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57 3 “THE FLOWING RIVER IN THE CAVE OF MAN” Books III–V i The first two Books make clear the essential nature of Pierre. An ambitious experiment in psychological fiction, its primary focus will be the complex workings of the human psyche, prominent among them the tortuous processes of distortion and self-deception involved in fervid states of mind combining religious exaltation and sexual arousal. The first Books suggest, and subsequent Books confirm, that it will also draw repeatedly on the conventions of Gothic fiction. Book III, “The Presentiment and the Verification,” vividly portrays the stirrings of Pierre’s unconscious that had already been evoked by the mysterious face he had addressed in his soliloquy at the end of Book II. Melville now ominously characterizes the face as “vaguely historic and prophetic; backward, hinting of some irrevocable sin; forward, pointing to some inevitable ill”—one of those faces “which now and then appear to man, and without one word of speech, still reveal glimpses of some fearful gospel” (43). Leaving behind the stylistic extravagance with which he had portrayed the artificiality and immaturity of his young characters in Books I and II, Melville then goes backward in time to explain how and where Pierre had encountered the girl with this remarkable face. In the manner of more conventional fiction, the straightforward narrative account of Pierre’s visit to the Miss Pennies with his mother and his encounter with that “face of supernaturalness” (46) resolves some of the suspense concerning the face that Melville had developed in Book II. At the same time, it leaves open the question of the girl’s identity and introduces new mysteries with her “unearthly” response to the announcement of Pierre’s name and his own agitated response to seeing her (45–48). Further mystery ensues with the delivery of a letter to Pierre by a “hooded” stranger, with the peculiar intensity of Pierre’s foreboding about the letter before he reads it, and then with the letter-writer’s startling claim to be Pierre’s hitherto unknown sister (62–64). In the midst of these increasingly Gothic developments, Melville’s RECTO RUNNING HEAD READING MELVILLE’S PIERRE; OR, THE AMBIGUITIES 58 larger concerns emerge mainly in extensive passages analyzing the effect of first the face and then the letter on Pierre’s states of consciousness and his “interior development.” For none of Pierre’s chivalric impulses portrayed in Books I and II is there a normal outlet. There is no real likelihood that Pierre will need to fend off suitors from his mother, despite his playful-earnest role of knightin -waiting. The renewed zest with which he throws himself into his “manly exercises” in Book III suggests that he wishes to “completely invigorate and embrawn himself into the possession of such a noble muscular manliness, that he might champion Lucy against the whole physical world” (50); but in fact with Lucy Pierre’s chivalric notions must be reduced to merely the courtesies of courtship, since she hardly needs his defense, what with two youthful brothers themselves overeager to fulfill their own chivalric obligations toward her. The first true appeal to his chivalry comes with his earliest glimpse of the extraordinary face he sees at the Pennies’ sewingmeeting , a face on which “he seemed to see the fair ground where Anguish had contended with Beauty, and neither being conqueror, both had laid down on the field” (47). Beyond the bewildering allure of the beauty and the anguish of the face, Pierre is aware of a special effect, “the face somehow mystically appealing to his own private and individual affections; and by a silent and tyrannic call, challenging him in his deepest moral being, and summoning Truth, Love, Pity, Conscience, to the stand.” In both these passages, the narrator’s language reveals the intensity of Pierre’s chivalric obsession. But the sight of the unknown girl evokes even more profound stirrings in his unconscious. Within an hour of first seeing her, we are told, Pierre felt that “what he had always before considered the solid land of veritable reality, was now being audaciously encroached upon by bannered armies of hooded phantoms, disembarking in his soul, as from flotillas of specter-boats” (49). This account of inner forces beyond Pierre’s control initiates a new narrative strategy. As Melville converts analysis into vivid action , he now repeatedly portrays Pierre’s psychological states and processes in extended metaphors and images, passages that are short...

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