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Mardi and a Voyage Thither
Presented as narratives of his own South Sea experiences, Melville's first two books had roused incredulity in many readers. Their disbelief, he declared, had been "the main inducement" in altering his plan for his third book, and a Voyage Thither (1849). Melville wanted to exploit the "rich poetical material" of Polynesia and also to escape feeling "irked, cramped, & fettered" by a narrative of facts. "I began to feel . . . a longing to plume my pinions for a flight," he told his English publisher.
Mardi began as a sequel to Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), but changed radically while he was writing it and emerged as an altogether independent and original work. In its combination of adventure, allegorical romance, realistic portraits of characters and scenes from nature, philosophical speculation, and travelogue-satire, Mardi was Melville's first attempt to create a great work of fiction.
This edition of is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).
Mardi began as a sequel to Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), but changed radically while he was writing it and emerged as an altogether independent and original work. In its combination of adventure, allegorical romance, realistic portraits of characters and scenes from nature, philosophical speculation, and travelogue-satire, Mardi was Melville's first attempt to create a great work of fiction.
This edition of is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).
681 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1849
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About the author
Herman Melville
2,410 books4,541 followersThere is more than one author with this name
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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Displaying 1 - 29 of 53 reviews
February 13, 2018
When I decided to read all of Melville's novels, this stood out as a great and tedious hurdle to be crossed: long and long-scorned. But the more material I read on it, the more it seemed to be waiting for its proper audience. I approached it with low hopes, but this last thought proved so correct that it's actually insufficient.
The novel presents its own struggle by providing the reader with the ways in which it can be read - as poetry, as story, and as philosophy - how it does this I will not reveal, but it is fairly obvious to anyone who reads it. As poetry in prose, it is on par with Joyce; as story, it delivers a thrilling opening, a middle in which all is necessary, and a devastating ending; and as philosophy, it deals with every theme imaginable. One or two or each of these three elements is present in strength at every moment of the novel, so that I did not find myself bored on a single page. As a whole, most say that it is uneven, but I would suggest that it is, in fact, wholly united, with the analysis of its structure a great pleasure. As one character says, "the sum of my inconsistencies makes up my consistency;" this seems more than apt for the novel in which he lives - as, indeed, the characters do all live in a very vital way.
I recommend this to anyone who enjoys long fiction, but especially people who enjoy long modernist and postmodern fiction: although this novel is very unique, I would say it most resembles something from one of those two movements.
The novel presents its own struggle by providing the reader with the ways in which it can be read - as poetry, as story, and as philosophy - how it does this I will not reveal, but it is fairly obvious to anyone who reads it. As poetry in prose, it is on par with Joyce; as story, it delivers a thrilling opening, a middle in which all is necessary, and a devastating ending; and as philosophy, it deals with every theme imaginable. One or two or each of these three elements is present in strength at every moment of the novel, so that I did not find myself bored on a single page. As a whole, most say that it is uneven, but I would suggest that it is, in fact, wholly united, with the analysis of its structure a great pleasure. As one character says, "the sum of my inconsistencies makes up my consistency;" this seems more than apt for the novel in which he lives - as, indeed, the characters do all live in a very vital way.
I recommend this to anyone who enjoys long fiction, but especially people who enjoy long modernist and postmodern fiction: although this novel is very unique, I would say it most resembles something from one of those two movements.
April 17, 2023
A tale of two novels/novel of two tales (or one tale and a mad, polyphonic spree)
This may well be the craziest book I've ever read...the first 160pp or so is a quite stimulating sea yarn which ends rather abruptly, when the protagonists land on a south sea archipelago.
In the remaining 400pp the narrator largely recedes into the background to record the demented, often brilliant (though not quite often enough TBH) but erratic philosophical-theological-anthropological-poetic conversations between his island guides (who appear to have somehow read Plato, Spinoza and Leibniz, just to name a very brief few influences) as they picaresque-ly guide him around said archipelago from island to island to island to island to island...
These polynesian philosopher-poets proceed to spout off reams and reams of digressions about everything and nothing (lotsa flotsam, and sweet FA) and get away with it, too, sort of, sometimes, though I can imagine that, reading Mardi, even the author of Tristram Shandy might well, after many a longueur, thrust the 4kg text at the wall, crying "Your POINT being...?"
Think the "Whiteness of the Whale" Chapter of Moby Dick but much less structured/focused, of which there are a couple examplars in my reading notes... I shall end with two final amuses bouches or foretastes of this foolhardy Feast of a book:
...Onward, then, to Melville #4, Redburn, which from what I can tell is a much more conventional novel (HM claims to have only written it for the money!), and which by all accounts is his funniest book.
This may well be the craziest book I've ever read...the first 160pp or so is a quite stimulating sea yarn which ends rather abruptly, when the protagonists land on a south sea archipelago.
In the remaining 400pp the narrator largely recedes into the background to record the demented, often brilliant (though not quite often enough TBH) but erratic philosophical-theological-anthropological-poetic conversations between his island guides (who appear to have somehow read Plato, Spinoza and Leibniz, just to name a very brief few influences) as they picaresque-ly guide him around said archipelago from island to island to island to island to island...
These polynesian philosopher-poets proceed to spout off reams and reams of digressions about everything and nothing (lotsa flotsam, and sweet FA) and get away with it, too, sort of, sometimes, though I can imagine that, reading Mardi, even the author of Tristram Shandy might well, after many a longueur, thrust the 4kg text at the wall, crying "Your POINT being...?"
Think the "Whiteness of the Whale" Chapter of Moby Dick but much less structured/focused, of which there are a couple examplars in my reading notes... I shall end with two final amuses bouches or foretastes of this foolhardy Feast of a book:
“Methinks I have heard some such sentimental gabble as this before from my slaves, my lord,’’ said Abrazza to Media. “It has the old gibberish flavor.”This was #3 in my little project of reading the first five, pre-MobyD books by Melville (#1 and 2 being Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life and Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas respectively.)
“Gibberish, your Highness? Gibberish? I’m full of it—I’m a gibbering ghost, my right worshipful lord! Here, pass your hand through me—here, here, and scorch it where I most burn. By Oro! King! but I will gibe and gibber at thee, till thy crown feels like another skull clapped on thy own. Gibberish? ay, in hell we’ll gibber in concert, king! we’ll howl, and roast, and hiss together!”
*
In his Ponderings, And those, my lord, we all inherit; for like the great chief of Romara, who made a whole empire his legatee; so, great authors have all Mardi for an heir."
...Onward, then, to Melville #4, Redburn, which from what I can tell is a much more conventional novel (HM claims to have only written it for the money!), and which by all accounts is his funniest book.
June 24, 2022
“‘[…] Poets are only seen when they soar.’” (p.1216)
Most certainly, Melville does soar high at times in his novel Mardi, so high that after finishing it, I felt too daunted to start writing a review at once and instead, gave in to the temptation of procrastinating. I copied lots of quoteworthy passages into my little notebook and after filling more than a dozen of pages, still I felt at a loss as to how to do this remarkable book justice – all the more so as Mardi has quite a bad reputation: It is generally regarded as a stilted, verbose, meandering proto-Moby-Dick, which is coming apart at the seams.
Nevertheless, I found it one of the most fascinating, unusual, fulfilling and inspiring reading experiences I have had in years!
