All Astir

All Astir Adown the Dolorosa Lane The mounted pilgrims file in train Whose clatter jars each open space; Then, muffled in, shares change apace As, striking sparks in vaulted street, Clink, as in cave, the horses’ feet. Clarel 2.1.1-6 T he opening lines of the canto Melville titled “The Cavalcade” capture the unconscious clamor of “pilgrims” making their way through urban space—the Old City of Jerusalem—that, though “open,” is also enclosed, like a cave wherein their “clatter” resounds all the more for being “muffled in.” In his discussion of this passage at the International Melville Society conference in Jerusalem ( June 17-21), Michael Jonik (SUNY Albany) drew attention to the spaces that surround visitors to Melville’s Holy Land, an “ambient world” that hums in resonance but also tension with the pilgrims. To attend thoughtfully to this conference, to be part of the Melville Society’s cavalcade , was also to jar and be jarred within a variety of competing landscapes: the city of cities, the texts we imaginatively and critically traversed, Melville’s nineteenth-century world, our twenty-first century reality. Sometimes, as when in the same day this writer managed to offend guardians of the holiest Christian and Islamic sanctuaries alike, when the light at Yad Vashem seemed unbearably hot and bright, when the graffiti on walls everywhere cried out in anguished colors, the tensions became overwhelming. At other times, when the fragrant juices of a falafel sandwich seeped through one’s fingers, when daylight stole into the sleeping streets of the Old City, and one could see the place of which Melville wrote, “Yonder is the arch where Christ was shown to the people, & just by that open window is sold the best coffee in Jerusalem, &c. &c. &c.” (NN Journal 89), then delight mixed with wonder and a hush descended, within which one might, as Prof. Jonik invited us to do, hear the hum of the city’s “tide processional” (NN Clarel 1.31.256) as a “mysterious melodiousness” (NN Pierre 150). In this special issue of “Extracts,” we feature the conference in reports and photographs, as we have done with international conferences in the past. Basem Ra’ad of Al-Quds University initiated, guided, and led the venture from start to finish, with the inspired teamwork of Timothy Marr (University of North Carolina) and Hilton M. Obenzinger (Stanford). Prof. Obenzinger’s opening essay frames this “Extracts” and displays their deep devotion to grand ideas and minute details, which, along with their abundant patience, skill, C  2010 The Authors Journal compilation C  2010 The Melville Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 30 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 E X T R A C T S energy, and kindness, made the event a pleasure for all. We are pleased to offer reports from Milette Shamir (Tel Aviv University) and Rodrigo Andrés (Universitat de Barcelona) on the intellectual content and experience of the conference. Photographs from Dennis Berthold (Texas A & M University), John Bryant (Hofstra University), Tony McGowan (USMA), Bayne Peterson (Somerville, MA), Elizabeth Schultz (University of Kansas), and Robert K. Wallace (Northern Kentucky University) evoke the many people and places of the week, but much remains unpictured to the last. Also in this issue you will find essays based on the texts of the keynote addresses by Thomas L. Thompson (Emeritus, University of Copenhagen) and Amy Kaplan (University of Pennsylvania); an essay on the Arabic translation of Moby-Dick by Jeffrey Einboden, a Note by Robert D. Madison (University of Arkansas) and Gordon M. Poole (Università degli studi l’Orientale, Napoli) about the correct pronunciation of “Clarel”; and a letter from Walter Bezanson and Gail Coffler, who, respectively, as editor of Clarel and encyclopedist of Melville’s ancient and religious references, beamed virtually, if not actually, over every feature of this Holy Land gathering. The conference took place during an annus mirabilis for Melville events. One way to put this is to say that Robert K. Wallace has been a very busy man. First he curated the exhibit, Moby...