PARTISAN REVIEW
for us to see the tragedy we ought to see in the betrayal of the young
hero to the man of power and law by the man of "retributive right–
eousness." Billy Budd is pre-eminently the beatified boy of the liberal–
progressive myth, the figure who gets "pushed around," the figure
"to whom things happen." His suffering and death are without mo–
ral content. Innocence, Melville had said in
Clarel,
is the act of the
true heart reflecting upon evil. In the high tragedy of Cain's City,
this is the only kind of innocence we can take seriously or believe
in. Melville is possibly our greatest critic of the liberal-progressive
ethos. But this we must see
in spite of Billy Budd.
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