His first two novels being what Melville claimed accounts of his earlier travel experiences – though they have to be taken not with a grain but an entire cellar of salt –, with Mardi and a Voyage Thither the author wanted to write pure fiction and use it as a vehicle to transport some of his thoughts and ideas. The first third of the book can indeed be read as an adventure story, in which the narrator, as in Typee, decides to desert from a ship he is serving on. Together with an older seaman, a Scandinavian by the name of Jarl, he steals a boat and makes for the nearest island, but on his way he has to prove himself in various adventures in the course of which he frees a mysterious woman called Yillah, killing an old priest, who wanted to sacrifice the woman to his gods, and incurring the wrath of the old man’s sons. They come to Mardi, an unknown archipelago, where the narrator presents himself as a demigod, Taji, and is invited to enjoy the hospitality of Media, one of the archipelago’s numerous chiefs. Unluckily, however, Yillah disappears one day, and Media organizes an expedition to search for her, taking part in it himself, together with the narrator and lots of other men, among whom three will play a decisive role in the course of the rest of the book: The most important one is the quirky philosopher Babbalanja, then there is the crusty old historian Mohi and, last not least, the young poet Yoomy. From the beginning of the quest, in the course of which the group visits several islands, the main character himself fades into the background, Jarl and some other characters disappear, and the narration gives way to something that can hardly be put into words – a mixture of allegory, poetry (lots of it in prose, which becomes clear when you read the book aloud), philosophical discourse, satire, political comment, and meta-fiction. As in Moby-Dick, Melville shows his unconcern about literary conventions – such as a consistent narrative perspective, or the unity of action – and seems to go wherever his fancy is taking him. It’s not difficult to catch glimpses of, for instance, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver, Montaigne’s Essais, Rabelais, Laurence Stern, Paradise Lost (the ending), maybe even Charles Dickens, and other literary giants, but at the same time, Melville never sacrifices his own handwriting.
There are lots of examples of extremely quirky (and yet serious) humour, for example when the narrator muses on the merits of fame:
Mardi can muse on the expediency and the pleasures of eating, drinking and pipe-smoking (there is a whole chapter devoted to this latter occupation), only to pass on to less materialistic topics like religion and superstition, the follies of war and autocracy, British imperialism, the potential dangers of public opinion in the United States, the stain of slavery, the limits of human experience, the power of poetry and many other subjects. In the midst of these fascinating ramblings (as you may call them), there are often bits of purest and most valuable wisdom, like:
Righteousness, for its own sake – and not as some kind of entitlement certificate to everlasting bliss in life after death, that is. One of the underlying motifs of this book is Babbalanja’s quest for deeper insight into the meaning of live, as it is voiced here:
One may remember that this search for a deeper meaning, the rigid and yearning belief that the things themselves are but masks that cover essences, is the root of Ahab’s misery in Moby-Dick because the captain cannot bear the thought that the loss of his leg is just the consequence of a thing that merely happened and could have happened otherwise. It is quite interesting that at the outset of their journey, Babbalanja should share this hunger for giving sense to the world, but unlike Ahab, the philosopher learns to put reason and its accompanying temptation to systematize, to put things into places and interpret them aside for an unquestioning belief:
Or
And yet, Mardi is not simply an exhortation to blind belief, but an encouragement to embrace the world, to partake in its wonders and enjoy its offerings – ”’[…] I have found that we can not live without hearts; though the heartless live longest. […]’” (p.1281) –, a creative Yes to the only, world-comprising gift we have, and it bears eloquent testimony to what Melville says of the poet, making every single reader a little great poet in their own right, namely
”’[…] like gods, great poets dwell alone; while round them roll the worlds they build. […]’” (p.1252)
So, then, undaunted reader! Be not afraid to walk in the world of Mardi and to build your own world in its vastness!
Note: All page references in my text refer to the edition of the Library of America.
Most certainly, Melville does soar high at times in his novel Mardi, so high that after finishing it, I felt too daunted to start writing a review at once and instead, gave in to the temptation of procrastinating. I copied lots of quoteworthy passages into my little notebook and after filling more than a dozen of pages, still I felt at a loss as to how to do this remarkable book justice – all the more so as Mardi has quite a bad reputation: It is generally regarded as a stilted, verbose, meandering proto-Moby-Dick, which is coming apart at the seams.
Nevertheless, I found it one of the most fascinating, unusual, fulfilling and inspiring reading experiences I have had in years!
His first two novels being what Melville claimed accounts of his earlier travel experiences – though they have to be taken not with a grain but an entire cellar of salt –, with Mardi and a Voyage Thither the author wanted to write pure fiction and use it as a vehicle to transport some of his thoughts and ideas. The first third of the book can indeed be read as an adventure story, in which the narrator, as in Typee, decides to desert from a ship he is serving on. Together with an older seaman, a Scandinavian by the name of Jarl, he steals a boat and makes for the nearest island, but on his way he has to prove himself in various adventures in the course of which he frees a mysterious woman called Yillah, killing an old priest, who wanted to sacrifice the woman to his gods, and incurring the wrath of the old man’s sons. They come to Mardi, an unknown archipelago, where the narrator presents himself as a demigod, Taji, and is invited to enjoy the hospitality of Media, one of the archipelago’s numerous chiefs. Unluckily, however, Yillah disappears one day, and Media organizes an expedition to search for her, taking part in it himself, together with the narrator and lots of other men, among whom three will play a decisive role in the course of the rest of the book: The most important one is the quirky philosopher Babbalanja, then there is the crusty old historian Mohi and, last not least, the young poet Yoomy. From the beginning of the quest, in the course of which the group visits several islands, the main character himself fades into the background, Jarl and some other characters disappear, and the narration gives way to something that can hardly be put into words – a mixture of allegory, poetry (lots of it in prose, which becomes clear when you read the book aloud), philosophical discourse, satire, political comment, and meta-fiction. As in Moby-Dick, Melville shows his unconcern about literary conventions – such as a consistent narrative perspective, or the unity of action – and seems to go wherever his fancy is taking him. It’s not difficult to catch glimpses of, for instance, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver, Montaigne’s Essais, Rabelais, Laurence Stern, Paradise Lost (the ending), maybe even Charles Dickens, and other literary giants, but at the same time, Melville never sacrifices his own handwriting.
