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Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems
This reprint of an 1866 volume of poems by the author of Moby Dick and Billy Budd includes four essays showing why Melville's verse with its unconventional linking of literary form and political-military history remains misunderstood and neglected.Princeton University historian James M. McPherson's preface thoughtfully discusses the import of Melville's book as a Civil War document. The introduction sketches Melville's pre-war concern with slavery in Moby Dick (1851) and Benito Cereno (1856). The seventy-two deeply moving, austerely beautiful lyrical poems about the Civil War include works on the hanging of John Brown, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the battles at Donelson, Shiloh, and Gettysburg.Harvard University critic Helen Vendler's essay argues that Melville's innovative manner of transforming this epic matter of history into a new kind of lyric poem makes for arresting and wholly original poetry. For Boston University poet Rosanna Warren, the irregularity of Melville's verse forces readers to participate in the process of arriving at a dark knowledge of war. According to Richard Cox, the organization of Melville's poems conveys that the passions of the war will not cease and yet they seem to continue Abraham Lincoln's task of binding the nation's wounds. Paul Dowling reveals how the poet reshaped the war, distorting history to moderate wartime passions and to imitate Shakespeare's philosophical (but unpopular) dramas.Students and scholars of American literature and history, as well as Civil War enthusiasts, will welcome this outstanding new publication of a long-neglected volume of political poetry by one of America's classic novelists.
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1866
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About the author
Herman Melville
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Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.
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April 12, 2025
Melville's Civil War Poetry
Herman Melville's "Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War" (1867) intersects two of my great interests: the Civil War and American literature. This collection of poetry has never been well-known and critical opinion about it has always been varied and mostly lukewarm. But I have returned to it many times for its meditative quality, for Melville's varied and conflicted insights about the Civil War, and for the tortuous quality of its poetry. This collection includes the full text of Melville's poems, including his notes to the poems and the prose essay, titled "Supplement", with which the book concludes. I find the book invaluable and eloquent in understanding the Civil War, contemporary reactions to it, and Melville himself.
In his short introduction, Melville tells the reader that the poems were almost entirely composed following the conclusion of the War. They were composed at different times and with no thought of unity in the collection. Thus they are not an epic or informed by a single theme (although the unfinished dome of the Capitol runs through them as a metaphor) but rather present a series of separate, disjointed thoughts on the war. Most of the descriptions in the book derive from journalistic reports, although Melville had more first-hand experience with the Civil War than is sometimes realized. The major part of the collection, "Battle-Pieces" begins with John Brown's raid and ends with a poem title "America" in which Melville ponders the changes the Civil War had already wrought, and would bring about in the future in the United States.
As a student of the Civil War, I find it valuable to read this book for Melville's depictions of conflicts, including Fort Donelson, Shiloh, the clash between the Monitor and the Virginia, Stones River, Antietam, Vicksburg, the Wilderness, Appomattox, and much else. He gives some details of the battles while reflecting on the courage of the soldiers, the terrible carnage of the War, the scourge of slavery that brought it about, and the uncertain and ambiguous future of the United States upon the War's conclusion. Melville realized that the War did not lead to clear conclusions or to false optimism. His poetry reflects the difficulty of a complex mind thinking about a terrible war. For this reason, the book has seemed pallid to some readers. But its lack of force is due to the depth of the struggle in Melville's mind to understand the conflict. Thus, in "The Conflict of Convictions", which describes the outbreak of the War, Melville reflects:
"YEA AND NAY--
EACH HATH HIS SAY;
BUT GOD HE KEEPS THE MIDDLE WAY
NONE WAS BY
WHEN HE SPREAD THE SKY
WISDOM IS VAIN, AND PROPHESY."
