From the Mast-Head

From the Mast-Head o one in the nineteenth century could escape Milton, and no American author embraced the challenge of reading, appreciating, and quarreling with Milton Nmore than Herman Melville. Melville’s use of Milton spans his career, from both the Eden and “pandemonium” of native life in Typee to what Henry E Pommer called in his seminal study, Milton and Melville, the “Satanic villainy” of Claggart in Billy Budd. But a half century has passed since Pommer recorded Melville’s long term dalliance with Milton, and much has occurred in the world of books and the life of the mind to warrant a rejuvenation of the discourse on Melville and Milton. Milton studies and Melville studies have remained vigorous, in their separate spheres, no doubt because of the remarkable range of literary production both writers created; no doubt because of their mutual darknesses; no doubt, too, because scholars attracted to both have flowed with, not against, the new currents of criticism over the past five decades. Now, in this remarkable Special Issue of Leviathan, and a double one at that, we propose to bring these two vigorous camps together. It was not difficult for me to envision such an issue; it was, as they say, a natural . After all, Melville’s copy of The Poetical Works ofJohn Milton had surfaced, disappeared , and resurfaced over the past fifteen years, and Melvilleans such as Robin Grey, Harrison Hayford, Jay Leyda, Hershel Parker, Douglas Robillard, and myself had made the pilgrimage to Princeton to inspect the two-volume set: a storehouse (as Robillard puts it) of evidence revealing one great writer’s reading of another. It seemed only natural that we publish a transcription of these epic annotations. Both Grey and Robillard were ready to meet that challenge. And it seemed equally natural to call upon Robin Grey, whose Complicity o f Imagination (Cambridge, 1997) draws upon Melville’s Miltonic marginalia, to be a guest editor in charge of assembling the excellent range of essays you find here accompanying the Grey and Robillard transcription. Leviathanls special double issue (Vol. 4, numbers 1and 2) on Melville and Milton promises to be a landmark. Its scholarly contribution is breathtaking; the range of critical approaches (from allegory, the sublime, and epic to war, revelation, and source analysis) is broad; the depth of insight stirring. And significantly, three of the five essays deal with Melville’spoetry. The hope is that with the new well of information available in the transcription of Melville’sMilton, and with the stimulating essays included here, a new phase of discourse concerning Melville has begun. Somewhere, I hear Samuel Johnson muttering that no one wishes the Melville Milton connection longer; but I hear deeper murmurings in the hold as well. --John Bvyant L E V I A T H A N 2 F R O M T H E M A S T - H E A D Corrections In the Leviathan 3.1 (March 2001), a line was inadvertently dropped at the bottom of the first page of Carolyn Karcher’sreview of Samuel Otter’s MelvillebAnatomies. The full line on p. 104should read: Theshiftfromprobing “structuresof feeling,”or ideologies,to delvinginto feelings themselves is “logical,”Otter claims, though admittedly“surprising”(208). And in Leviathan 3.2 (October 2001), our Moby-Dick 2001 Art and Book Exhibition catalog issue entitledArtists After Moby-Dick, a sentencewas dropped from Robert K. Wallace’s essay “ChasingMoby-Dick Across Paper and Canvas:Five Decades of Free-FloatingLiterary Art.” The dropped line should appear as the fourth sentencein the article’s first paragraph on page 5, and it should read, “Inour own age of film and video, of satelliteand undenvater photography, and of chartered whale-watch expeditions, the fluid shape of the living whale can be seen more easily.” A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L ES T U D I E S 3 ...