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Pierre, or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven (Melville)

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Pierre is perhaps the strangest novel of all time: bizarre, to say the least, but brilliant in its extravagence. At a minimum, it is one of Melville's central novels that deconstructs the entire myth of pre-war American society in its explorations of incest, patricide and psychosis. It is almost inconceivable that Melivlle really believed that it would be popular (which he did), for it shows the impossibility of writing as an American author, the impossibility of originality, and the impossibility of self-reliance. Beware: it is not for the faint of heart. It is demanding, relentlessly challenging, and very rewarding.

It's been since grad school, in the early 80s, that I last read Melville's "Pierre", yet it's stuck to my ribs ever since. I recall a quote from Freud, that he ventured nowhere that a poet hadn't preceeded him, and I have to wonder if he had this unfortunately obscure masterpiece in mind. For Melville examines themes of psychology and sexuality as no other writer before him...excepting perhaps the Pagan mystics of old Europe. "Pierre" brilliantly illuminates the darknesses of the human psyche, those tunnels and strange rooms few of us ever explore, lest we be artists and therefore honest and courageous enough to sacrifice our egos. Melville considered "Pierre" his most important work, a suitable novel to follow "Moby Dick" (justifiably considered by many THE great American novel). Yet I find "Pierre" more moving, because more tragic, than "Moby Dick"--Ahab is obsessed and while his obsessions mixed with his intelligence make him complex, he is clearly one-dimensional in his drive. Pierre, however, is drawn by instincts which defy his conscious realization, by desires which emanate from the dark belly of humanity and therefore can't be seen. Ahab wants revenge; Pierre wants fulfillment. For a landlocked person such as myself, "Pierre" is also an easier read: no boggling display of nautical terminology to refer to on every page. Yeah, Freud was right: he owed a great deal to the poets...and while, technically, Melville was more storyteller or novelist than poet, here is a poetry there that's unmistakeable. Embrace this book, and embrace the spirit of the great man who possessed the courage to write it.

"In those Hyperborean regions, to which enthusiastic truth and earnestness, and independence, will invariably lead a mind fitted by nature for profound and fearless thought, all objects are seen in a dubious, uncertain and refracting light." One long, gorgeous inquiry into the nature of religion, spirituality and the stars, galaxies and planets of our firmament. American authors just don't come any more honest or more wise. He parodies and inverts Christianity; he shines on; the ashes of trad. belief are left in his wake.

"Pierre" is perhaps Melville's most difficult and challenging novel--and that's saying something. Despairing over his inability to support his family, Melville began writing a book designed to be popular--a counterpoint to the sensational novels written and read by contemporary women, using inspiration from French romances and even from Hawthorne's novels. Wavering between psychological melodrama and social satire, Melville ultimately increased the book's length by half again, incorporating his rage against the literary world by adding a subplot about a young man's desperate struggle to become a writer.

The stumbling points for most readers are the novel's opaque prose, the "thees and thous" of its antiquated dialogue, and the labyrinthine hodgepodge of a plot. But the density is broken by colloquial asides, sparkling sarcasm, and an occasional passage that approaches Dickensian mirth, such as Melville's description of the "Preposterous Mrs. Tartan!" and her undercover attempts to play matchmaker between Pierre and her daughter: "Once, and only once, had a dim suspicion passed through Pierre's mind, that Mrs. Tartan was a lady thimble-rigger, and slyly rolled the pea."

Behind the mask of the prose, however, is a modernist--even scandalous--story of a young, somewhat deluded man whose nihilistic descent leads to his destruction. Engaged to Lucy Tartan, Pierre adores his mother (their make-believe brother-sister relationship is almost creepy in its amorous undertones) and worships the memory of his long-dead father. This idyllic world is shattered by a missive from a woman, Isabel, who claims to be his half-sister--a claim supported by a more-than-passing resemblance to a portrait of his father. Complicating matters are his romantic feelings for this alleged half-sister.

Convincing himself that he is choosing honor over duty, he breaks off his engagement and flees to Manhattan with Isabel, taking along a local woman who had been disgraced by an out-of-wedlock tryst. Disowned by his mother and cut off from his family fortune, Pierre finds shelter for this odd trio among bohemian neighbors in a dilapidated part of town. His finances slowly evaporating, Pierre struggles to support them by writing a novel. And then, just when the plot can barely handle another twist, his estranged fiancee Lucy shows up at their doorstep.

To go any further would spoil the fun for the reader. Yet even such a basic plot summary omits some memorable and extraordinary scenes and sketches: his first meeting with Isabel, the near-riot that greets them during their first night in Manhattan, the eccentric philosopher who refuses to put his scholarly brilliance into written form.

Adultery, incest, madness, murder, and suicide--all the ingredients of a bleak nineteenth-century melodrama are wrapped in archaic language and modern themes. In her life of Melville, Robertson-Lorant calls "Pierre" "a narrative nervous breakdown" that is a "minefield" for biographers. It's also a goldmine; in no other work does Melville more clearly ridicule his critics, his friends and family, and even himself. The weird universe of "Pierre" is not the place to start if you've never read Melville, but it's certainly where you should go if you want better to understand his life and works.

