Northwestern University Press will soon publish a new paperback edition of Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, Melville’s poetic magnum opus. The text is that of the definitive Northwestern-Newberry edition, an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors, first published in 1991.

In addition to its newly printed state and attractive cover, this new 2008 edition features a forward by Hershel Parker, author of the two-volume Herman Melville: A Biography, as well as the recently published Melville: The Making of the Poet. Though no official publication date has been announced, Amazon and Barnes & Noble both list a date of August 20, 2008. If you are not familiar with Clarel, you are not alone. But with this new edition and the growing interest in Melville the poet, the likelihood increases that Clarel will become more and more widely read and appreciated as one of Melville’s masterworks.

For anyone needing a basic introduction to Clarel or for anyone looking for way to explain to others what Clarel is all about, this brief, one sentence sketch might do: Clarel is an epic-length verse narrative whose heroes and characters engage one another as persons motivated and informed by important new ideas and forces that were beginning in the middle and late-19th century to transform science, history, politics, philosophy, and religion into the various forms in which we find them discussed and practiced today. As a one-sentence summary, this is true enough, but not at all adequate—the Monty Python “Summarize Proust Contest” routine comes to mind. The best introduction to Clarel is a first reading; no summary can do the book justice.

The subjects, characters, and themes of Clarel, and Melville’s dramatization, description, and portrayal of them in an epic-length verse narrative, make up a vast literary landscape in which readers—especially those discovering Melville’s poetry for the first time or those who wish to deepen their involvement with it—may profitably if not happily wander for a few weeks or months. The characters, scenes, episodes, settings, themes, speeches, soliloquies, descriptions, subjects, and stories dramatized in Clarel will provide the reader with much material for analysis, thought, argument, and discussion. The careful reader will also discover in Clarel many passages of poetic beauty and power befitting the work of a poet who, like Melville, had, throughout his life, studied and read the lives and works of the great poets.

The various commentaries, essays, articles, and book-length studies available can make a first reading of Clarel much more efficient and enjoyable. You can search the bibliography pages on this site for many of these studies. Because Clarel is long—over 18,000 lines—a reader encountering Melville’s epic for the first time will welcome the discovery that Melville divided it into four books or sections containing from 32 to 44 cantos each. The titles of these four books or sections—as well as the titles of the scores of cantos that comprise them—are allusive and suggestive: “Jerusalem,” “The Wilderness,” “Mar Saba,” and “Bethlehem.” The titles of individual cantos foreshadow their respective contents. Here is a partial listing:

The Sepulchre, Of the Crusaders, Tribes and Sects, The Votary, Saint and Student, Rambles, The Arch, In the Glen, Under the Minaret, Matron and Maid, Tomb and Fountain, The Recluse, The Site of the Passion, Of Rama, By the Stone, The Tower, A Sketch, The Sparrow, The Mounds, Tidings, A Procession, The Fountain, An Apostate, Under the Mountain, The Dominican, The Inscription, Of Traditions, The Sleep-Walker, The Carpenter, Of the Many Mansions, Tents of Kedar, Of Monasteries, Before the Gate, The Timoneer’s Story, Song and Recitative, The Revel, Closed In, Moonlight, The Easter Fire, A Chant, The Minister, The Masque, In Confidence, Vault and Grotto, Man and Bird, Of the Stranger, The Pillow, The Church of the Star, Symphonies, The Convent Roof, A Transition, Of Wickedness the Word, Twilight, The Invitation, The Prodigal, The Night Ride, The Valley of Decision

Spending a few weeks or months immersed in reading or re-reading Clarel—joining Ruth, Clarel, Rolfe, Vine, Derwent, Nathan, Mortmain, and Ungar on their discussion-, speech-, argument-, persuasion-, thought-, and seduction-laden Holy Land pilgrimage through the towns, hotels, churches, streets, cafes, mosques, synagogues, homes, and monasteries of Jerusalem, Mar Saba, Bethelem, and desert paths leading to the hills, lakes, and rivers of the surrounding country—just might prove worthwhile for many different, but equally important reasons. Great works of art, great poems, by definition, affect how we think and feel, how we live, love, work, imagine, and dream. Many have found Clarel to be a great poem, comparable in many ways to Milton’s Paradise Lost, Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and Browning’s The Ring and the Book. This new edition of Clarel will hopefully afford many more readers the opportunity to judge for themselves.

In conclusion, a few quotes:

No thrills forewarn
Of fish that leaps from midnight tarn;
The very wave from which it springs
Is startled and recoils in rings.
— Jerusalem “Under the Minaret” I.15.116-119, Clarel

But Time the cruel, whose smooth way
Is feline, patient for the prey
That to this twig of being clings;
And Fate, which from her ambush springs
And drags the loiterer soon or late
Unto a sequel unforeseen.
— Jerusalem “Nathan” I.17.331-337, Clarel

But rustling trees aloft entice
To many a house-top, old and young:
Aerial people! see them throng;
And the moon comes up from Paradise.
— Jerusalem “Night” 1.18.32-35, Clarel

In chamber low and scored by time,
Masonry old, late washed with lime–
Much like a tomb new-cut in stone;
Elbow on knee, and brow sustained
All motionless on sidelong hand,
A student sits, and broods alone.
— Jerusalem “The Hostel” I.1.1-6, Clarel

Till sleep, the good nurse, deftly stole
The bed beside, and for a charm
Took the pale hand within her own,
Nor left him till the night was gone.
— Jerusalem “Abdon” I.2.142.145, Clarel

Or some all uncompanioned one
(Like ship-boy at mast-head alone)
Watching the star-rise. Silently
So Clarel stands, his vaulted room
Opening upon a terrace free,
Lifted above each minor dome
On grade beneath.
— Jerusalem “Night” 1.18.40-46, Clarel

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Clarel, Editions, Published Poems, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.