414
PARTISAN REVIEW
and th en h e will be rudely trea ted, and perhaps driven forth misera–
bly to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self–
approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willful–
ness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what
will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience.
The lawyer is not merely fatuous ; it does not escape him that this test of
Christian virtue is mild and easy.
His restraint attains new leve ls upon discovering- "One Sunday
morning I happened to go to Trinity Church, to hear a celebrated
preacher"-that Bartleby has been living in his office. Melville con–
jures up a tremendous image of utter solitude, that of Bartleby among
the empty rooms , buildings, and streets of Wall Street on Sunday . " For
the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy
seized me," the lawyer says, "but just in proportion as the forlornness
of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melan–
choly merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. " After further attempts
to dismiss and rid himself of Bartleby, he attains a resolution it is too
easy merel y to deride:
Yes , Bartleby, stay there behind your screen .... At last I see it, I feel
it; I penetrate
10
the predes tinated purpose of my life. I am content.
Others may have loftier parts
10
enact; but my mission in this world,
Bartleby, is to furnish you with office room for such period as you
may see fit
to
remain.
This position is purged of pallid Christianity and self-congratulation.
The lawyer accepts obligations which bring no reward and make no
sense. But "this wise and blessed state of mind," as he calls it, does not
survive the reactions of colleagues to Bartl eby's eerie presence, which
threaten his professional reputation . He weakens, blaming "the con–
stant friction of illiberal minds," yet is still un able to do the obvious –
have Bartleby ejeCled by force of law. H e moves instead to another
office, leaving the still, unspeaking Bartleby behind in an empty room.
Turned out by the new tenant, Bartleby "haunts" the building, and
land lord and tenant demand of the lawyer that he act. "In vain I
persisted that Bartleby was nothing to me-no more than to anyone
else.
In
vain :-1 was the last p erson known to have anything to do with
him, and they held me to the terrible account." The bond with Bartleby
is not his either to satisfy or
to
sever.
In
the story's longest dialogue, narrator and reader are led to hope
for a resolution: "His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to
the charge." But Bartleby, though "not particular," refuses five suc-
