Herman Melville (redirected from Hermann Melville)

Melville, Herman 

Born Aug. 1, 1819, in New York; died there Sept. 28, 1891. American writer.

The son of a merchant, Melville served as a sailor on whalers and other American ships between 1839 and 1844. In the short novels Typee (1846; Russian translation, 1958) and Omoo (1847; Russian translation, 1960), Melville shows the destructive influence of bourgeois civilization on the inhabitants of Polynesia. In 1849 he published the autobiographical novel of the sea Redburn and the satirical allegory Mardi. In White-Jacket (1850), Melville exposes the inhuman treatment of sailors on US warships.

In 1851, Melville wrote his sociophilosophical novel Moby Dick, or the White Whale, centered on a semifantastic pursuit of a white whale, symbolizing the titanic struggle of good and evil. Romantic symbolism and epic descriptions of the sea are mingled with realistic themes.

Melville’s later works include the psychological novel Pierre, or the Ambiguities (1852), Israel Potter (1855; Russian translation, 1966), a historical tale about the Revolutionary War period, the collection of short stories The Piazza Tales (1856), and the satirical novel The Confidence-Man (1857). His meager literary earnings compelled Melville to take a post in the New York customhouse in 1866. He subsequently wrote several poetic works: Battle-Pieces (1866), poems about the American Civil War; Clarel (1876), a novel in verse; and the collections John Marr (1888) and Timoleon (1891). The sea tale Billy Budd was published posthumously in 1924.

Unappreciated and forgotten by his contemporaries, Melville was recognized in the 1920’s as a classic American writer. R. Kent’s illustrations for Moby Dick are famous. B. Britten’s opera Billy Budd (1951) was based on Melville’s novel.

WORKS

The Works of Herman Melville, vols. 1-16. London, 1922-24.
Letters. Edited by M. R. Davis and W. H. Oilman. New Haven, 1960.
In Russian translation:
“Pisets Bartl’bi.”In the collection Amerikanskaia novella XIX v. , vol. 1. Moscow, 1958.
MobiDik, iliBelyikit. [With an introduction by A. I. Startsev.] Moscow, 1961.

REFERENCES

Istoriia amerikanskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947.
Kovalev, lu. V. German Melvill i amerikanskii romantizm. Leningrad, 1972.
Matthiessen, F. O. Otvetstvennost’ kritiki. Moscow, 1972.
Arvin, N. H. Melville. London, 1950.
Leyda, J. The Melville Log, vols. 1-2. New York, 1951.
Sedgwick, W. E. Herman Melville: The Tragedy of Mind. New York, 1962.
Bowen, M. The Long Encounter: Self and Experience in the Writings of Herman Melville. Chicago-London, 1963.
Dryden, E. A. Melville’s The ma tics of Form: The Great Art of Telling the Truth. Baltimore, 1968.

A. I. STARTSEV