There are lots of examples of extremely quirky (and yet serious) humour, for example when the narrator muses on the merits of fame:
”The old man was a sight to see, especially his nose; a remarkable one. And all Mardi over, a remarkable nose is a prominent feature: an ever obvious passport to distinction. For, after all, this gaining a name is but the individualizing of a man; as well achieved by an extraordinary nose, as by an extraordinary epic. Far better, indeed; for you may pass poets without knowing them. Even a hero is no hero without his sword; nor Beelzebub himself a lion, minus that lasso-tail of his, werewith he catches his prey. Whereas, he who is famous through his nose, it is impossible to overlook. He is a celebrity without toiling for a name.” (p.1034)
Mardi can muse on the expediency and the pleasures of eating, drinking and pipe-smoking (there is a whole chapter devoted to this latter occupation), only to pass on to less materialistic topics like religion and superstition, the follies of war and autocracy, British imperialism, the potential dangers of public opinion in the United States, the stain of slavery, the limits of human experience, the power of poetry and many other subjects. In the midst of these fascinating ramblings (as you may call them), there are often bits of purest and most valuable wisdom, like:
”’ […] I sometimes see but two things in all Mardi to believe: - that I myself exist, and that I can most happily or least miserably exist, by the practice of righteousness. […]’” (p.1084)
Righteousness, for its own sake – and not as some kind of entitlement certificate to everlasting bliss in life after death, that is. One of the underlying motifs of this book is Babbalanja’s quest for deeper insight into the meaning of live, as it is voiced here:
”’I am intent upon the essence of things; the mystery that lieth beyond; the elements of the tear which much laughter provoketh; that which is beneath the seeming; the precious pearl within the shaggy oyster. I probe the circle’s center; I seek to evolve the inscrutable.” (p.1008)
One may remember that this search for a deeper meaning, the rigid and yearning belief that the things themselves are but masks that cover essences, is the root of Ahab’s misery in Moby-Dick because the captain cannot bear the thought that the loss of his leg is just the consequence of a thing that merely happened and could have happened otherwise. It is quite interesting that at the outset of their journey, Babbalanja should share this hunger for giving sense to the world, but unlike Ahab, the philosopher learns to put reason and its accompanying temptation to systematize, to put things into places and interpret them aside for an unquestioning belief:
”’[…] Life is an April’s day, that both laughs and weeps in a breath. […]’” (p.1274)
Or
”’[…] In things mysterious, to seek no more; but rest content, with knowing naught but Love.’” (p.1295)
And yet, Mardi is not simply an exhortation to blind belief, but an encouragement to embrace the world, to partake in its wonders and enjoy its offerings – ”’[…] I have found that we can not live without hearts; though the heartless live longest. […]’” (p.1281) –, a creative Yes to the only, world-comprising gift we have, and it bears eloquent testimony to what Melville says of the poet, making every single reader a little great poet in their own right, namely
”’[…] like gods, great poets dwell alone; while round them roll the worlds they build. […]’” (p.1252)
So, then, undaunted reader! Be not afraid to walk in the world of Mardi and to build your own world in its vastness!
Note: All page references in my text refer to the edition of the Library of America.
February 24, 2012
Peaks and troughs abound in this one. At times, I found myself deeply engaged by Melville's ruminations on metaphysics, religion, and politics--mainly through his philosopher character Babbalanja--yet at others, I was inclined to either nod off at best, or tear the book to pieces at worst. These latter paroxysms, which, regrettably, occurred far too often, were brought on by the following:
- The lack of any sort of compelling plot to drive the narrative forward. While I wasn't expecting a thriller or detective novel, I don't think it's unfair to desire some sort of plot to move things along. The first 150 pages or so contained such a plot. It was by no means a fast-moving one, but it was interesting and developed organically nonetheless. However, about 500 pages of island hopping was all that followed, interspersed with small pockets of genius.
- Characters weren't developed very much, if at all. Any changes described were rushed in at the end, instead of evolving throughout their wanderings. They were also quite flat; the philosopher philosophized, the minstrel sang songs, the demigod king...well, he did little but condescend his socially inferior yet intellectually superior shipmates.
- The prose was a bit too bombastic at times. There is a large stylistic jump between Omoo and Mardi, in my opinion. The former wasn't as rich as the prose in Melville's masterpiece Moby-Dick, while Mardi was overly florid. Thankfully, by the time of his magnum opus, Melville found a healthy medium somewhere between austerity and lavishness.
- The Elizabethan English and suspect worldly erudition of the islanders. The people of this fictional archipelago of Mardi were supposed to have been unmolested by prodding European sailors; this was how the narrator was able to pass himself off as a god, instead of one who stole a boat from his ship's captain and made off in the night--which is what he really was. They lived in a society undeveloped, by Western estimations, at least. It was because of this this that I would find it hard to believe that they would have knowledge of European history, fauna of other continents, etc.--things that they indeed felt comfortable discoursing on. I'm not sure how Melville thought that these people living in the middle of an "undiscovered" Polynesian island would become so well-read.
All in all, Mardi was filled with some moments of coruscation, and many more moments of dullness, masturbatory oratory, unpleasantly thick prose, and aimlessness. I think the star rating I've given it is more than fair, and to be honest, I may be giving the emperor more credit than he rightly deserves in regards to his garments. If this book were written by an author of less renown and fascination to me, I likely wouldn't have been so generous. I'm willing to admit that fault.
- The lack of any sort of compelling plot to drive the narrative forward. While I wasn't expecting a thriller or detective novel, I don't think it's unfair to desire some sort of plot to move things along. The first 150 pages or so contained such a plot. It was by no means a fast-moving one, but it was interesting and developed organically nonetheless. However, about 500 pages of island hopping was all that followed, interspersed with small pockets of genius.
- Characters weren't developed very much, if at all. Any changes described were rushed in at the end, instead of evolving throughout their wanderings. They were also quite flat; the philosopher philosophized, the minstrel sang songs, the demigod king...well, he did little but condescend his socially inferior yet intellectually superior shipmates.
- The prose was a bit too bombastic at times. There is a large stylistic jump between Omoo and Mardi, in my opinion. The former wasn't as rich as the prose in Melville's masterpiece Moby-Dick, while Mardi was overly florid. Thankfully, by the time of his magnum opus, Melville found a healthy medium somewhere between austerity and lavishness.
- The Elizabethan English and suspect worldly erudition of the islanders. The people of this fictional archipelago of Mardi were supposed to have been unmolested by prodding European sailors; this was how the narrator was able to pass himself off as a god, instead of one who stole a boat from his ship's captain and made off in the night--which is what he really was. They lived in a society undeveloped, by Western estimations, at least. It was because of this this that I would find it hard to believe that they would have knowledge of European history, fauna of other continents, etc.--things that they indeed felt comfortable discoursing on. I'm not sure how Melville thought that these people living in the middle of an "undiscovered" Polynesian island would become so well-read.
All in all, Mardi was filled with some moments of coruscation, and many more moments of dullness, masturbatory oratory, unpleasantly thick prose, and aimlessness. I think the star rating I've given it is more than fair, and to be honest, I may be giving the emperor more credit than he rightly deserves in regards to his garments. If this book were written by an author of less renown and fascination to me, I likely wouldn't have been so generous. I'm willing to admit that fault.
August 7, 2008
my least favorite melville, he worked so hard on the allegory, he forgot to add a PLOT.
June 12, 2010
Beginning as another of Melville's traditional Polynesian tales--and thus picking up where Typee and Omoo left off--Mardi transforms after the first one hundred pages into something philosophically symbolic (think Gulliver's Travels) and then something politically allegorical. It shouldn't work--and Melville's critics didn't think that it did--but the novel, for me, represents a remarkable achievement. Someone remarked that the novel's use of the boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-goes-after-girl narrative as a vessel to explore the human search for a divine essence of being is unwieldy (in other words, they ask, how can a mundane romance carry the symbolic weight of a spiritual quest). I disagree. Translating the search for God as the search for a lost love manages to simultaneously aggrandize romance and particularize a spiritual journey. Mardi may not reach the sublime heights of Melville's more mature later work (Pierre, The Confidence Man, and his novellas, in addition to MD), but it certainly outshines his pre-1850 oeuvre (which isn't to say that Typee, Omoo, Redburn, etc. are not without their charms), and it is certainly worth your attention if you enjoy Melville or, more broadly, American literature of the mid-19th century.
November 25, 2016
In the authors own words
"...And so is Mardi itself: nothing but episodes; valleys and hills; rivers, digressing from plains; vines, roving all over; ...and here and there, fens and moors.
...Ay, plenty of dead-desert chapters there; horrible sands to wade through."
