Melville & Shakespeare

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I'm just looking at an Essay that Melville wrote. He's flagrantly, decoratively verbose:

Writing Moby-Dick destroyed him, in a nervous-breakdown sort of way. They found him a job as a customs inspector and I don't think he ever wrote again. But what did it take out of him (they spoke of exhaustion) to go from that Essay to 400 pages of this sort of thing:


Okay, one is exposition and the other narrative. Still, Melville must have reached into the dark depths of his soul to wrench out the colossal Moby-Dick.

I think it might have been this: he got the collected works of Shakespeare which, in his day, nobody ever got to see.

Imagine, no Henry IV,


no King Lear,


no Twelfth Night,


Melville went to ground and was rarely heard from, except for ecstatic notes. Was it Shakespeare that transformed Melville?

Moby-Dick was published but universally rejected during Melville's lifetime as the "ravings of a disordered mind."

Has anybody ever read bartlby the scrivener?
What was your favorite Melville work besides from Moby Dick? Why?

Now this is the way to end a chapter, with just three sentences.

And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues — every stately or lovely emblazoning — the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge — pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like willful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him.

And of all these things the Albino Whale was the symbol.

Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

I have always wanted to read Bartleby; never have gotten around to it. I limped through Omoo when I was about 14, and on pain of death I wouldn't even be able to tell you what it's about. It was just that exciting.

I guess I'll just have to take your word for it lol

My friend kinda said the same about typee but it's strange. That was a travel log kind of book and that's what I heard he was popular for. But it was the very unpopular books and stories that are considered his classics.