Agath and the Ephemeral Text in Melville's Clarel

Agath and the Ephemeral Text in Melville’s Clarel WYN KELLEY Massachusetts Institute of Technology T he first edition of Melville’s Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land bears a strange device: the Jerusalem Ensign stamped in gold on each cover of its twin volumes (NN Clarel 674, 821-23; Dryden 146). This design, as we learn in Part Four, “Bethlehem,” when the travelers see it tattooed on the sailor Agath’s arm, involves a wealth of heraldic symbols: Above that emblem of the loss [a crucifixion], Twin curving palm-boughs draping met In manner of a canopy Over an equi-limbed small cross And three tri-spiked and sister crowns: And under these a star was set. (NN Clarel 4.2.53-59) As Rolfe reminds us, the Ensign images a turbulent history: “The Ensign: palms, cross, diadems / And star—the Sign!—Jerusalem’s, / Coeval with King Baldwin’s sway” (4.2.68-70). If the “sway” of crusader “King Baldwin” seems a colossal European folly, Melville’s adoption of the Ensign may appear puzzling. One might expect his narrator to speak in the scathing terms Ungar uses for Anglo-Saxon “pirates of the sphere! Grave looters— / Grave, canting, Mammonite freebooters, / Who in the name of Christ and Trade . . . / Deflower the world’s last sylvan glade!” (4.9.121-26). Hilton Obenzinger uses these lines to identify Ungar with Melville’s “critique of American optimism—and American culture’s sense of special providential destiny” (“Wicked Books” 193)—an attitude that seems to find its precursors among European adventurers in the Holy Land. Melville’s narrator, however, takes a more tolerant view of European crusaders, noting that they combine piety with their pageantry: “for man is heir / To complex moods; and in that age / Belief devout and bandit rage / Frequent were joined” (NN Clarel 1.4.9-12). In “Of the Crusaders,” Melville’s speaker intimates that a certain “romance” (1.4.17) invests their deeds. While acknowledging the “disillusions” (1.4.20) the crusaders inspire, Melville notes their reverent humility and asks why, at the sight of Jerusalem, “they doff c  2011 The Melville Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 49 W Y N K E L L E Y the plume / And baldrick, kneel in dust, and sigh?” (1.4.5-6). This question may seem ironic, but then the narrator claims for his poetic text an equivalent modesty and simplicity: “Because if here in many a place / The rhyme—much like the knight indeed— / Abjure brave ornament, ’twill plead / Just reason, and appeal for grace” (1.4.30-33). The irony lies in Melville’s narrator claiming that his poem will “abjure brave ornament,” when the author has packaged it with a brave ensign stamped in gold. Is Clarel a Poem decked out in proud ornaments that announce its imperial “sway”? Or is it a Pilgrimage, humble in its “appeal for grace”? One possible answer lies in Melville’s personification of “rhyme” here and “verse” elsewhere in Clarel, implying that the elements of poetry take an active role in shaping the narrative. In “The Ensign,” Melville’s narrator pauses to comment on his effort to edit Agath’s story for readers: But, more of clearness to confer— Less dimly to express the thing Rude outlined by this mariner, License is claimed in rendering; And tones he felt but scarce might give, The verse essays to interweave. (NN Clarel 4.2.229-34) It is unusual for Melville to articulate a narrative intent in Clarel. The authorial presence in “Of the Crusaders” and “The Ensign” draws attention to the demands of poetry itself. The rhyme “abjures,” and the verse “essays,” permitting “license” in the poet. As Poem, Clarel bears the proud emblem of its power as verse, even when as Pilgrimage Clarel doffs the plume and kneels in dust. This dual meaning in the ensign speaks as well to Melville’s concerns about the ephemeral media in which ensigns and by extension...