Hoodwinking the World: Two Views of Melville’s Piazza Tales

TheCanadian Review of American Studies, Volume 10,Number 2, Fall, 1979 Hoodwinking the World: Two Views of Melville'sPiazza Tales WilhamB. Dillingham. Melville's Short Fiction 1853-1856. AthensThe University of Georgia Press, 1977. 390 pp. Ernest H. Redekop MarvinFisher. Goin!; Under: /1,ft.,/vil/e'.1· Short Ficlion and the American 1850s. BatonRouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. 216 pp. In August, 1851, two months before the publication of Moby-Dick, The Literary World published Melville's review of Hawthorne's Mosses.from an Old Manse, an essay as significant for its revelation of Melville as for its elevation of Hawthorne to supremacy in American letters. Melville feasted on"these Mosses" as on the bread and wine of communion, "incorporating" theirstuff into his being, feeling the "germinous seeds" and the "strong New England roots" of Hawthorne growing into his soul. Unquestionably, he saw himself much as he saw Hawthorne, whose "great power of blackness" he admired, as he admired "those deep far-away things" in Shakespeare, "those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality." 1 He had just written a book "broiled" in hell-fire,as he described it to Hawthorne, and its secret motto, he hinted, was "Ego non baptiso te in nomine-- but make out the rest yourself. ..."2 So he identified himself with Shakespeare and Hawthorne in his pursuiit of "the greatArt of Telling the Truth-even though it be covertly, and by snatches" and became, like them, a hunter: "For in this world of lies, Truth is forced to flylike a sacred white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will shereveal herself .... "3 Beneath the surface sunlight of Hawthorne's tales lies the profound blacknessinto which the reader must look. But even eyes accustomed to the dark may not see the true Hawthorne: "like many other geniuses, this Man of 176 Ernest H. Redekop Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world- at least with respectto himself."4 Melville sees in Hawthorne what he sees in himself: recognitionthat truth is elusive and that the world cannot stand much of it. He appeals tohis fellow-Americans to take to themselves the great original "unimitating" and "inimitable" Hawthorne: "by confessing him, you thereby confess others; you brace the whole brotherhood. For genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round."5 Both Dillingham and Fisher see Melville's essay on Hawthorne as fundamental to any understanding of the works of the years immediately following . The relationship with Hawthorne promised sympathy, recognition. understanding and, Melville hoped, love, but it faded under his intensityand Hawthorne's reserve. The review is an excellent starting-point for a discussion of the Piazza tales, and Fisher, in fact, devotes the first chapter to a critiqueof the essay. He sees in it some of the techniques used in the fifteen storiesthat were to follow: "an extravagant and audacious symbolism, a deceptively indirect narrative style, and a highly innovative use of allusion" (p. 12).He believes that Melville was revealing his own heart in this "disarmingly casual review"; this is true, but since the essay begins with a pose, invents incidents and people and purports to address itself entirely to Hawthorne and histales, the extent of his self-revelation was not seen at the time. As Melville writes, "you must have plenty of sea-room to tell the Truth in."6 For the most part, both critics bear in mind Melville's need for sea-room and in their varying interpretations add much to our understanding of the stories published between 1853 and 1856. The structures of the two critical works differ considerably, although each has merits. Dillingham approaches the stories chronologically, beginning with "Bartleby the Scrivener" (Putnam's, November and December, 1853)and concluding with "The AppleTree Table" (Harper's, May, 1856). Aside from two slight deviations fromthe order ("The Fiddler" and "I and My Chimney"), he analyzes each story inthe order in which it appeared in the two magazines. He includes the two stories which were not published in magazine form, "The Two Temples" and "The Piazza...