Melville's "Pale Ravener of Horrible Meat"

Melville’s “Pale Ravener of Horrible Meat” DOUGLAS ROBILLARD University of New Haven, Emeritus T he printer’s copy of John Marr and Other Sailors prepared by Melville for the De Vinne Press in 1888 shows the struggles the poet had in revising portions of his poems. One case is the familiar final line of “The Maldive Shark,” which, in print, reads: “Pale ravener of horrible meat.” However, Melville took a long way round to get this version of the line. Melville’s earliest wording was “Pale mumbler of horrible meat.” It must have been clear to Melville at once that “mumbler” would not do. Whatever a shark does with horrible meat, it does not mumble its meal. To mumble is to play about with food in a not particularly aggressive way. In the printer’s copy, Melville crossed out “mumbler” and substituted “gorger.” This alternative has some merit. The shark certainly gorges itself upon the meat it tears from its victims. But again, Melville may have felt that the word does not give the line its proper weight. To gorge offers an aspect of the shark’s method of devouring its victim but leaves out the impression that the animal attacks in a peculiarly vicious and overpowering way. Melville surely gave this line considerable thought, working out words that might lend his poem an effective conclusion. Eventually, he came up with the version we know: “Pale ravener of horrible meat.” The word “ravener” contains a number of useful meanings: it suggests one who “takes by force, a robber, plunderer, despoiler.” It even includes such meanings as “a ravisher, a destroyer.” It is not a word much used in literary contexts, but Melville, who knew his Shakespeare well and as a young man used to recite from the witches’ speeches in Macbeth, may have recalled just such a terrifying shark magnificently sketched in one song the third witch intones: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravined salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digged i’ the dark (IV.i.22-25) Here, Melville’s thought finds its best model in Shakespearean language. C
2006 The Authors Journal compilation C
2006 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing 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 85 ...