72
PARTISAN REVIEW
being "too little the continuously professional writer." Quoting Mel–
ville's very winning and characteristic exclamation in
Mob y-Dick, "I
try all things; I achieve what I can," Mr. Chase assures us that
"his
plight as an epic writer was less desperate than
his
words might
imply," though Melville was not necessarily thinking here of the epic
form. He
did
try all things, often in a single work, and that is half
his charm as an "unprofessional" author, as it helps to explain why
he failed as a professional one. Much as he needed a public in order
to make a living, he needed even more to spill over in every direction,
to fit his new learning to his old wanderings, to act as reporter, pro–
phet, wise man, and general mystic factotum to his "raw" countrymen
-a very characteristic mark of the American writer from Whitman
to Ezra Pound. But though he did become over-conscious of his
symbols in proportion as he began to write purely for himself-a
point Mr. Chase can never state explicitly because it is of the very
argument of his book that Melville's interest in symbols was uniform
-I still do not think that Melville ever sat down to write
about
sym–
bols, which is the impression this book leaves. To Mr. Chase, Captain
Vere in
Billy Budd
is Man, because
vir
is Latin for man; when
Billy accidentally spills the soup in Claggart's path, Claggart feels in–
sulted because "Billy has symbolically exposed himself to Claggart as
the Host, the vessel from which issues 'virt'"ue.' ... The spilled soup
has also exposed Claggart's guilt as an eater of the Host and, further–
more, Claggart's fear of his own unconscious desire to be like Billy;
for the psychological content of Claggart's desire to share Billy's in–
nocence is his desire to be the passive host." Did Melville sense all this?
If
I doubt it, it is not least because Mr. Chase never looks for an ex–
planation in the human events nearest him. He has told us above, for
example, that Pierre bears the name of St. Peter, who is in
Ulysses,
but not that a cousin of Melville's bore the name of Pierre. In any
event, Mr. Chase does not say what Melville himself thought; but
since his subject is a Personification of modern wisdom, it may be
presumed that he thought of everything. A
writer,
however, particu–
larly so spontaneous and airily half-learned a writer as Melville, is
usually
in
a more limited state of intellectual grace, for art is so dif–
ficult that he must take the larger part of his "content" for granted.
If
Melville had been half as keen on symbols as Mr. Chase is, he would
not have moved an inch, and he would certainly have lost the rich
