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Herman Melville (1819 - 1891) and 'Pierre; or the Ambiguities'
In Autumn 1985, Herman Melville started writing his seventh novel, 'Pierre; or the Ambi-
guities'. He was 32.
Having completed the enormous undertaking that was 'Moby Dick' just a few weeks earlier, aware of having surpassed himself and elated by the knowledge that Hawthorne had under-
stood and liked his book, he went back to work in his house near Pittsfield (Massachusetts,
New England).
'My dear Hawthorne, the scepticism of the ether is filling my mind and making me doubt my sanity
at writing to you thus. But, believe me, I am not mad, my most noble Festus...
God, when shall we have finished growing? Add 'Moby Dick' to our blessings and let us move on... Leviathan is not the biggest fish. I have heard tell of the Kraken.'
On October 28, 1851, his friend Sarah Morewood wrote:
'I hear that he is now at work on another book, to the point that he often only leaves his room at nightfall, and that is when he takes his first square meal of the day. He must therefore write in a state of morbid excitement that will soon damage his health. I have at times teased him about this and told him that the reclusive life he was leading made his friends in the capital think him a little mad. He replied that he had reached that very same conclusion himself...'
Apparently, 'Pierre' was written in this state of mind, in the space of a few months (and, to-
wards the end, in a state of resentment due to the negative reception of 'Moby Dick' that turned
out to be a flop, a mere succès d'estime). His publishers, their enthusiasm probably dampened by
the failure of 'Moby Dick', and concerned at finding themselves with a second book by Melville on
their hands, offered him only half of the usual fee.
He replied: 'It might not prove inadvisable to publish this present book anonymously, or under an assumed name - by a Vermonter, say... '
'And more especially I am impelled to decline those overtures upon the ground that my new book possessing unquestionable novelty, as regards my former ones, - treating of utterly new scenes and characters; - and, as I believe, very much more calculated for popularity than anything you have yet published of mine- being a regular romance, with a mysterious plot to it, and stirring passions at work, and withal, representing a new and elevated aspect of American life - all these considerations warrant me strongly in not closing with terms greatly inferior to those upon which our previous negotiations have proceded.'
'Pierre; or the Ambiguities' was finished and at the printers in April 1852.
On publication, the reviews were execrable and often violent. In financial terms, 'Pierre' was a disaster for Melville. Less than 2,000 copies were sold during his lifetime.
Latter-day critics have recognised in the story of Melville's idealistic young hero a corrosive satire of the sentimental-Gothic novel, and a revolutionary foray into modernist literary techniques.
As William Spengemann writes in his introduction to the Penguin Classic 1996 Edition,
'For anyone who, being aware of the culture of modernity, is curious about its origins, Pierre ranks with Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner', Carlyle's 'Sartor Resartus', Hawthorne's 'Scarlet Letter', and the poems of Emily Dickinson as one of the privileged places where the dead past can be seen giving way inexorably to the living present.'
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