The book is written in verse with meters and rhymes that frequently are awkward. Here again, some readers take this as a sign that poetry was not a congenial form to a Melville burned-out from the effort of writing his novels. But for much of the verse, the awkwardness of the poetry reflects the difficulty of the War as Melville works to understand the conflict and to present differing perspectives. Some of the selections, including "The Portent", "Shiloh","Rebel Colorbearers at Shiloh", the two poems about Stonewall Jackson, "Formerly a Slave", "On the Slain Collegians", and "America" seem to me to work as poetry. Other individual poems are, perhaps, more valuable for what they try to say than for Melville's poetical skills in saying it. On the whole, I think the quality of these jagged works is high. When read with Melville's notes, they have a quality of trying to communicate directly with the reader.
Most of the successful poems in this collection are short, but I found some of the longer ones, such as "Donelson," "The Armies of the Wilderness" and "Lee in the Capitol" cast important light upon their subjects. It is interesting that in much of the poetry and in the "Supplement" with which the book concludes, Melville took a reconciliationist view of the conflict and its aftermath. Brave committed Americans fought on both sides, Melville tells the reader, although one side had right with it, and he urged Americans and their leaders to put aside their differences and work towards reuniting the Nation. This view has come under deserved scrutiny in recent years, as many have questioned whether it did justice to the needs of freed African Americans. But it is valuable to be reminded of how contemporaries saw the issue, as reflected in the words of some highly complex and thoughtful minds.
Although Melville's Civil War poetry will never win widespread critical or popular appeal, I have gained a great deal from repeated readings of this work. Students of the Civil War and of American literature can only benefit from knowing and reflecting upon it.
Robin Friedman
Herman Melville's "Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War" (1867) intersects two of my great interests: the Civil War and American literature. This collection of poetry has never been well-known and critical opinion about it has always been varied and mostly lukewarm. But I have returned to it many times for its meditative quality, for Melville's varied and conflicted insights about the Civil War, and for the tortuous quality of its poetry. This collection includes the full text of Melville's poems, including his notes to the poems and the prose essay, titled "Supplement", with which the book concludes. I find the book invaluable and eloquent in understanding the Civil War, contemporary reactions to it, and Melville himself.
In his short introduction, Melville tells the reader that the poems were almost entirely composed following the conclusion of the War. They were composed at different times and with no thought of unity in the collection. Thus they are not an epic or informed by a single theme (although the unfinished dome of the Capitol runs through them as a metaphor) but rather present a series of separate, disjointed thoughts on the war. Most of the descriptions in the book derive from journalistic reports, although Melville had more first-hand experience with the Civil War than is sometimes realized. The major part of the collection, "Battle-Pieces" begins with John Brown's raid and ends with a poem title "America" in which Melville ponders the changes the Civil War had already wrought, and would bring about in the future in the United States.
As a student of the Civil War, I find it valuable to read this book for Melville's depictions of conflicts, including Fort Donelson, Shiloh, the clash between the Monitor and the Virginia, Stones River, Antietam, Vicksburg, the Wilderness, Appomattox, and much else. He gives some details of the battles while reflecting on the courage of the soldiers, the terrible carnage of the War, the scourge of slavery that brought it about, and the uncertain and ambiguous future of the United States upon the War's conclusion. Melville realized that the War did not lead to clear conclusions or to false optimism. His poetry reflects the difficulty of a complex mind thinking about a terrible war. For this reason, the book has seemed pallid to some readers. But its lack of force is due to the depth of the struggle in Melville's mind to understand the conflict. Thus, in "The Conflict of Convictions", which describes the outbreak of the War, Melville reflects:
"YEA AND NAY--
EACH HATH HIS SAY;
BUT GOD HE KEEPS THE MIDDLE WAY
NONE WAS BY
WHEN HE SPREAD THE SKY
WISDOM IS VAIN, AND PROPHESY."
The book is written in verse with meters and rhymes that frequently are awkward. Here again, some readers take this as a sign that poetry was not a congenial form to a Melville burned-out from the effort of writing his novels. But for much of the verse, the awkwardness of the poetry reflects the difficulty of the War as Melville works to understand the conflict and to present differing perspectives. Some of the selections, including "The Portent", "Shiloh","Rebel Colorbearers at Shiloh", the two poems about Stonewall Jackson, "Formerly a Slave", "On the Slain Collegians", and "America" seem to me to work as poetry. Other individual poems are, perhaps, more valuable for what they try to say than for Melville's poetical skills in saying it. On the whole, I think the quality of these jagged works is high. When read with Melville's notes, they have a quality of trying to communicate directly with the reader.