Pierre has all the markings of an awful book--flat characters, overblown writing, shameless melodrama. So why is it such a masterpiece? Melville seems to have put all of himself into this work--his despair, his religious doubts, his understanding of human psychology--with an intensity that makes the usual standards of plot, style and character obsolete. The analysis of Pierre's mother as she turns on her husband/son and Melville's agonizing descriptions of the writing process were two of the book's highlights for me. The Beats loved Pierre--maybe they saw a model for their own art, where elegance takes a back seat to energy. The novel was a critical disaster at the time, but look where it ranks on amazon 150 years later. I hope Melville's somewhere watching.

"Pierre," (written shortly after "Moby Dick") is called "The Book that ruined Melville." In fact, he never wrote another novel after "Pierre," but spent his last 40 years either unemployed or working as a customs official. But by the end of the 20th century a new generation of readers and critics had rediscovered him, and today his reputation is at the front rank of American authors. "Pierre" is a superbly controlled exploration of the deepest psychological motivations which underlie all human beha vior. If it is ambiguous, it is meant to be so, not in the sense of vagueness, but in the sense of many meanings. Melville, like Thomas Hardy is a master at depicting country life. And the conflicts in the novel are very much tied to country versus city living. The novel is Freudian, in its questing after the deepest reasons for human behaviors. Like most of us at some point in life, Pierre sees the father he had idolized as human and capable of error. His own values are put into question by the receipt of a note from his long-lost sister. Melville points out that we all walk "on a razor's edge of security.....that what we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event-the fallling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather." Melville does not spare Pierre from disillusion but continues to open him up0 with an "electrical insight" into the character of his mother. He sees how she has been molded by the culture and how her love for him is not unconditional, but based upon his outward beauty and docile behavior. Melville deals with nature versus nurture as he contrasts the honesty of natural growing things with the subtlety of cultural influences. The author is at his best with descriptions like this: "The sounds seemed waltzing in the room; the sounds hung pendulous like glittering icicles from the corners of the room; and fell upon him with a ringing silveryness; and were drawn up again to the ceiling, and hung pendulous again, and dropt down upon him again with the ringing silveryness. Fireflies seemed buzzing in the sounds, summer-lightnings seemed vividly yet softly audible in the sounds. And still the wild girl played on the guitar; and her long dark shower of curls fell over it and vailed it; and still, out from the vail came the swarming sweetness, and the utter unintelligibleness, but the infinite significancies of the sounds of the guitar. The novel ends with a "Romeo and Juliet " death scene worthy of the original..."And from the fingers of Isabel dropped an empty vial-as it had been a run-out sand glass-and shivered upon the floor; and her whole form sloped sideways, and she fell upon Pierre's heart, and her long hair ran over him, and arbored him in ebon vines." The black hair of Isabel which enchanted Pierre at the beginning of the novel, covers his dead body at the end of the story. The ambiguities which began the narrative are unresolved at the end. All of us have many contradictions in our lives and most of us will not solve them. Like the genius that he was, Melville knows this. He digs deeply into the soul of Pierre trying to unravel the threads of his existence. We learn much about Pierre , and ourselves, and how we are the cause of what sometimes is our own destruction. We also learn about fate and the little that we can do to change our destinies. We learn about choices, and how the slightest incident can twist our parths toward other directions. Like Moby Dick, Pierre is Melville, calling out to us to read him. Like "Moby Dick" "Pierre" has been unread for generations. Perhaps this generation will embrace him and have the enriching experience only Melville can give.

The thing about Bartleby, the Scrivener is that it makes you want to read everything else Melville wrote. Right now I'm about half way through Pierre; or, The Ambiguities and think it an immensely satisfying layer cake so far. When I'm finished I hope to go fishing. Apropos of which, great bolshy yarblockos to Clifton Fadiman, who wrote the following paragraph in an introduction to Moby Dick round about 1941:

"A pessimism as profound as Melville's, if not pathological--and his was not--can exist only in a man who, whatever his gifts, does not posess that of humor. There is much pessimism in Shakespeare but with it goes a certain sweetness, a kind of radiance. His bad men--Macbeth, Iago--may be irretrievable, but the world itself is not irretrievable. This sense of balance comes from the fact that Shakespeare has humor, even in the plays of the later period. Melville had none. For proof, reread Chapter 100, a labored, shrill, and inept attempt at laughter. Perhaps I should qualify these strictures, for there is a kind of vast, grinning, unjolly, sardonic humor in him at times--Ishmael's first encounter with Queequeg is an example. But this humor is bilious, not sanguine, and has no power to uplift the heart."

