Henry A. Murray on Melville’s 1852 Novel Pierre, or, The Ambiguities; and Walter J. Ong’s Thought

Thomas J. Farrell
Professor Emeritus in Writing Studies
University of Minnesota Duluth
Web: www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell
Email: tfarrell@d.umn.edu


In my recent OEN article “Laurie Robertson-Lorant on Melville” (dated August 22, 2021), I discussed her 700-page Melville: A Biography. I commended her discussion of Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre, or, The Ambiguities. But I highlighted her discussion of his 1876 18,000-line poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, about which I had written in two previous OEN articles Dated June 23, 2020, and July 8, 2020):
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Laurie-Robertson-Lorant-on-by-Thomas-Farrell-Biography_Poem_Poet_Reviews-210822-471.html
In Melville’s Clarel (1876), there is a minor character named Vine. Melville scholars tend to think that Vine is loosely based on the then-deceased American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), and in Melville’s Pierre (1852), there is a minor character who may be based, ambiguously, on Hawthorne, just as certain other characters are based, ambiguously, on Melville and members of his family.
Now, for a memorable short time, the younger aspiring writer Herman Melville (1819-1891) and the older established writer Hawthorne felt a certain intense affinity for one another in the early 1850s. However, after a short time of mutual intensity, their platonic relationship came to an end.
So what? What difference does it make that their intense platonic friendship was short-lived? As Robertson-Lorant and other Melville scholars have pointed out, the intense platonic relationship between Melville and Hawthorne emerged at about the time when Melville was writing his posthumously famous 1851 novel Moby-Dick.

(I.)

In the colorful figurative terminology that Robertson-Lorant uses, Melville’s life was, in effect, a Gordian knot for him. Through his writing, he explored the volcanic depths of his life. No doubt his 1851 novel Moby-Dick is an expression of the volcanic depths of his life. In effect, it is a volcanic eruption, figuratively speaking. And his then-emerging platonic friendship with the older established writer Hawthorne undoubtedly contributed to Melville’s exploration of the depths of his psyche in his 1851 novel Moby-Dick.
Now, without diminishing the creative wonder of Melville’s writing in his 1851 novel Moby-Dick, we are left with Melville’s post-1851 life and writings. Yes, as we will not below momentarily, his intense mutual platonic relationship with Hawthorne came to an end in Melville’s post-1851 life. However, Melville’s life did not come to an end until 1891. But his life continued to be the Gordian knot that Robertson-Lorant refers to. In addition, Melville continued to use his writing as a way to explore further the volcanic depths of his psyche, figuratively speaking.
Simply put, was Melville’s writing all downhill after the creative wonder of Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick? For the moment, let me characterize Moby-Dick as Nietzschean in spirit. But the German classicist and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a younger nineteenth-century contemporary of Melville’s. To spell out the obvious, young Nietzsche turned seven years old in 1851, the year in which the American novelist Melville published his Nietzschean novel Moby-Dick. So Melville explored the Nietzschean depths of his American psyche in Moby-Dick, but then Melville continued to explore the depths of his American psyche in his post-1851 writing. So can we perhaps designate Melville’s post-1851 writing as post-Nietzschean – that is, what you can explore in the depths of your psyche as a result of exploring the volcanic Nietzschean depths of your psyche in a volcanic eruption of creative writing in Moby-Dick?
Now, I recently published the OEN article “Macey Perceptively Aligns Foucault with Nietzsche” (dated August 14, 2021) about the late British biographer and translator David Macey’s 600-page The Lives of Michel Foucault:
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Macey-Perceptively-Aligns-by-Thomas-Farrell-Nietzsche_Reviews_Reviews_-Books_Reviews_-Computers-210814-341.html
Now, from what I have learned from Macey’s biography about the French twentieth-century Nietzschean philosopher Foucault (1926-1984), and from other Foucault biographies, I cannot say for sure that Foucault, overall in all of his Nietzschean writings, explored the depths of his French psyche as deeply as Melville explored his American psyche in his Nietzschean 1851 novel Moby-Dick and continued exploring his American psyche in his post-1851 writings. But I have no doubt that Foucault explored the depths of his modern French psyche.
For Foucault’s own discussion of Nietzsche, see the posthumously published book Lectures on the Will to Know: Lectures at the College de France 1970-1971 and “Oedipal Knowledge,” edited by Daniel Defert; translated by Graham Burchell (2013; see the “Index of Names” for specific page references to Nietzsche [page 293]).
Now, to avoid a certain possible misunderstanding about the following review essay, let me make it clear here that I do not expect that Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre will ever be as widely read as his 1851 Nietzschean novel Moby-Dick has been, because in his 1852 novel Melville explores far too many endogamous kinship libido relationships in his nineteenth-century American psyche, and uses far too idiosyncratic imagery, for most Melville scholars and/or most Melville readers to relate to – with the notable exception of the American Melville scholar and psychoanalyst Dr. Henry A. Murray, M.D. (1897-1967) of Harvard University, whose lengthy 1949 “Introduction” to Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre I will discuss at length below momentarily.

