Report: What is the Purpose of Your Trip to Jerusalem?

Report What is the Purpose of Your Trip to Jerusalem? RODRIGO ANDRÉS Universitat de Barcelona (With much gratitude to Timothy Marr, Hilton Obenzinger, Basem Ra’ad) Rodrigo Andrés. Photo courtesy of Dennis Berthold At my city airport, checking in with El Al: —What is your final destination? —Jerusalem. —What is the purpose of your trip to Jerusalem? —I am going to participate in a conference on Herman Melville. —Say that again? —Herman Melville? . . . the author of Moby-Dick? —What is the conference about? —Well, he wrote this poem . . . [ Klær-El]? . . . [KlE- rel]? —You are going to Israel to attend a conference about . . . a poem? [which you obviously do not even know how to pronounce]. Please move over to that corner and wait there. Somebody will be with you shortly. We need to ask you a few more questions. C  2010 The Authors Journal compilation C  2010 The Melville Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 66 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 T H E P U R P O S E O F Y O U R V I S I T T he Melville and the Mediterranean conference, held in Jerusalem on June 17-21, 2009, became a learning experience even days before it started. For many of us, the simple fact of going through the El Al security control at the airport nearest to where we live, where we teach, where we read Melville, where we think Melville, implied going through the almost shocking and not very comfortable exercise of hearing articulated in the mouth of Israeli security staff the kind of questions some of us had been privately and secretly asking ourselves. Am I going to be on a plane for hours to discuss a poem? Am I going to travel to that specific region of the world simply because he went there? Surely—some of us argued to ourselves—it is not only because of that. I am going there also because it is a region in the world that matters politically, historically, religiously, spiritually, geographically. But what is it that really matters to me? What mattered to Melville? What is the true nature of my interest in Melville, of my interpretations of Melville’s texts? Forty years after some French intellectuals proclaimed the death not only of God but also (even!) of the Author, what am I doing on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the purpose of which is the exegesis of Melville’s message(s) to the world? Maybe I am actually following Melville’s path from Liverpool—where he had had that intimate conversation in Southport with Nathaniel Hawthorne—to the Holy Land, in a spirit more organic to his experience than I thought, in the search if not of belief, then of meaning. As academics, many of us justified ourselves to ourselves, reasoning that the true purpose of our trip to Israel was our willingness/need to unlearn. Yet, the second we arrived in Jerusalem was the second we started learning, and learning fast. About the beauty of the city, about adjusting to the sudden and unexpected feeling of being in the spiritual center of the world, about pretending we were not surprised at seeing fundamentalists of most known religions walking the same streets, being profoundly indifferent to each other. And, above all, about trying to function normally in a city that is paradoxically and simultaneously both a space of fictional narratives, illusions, and hopes, on the one hand, while at the same time a space of facts, stone, history, noise, citizens, quotidianeity during the day, and calls to prayer in the middle of warm, sensuous, moonlit nights, on the other. The feeling of unreality almost abruptly became one of homecoming when we started encountering fellow Melvilleans, long-time friends, good friends, scholars we respect and admire. That feeling was simultaneous with that of making new friends and the premonition of meeting people who will matter for life. Among veteran Melvilleans, the joyful and obviously comfortable reencounters. For newer members of...