Is it me or is this just a bit too saucy and overbold? Fadiman was a noted intellectual but was obviously unafraid of making a right eejit of himself--can you beat the blinkered quality of his indictment? Talk about a blind spot! That's the trouble with introductions to novels, they're right there in front, always getting in your way, distracting you with their gibberish. Luckily there's no introduction in my copy of Pierre so I was able to proceed directly to the first page unmolested. The story of Pierre Glendinning is straightforward enough but it unfolds amid a vast and stunningly considered narration that is for me the novel's chief delight. Here's what strikes me at this point: Melville swallowed with obvious relish the Classics, the King James Version of the Bible and most of Shakespeare and then brung them all back up again in a glorious nineteenth-century American amalgam. I'm practically certain that this is some of the most capaciously vivid and readable English I have ever encountered, the type of prose D. H. Lawrence wished he could type but was too blotto with hormones to actually type coherently on his typewriter. Forget everything you've ever read or heard about this novel--the critical response since its first appearance in 1852 has been for the most part laughably inept and spineless--and just start right in. Believe me, if you're a certain type of reader you will be well pleased. Would it help if I told you that the manservant in Saddle-Meadows is named Dates? Or the local clergyman Falsgrave? Perhaps not. Getting back to Bartleby though for a minute, what a peach that is. Funny and poignant and mysterious. When I finished it a couple of weeks ago I went out on my bicycle and did a victory lap round the neighbourhood, sealing my exultant passage with a cigarette which I actually smoked while awheel. Bliss that was. When you smoke on a bicycle the whole world is your ashtray!

Most people did not like this work by Herman Melville. It certainly did not garner the attention that "Moby Dick," "Billy Budd," or "Typee" did. "Pierre" is a startingly original work, about a young man who is lost through his subsconscious illicit love for his sister and his desire to the right thing.

The characterizations in this subtle, dense work are nothing short of amazing. My favorite character was Pierre's sister. Is she an innocent, wracked with guilt and sorrow over the misfortunes and injustices the world has foisted upon her? Or is she an amoral Siren...determined to wreck Pierre's life? A truly compelling character, and no one can say either characterization fits entirely without its flaws.

The premise of the story is this: All is going right with Pierre's life. He has financial security, and a beautiful fiancee. All this changes when Pierre finds out he has an illegitmate sister who has been shunned by society and cast out. He contacts her and tries to use his own position to help her, but ends up dragged into the depths of human misery himself.

Permeating this narrative throughout is the spectre of incest... what does Pierre actually FEEL for this sister of his?

A very provocative tale.

I find myself in agreement with some of the more astute reviewers here that the critics, from Melville's contemporaries, to Updike, to Spengemann, who writes the Introduction to this Penguin Classics edition, have, to a one, got this book absurdly wrong.

Describing Pierre's library, Melville writes, "Uppermost and most conspicuous among the books were the Inferno of Dante, and the Hamlet of Shakespeare." They are also, it seems to me almost a superfluity to mention, the books Melville most had in mind whilst penning this odd, ponderous work. All comparison to other writers and works - including Melville's own - only hinder the reader.

The plot is indeed threadbare and trite, the dialogue is fusty and the narrative zigs and zags from extremity to extremity with no seeming order. - Actually, quoting Hamlet, "Seems, madam! Nay, it is;" - no real narrative thread to recount but that is tired and worn.

The significance and worth of the book is what transpires in Pierre's mind, just as Hamlet would be nothing without his soliloquies. But the work is emphatically NOT philosophical, as the term is commonly understood, "Plato, and Spinoza, and Goethe, and many more belong to this guild of self-impostors...those impostor philosophers pretend somehow to have got an answer; which is as absurd, as though they should say they had got water out of a stone; for how can a man get a Voice out of Silence?" I suppose the word to describe it is psychological or epistemological, but it is the dark psychology of the Inferno and the epistemology of the doomed Dane.

Everything in the perceptible world is indeed vertiginously ambiguous. As Pierre meditates in the early goings:

"Not immediately, not for a long time, could Pierre fully, or by any approximation, realize the scene which he had just departed. But the vague revelation was now in him, that the visible world, some of which before had seemed but too common and prosaic to him, and but too intelligible, he now vaguely felt, that all the world, and every misconceivedly common and prosaic thing in it, was steeped a million fathoms in a mysteriousness hopeless of solution." In other words, Pierre discovers that he lives in a world of ambiguities so disorienting that coming to any sort of terms with it or its inhabitants is a lost, hopeless endeavour.

The book is essentially a recounting of the soul plagued and blessed by intimations of another, spiritual realm and the loss of anything that measures up to them in what becomes, by the end of the book, an Inferno of ambiguities which our wildered 19th Century Hamlet is more than happy to depart.

I do not say that the book measures up in its execution to the two works from which it takes its theme. The wonder is that the theme of our precarious position in this shape-shifting world is braved at all.

This complicated,work so full of ambiguity and difficulty in language and style is one I have found almost unreadable. The broad spaces and the great ranging adventurous mind of Melville in Moby Dick(The work which preceded this and in which all of Melville's writing climaxed) is followed by a claustrophic, domestic drama which seems to go nowhere.

My sense many other people have a more generous attitude towards this work, than I do and understand it more deeply.

As my old high- school Physics teacher Dave Levenstein ( of blessed memory) said when asked about the Theory of Relativitiy-

"I read some of that Einstein stuff and I just didn't get it." In regard to 'Pierre" I too "just didn't get it."