(II.)

But first I want to contextualize a bit my use of the Jungian terminology about endogamous kinship libido relationships. In Walter J. Ong’s 1971 350-page book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Cornell University Press), he succinctly summarizes the eight stages of consciousness that the Jungian author Erich Neumann delineates in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness:
“The stages of psychic development as treated by Neumann are successively (1) the infantile undifferentiated self-contained whole symbolized by the uroboros (tail-eater), the serpent with it tail in its mouth, as well as be other circular or global mythological figures [including Nietzsche’s imagery about the eternal return?], (2) the Great Mother (the impersonal womb from which each human infant, male or female, comes, the impersonal femininity which may swallow him [or her] up again), (3) the separation of the world parents (the principle of opposites, differentiation, possibility of change, (4) the birth of the hero (rise of masculinity and of the personalized ego) with its sequels in (5) the slaying of the mother (fight with the dragon: victory over primal creative but consuming femininity, chthonic forces), and (6) the slaying of the father (symbol of thwarting obstruction of individual achievement, [thwarting] what is new), (7) the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous [i.e., “married” within one’s psyche] kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness), and finally (8) the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering new phases with heightened individualism [such as Nietzsche’s overman] – or, more properly, personalism – of modern man [sic])” (pages 10-11).
Ong also sums up Neumann’s Jungian account of the stages of consciousness in his (Ong’s) book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press, 1981, pages 18-19; but also see the “Index” for further references to Neumann [page 228]), the published version of Ong’s 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University.
In it, Ong highlights what he refers to as male agonism. No doubt the spirit of male agonism was alive and well in Melville, especially in his relationship with Hawthorne. But the spirit of male agonism in Melville is also manifested in his use of the conventions of other nineteenth-century fiction in his 1852 novel Pierre. In Dr. Murray’s lengthy 1949 “Introduction” to Pierre, he points out various works of nineteenth-century fiction that Melville may be drawing on.
For further discussion of male agonism, see my essay “Faulkner and Male Agonism” in the 1998 book Time, Memory, and the Verbal Arts: Essays on the Thought of Walter Ong, edited by Dennis L. Weeks and Jane Hoogestraat (Susquehanna University Press, pages 203-221).
Now, if we were to align Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre with the exploration of endogamous kinship libido in stage seven of the eight Jungian stages of consciousness delineated by Neumann, as I have already suggested, then we might wonder if Melville’s later explorations of his American psyche led him to the transformative heightened personalism (in Ong’s terminology) of stage eight of the Jungian stages of consciousness – for example, in his long 1876 poem Clarel. In short, can Melville’s Clarel (1876) be considered as one exemplar of the emergence of the transformative heightened personalism that Ong refers to?
Now, even though Ong says that we in Western culture are “today entering new phases [of consciousness] with heightened individualism – or, more properly, personalism,” he does not mean that the “new phases” of consciousness emerging in Western culture today represent a mass movement toward personalism, as he styles it – not even when these new phases are bundled together collectively should they be referred to as a mass movement, because they are not tantamount to a mass movement.
Nor does Ong mean to imply that a mass of men and women in Western culture today have already emerged from successfully negotiating the liberation of endogamous kinship libido in the Jungian stage seven of consciousness delineated by Neumann. Which is why my discussion of Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre is important.
But there is no straightforward formula that persons can follow in order to liberate the endogamous kinship libido in their psyches. In this respect, Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre cannot serve as a blueprint for other persons to follow in exploring their own psyches, except in the broad sense that they also have endogamous kinship libido in their own psyches – because it is impossible to grow up without forming certain kinds of endogamous kinship libido with certain persons in your life. 
Now, Melville and Hawthorne were adults when they for their mutually intense but short-lived relationship. The attachment bond that they formed during their mutually intense relationship ended when their short-lived relationship came to an end.
For a discussion of adult attachment relationships that come to an end, see Susan Anderson’s handy self-help book The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, 2nd revised and updated edition (2014).
For further discussion of Neumann’s Jungian account of the eight stages of consciousness, see my essay “Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today” in the book Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong’s Thought, edited by Bruce E. Gronbeck, Thomas J. Farrell, and Paul A. Soukup (1991, pages 194-209).
But also see my online 2015 essay “Understanding Jung’s Thought” that is available through the University of Minnesota’s digital conservancy:
http://hdl.handle.net/11299/187433
Arguably the most extraordinary essay in the Jungian spirit about Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre is E. L. Grant Watson’s “Melville’s Pierre” in the New England Quarterly, volume 3 (April 1930): pages 195-234.




(III.)

