Melville Society Panel at MLA 2024: Thursday, January 4th at 12:00 noon
The MLA Annual Convention will be held January 4-7 in Philadelphia, PA. Visit the MLA website for a full program.
Medical Melville
THURSDAY, 4 JANUARY 12:00 PM-1:15 PM, ADAMS (LOEWS)
A 2008 article in The Journal of Medical Biography refers to “the many ailments of Herman Melville.” The author was keenly interested in conditions of the body and the way that people tried to address them. What kind of doctoring does he advocate? How does Melville stage the drama of treatment? How did his own embodiment affect his art?
Speakers
Stephen Richard Andrews (Grinnell C)
David Haven Blake (C of New Jersey)
John Bryant (Hofstra U)
Jamini Hariharan (U of North Texas)
Pilar Martinez Benedi (U of L’Aquila)
Christopher Rice (McGill U)
Presiding
Ralph Savarese (Grinnell C)
Abstracts:
Stephen R. Andrews, Grinnell College, “A Species of Euthanasia”: Lynching and the Anatomy of Grace in Billy Budd”
In chapter 26 of the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Billy Budd, Sailor, the Purser and the Surgeon engage in what the narrator subtitles “a digression.” Two other chapters are also subtitled, but in chapters 4 and 12 the subtitles are direct citations of a phrase or words used in the chapter proper. Within chapter 26, the word “digression” does not appear, and so is a digression from the form preestablished by the narrator. To what avail? The exchange is certainly out of sequence, a point the narrator establishes in the next chapter by returning to the aftermath of the hanging. But what if “digression” here is not merely structural? What if it does in fact refer to things said in the chapter, but, as one might expect of a Melvillean digression, such reference is allusive and evasive rather than citational? In that sense, the Surgeon may play a more pivotal role in this “inside narrative” than mere “digression” might otherwise indicate. Regarding the hanging, the Surgeon declares that “under special orders I myself directed how Budd’s was to be effected.” The lack of “muscular spasm,” then, can be understood to be a medically induced moment of grace. If the “special orders” under which the Surgeon operates are a deviation from a set of standards preestablished for naval executions, then this “digression” must be appreciated as a veering. To John Bryant’s question, “what, then, can we do critically with the ‘ragged edges’ of Melville’s revision process,” I provide a provisional answer by way of veering off to the conclusion of “Going to Meet the Man,” James Baldwin’s story about the psychodynamics of lynching, castration, and a kind of “grace.” Lorraine Hansberry glides along those ragged edges when she says of Baldwin that he could ''articulate the inarticulable, as if Billy Budd had finally found the words to match his passion” (qtd. Michael Anderson).
David Blake, College of New Jersey, “Morbid Anatomy: Amputation by Prostheses in Melville’s White-Jacket”
Among Melville’s most conspicuous targets in White-Jacket we find Dr. Cadwallader Cuticle, the Surgeon of the Fleet, whose “peculiar love” for “Morbid Anatomy” surfaces in his fondness for amputation. (He once confided, “he would rather cut off a man's arm than dismember the wing of the most delicate pheasant.”) The dark comedy of White-Jacket’s amputation scene culminates in Cuticle’s losing a patient on the operating table while he pontificates about his methods. The death puts a previous detail into context: before operating, the famed surgeon has removed a series of prosthetics -- his wig, false teeth, and glass eye.
As part of Melville’s satire of the US Navy, the prostheticized surgeon descends from Poe’s General Smith, a war hero composed of artificial body parts. Like Poe, Melville prompts readers to reconsider the customary relationship in which injury leads to intervention and an artificial replacement. Drawing on scholars influenced by post-structuralism and disability studies, this paper uses the linguistic and surgical origins of the word “prosthesis” to ask whether, in the increasingly professionalized discourse of 19th-century medicine, the prosthetic precedes the amputation? Does the morbid anatomy of Melville’s surgeon imagine the supplement before the original body has been injured?
Pilar Martinez Benedí, University of L’Aquila, “Melville on the Yoga Ma(s)t”
In Chapter 17 of Moby-Dick, “The Ramadan,” Ishmael finds Queequeg sitting in Malasana pose (aka “yogi squat”) while “holding Yojo on top of his head” (MD 81). And while the former later deplores that “Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold cheerless rooms” are “bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense” (82), Queequeg might be said to be following some of the staples of present-day fitness or healthy living—intermittent fasting, meditation, and yoga.