Most of the successful poems in this collection are short, but I found some of the longer ones, such as "Donelson," "The Armies of the Wilderness" and "Lee in the Capitol" cast important light upon their subjects. It is interesting that in much of the poetry and in the "Supplement" with which the book concludes, Melville took a reconciliationist view of the conflict and its aftermath. Brave committed Americans fought on both sides, Melville tells the reader, although one side had right with it, and he urged Americans and their leaders to put aside their differences and work towards reuniting the Nation. This view has come under deserved scrutiny in recent years, as many have questioned whether it did justice to the needs of freed African Americans. But it is valuable to be reminded of how contemporaries saw the issue, as reflected in the words of some highly complex and thoughtful minds.
Although Melville's Civil War poetry will never win widespread critical or popular appeal, I have gained a great deal from repeated readings of this work. Students of the Civil War and of American literature can only benefit from knowing and reflecting upon it.
Robin Friedman
August 11, 2024
Melville’s Battle-Pieces is a mirror of his evolving literary style. It showcases his poetic talent with raw emotion and vivid imagery. A collection of poems reflecting on the Civil War, along with the ethical dilemmas and the human cost of war.
Read
January 19, 2025DNF. I decided to try this because while googling Drum Taps by Walt Whitman I realized that (1) he and Herman Melville lived extremely similar lives, although they apparently never met, and (2) Melville had also written a book of Civil War-themed poetry, although a much less famous one.
The poetry is… not great. Moby Dick was way more poetic, frankly. I think Melville was a little trapped by the ~form~ of it all, which, knowing what he was capable of, he didn’t need to be.
I did read the “Supplement” essay at the end, which was an interesting kind of op-ed/essay about how to deal with the South, and with white Southerns, in the aftermath of the war. I thought it was interesting to read something from the perspective of no hindsight. I will pull one quote out of its context to give you a sense of the tone & subject matter: “The years of the war tried our devotion to the Union; the time of peace may test the sincerity of our faith in democracy.”
The poetry is… not great. Moby Dick was way more poetic, frankly. I think Melville was a little trapped by the ~form~ of it all, which, knowing what he was capable of, he didn’t need to be.
I did read the “Supplement” essay at the end, which was an interesting kind of op-ed/essay about how to deal with the South, and with white Southerns, in the aftermath of the war. I thought it was interesting to read something from the perspective of no hindsight. I will pull one quote out of its context to give you a sense of the tone & subject matter: “The years of the war tried our devotion to the Union; the time of peace may test the sincerity of our faith in democracy.”
August 27, 2015
Okay, Melville, I give up. I read about 250 pages of this, enjoying very little of it, but now I have to stop. Your verse is mostly vague, forced, unrhythmic, and overly verbose. It doesn't seem possible that a contemporaneous poetic account of something as epic, tragic and fascinating as the Civil War could be boring, but somehow you managed it. Your fiction - challenging but often rewarding - may not have brought you the fame and fortune you desired during your lifetime, but you should have stuck with it. Because you were certainly not a poet.
July 4, 2019
Melville sees the mechanization of war ends heroic romance. He does not see it demands gritty realism. Caught between the two, he writes historical lyric.
January 3, 2020
DNF. After the Civil War, Herman Melville was moved to write this series of poems commemorating the events of the War. There are a few good lines and images, but unfortunately, most of the poems that I read are painfully bad with jog-trot rhythms and predictable rhymes and images. I evoked the Nancy Pearl Rule (to give a book the benefit of the doubt for the first fifty pages) and then bailed. For a contemporary poetic account of the Civil War, I recommend Walt Whitman’s “Drum Taps”. A few lines of Melville’s that I liked:
“The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel." Misgivings
“The banners play, the bugles call,/The air is blue and prodigal." The March Into Virginia Ending in the First Manassas”
“The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel." Misgivings
“The banners play, the bugles call,/The air is blue and prodigal." The March Into Virginia Ending in the First Manassas”
April 12, 2025
I would recommend this book of poetry to anyone familiar with the Civil War, its various figures and campaigns. Some poems are summaries of specific battles, others serve as ‘sketches’ of the many personalities from the war, and still others grant us a transparent view into our national conscious. The last 6-7 pages of the book (dubbed ‘Supplement’ by Melville) should be required reading in any 19th Century American History class. Topical today as it was in 1865.
