Melville's Wisdom

Damien B. Schlarb has written a very smart book, as complex as it is brief. Melville’s Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America is half revisionist and half reemphasis, showcasing 19^th-century author Herman Melville’s deep connection to Biblical wisdom literature: the books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.

Calvinism encountered serious challenges in the modernizing and secularizing 19^th century. In this crucible of meaning, where the major religious focus was on the New Testament, Old Testament studies were “revitalized” by a number of different writers and thinkers who sought to apply ancient and understudied wisdom to modern problems (8). Schlarb identifies Melville and his literary canon (novels, stories, and poems, as well as Biblical marginalia) as representative of the 19^th century’s various tensions and cultural currents. By reading Melville’s canon alongside the wisdom books—“a modern literary exegesis” (179)—Schlarb’s work “allows us to inspect the inner workings of a central paradox that sits at the heart of modernity: the simultaneous displacement and affirmation of biblical language and religious culture” (2). Melville, Schlarb writes, wished to resurrect a biblical literature discourse focused on the wisdom books, and to use that language to seek the truth about God and society wherever it might lead. Schlarb argues that Melville was not an agent of disenchantment, but instead allowed his investigations to reveal the numinous while at the same time critiquing traditional institutions.  

Schlarb’s central claim is to show “that Melville responds to the moral, spiritual, and representational challenges of modernity by developing a contemplative reading attitude toward the Bible and religion” (18). Schlarb then gives four arguments that bolster his thesis. The first is that in a culture that was busy dethroning biblical authority, Melville had a “career-long project of recovering the language and the ethics of biblical wisdom” (18). Second, the wisdom books matter because they can be used to get across modern thoughts “by literary means” (19). Third, and probably simplest, Schlarb gains “theological insights” by engaging in a hermeneutical approach to Melville’s understanding of the wisdom books (20). Finally, Melville must be “recontextualized” (20). His canon must be read henceforth alongside not only the modern literary canon, but a religious and a historical one too. This multiplicity of readings allows for a variety of equally true and not mutually exclusive approaches. In other words, there is no grand theory of everything for Melville. This network of arguments is woven together by Melville himself, especially in relation to his religious doubts.

This work will challenge those who argue that Melville was representative of an anti-Bible secularization effort, or an antagonistic critique of religion generally. Skepticism was complicated in the 19^th century. It was rarely tolerated in public but became more prevalent as the century progressed. Nevertheless, doubt was carried out in good faith privately. This odyssey of intellectual skepticism was undertaken by seekers of truth wherever it led, including back to religion. But more often than not, the quest also led away from religion, or at least religious institutions or traditions. Melville doubted, but he believed the Bible was important for understanding that very doubt. “Melville,” according to Schlarb, “did not linger with skepticism but regarded it as a methodology that would ultimately allow him to build something more, and that is what led him from a hermeneutics of suspicion to one of contemplation” (13). In this quest, Schlarb sees Melville as humble and honest, emanating integrity and epitomizing what “the wisdom books teach” (18). Schlarb argues that there are authors, then as today, who read with an end in mind, seeking answers for which they already have a prepared script and understanding. Melville was willing to follow the truth to even uncomfortable ends with no preordained conclusion.

One of the best examples of this is found in the first chapter, which concerns the problem of suffering and our attempt to reconcile divine and human wisdom. Melville, Schlarb notes, considers science in his quest to understand certain mysterious phenomena, but this scientific route does not challenge heavenly magnificence. For Melville, science was the path to understanding God’s wisdom. Schlarb discusses this in reference to the mystery of bioluminescence. Melville contemplates the naturalistic explanations of the physical phenomenon, but uses such understandings to meditate on their meanings and consequences. This is because Melville was rooted in the wisdom books and used that knowledge base and its methodology to understand physical phenomena, rather than to dismiss numinous experience. Melville’s approach was “syncretic” and not exclusive—which would have been the domain of dogmatic scientism or fundamentalist rhetoric. Schlarb then explains how this approach allowed Melville to contemplate and “appreciate. . . even the smallest creatures” without adherence to “any preformulated method or tradition” (36).

This is not a book for a casual or semi-interested reader, and it is certainly not a survey or introduction to either literary criticism or Melville, although it does a good job for those passingly familiar with their Bible. A combination of specificity of topic and frequent academic jargon—like “ratiocination” (39) instead of “reason”—makes for a work that is dense enough to warrant careful reading but not dense enough to make it inscrutable to readers not versed in literary criticism. It is a rich book filled with astute meditations on the connections between biblical wisdom and Melville’s canon that will add a new level of depth and meaning to Melville and 19^th-century literature. This book would be a welcome addition to a culturally focused 19^th century American humanities course and should be embraced in the historiography by Melville scholars.

Ian S. Wilson is a PhD candidate in history at the University of New Hampshire.

Ian Wilson

Date Of Review:

April 4, 2023