The Psychology of Herman Melville

Herman Melville, often considered the greatest American writer, suffered the tragedy of outliving his genius. After the achievement of Moby Dick (5) his masterpiece, at the age of 32, he never again approached the level of this work. His entire output during the next forty years dwindled to a feeble stream of productions, often more important for revelatory insight about the author than for intrinsic literary merit. It has been said that Melville turned his back on an unappreciative world, that he was disillusioned, that like Hamlet he was born to set right a time out of joint, and so on. The suggestion that his decline was due to insanity has been strongly resented by some literary critics who intimate the Philistines did not understand Melville. And as Raymond Weaver correctly points out in his important biography (21)—insanity is not a single entity. Nevertheless, a man does not simply outlive his genius; this can be explained only by some kind of major psychological reorganization.

Why many literary scholars should be sensitive to this type of approach is somewhat incomprehensible since Melville himself makes it clear in Pierre (7) that he is exploring his own depths. The critics do not hesitate to study biographical, sociological, literary and historical sources to the novelist's work, nor should one hesitate to examine, in the light of modern psychoanalytic development, the internal psychological sources. This in no way depreciates the greatness of an artist through psychiatric name-calling. Weaver observes that “though Melville and Toby both lived among the Cannibals, it was Melville, not Toby who wrote Typee.” Analogously, the world is full of unfortunate paranoids and depressives who have too much access to their unconscious anguish, but precious few Show the poetic imagination of a Melville. It is precisely this difference that has defied explanation; in a more modest way this essay attempts to illuminate some of the conflicts which motivated Melville and