Melville, Our Contemporary
Andrew Delbanco听
Columbia University
Date:听April 11, 2002听
Location:听Gasson 305
EVENT RECAP
As part of the Lowell Lectures in the Humanities with co-sponsorship by the Boisi Center, Columbia English Professor Andrew Delbanco addressed the religious and moral questions raised by the work of author Herman Melville in a lecture entitled 鈥淢elville, our Contemporary.鈥� Delbanco, whom Time听Magazine recently named as 鈥淎merica鈥檚 Best Social Critic,鈥� is the author of numerous books and articles, including his most recent work, The听Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost their Sense of Evil.听He brought a close reading of a number of Melville鈥檚 works, including Moby听Dick,听to bear on moral issues, which have a particular urgency for American society in our times.
Delbanco argued that Melville was very much preoccupied with the human capacity for cruelty, and with the human appetite for belief. He was a writer who understood the power of demagoguery, and, like Dostoevsky, he was deeply aware of how compassion and cruelty can become intermingled, with devastating results.
With respect to the thematic elements of Melville鈥檚 work, Delbanco identified four characteristics which seem to make Melville especially appropriate for contemporary post-modern readers. First, Melville viewed knowledge as a social construction. Secondly, according to his correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville believed language was inadequate to capture our experience, but rather could only evoke or point to that which is ineffable. Thirdly, Melville鈥檚 plots tend to be non-linear, with digressions rather than consecutive plot developments, which suggests a less structured view of our experience of time. Lastly, Melville was a brash and exuberant individual who rejected the prudish ways of his own time.
In the aftermath of September 11, Delbanco (who works and lives in New York City) pondered what elements in Melville could speak to the 鈥渨orking class heroes鈥� like the firemen and policemen who rushed into the World Trade Center. He suspected that the events of September 11 might signal the end of post-modern irony.