Some of my favorites poems are The Portent, The Armies of the Wilderness II, The March to the Sea, Formerly a Slave, and Supplement.
Some of my favorites poems are The Portent, The Armies of the Wilderness II, The March to the Sea, Formerly a Slave, and Supplement.
February 7, 2012
I wanted to die.
February 8, 2021
(I did not read this edition; I have the book in Melville's Complete Poems in the Library of America series)
There are two very good reasons to spend time with these poems. 1.) They were written by Herman Melville! And not too many years after "Moby Dick." They help round out our picture of this man. And 2.) they are poems about the American Civil War written mostly during the time it was going on. I've felt the need lately -- for reasons that might be obvious -- to read Civil War poetry.
Now, do I love these poems? Certainly not. They feel almost bloodless, as if written from a great remove. Formally, they are fine, but mostly in received forms that Melville didn't challenge. Melville was a true northerner and, in his own quiet way, a zealot for the northern cause. He talks about the Right (the north) and the Wrong (the confederacy). He clearly knows the war was a righteous cause, and was over slavery. I don't know if he was an abolishionist, but he probably was.
Andrew Delbanco, who has written a recent and important biography of Melville, is of two minds about the book. He writes about the poems about the early battles -- " ... one reads these poems without getting much sense of the cocky indignation with which the North greeted the war or the shock that shortly followed when Union troops were routed at Bull Run ... Nor do they convey the grinding horror of the months and years that ensued." But a few pages later in the biography, he writes about the collection, " Melville saw a people led to slaughter by a fate over which they had no control." And that makes the book sound much more interesting. Even though I looked hard for it, I didn't find that.
Edmund Wilson, in his exhaustive and often brutal history of the literature of the Civil War, "Patriotic Gore," writes that Melville "is writing versified journalism: a chronicle of the patriotic feelings of an anxious middle-aged non-combatant as, day by day, he reads the bulletins from the front. The celebration of current battles by poets who have not taken part in them has produced some of the emptiest verse that exists." Ouch! I'm not sure that I agree with this, but the poems do feel bloodless in a way that Whitman's, for instance, don't.
Still, I'm glad I read this.
There are two very good reasons to spend time with these poems. 1.) They were written by Herman Melville! And not too many years after "Moby Dick." They help round out our picture of this man. And 2.) they are poems about the American Civil War written mostly during the time it was going on. I've felt the need lately -- for reasons that might be obvious -- to read Civil War poetry.
Now, do I love these poems? Certainly not. They feel almost bloodless, as if written from a great remove. Formally, they are fine, but mostly in received forms that Melville didn't challenge. Melville was a true northerner and, in his own quiet way, a zealot for the northern cause. He talks about the Right (the north) and the Wrong (the confederacy). He clearly knows the war was a righteous cause, and was over slavery. I don't know if he was an abolishionist, but he probably was.
Andrew Delbanco, who has written a recent and important biography of Melville, is of two minds about the book. He writes about the poems about the early battles -- " ... one reads these poems without getting much sense of the cocky indignation with which the North greeted the war or the shock that shortly followed when Union troops were routed at Bull Run ... Nor do they convey the grinding horror of the months and years that ensued." But a few pages later in the biography, he writes about the collection, " Melville saw a people led to slaughter by a fate over which they had no control." And that makes the book sound much more interesting. Even though I looked hard for it, I didn't find that.
