Herman Melville suffered from chronic dissatisfaction. He didn’t know what he wanted. Or rather, he wanted too much. Obscurity and renown. Independence and companionship. Poverty and patronage. Unbounded eternity and a New England farmhouse. The romantic in him saw the vast, divine unity of everything. The gothic recognized ceaseless, grating limitation.
In Melville’s age, seafaring was exclusive to men. This reinforced inhibition. It also unchained the author from the constraints of the repressive society he couldn’t help but seek approval from and resent. Take “A Squeeze of the Hand,” chapter 94 of Moby-Dick:
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,— Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
The passage’s homoerotic overtones cannot be ignored. Melville embodied a masculine dialectic. Maybe, in addition to wanting everything else… Etc. That the author was prized at his most patently adventurous (Typee, Omoo) only to be made destitute under the most spiritual ambitions (The Piazza Tales, Clarel) is telling in itself.
All these titles and more were ransacked from my exhaustively-built collection upon my divorce. It made me feel more like a man than I wanted. I lost over one hundred books, several dozen records, every scratch of cookware and furniture, all to keep half-ownership of a 2004 Toyota Tacoma.
And pulling into the driveway of my hollowed-out, split level rental, I felt a welcome comradery with the sailor-scrivener. He too had imbued “great anxiety” in his in-laws and spouse. His passions “[bringing] on severe nervous affections” in those he was expected to provide. Unlike Melville, however, when faced with the prospect of parting at death, I was fortunate enough to know that I would prefer not to.
-David Fishkind