I've previously read Moby-Dick but i really don't remember it being written so archaically as this is. This felt so old fashioned in its writing almost shakespearean. It also has a lot of dry humour and witty back and forth repartee which reminded me of shakespeare too. But if you're not good at parsing Ye Olde talking or don't know your world history, greek myth or the other old timey references that tend to crop up in these kinds of books then you may have problems with this. Melville really likes his old timey references as well as his old timey language.
Oh and he also knows how to completely torture a metaphor. If you can't stand a sunrise being described in terms of clashing armies, then this isn't going to be your thing.
This starts off as a high seas adventure story albeit a very languid one. Languid is a word which constantly stalked me through the first volume. It feels like lying on a beach in the sun, slightly drunk, while someone (probably also drunk) tells you a story... a seemingly endless story. One which you'll probably drift in and out of.
Still i thought it was better than Moby-Dick for the first 3rd of volume one. All of the 'voyage thither' part basically.
It still goes off on numerous tangents like Moby-Dick, but in that book there was a clear goal, so every tangent was annoying as it was getting between you and the point of the book. However the goal in Mardi is a lot less clearly defined and therefore the meanderings less frustrating. Also there's no were near as much whale biolology :) .
Finally though we make it to Mardi and things slow down even more, i don't even know what the point was and i don't think the author did either. Up until the end of volume 1 it was a real slog and Melville didn't seem to know what to do next.
On to volume 2! Ah the author finally made a decision... and that decision was just to change genres completely.
Seriously, while there is a thin veneer connecting this to volume one its really a different type of book entirely. We're now in the realm of pure satire/allegory, and incredibly obvious allegory's at that, apart from a couple of obtuse moments where i couldn't figure out what the hell he was talking about..
We have 10-15 chapters taking shots at organized religon, then we're off for a trek round the entire world covering the irish rebellion, french revolution, opium wars, american civil war etc. With occasional stops at the evils of civil law, the nature of human consciousness, how awesome smoking is, beauty being in the eye of the beholder etc.
Also at least two chapters of apology and excuse, pointing out that its really hard writing a book which is where the above quote comes from. I like the honesty but if he'd just written something better he probably could have skipped those parts ;) .
And the ending... i didn't see that coming and i'm still not entirely sure what the point was but interesting at least.
Volume One: 2/5
Volume Two: 3/5
"...And so is Mardi itself: nothing but episodes; valleys and hills; rivers, digressing from plains; vines, roving all over; ...and here and there, fens and moors.
...Ay, plenty of dead-desert chapters there; horrible sands to wade through."
I've previously read Moby-Dick but i really don't remember it being written so archaically as this is. This felt so old fashioned in its writing almost shakespearean. It also has a lot of dry humour and witty back and forth repartee which reminded me of shakespeare too. But if you're not good at parsing Ye Olde talking or don't know your world history, greek myth or the other old timey references that tend to crop up in these kinds of books then you may have problems with this. Melville really likes his old timey references as well as his old timey language.
Oh and he also knows how to completely torture a metaphor. If you can't stand a sunrise being described in terms of clashing armies, then this isn't going to be your thing.
This starts off as a high seas adventure story albeit a very languid one. Languid is a word which constantly stalked me through the first volume. It feels like lying on a beach in the sun, slightly drunk, while someone (probably also drunk) tells you a story... a seemingly endless story. One which you'll probably drift in and out of.
Still i thought it was better than Moby-Dick for the first 3rd of volume one. All of the 'voyage thither' part basically.
It still goes off on numerous tangents like Moby-Dick, but in that book there was a clear goal, so every tangent was annoying as it was getting between you and the point of the book. However the goal in Mardi is a lot less clearly defined and therefore the meanderings less frustrating. Also there's no were near as much whale biolology :) .
Finally though we make it to Mardi and things slow down even more, i don't even know what the point was and i don't think the author did either. Up until the end of volume 1 it was a real slog and Melville didn't seem to know what to do next.
On to volume 2! Ah the author finally made a decision... and that decision was just to change genres completely.
Seriously, while there is a thin veneer connecting this to volume one its really a different type of book entirely. We're now in the realm of pure satire/allegory, and incredibly obvious allegory's at that, apart from a couple of obtuse moments where i couldn't figure out what the hell he was talking about..
We have 10-15 chapters taking shots at organized religon, then we're off for a trek round the entire world covering the irish rebellion, french revolution, opium wars, american civil war etc. With occasional stops at the evils of civil law, the nature of human consciousness, how awesome smoking is, beauty being in the eye of the beholder etc.
Also at least two chapters of apology and excuse, pointing out that its really hard writing a book which is where the above quote comes from. I like the honesty but if he'd just written something better he probably could have skipped those parts ;) .
And the ending... i didn't see that coming and i'm still not entirely sure what the point was but interesting at least.
Volume One: 2/5
Volume Two: 3/5
April 12, 2020
MEDIA (to Abrazza).--Be not impatient, my lord; he'll recover presently. You were talking of Lombardo, Babbalanja.
BABBALANJA.--I was, your Highness. Of all Mardians, by nature, he was the most inert. Hast ever seen a yellow lion, all day basking in the yellow sun:--in reveries, rending droves of elephants; but his vast loins supine, and eyelids winking? Such, Lombardo; but fierce Want, the hunter, came and roused his roar. In hairy billows, his great mane tossed like the sea; his eyeballs flamed two hells; his paw had stopped a rolling world.
ABRAZZA.--In other words, yams were indispensable, and, poor devil, he roared to get them.
BABBALANJA (bowing).--Partly so, my literal lord. And as with your own golden scepter, at times upon your royal teeth, indolent tattoos you beat; then, potent, sway it o'er your isle; so, Lombardo. And ere Necessity plunged spur and rowel into him, he knew not his own paces. That churned him into consciousness; and brought ambition, ere then dormant, seething to the top, till he trembled at himself. No mailed hand lifted up against a traveler in woods, can so appall, as we ourselves. We are full of ghosts and spirits; we are as grave-yards full of buried dead, that start to life before us. And all our dead sires, verily, are in us; that is their immortality. From sire to son, we go on multiplying corpses in ourselves; for all of which, are resurrections. Every thought's a soul of some past poet, hero, sage. We are fuller than a city. Woe it is, that reveals these things. He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity. To scale great heights, we must come out of lowermost depths. The way to heaven is through hell. We need fiery baptisms in the fiercest flames of our own bosoms. We must feel our hearts hot--hissing in us. And ere their fire is revealed, it must burn its way out of us; thought it consume us and itself. Oh, sleek-cheeked Plenty! smiling at thine own dimples;--vain for thee to reach out after greatness. Turn! turn! from all your tiers of cushions of eider-down--turn! and be broken on the wheels of many woes. At white-heat, brand thyself; and count the scars, like old war-worn veterans, over camp-fires. Soft poet! brushing tears from lilies--this way! and howl in sackcloth and in ashes! Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow. Oh! there is a fierce, cannibal delight, in the grief that shrieks to multiply itself. That grief is miserly of its own; it pities all the happy. Some damned spirits would not be otherwise, could they.
ABRAZZA (to Media).--Pray, my lord, is this good gentleman a devil?
BABBALANJA.--I was, your Highness. Of all Mardians, by nature, he was the most inert. Hast ever seen a yellow lion, all day basking in the yellow sun:--in reveries, rending droves of elephants; but his vast loins supine, and eyelids winking? Such, Lombardo; but fierce Want, the hunter, came and roused his roar. In hairy billows, his great mane tossed like the sea; his eyeballs flamed two hells; his paw had stopped a rolling world.