Edmund Wilson, in his exhaustive and often brutal history of the literature of the Civil War, "Patriotic Gore," writes that Melville "is writing versified journalism: a chronicle of the patriotic feelings of an anxious middle-aged non-combatant as, day by day, he reads the bulletins from the front. The celebration of current battles by poets who have not taken part in them has produced some of the emptiest verse that exists." Ouch! I'm not sure that I agree with this, but the poems do feel bloodless in a way that Whitman's, for instance, don't.
Still, I'm glad I read this.
March 11, 2018
Poetry is very clearly not my thing.
If you have a taste and patience for flowery mazes of syntax that only rarely rhyme, you may find this an excellent volume. But if you're like me, you'll find it a confusing slog, with only rare exceptions. Nothing here comes close to touching the Battle Hymn of the Republic (a rather high bar, to be sure).
Although I'm not the best judge, even poetry lovers could find this lacking. Good poetry can usually stand alone, and doesn't require several pages of the author's explanatory notes in an appendix, like this book contains.
Oddly, the single best part of the book was the strange prose epilogue that followed the appendix. In it, Melville offers a stirring and downright Lincolnian plea for grace, forgiveness, and charity toward the defeated southerners. It's worth a read even if the poems are too stuffy and cryptic for you.
If you have a taste and patience for flowery mazes of syntax that only rarely rhyme, you may find this an excellent volume. But if you're like me, you'll find it a confusing slog, with only rare exceptions. Nothing here comes close to touching the Battle Hymn of the Republic (a rather high bar, to be sure).
Although I'm not the best judge, even poetry lovers could find this lacking. Good poetry can usually stand alone, and doesn't require several pages of the author's explanatory notes in an appendix, like this book contains.
Oddly, the single best part of the book was the strange prose epilogue that followed the appendix. In it, Melville offers a stirring and downright Lincolnian plea for grace, forgiveness, and charity toward the defeated southerners. It's worth a read even if the poems are too stuffy and cryptic for you.
September 28, 2021
Many of these moving, all of them interesting, love the imagery in many as well.
Towards the end they arc to a "both sides now" feel (cemented in his afterword) and that is a disappointment, even if not surprising. (Melville very much falls into the "family squabble" framework of understanding the Civil War, re. Cody Marrs' analysis of post-CW representations).
Towards the end they arc to a "both sides now" feel (cemented in his afterword) and that is a disappointment, even if not surprising. (Melville very much falls into the "family squabble" framework of understanding the Civil War, re. Cody Marrs' analysis of post-CW representations).
May 7, 2025
Really really good! I think Melville's poetry is wonderfully complex.
My favorites--in no particular order--were:
Donelson
Shiloh
Battle of Stone River, Tennessee
The Martyr
The House-Tops
Meditation
The Eagle of the Blue
My favorites--in no particular order--were:
Donelson
Shiloh
Battle of Stone River, Tennessee
The Martyr
The House-Tops
Meditation
The Eagle of the Blue
February 2, 2019
Doggerel.
July 6, 2021
Enjoyed this collection more than I thought I would. He’s trying things more with his poetry than is apparent at first. Melville hugely disappointing in his closing Supplement
Want to read
August 28, 2024Close reading poetry
March 31, 2021
I haven't read much poetry to compare these to, but they didn't do anything for me emotionally and the wordplay wasn't very interesting. Melville's a much better prose writer.
July 29, 2016
Melville, mostly known for novels such as Moby-Dick, Billy Budd, Pierre, and The Confidence-Man, and his short fiction, such as Bartleby the Scrivener and Benito Cereno, also wrote a fair amount of poetry, and devoted most of his later years, from the 1860s until his death in 1891, exclusively to verse. This collection, originally published to little critical fanfare in 1866, depicts often quite vivid scenes from the Civil War, meditating on many of the major battles and figures, while at the same time transcending pure historical narrative (though a few of the poems are quite long) with the metaphorical and metaphysical flourishes Melville was so found of.