Melville could have read about meditation in the Bhagavadgītā, whose circulation among Melville’s contemporaries has been documented (American Renaissance). More or less explicit references to yogic meditation recur indeed in Melville’s works, from sketch 2 of The Encantadas, whose narrator dreams of himself seemingly practicing meditation in Sukhasana upon a tortoise in the company of Brahmins, to (most famously), Ishmael’s “vacant reverie” atop the Mast-Head, where his “spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space” in a sort of yogic unity with the All. In his topmost meditation, however, Ishmael is not sitting in easy pose, but rather holding standing balance pose that demands continued (but effortless) control of the physical body. Drawing from ancient Hindu sources, Melville seems to have anticipated the more physical approach to yogic meditation of our time.
My paper seizes on Melville’s interest in meditation as well as on his insights into the continuity between mind and body (between inner meditation and physical exertion) as it emerges, among others, from the mast-head episode, to reflect on his holistic view of the body-mind.
John Bryant, Hofstra University, “Biography & Disease”
I focus mostly on the biographer's (my) pathway in diagnosing Gansevoort's condition, and how I came to figuring out it was mercury poisoning. Along the way, I'd like to caution against certain easy biographical traps: Poe was probably diabetic, fine; but what does that say about his tales/poems? El Greco had a stigmatism, and that explains his gaunt paintings. Then there's the trap of diagnosing conditions based on misleading information like the varying heights recorded on HM's passports or other documents. More importantly, how can the condition of dis-ease in a writer or a family become a reliable factor in our interpretation? In my bio, I reflect on how the siblings' disease(s) and disabilities infected HM's writing, specifically, lameness and madness. The presentation would not be a reading from the Bio but an analysis of how one can make credible sense of disease in writing biography and making biography a credible presence in our interpretation of texts.
Jamini Hariharan, University of North Texas, “Beyond Broken Bodies: Navigating Health and Well-Being in Melville's Typee”
In Typee, Herman Melville narrates Tommo's numerous physical and psychological afflictions, including his debilitating leg infection and a kind of anxiety disorder. As Tommo adapts to life in the Marquesas islands, he focuses on physical wellness among the Typee, who appear to enjoy the best physical health. Tommo notes, "not a single instance of natural deformity was observable in all the throng" (Melville 180). His observation stands in sharp contrast to his own physical and mental agony, which he describes as a "chief source of anxiety" which "poisoned every temporary enjoyment, was the mysterious disease" in his leg, "which still remained unabated" (Melville 118).
This paper explores how Melville dramatizes Tommo's experience of ill health to depict the interconnectedness of the mind and body and the social, cultural, and psychological variables that influence health and well-being while challenging Western society's individualistic and mechanistic ideologies surrounding human health. By portraying Tommo, who deals with chronic pain, physical harm, and disabilities in complex and multidimensional ways, Melville illustrates that physical and mental health cannot be evaluated in isolation. Ultimately, Typee confronts conventional ableist dichotomies by showing that power dynamics and cultural norms impact how disease and disability are viewed and managed and that the human body and mind are sites of social dispute.
Chris Rice, McGill University, “Dr. Strangelove: Holmes and Melville”
In Richard Chase’s early study of Melville, he claims that the period between 1852-1856 was a time of “uncertain health” for the struggling author, during which he had frequently complained of “sciatica and eye strain”—yet one of the main objectives Melville’s family had when they ultimately arranged for an examination by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes “was to find out if Herman was going mad” (142).
Holmes is widely acknowledged as “one of the boys” from the Berkshires who populated Melville’s social life in Pittsfield, yet his own distinctive approach to medicine and unique role in Melville’s life certainly deserves more attention. For instance, in Jay Leyda’s Log he gestures towards some of the complicated doctor-patient dynamics at work when claiming that “though it is certain that Holmes & M saw a great deal of each other—as neighbors, picnickers, and doctor & patient—the only documented communications between the two men” yields little that is helpful. Though Holmes is suspected to have formed the basis for Doctor Scribe in I and my Chimney, I would like to pursue Holmes presence in other late works from Melville, especially with an eye to Holmes’ understanding of psychology. Peter Gibian describes Holmes’ view of treatment as one which centers “on carefully managed and monitored verbal dialogue with the patient . . . and the dynamics of talk: he became a prime theorist of the divided self . . . defining all mental process as an internal conflict.” How can Melville’s figuration of dialogue be related to Holmes view of mental processes and mental treatment, and did Melville’s close interaction with this polymath who coined the word “anaesthesia” alter his own view of doctors and medicine?