ABRAZZA.--In other words, yams were indispensable, and, poor devil, he roared to get them.
BABBALANJA (bowing).--Partly so, my literal lord. And as with your own golden scepter, at times upon your royal teeth, indolent tattoos you beat; then, potent, sway it o'er your isle; so, Lombardo. And ere Necessity plunged spur and rowel into him, he knew not his own paces. That churned him into consciousness; and brought ambition, ere then dormant, seething to the top, till he trembled at himself. No mailed hand lifted up against a traveler in woods, can so appall, as we ourselves. We are full of ghosts and spirits; we are as grave-yards full of buried dead, that start to life before us. And all our dead sires, verily, are in us; that is their immortality. From sire to son, we go on multiplying corpses in ourselves; for all of which, are resurrections. Every thought's a soul of some past poet, hero, sage. We are fuller than a city. Woe it is, that reveals these things. He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity. To scale great heights, we must come out of lowermost depths. The way to heaven is through hell. We need fiery baptisms in the fiercest flames of our own bosoms. We must feel our hearts hot--hissing in us. And ere their fire is revealed, it must burn its way out of us; thought it consume us and itself. Oh, sleek-cheeked Plenty! smiling at thine own dimples;--vain for thee to reach out after greatness. Turn! turn! from all your tiers of cushions of eider-down--turn! and be broken on the wheels of many woes. At white-heat, brand thyself; and count the scars, like old war-worn veterans, over camp-fires. Soft poet! brushing tears from lilies--this way! and howl in sackcloth and in ashes! Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow. Oh! there is a fierce, cannibal delight, in the grief that shrieks to multiply itself. That grief is miserly of its own; it pities all the happy. Some damned spirits would not be otherwise, could they.
ABRAZZA (to Media).--Pray, my lord, is this good gentleman a devil?
February 2, 2019
I think it would take me a year to extol the virtues of this epic creation by the author of MOBY-DICK. All I can say is:
Find the version edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker and G. Thomas Tanselle. That should not be difficult to find, because it is included in the Library Of America's Herman Melville. It's also known as the Northwestern-Newberry edition.
Published in 1849, this was Herman Melville's third book and the first which may be termed, unquestionably, a novel. It is prose poetry of the highest order. Its author was thirty years old, already an established author. His first two books, TYPEE and OMOO, are clearly autobiographical accounts of sailing voyages to the south seas. At the opening of MARDI, Melville responds to readers who did not believe his accounts, setting the bar very high for himself:
"Not long ago, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether, the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my previous experience.
"This thought was the germ of others, which have resulted in Mardi."
What Melville proves, in the next seven-hundred pages, is literary artistry on a par with Goethe, Swift, Cervantes, Shakespeare and the authors of the Bible. MARDI is quite reminiscent of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, and its episodic nature allows Melville to delve into myth, fairy-tales, folklore and, indeed, folk-song. While there are many references to genuine historical figures and poets, Melville invents an entire world of kings, bards, philosophers and historians. MARDI is a commentary on all levels of belief. It is outright satire. (The United States is Vivenza, Britain is Dominora, and Ireland is Verdanna.) While I am not strong on history, I do know something about the Irish potato famine, which started a year before MARDI was published, and about the Irish statesman, Daniel O'Connell, who died two years before this book. Melville's narrator discusses the "blighted yams" of Verdanna and the hero Konno, and Dominora's role in the famine. While this chapter is not incredibly deep, it reveals Melville as, in some respect, anticipating James Joyce. A lot of this book consists of discussions among friends about literature, philosophy and history, and these discussions reminded me of the library scene in ULYSSES. I must point out that MARDI made me laugh a lot. I generally find Melville's humor forced. But in MARDI, Melville is seriously comic.
Find the version edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker and G. Thomas Tanselle. That should not be difficult to find, because it is included in the Library Of America's Herman Melville. It's also known as the Northwestern-Newberry edition.
Published in 1849, this was Herman Melville's third book and the first which may be termed, unquestionably, a novel. It is prose poetry of the highest order. Its author was thirty years old, already an established author. His first two books, TYPEE and OMOO, are clearly autobiographical accounts of sailing voyages to the south seas. At the opening of MARDI, Melville responds to readers who did not believe his accounts, setting the bar very high for himself:
"Not long ago, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether, the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my previous experience.
"This thought was the germ of others, which have resulted in Mardi."
What Melville proves, in the next seven-hundred pages, is literary artistry on a par with Goethe, Swift, Cervantes, Shakespeare and the authors of the Bible. MARDI is quite reminiscent of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, and its episodic nature allows Melville to delve into myth, fairy-tales, folklore and, indeed, folk-song. While there are many references to genuine historical figures and poets, Melville invents an entire world of kings, bards, philosophers and historians. MARDI is a commentary on all levels of belief. It is outright satire. (The United States is Vivenza, Britain is Dominora, and Ireland is Verdanna.) While I am not strong on history, I do know something about the Irish potato famine, which started a year before MARDI was published, and about the Irish statesman, Daniel O'Connell, who died two years before this book. Melville's narrator discusses the "blighted yams" of Verdanna and the hero Konno, and Dominora's role in the famine. While this chapter is not incredibly deep, it reveals Melville as, in some respect, anticipating James Joyce. A lot of this book consists of discussions among friends about literature, philosophy and history, and these discussions reminded me of the library scene in ULYSSES. I must point out that MARDI made me laugh a lot. I generally find Melville's humor forced. But in MARDI, Melville is seriously comic.
January 23, 2022
This is the most torn I've yet been about one of Melville's works. I liked it, but then I also didn't, and if I'm to give it a rating, I think I've finally landed uncomfortably in the middle. On the one hand, the plot rings all too familiar: man jumps on boat with destination in mind, man runs away, man goes on adventures about the South Seas. Unlike his previous works, however, this was meant to be fiction from the beginning, and here I can tell that he took that as license to slip in allegory after allegory, and since it was so inconsistently interspersed throughout the narrative, it came off as more distraction than enlightenment. Really, my biggest problem with this is that it's just messy. He breaks the fourth wall sometimes to comment on his own writing. Some passages are pure narrative, but then he meanders into reflections on his personal beliefs regarding religion and philosophy, much like the way he would do so in Typee and Omoo, only this time he isn't tackling interesting, objective observations about exotic cultures and peoples.
Those areas that reminded me of his earlier works, however, as well as those rambling passages that were particularly well-put to paper, were incredibly engaging. What adventure story that is here is still very much that, with the added bonus of a little unrestrained eye for fictional happenings. The new characters were interesting enough that I could tolerate their company throughout the narrative, and sprinkled in here and there were passages of inordinate brilliance. Melville was such a great writer, but even here I think the final product could have gone through a more rigorous editing process.
Overall I'm not sure what Melville is trying to say with this, or perhaps the problem is that he's trying to say too much with too little, and he tries so hard to pack this full of maxims and witticisms that he neglected to make the plot palatable enough to survive the length of this work.
Those areas that reminded me of his earlier works, however, as well as those rambling passages that were particularly well-put to paper, were incredibly engaging. What adventure story that is here is still very much that, with the added bonus of a little unrestrained eye for fictional happenings. The new characters were interesting enough that I could tolerate their company throughout the narrative, and sprinkled in here and there were passages of inordinate brilliance. Melville was such a great writer, but even here I think the final product could have gone through a more rigorous editing process.