While Melville clearly writes from a "Yankee" point of view, casting the war in terms of good vs. evil (the South's rebellion akin to Satan's uprising in Paradise Lost--with the enemy as perhaps noble and yet wrong and evil), he also takes pains neither to celebrate the war itself, nor the North's victory. He also often writes of respect for Southern soldiers, whose sacrifice and devotion should be admired even if they do it for a wrong cause, as long as they act honorably. (He takes the necessity of this up in the prose "Supplement" that follows the poems as well.) In fact, a number of pieces take on Confederate perspectives, and the second to last poem is "Lee in the Capitol," based on Lee asserting to Congress the dignity of the South, saying that although they admit defeat and will not allow any further insurrection, at the same time they will not grovel before the North, nor should the North rub their noses in the loss with too harsh punishments.
You won't find stern denouncements of slavery in these poems, even though they begin with "The Portent," which is about the hanging of John Brown. In fact, slavery and black people appear very little in the poems, although Melville touches on them more in the "Supplement." Melville's main focuses are on death and the horrors of war, for both sides, and the transgression of the South more as a kind of treason and lawlessness that has both literal and metaphysical dimensions.
Some of the most interesting moments depart from the more literal historical observations, and the more pathos-endowed passages. For example, in "Magnanimity Baffled," following the war, one soldier offers his hand in friendship to a soldier from the opposite side. Persistent after several attempts are met with silence, the soldier grabs the other's hand only to discover that his would-be friend is dead. This is a particular poignant moment, and while Melville often hints at the commonalities between North and South, with little scenes of kindness between them (as when Confederates help care for Union wounded during a harsh winter hard on both sides), he shows with "Magnanimity Baffled" that he was aware of how it would take more than overtones of good-will to deal with the aftermath of the war.
The most striking images, for me, were where the poems take an unexpected turn--panning out from simply observing the soldiers or looking through their perspectives, to wider views through women and civilians, animals, or nature, as when he closes "Malvern Hill" through the trees' refusal to either deny or be thwarted by battle: "We elms of Malvern Hill / Remember every thing; But sap the twig will fill: / Wag the world how it will, / Leaves must be green in Spring."
Cohen's 1963 edition--perhaps the first republished version of the book--includes a helpful (if probably somewhat outdated by 2016) introduction, extensive notes giving the historical background on many of the poems and their sources, and explaining some of the archaic references. as well as a number of sketches of the war by artists Alfred and William Waud, who followed Union soldiers and witnessed the scenes they drew first-hand. (These were not included in Melville's edition.) There are more drawings in the Notes section by other artists, some of which may have served as sources or inspiration for the poems.
Although this is an older edition that may be hard to find now (a friend happened to pick this up for me during a used book sale at my school), if you stumble across it, it's certainly worth a look.
While Melville clearly writes from a "Yankee" point of view, casting the war in terms of good vs. evil (the South's rebellion akin to Satan's uprising in Paradise Lost--with the enemy as perhaps noble and yet wrong and evil), he also takes pains neither to celebrate the war itself, nor the North's victory. He also often writes of respect for Southern soldiers, whose sacrifice and devotion should be admired even if they do it for a wrong cause, as long as they act honorably. (He takes the necessity of this up in the prose "Supplement" that follows the poems as well.) In fact, a number of pieces take on Confederate perspectives, and the second to last poem is "Lee in the Capitol," based on Lee asserting to Congress the dignity of the South, saying that although they admit defeat and will not allow any further insurrection, at the same time they will not grovel before the North, nor should the North rub their noses in the loss with too harsh punishments.
You won't find stern denouncements of slavery in these poems, even though they begin with "The Portent," which is about the hanging of John Brown. In fact, slavery and black people appear very little in the poems, although Melville touches on them more in the "Supplement." Melville's main focuses are on death and the horrors of war, for both sides, and the transgression of the South more as a kind of treason and lawlessness that has both literal and metaphysical dimensions.
