; and straight in my white wake, headlong dashed a shallop, three fixed specters leaning o'er its prow: three arrows poising. And thus, pursuers and pursued flew on, over an endless sea."

Mardi is Melville's 3rd book. His first two (Typee and Omoo) were briskly-selling, somewhat fictionalized travelogues of his actual adventures in the South Pacific. Mardi was meant to be another such adventure story, but partway in it takes a sudden turn into fantasy, by venturing into a fictional (and apparently enormous) archipelago of myriad pseudo-Polynesian cultures. Like the Odyssey (or like planets in Star Trek), each island is a place to explore some philosophical/political point from our real world. In fact, during the final 3rd of the sprawling book, these islands become mirrors of our own world's nations, and Melville's criticism of America, especially slavery on the eve of the Civil War, is fascinating.

However, Mardi is one of Melville's weakest books. It suffers greatly from a lack of unification, and from serious pacing problems. It can be viewed as a first, muddy attempt at Moby-Dick.

But the mud contains so many nuggets of pure gold that I still give it 4 stars. The character Babbalanja (and his demon, Azzageddi) is one of the best in all of Melville's work, and many of the philosophical conversations are worth reading, not least because of the humor that Melville incorporates into them.

Unfortunately, this first attempt to write something unique resulted in the derailing of Melville's career, which never really got back on track. He followed it up with two rather conventional (and to him, boring) novels which again drew upon his past as a sailor, before he created his masterwork, Moby-Dick. Unfortunately, none of these nor later books sold well, and after those first two books, Melville was never able to make a living as a writer. But that just shows that even the greats can write bombs, and that numbers of copies sold does not equal quality.

After the successful one-two punch of his first books ('Typee' and 'Omoo'), Melville took a little more time to produce his next novel. In the interim, he got married and contributed to journals (he wrote 'Hawthorne and His Mosses' at this time). Unfortunately, when released, 'Mardi' was such a complete critical and financial failure that it single-handedly destroyed his newly-won success as a writer. Melville never recovered his audience after 'Mardi' and, after reading this fiasco, it's not hard to see why.

'Mardi' actually starts off very well as a third episode in Melville's South Sea adventures, picking up where 'Omoo' left off. However, the plot is much tighter than in 'Omoo' and far more interesting. In fact, for the first fifth of the book, Melville's definitely bringing his A-game. There is some grandiose phrasing unlike his typically crisp style, but it doesn't detract much. At first.

About a fifth of the way into 'Mardi' though, after the characters melodramatically rescue a girl named Yillah from some island priests, the plot collapses. Several chapters ensue that are, quite frankly, pale retreads of the 'island life among the savages' stuff that Melville did much better in his two previous novels. Then Yillah, who has become the main character's squeeze for no apparent reason, disappears. However, since Melville never made her anything more than a two-dimensional presence, I really didn't care about her or the narrator's feelings for her. This left me uninterested as a reader, and effectively diffused Melville's plot. For those interested, Melville's descriptions of Yillah are absolute proof he was gay, especially when you compare these tepid platitudes with the homoerotic, head-over-heels rhapsodies he pens for Jarl ('his Viking'). It's pretty clear who he thought was yummy. But I digress.

Not only did the plot collapse, but it was also at this point that Melville's writing turns into amateur, pretentious crap. His prose is slathered with endless mythological allusions and stilted language that strangles his narrative flow and renders anything he is trying to say laughable. He describes Yillah's beauty: 'Of her beauty I say nothing. It was that of a crystal lake in a fathomless wood.' How vague, trite, and random is that? Then there's: 'For oh, Yillah; were you not the earthly semblance of that sweet vision, that haunted my earliest thoughts?' There's page after page of this hoity-toity phrasing, and no viable plot to help you look past it. Much of Mardi, in fact, is directionless, unrelated ramblings sewn together like Frankenstein's monster.

A great example of how overgrown Melville's prose had become while he was writing Mardi is in the chapter 'Mardi by Night and Yillah by Day'. The core of this chapter is Melville's beautiful panoramic word painting of the Mardi islands at night, and the poignant emotions such a scene stirs in him. However, the brief description and his emotions are buried within a two page 'chapter' of stilted writing, overwrought metaphor and simile, and adolescent histrionics.

You want stilted writing? How about: 'obeying a restless impulse, I stole without into the magical starlight' or 'but how your mild effulgence stings the boding heart.' You want histrionics? How about: 'Am I a murderer, stars?' Or try out this little gem (and try not to laugh): 'Oh stars! oh eyes, that see me, wheresoe'er I roam...tell me Sybils, what I am.' Melville groupies - judging from the other reviews here - are able to excuse anything from the man who wrote Moby Dick. Perhaps Melville had high aspirations for this book but, wake up people! This is pompous sentimental writing that would have made the stereotypical 'lady novelist' pull out her editing pen! Coming from Melville, it's just embarrassing and I felt bad for him.

Unfortunately there's more. Throughout Mardi, Melville layers on bombastic (and oftentimes trite) metaphors and similes like a baker using super sugary icing to cover up that his cake isn't all that good. In the brief two page chapter noted above, Melville references Saturn, Indian wigwams, waterfalls, Greek mythology (two or three times), gnomes, and elves sailing on nautilus shells - all in ONE paragraph! This is awful writing however you spin it and, after a dozen chapters like this with no plot or coherent thematic thread, I'd had it!

In short, Mardi is unreadable. I am not surprised it was a flop in Melville's time, nor that it single-handedly finished him with the reading public and the critics. Melville realized his error, as well, for his next book - Redburn - was a return to the approach he had use with Typee. Published less than a year after Mardi, it was obviously an attempt to sweep the failure of Mardi under the rug and recapture Melville's public. Unfortunately, the damage was too great and Melville was ignored for the rest of his life. This meant there was no one paying much (if any) attention when he produced a masterpiece in Moby Dick.

Although Melville groupies will worship anything the author of Moby Dick wrote, the objective truth is that Mardi is every bit the debacle it is usually painted as, and only Melville's name on the cover keeps it in print. Consider yourself warned!

Most people contemplate reading Mardi, I think, as I did, because they are expecting to find a lost gem of American literature -- a work of genius that was unfairly panned by critics, and that hold sublime insights into the human condition... Unfortunately, Mardi is just a really really awful book and should not even have been published in the first place. Every aspect of the book is a failure:

No plot -- the main story, a hunt for the heroine, is forgotten and left hanging about 20 pages after it starts, then brought up again about 20 pages before the end of the book to tack on an ending.

Bad writing -- Melville has a pretty dense writing style, generally speaking, but in Mardi his writing is overblown. There are hundred (thousands?) of allusions to literature and history (extremely obscure references), which might be interesting if they were being used to make a point about... something/anything. But the only reason I could find for all of this was either showing off by Melville, or an attempt to hide the fact that there really is no reason for the book as a whole. So the book is all fluff, but it is dense overblown undecodeable fluff.

No characters -- The bulk of the book is a retelling of several conversations that take place on a boat as they search for the main character's love interest. Melville seems to think he is setting the stage for high philosophical debate, so he didn't see the need to give the speakers personalities, and just had them debate endlessly and pointlessly, and irrelevantly...

Mardi was extremely frustrating to read, and instead of feeling like Melville was unfairly criticized for taking chances, I came out of the experience on the side of the 19th century critics and readers that rejected the works that followed. And this was after enjoyable reads of both Typee and Omoo... Mardi really detracts from the enjoyment of even Moby Dick -- after Mardi it is difficult to take anything the guy wrote seriously.

There is nothing here: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.