Overall I'm not sure what Melville is trying to say with this, or perhaps the problem is that he's trying to say too much with too little, and he tries so hard to pack this full of maxims and witticisms that he neglected to make the plot palatable enough to survive the length of this work.
July 26, 2019
A historian, poet, philosopher (and others) set sail for adventure, romance, allegory. Vol. 1 is dull. Vol. 2 is intermittently amusing.
November 11, 2019
I struggle in categorizing Mardi, still less reviewing it.
The conventional wisdom is that it's a mess. Melville started it out as a South Seas seafaring adventure, but only so his publisher would bite. Then he transformed it into a fantastical voyage through imaginary Polynesian Islands. From that point on characters are more symbolic than human. While there is a skeleton of a plot (boy meets, then loses, then searches for girl), it's only the barest gesture to allow the narrator to continue travelling through the allegorical archipelago.
I don't deny that the creativity of Mardi is vast. There is meat there. A lot of it. It is Melville's thoughts and imagination running absolutely wild. But at some point it's just too much froth and not enough substance even for the dedicated reader.
Mardi becomes so untethered to reality, realism or a discernible baseline that virtually every reader will end up adrift. It doesn't work as a real picaresque (Don Quixote) or a fantasy picaresque (Jurgen), because we don't recognize the world it takes place in as either real or coherently fantastical. It doesn't work as a Joycean narrative deep dive because there is no concrete backdrop upon which the reader can project the text (also it's not really an attempt at that sort of narrative anyway).
I think I have to conclude that the conventional wisdom is right. Mardi showed Melville that your novel *can* attempt to be a symbolic roadmap for the entire world, but it can't do that if it is pure, undirected fantasy. You need powerfully imagined characters and character threads (Ahab! Ishmael! Starbuck!) and a strong narrative drive (KILL THE WHITE WHALE!) to tie everything together. Mardi is a stepping stone to a masterpiece, but not really worth it except to Melville scholars.
The conventional wisdom is that it's a mess. Melville started it out as a South Seas seafaring adventure, but only so his publisher would bite. Then he transformed it into a fantastical voyage through imaginary Polynesian Islands. From that point on characters are more symbolic than human. While there is a skeleton of a plot (boy meets, then loses, then searches for girl), it's only the barest gesture to allow the narrator to continue travelling through the allegorical archipelago.
I don't deny that the creativity of Mardi is vast. There is meat there. A lot of it. It is Melville's thoughts and imagination running absolutely wild. But at some point it's just too much froth and not enough substance even for the dedicated reader.
Mardi becomes so untethered to reality, realism or a discernible baseline that virtually every reader will end up adrift. It doesn't work as a real picaresque (Don Quixote) or a fantasy picaresque (Jurgen), because we don't recognize the world it takes place in as either real or coherently fantastical. It doesn't work as a Joycean narrative deep dive because there is no concrete backdrop upon which the reader can project the text (also it's not really an attempt at that sort of narrative anyway).
I think I have to conclude that the conventional wisdom is right. Mardi showed Melville that your novel *can* attempt to be a symbolic roadmap for the entire world, but it can't do that if it is pure, undirected fantasy. You need powerfully imagined characters and character threads (Ahab! Ishmael! Starbuck!) and a strong narrative drive (KILL THE WHITE WHALE!) to tie everything together. Mardi is a stepping stone to a masterpiece, but not really worth it except to Melville scholars.
January 24, 2022
This one starts off a little slow, but once the story gets rolling, it's a great time. The majority of the book is about Melville (disguised as a deity), exploring a group of islands along with a demigod King, a historian, a philosopher, and a poet. These final three are the main aspects of Melville as an author, and much of the story is spent with them in bickering argument, with each coming across as silly or profound in turn. Meanwhile the King is there to settle disputes and keep the adventure rolling along.
The islands themselves each contain their own silly gimmicks and satires, some of which satires are painfully obvious, while others are vague and bizarre. It's incredibly imaginative; the book is just jam-packed with ideas strewn about hither and thither. There is very little connection between the islands aside from certain call-backs, so it is definitely best read as an episodic tale, rather than a coherent whole.
The main plot point is that Melville (the character) is searching for a lost maiden he saved from being sacrificed early in the story. However, her existence becomes less and less corporeal as the tale goes on, and by the end it's clear that he is not searching for a person at all, but just a conception of beauty that exists within his own mind.
It's a strange book, and it's obvious why, after two realistic sea-faring adventure novels, critics absolutely panned it to death, sending Melville back into his established genre for Redburn. However, for the modern Melville appreciator, this book has everything you would want, and while it's not as tight as Moby Dick, it's got at least a portion of what makes that book so legendary, as well as its own individual charms.
The islands themselves each contain their own silly gimmicks and satires, some of which satires are painfully obvious, while others are vague and bizarre. It's incredibly imaginative; the book is just jam-packed with ideas strewn about hither and thither. There is very little connection between the islands aside from certain call-backs, so it is definitely best read as an episodic tale, rather than a coherent whole.
The main plot point is that Melville (the character) is searching for a lost maiden he saved from being sacrificed early in the story. However, her existence becomes less and less corporeal as the tale goes on, and by the end it's clear that he is not searching for a person at all, but just a conception of beauty that exists within his own mind.
It's a strange book, and it's obvious why, after two realistic sea-faring adventure novels, critics absolutely panned it to death, sending Melville back into his established genre for Redburn. However, for the modern Melville appreciator, this book has everything you would want, and while it's not as tight as Moby Dick, it's got at least a portion of what makes that book so legendary, as well as its own individual charms.
July 21, 2021
This is my Year of Melville, and "Mardi" is one of five novels he wrote before "Moby-Dick." It is also one of the hardest to find in print (I actually read it not in the pictured edition, but as part of a Library of America anthology), and it's easy to see why. "Mardi" starts as a seafaring adventure but eventually turns into a fanciful and wildly ambitious allegorical satire about -- well, about the whole freakin' world, if you must know. It is the sort of book a 29-year-old dude would write who has seen a bit of the world and thinks he had it all figured out, and it's a bizarre chimera of the travelogue his first novel, "Typee," was, "Gulliver's Travels," and some other stuff (some have compared it to epic allegorical Elizabethan poems like "The Faerie Queen," but I read that in college and don't much recall it.) The narrator jumps ship, and chances upon some South Sea companions who end up sailing around the islands, ostensibly to look for a stolen young woman who's a bit of a McGuffin (and in some sense, a precursor to the White Whale in this regard). Anyway, it's really mostly an excuse for Melville to satirize and mock lawyers, the law, the justice system, antiquarians, religion, the military, chattel slavery, the United States and pretty much every country in Europe, plus some other nations. By turns, the whole is wildly entertaining and a bit much. There's some beautiful writing, of course, but it's also incredibly long. Really something, but as a whole probably for completists and scholars only.
April 15, 2020
This is a strange one. Like "Moby Dick" (but much longer), it includes many digressions into philosophical, metaphysical, and religious matters. Unlike "Moby Dick," these digressions are not hung onto an inherently interesting plot. Instead "Mardi" starts out like Melville's previous books, "Typee" and "Omoo," as if it is a travelogue of the South Seas. But after a little while (maybe 20% through the book), the main character sets out to find a young woman he has become obsessed with. The rest of the book is an allegorical voyage where he is joined by a group of Polynesians, including a king, a philosopher, a poet, a historian, and maybe one or two others—it was hard to keep track.