Some of the most interesting moments depart from the more literal historical observations, and the more pathos-endowed passages. For example, in "Magnanimity Baffled," following the war, one soldier offers his hand in friendship to a soldier from the opposite side. Persistent after several attempts are met with silence, the soldier grabs the other's hand only to discover that his would-be friend is dead. This is a particular poignant moment, and while Melville often hints at the commonalities between North and South, with little scenes of kindness between them (as when Confederates help care for Union wounded during a harsh winter hard on both sides), he shows with "Magnanimity Baffled" that he was aware of how it would take more than overtones of good-will to deal with the aftermath of the war.
The most striking images, for me, were where the poems take an unexpected turn--panning out from simply observing the soldiers or looking through their perspectives, to wider views through women and civilians, animals, or nature, as when he closes "Malvern Hill" through the trees' refusal to either deny or be thwarted by battle: "We elms of Malvern Hill / Remember every thing; But sap the twig will fill: / Wag the world how it will, / Leaves must be green in Spring."
Cohen's 1963 edition--perhaps the first republished version of the book--includes a helpful (if probably somewhat outdated by 2016) introduction, extensive notes giving the historical background on many of the poems and their sources, and explaining some of the archaic references. as well as a number of sketches of the war by artists Alfred and William Waud, who followed Union soldiers and witnessed the scenes they drew first-hand. (These were not included in Melville's edition.) There are more drawings in the Notes section by other artists, some of which may have served as sources or inspiration for the poems.
Although this is an older edition that may be hard to find now (a friend happened to pick this up for me during a used book sale at my school), if you stumble across it, it's certainly worth a look.
July 24, 2016
For me it was a fantastic set of poems. I was in Vietnam and some of his verse I could identify with such as
Strict watch they kept; 'twas Hark! and Mark!
Unarmed none cared to stir abroad
For berries beyond their forest-fence:
As glides in seas the shark,
Rides Mosby through green dark.
"The Scout toward Aldie"
I could remember nights in the jungles standing the watch and fearing what was out there. The words were haunting "glides in the seas the shark, Rides Mosby through green dark"
I recommend it.
Strict watch they kept; 'twas Hark! and Mark!
Unarmed none cared to stir abroad
For berries beyond their forest-fence:
As glides in seas the shark,
Rides Mosby through green dark.
"The Scout toward Aldie"
I could remember nights in the jungles standing the watch and fearing what was out there. The words were haunting "glides in the seas the shark, Rides Mosby through green dark"
I recommend it.
May 15, 2013
The Longest poem which went on for 5 or more pages, front and back, was titled, "The Scout toward Aldie." Then the second longest one was right after that called, "Lee in the Capital, (April, 1866)." It was a good work of poems, but I had to go back to the very end a couple of times and read what the notes were. Although there were phrases and words I did not understand and it shows how much the English language has changed in 100 + years.
November 29, 2014
Melville presents the dark and foreboding aspect of the war; one which is becoming mechanized and devoid of humanity. The narratives of the poems are disjointed, yet unified by the tragic, rather than glorified tone of each.
Read
September 14, 2009Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems by Herman Melville (1995)
June 15, 2014
unexpectedly moving from an author most now only as a novelist.
October 5, 2020
En rigtig god kilde med dybdegående stof og en grundig gennemgang.
- Brugt på universitetet (litteraturvidenskab) til en opgave om Melvilles forfatterskab.
- Brugt på universitetet (litteraturvidenskab) til en opgave om Melvilles forfatterskab.
April 9, 2017
Melville, at this point and technically speaking, isn't a particularly gifted poet, or at least has a poor grasp of rhyme and meter. He would have been better served writing in a free-verse form, because thematically there are some aching images, moments, and sentiments from the Civil War within. Melville viewed the world with a remarkably complex eye, and his frighteningly honest ethical tension is revealed in the opening "The Portent" and "The Misgivings." "The Conflict of Convictions" is another remarkable situating of the Civil War in terms of Paradise Lost, "Donelson" is a potent account of a long siege, and his reflections on Stonewall Jackson's death are compelling. Unfortunately, as fascinating as Melville's thoughts are, at this point his poetic skill is not enough to sustain interest, and the collection waffles in quality. Well-worth reading, though, for those interested in Melville and thinking further on the Civil War.
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