I say it is an allegorical voyage, but this only became clear to me well into the book, when I realized that the strange lands they were examining included Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. (Melville gives them Polynesian-sounding names, so it is not blatantly obvious.) It made me wonder how much I had missed before that. It definitely has a "Gulliver's Travels" vibe, including some of the satire and biting commentary.
"Mardi" is not for the faint of heart, but there are interesting things amid its bulk. It does make me appreciate "Moby Dick" all the more. I'm going to take a little break from Melville now before returning to his other novels.
I say it is an allegorical voyage, but this only became clear to me well into the book, when I realized that the strange lands they were examining included Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. (Melville gives them Polynesian-sounding names, so it is not blatantly obvious.) It made me wonder how much I had missed before that. It definitely has a "Gulliver's Travels" vibe, including some of the satire and biting commentary.
"Mardi" is not for the faint of heart, but there are interesting things amid its bulk. It does make me appreciate "Moby Dick" all the more. I'm going to take a little break from Melville now before returning to his other novels.
September 12, 2024
Truly one of the most enormous slogs of my reading life. And I honestly love Melville- I teach Moby Dick for Christ’s sake. Anyway, this book is an endless journey that is about endless journeys and searches for the unfindable (a woman). It’s philosophy, from Platonism to deconstruction. It’s about democracy and power and social hierarchies and slavery. It’s terribly tedious. But I liked seeing the bits Melville elevated to more prominent position in M-D, like descriptions that made their way into characterizing Ahab, and I loved the banger prose that almost felt like modernist poetry at times (Hart Crane’s poem about the calyx of bones echoes a calyx that appears here; TS Eliot’s Prufrock’s final lines on mermaids and drowning are prefigured here….). The wordplay around math was also fun, as was the parodic Doxodox. And I felt I could understand more Melville’s idea of woe from MD from the treatment it gets here closer to the end. But still….the endless drag of meandering associative allegory and satire……
It’s apparently influenced heavily by Rabelais and by Swift— of course— soon I am actually going to tackle Gargantua and Pantagruel
It’s apparently influenced heavily by Rabelais and by Swift— of course— soon I am actually going to tackle Gargantua and Pantagruel
January 20, 2016
I read this in the Library of America edition. I like Melville, but I felt this was one of his weaker entries. The book starts out well, with a simple tale of 2 sailors jumping ship near what sounds like Polynesia.
The story loses its connection with reality once they rescue the maiden, Yillah. The story becomes a fantasy and, in parts, an allegory. The language and references can be obscure. The book is worth reading if you are willing to spend time with it, but I would not recommend it for someone not already familiar with Melville.
I rated it 2 stars because there is a lot of good writing in it. I do wonder where the editor was. A bit of judicious pruning would have made a much better book.
The story loses its connection with reality once they rescue the maiden, Yillah. The story becomes a fantasy and, in parts, an allegory. The language and references can be obscure. The book is worth reading if you are willing to spend time with it, but I would not recommend it for someone not already familiar with Melville.
I rated it 2 stars because there is a lot of good writing in it. I do wonder where the editor was. A bit of judicious pruning would have made a much better book.
October 7, 2019
For once, reviews contemporary with a book’s publication are right even now: it starts well, but sinks into obscure philosophical unreadability less than half way through. The prose may be elevated, the thoughts may be deep, but who really cares? I love Melville so I will simply pretend I never read this.
April 29, 2024
“Puff, puff, puff…” (my favourite part)
August 28, 2022
I read this Oceanside over the past week, which is undoubtedly the best way to read Melville. Mardi isn’t close to as good as Moby-Dick but there are several moments where Melville’s later greatness pokes through.
October 21, 2016
"Ay, plenty of dead-desert chapters there; horrible sands to wade through." - chapter 180; spoken of a 'fictional' book that sounds suspiciously similar to Mardi itself.
Mardi has many good things. It has an interesting sea story for the first 1/4th of the text. It has some very astute and thought-provoking philosophical dialogues. It has some brilliant allegories. And it even has a surprisingly potent essay against democracy in chapter 161.
What went wrong? Quite a bit, unfortunately.
- Critics who complain about Mardi being two or three different novels awkwardly glued together are sadly correct. The heart of the story doesn't get going until chapter 52 (out of 195!).
- The text is disgracefully padded, as the quote above even acknowledges. Cutting out even as many as 100 chapters would probably have left the book stronger.
- There's an extremely blatant instance of the author casually killing off two secondary characters just because the author realized they no longer fit his narrative purpose.
- Melville really went overboard with name-dropping - and just as usual, these obscure allusions did basically nothing except help Melville show how 'smart' he was to English Lit departments.
- The narrator almost completely disappears as a character in the narrative for about 100 chapters, before being artificially brought back for the very end. And a plot issue which had been virtually ignored for those 100 or so chapters is suddenly treated as important again.
- The ending itself has bitterly divided professional critics. Some think the protagonist is acting heroically, some think he is acting demonically, and others think he's just acting stupidly. This is admittedly a pet peeve of mine, and it may not bother other readers as much. But, to me, if an author can write for over 600 pages, and still not be clear about how he intended the ending to be interpreted, to the point where even people whose job it is to study literature can't agree, then I think you're a crappy author. Sorry.
I will say one thing in Mardi's favor: reports of the book being unreadable or impenetrable are greatly exaggerated. Once you get past the name-dropping, the padded length, and some of the more obscure digressions of Babbalanja, it really is easy enough to read. Veterans of Ulysses or The Sound and the Fury will find it a veritable walk in the park.
Mardi has many good things. It has an interesting sea story for the first 1/4th of the text. It has some very astute and thought-provoking philosophical dialogues. It has some brilliant allegories. And it even has a surprisingly potent essay against democracy in chapter 161.
What went wrong? Quite a bit, unfortunately.
- Critics who complain about Mardi being two or three different novels awkwardly glued together are sadly correct. The heart of the story doesn't get going until chapter 52 (out of 195!).
- The text is disgracefully padded, as the quote above even acknowledges. Cutting out even as many as 100 chapters would probably have left the book stronger.
- There's an extremely blatant instance of the author casually killing off two secondary characters just because the author realized they no longer fit his narrative purpose.
- Melville really went overboard with name-dropping - and just as usual, these obscure allusions did basically nothing except help Melville show how 'smart' he was to English Lit departments.
- The narrator almost completely disappears as a character in the narrative for about 100 chapters, before being artificially brought back for the very end. And a plot issue which had been virtually ignored for those 100 or so chapters is suddenly treated as important again.
- The ending itself has bitterly divided professional critics. Some think the protagonist is acting heroically, some think he is acting demonically, and others think he's just acting stupidly. This is admittedly a pet peeve of mine, and it may not bother other readers as much. But, to me, if an author can write for over 600 pages, and still not be clear about how he intended the ending to be interpreted, to the point where even people whose job it is to study literature can't agree, then I think you're a crappy author. Sorry.
I will say one thing in Mardi's favor: reports of the book being unreadable or impenetrable are greatly exaggerated. Once you get past the name-dropping, the padded length, and some of the more obscure digressions of Babbalanja, it really is easy enough to read. Veterans of Ulysses or The Sound and the Fury will find it a veritable walk in the park.
March 29, 2023
Promising beginning: Engaging events, characters, and coruscating prose to be expected from Melville. The first cracks in the foundation appear when the book's whimsically established trio launches a violent, unprovoked attack against a religious pilgrimage on the gamble of procuring a fantasy virgin, who, miraculously, exists. Upon her disappearance shortly thereafter, which could have been immediately explained where it not for the narrator's bizarrely wrathful and willful ignorance, the original characters are quickly replaced by caricatures; all set sail at the whim of a monomaniac (sound familiar?). Initially, the Odyssey-styled adventure among unexplored pagan islands is both thought-provoking and amusing, but the sweeping scope of the second half transcends ambition and plants its flag firmly in the territory of conceit. What was an enjoyable cruise through an isolated microcosm quickly demands to represent the literal world and everything in it. Scattered ironic ramblings and on-the-nose satirization of Franko, Ibeeree, Romara and the like yield much unnecessary, half-baked political and religious commentary and a disjointed narrative. Eventually, Melville completely loses the original thread with islanders discussing Calculating machines, Egyptian pyramids, and Arctic glaciers, oh, and they speak French, Latin, and Greek. The culmination of all this is... nothing. The nearly instantaneous conversion of the entire party to Christianity, a St. John-tier revelation, a symbolism charged encounter with a brain washing cult, and a selfish, despair driven self-sacrifice end the book and render half the narrative expendable. Sixty percent of this book is actually quite good, rewarding even, but the full experience can be summed up by a meta-comment from page 1262 (LoA edition), "...two million five hundred thousand a's and i's and o's to read! How many are superfluous?"
May 12, 2015
This one is for Melville completists only. I may have had ambitions to fit in that category myself, but I just couldn't finish Mardi. I made it about halfway out of devotion to Melville and a personal interest in some potential parallels to the Book of Mormon, but neither factor was enough to carry me through. The descriptive landscapes are beautiful, and there are some truly remarkable passages like this:
"Yet if our dead fathers somewhere and somehow live, why not our unborn sons? For backward or forward, eternity is the same; already have we been the nothing we dread to be. Icy thought."
But these beautiful verbal islands become increasingly infrequent in Melville's voyage through a sea of stilted dialogue and esoteric mythological allusions. Some of the prose is so purple it is almost embarrassing, like that time Melville actually busts out with this:
"We fish, we fish, we merrily swim
We care not for friend nor for foe:
Our fins are stout,
Our tails are out,
As through the seas we go."
. . . .
Clearly, Melville was still honing his craft, and while all the practice pays off in spectacular fashion with Moby Dick and his later works, Mardi is very much practice. On the other hand, the high points in Mardi may just be great enough to draw me back in to fish this at some point.
"Yet if our dead fathers somewhere and somehow live, why not our unborn sons? For backward or forward, eternity is the same; already have we been the nothing we dread to be. Icy thought."
But these beautiful verbal islands become increasingly infrequent in Melville's voyage through a sea of stilted dialogue and esoteric mythological allusions. Some of the prose is so purple it is almost embarrassing, like that time Melville actually busts out with this:
"We fish, we fish, we merrily swim
We care not for friend nor for foe:
Our fins are stout,
Our tails are out,
As through the seas we go."
. . . .
Clearly, Melville was still honing his craft, and while all the practice pays off in spectacular fashion with Moby Dick and his later works, Mardi is very much practice. On the other hand, the high points in Mardi may just be great enough to draw me back in to fish this at some point.
December 29, 2013
Wow this is a pretty difficult work, much elevated from Typee and Omoo. The critiques of the book, boring, unreadable, ponderous, are valid to an extent. However there are several areas which merit further study, and perhaps have already been picked apart by the Melville industry.
First, the book is very science fictional. From the creation of the alternate world of Mardi for the purpose of satire to several extended rhapsodies about the worlds beyond the stars, the book has a very speculative feel, and could be analyzed heavily as such.
Second, it would be interesting to see an extended discussion of each of the various islands and what value or idea they are meant to satire. Taji's travels are extensive; it would be interesting to see the work boiled down to essentials.
Finally, the various islanders who serve as storytellers each have a unique voice but to an average reader like myself, they are screaming for some differentiation to make their purpose clear.
Any novel that calls for, demands, this much work to understand is right up my alley. I would enjoy reading further criticism of it, one of the true tests of a novels' worth. Recommended but will bore the daylights out of you.
First, the book is very science fictional. From the creation of the alternate world of Mardi for the purpose of satire to several extended rhapsodies about the worlds beyond the stars, the book has a very speculative feel, and could be analyzed heavily as such.
Second, it would be interesting to see an extended discussion of each of the various islands and what value or idea they are meant to satire. Taji's travels are extensive; it would be interesting to see the work boiled down to essentials.
Finally, the various islanders who serve as storytellers each have a unique voice but to an average reader like myself, they are screaming for some differentiation to make their purpose clear.
Any novel that calls for, demands, this much work to understand is right up my alley. I would enjoy reading further criticism of it, one of the true tests of a novels' worth. Recommended but will bore the daylights out of you.
September 23, 2020
Melville's third novel leaps from his earlier pseudo-biographies like a man from a burning building. Many critics question the duality of the book, and the discordant note it thus strikes with many readers. The first third of the book is strcit sea-going adventure, with the last two-thirds a reflection of human character and human thought. It seems our author was always a philosopher at heart only without the rigid learning to ground him in that discipline. Some have wondered why Melville just didn't finish the sea-tale--which was exciting and would probably have been well received--and spin out his literary/philosophic tome as a stand-alone fourth book. But I think the turn works here, as the novel shocks the reader into its body/mind dualism. I don't believe the book should have been split in half any more than Alice in Wonderland could have been split (pre- and post-rabbit hole), or The Wizard of Oz--book and film--could have been split pre- and post-cyclone. Granted, this book was a hit-and-miss, but more hit than miss, and presages Moby Dick, albeit with Redburn and White Jacket (cakes and ale) standing in between.
Grade: B-
Grade: B-
September 1, 2016
I can't recommend this book although I am glad I read it. A combination of "Gulliver's Travels" and "Candide", what little plot there is didn't hold my interest and, while some of the philosophy was interesting, the book was a very slow slog to get to the end. Do I hear notes of Emerson and the transcendentalists in this book? I feel I will understand Melville's later works better after having read "Mardi". But, when you throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into a novel an author needs a better way of organizing or it just becomes hundreds of pages of rhetoric.
October 6, 2020
Third, and least, of Melville's early (and mostly fictional) adventures in the South Seas (I endured as part of a desire to read his entire oeuvre). Starts like the others, a nautical adventure, before devolving into a very long philosophical/political disquisition among several characters paddling among the islands of Mardi. Though the writing is beautiful throughout, my knowledge of Melville's contemporary milieu simply wasn't sufficient to fully appreciate the allegorical nature of the book's final 400-500 page discussions and encounters. Rather a long slog. On to Redburn!
February 27, 2015
I tried. I made it a little more than 200 pages in. I’ll see if I can pick off some more of it now and then, but, frankly, this book ceased to be fun. The younger Melville is giving himself more creative elbow room here, after Typee and Omoo. Still, it’s hard going. Very hard. The plot is inane, despite occasional flashes of rhetorical brilliance. It may be that Moby Dick is present in germ form, but you’d need a microscope to find it.
April 7, 2011
Had Melville not gone off on a massive, unforgivable tangent around page 200 - one that lasts for the rest of the novel - this would probably have been a GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. The first chapters are great and combine everything that's good about TYPEE and MOBY-DICK. The rest reads like a drug-addled imitation of Hawthorne.
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