Now, the intense platonic friendship of Melville and Hawthorne is well known among Melville scholars and Hawthorne scholars.
For example, in the second edition of the Norton Critical Edition of Hawthorne’s 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism, edited by Richard H. Millington (2010), Millington reprints Melville’s letter dated July 17, 1872, to Hawthorne about The Blithedale Romance. In part, Melville says, “As I am only just home, I have not yet got far into the book but enough to see that you have most admirably employed materials which are richer than I had fancied them. Especially at this day, the volume is welcome, as an antidote to the mooniness [sic] of some dreamers – who are merely dreamers – Yet who the devil aint [sic] a dreamer?” (pages 255-256).
As an idealistic, but not yet married, young man, Hawthorne had participated in the utopian experiment of agrarian group living at Brook Farm from April to late October, 1841 – the model for the utopian community in The Blithedale Romance. Years later, he met Melville on August 5, 1850, the year in which Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter. But Melville had started Moby-Dick in February 1850.
After Melville met Hawthorne, Melville read Hawthorne’s 1846 collection of stories Mosses from an Old Manse and then anonymously published an appreciative essay about it: “Hawthorne and His Mosses: By a Virginian Spending July in Vermont,” in two installments in the Literary World (August 17 and 24, 1850), which Millington describes as “a manifesto for a distinctive American literature” (page 410).
When Moby-Dick was published in the United States late in 1851, it carried a generous dedication to Hawthorne. Hawthorne read the novel and wrote Melville a deeply appreciative letter about it, which is now lost. But we do have Melville’s reply letter (dated November 17, 1851). But recall that Hawthorne published The Blithedale Romance in 1852.

(IV.)

Now, in the third edition of the Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick; An Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism, edited by the indefatigable Hershel Parker (2018), Parker has included the most relevant materials related to the Melville-Hawthorne relationship. He includes Hawthorne’s 1846 review of Melville’s 1846 book Typee (pages 464-465), Melville’s anonymously published essay “Hawthorne and His Mosses” (pages 544-558), mentioned above, five letters Melville wrote to Hawthorne between mid-April 1851 and late November 1851, mentioned above (pages 564-570 and 571-575), and Parker’s own fine essay about Melville’s money problems: “Damned by Dollars: Moby-Dick and the Price of Genius” (pages 617-631).
Now, in the 1971 authoritative edition of Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre, or, The Ambiguities, edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (Northwestern University Press), Leon Howard and Hershel Parker supplied the “Historical Note” (pages 365-379 and 379-410, respectively). Both Howard (page 369) and Parker (pages 400, 404, 405, 406, and 407) discuss Dr. Murray’s lengthy 1949 “Introduction” to Melville’s 1852 novel.
In Howard’s contribution to the “Historical Note,” he says, “There can be little doubt, from what Melville said of his new book [Pierre], that he conceived of it in terms of a novel or romance of the type currently popular; and Henry A. Murray, in his [1949] edition of Pierre, has noted numerous verbal echoes or incidental parallels [in the spirit of male agonism described by Ong] between it and various English novels by Borrow, Carlyle, Dickens, Disraeli, Godwin, Scott, Mary Shelley, and Thackeray, and American works of fiction by Cooper, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Poe” (page 369).
In Parker’s contributions to the “Historical Note,” he says, “One of Murray’s major contributions [in his lengthy 1949 “Introduction”] was as a literary scholar rather than eminent psychiatrist: his knowledgeable examination of predecessors of Pierre among British novels” (page 400, note 15). In addition, Parker says, “The fullest treatment of literary influences on Pierre is in Dr. Murray’s [lengthy 1949] introduction” (page 404, note 18).
In Parker’s footnote 15, on page 400, he says that Dr. Murray “actually created some new controversies by making debatable identifications between characters in the book and real people, particularly between [Plotinus] Plinlimmon and Hawthorne.” For the record, Dr. Murray puts the Plinlimmon and Hawthorne identification in his classification of “Somewhat less convincing” correspondences (page xxii). In any event, Parker says nothing further about any other “new controversies” allegedly stirred up by Dr. Murray.
In addition, Parker edited and wrote the “Introduction” to Pierre, or, The Ambiguities: The Kraken Edition (1995). The so-called Kraken Edition of Pierre is a short, coherent version of Melville’s 1852 novel. As Parker explains in the “Introduction” (pages xi-xlvi), he reconstructed, to the best of his ability, the version of the complete novel that Melville had submitted to the published. Subsequently, Melville added a lot of material about Pierre as an author. However, Parker’s reconstructed Kraken Edition contains the parts of the novel that are most salient in considering the liberation of endogamous kinship libido in Melville’s psyche.
In Parker’s lengthy “Introduction” to the 1995 Kraken Edition of Pierre, he singles out E. L. Grant Watson’s extraordinary 1930 essay “Melville’s Pierre” in the New England Quarterly, mentioned above. Parker says that the Englishman “E. L. Grant Watson, in 1930 published the first detailed reading of Pierre. He acknowledged that Melville had risked alienating the reader [just as Melville had done, but in other ways, in writing Mardi (1849) and Moby-Dick (1851)]: ‘There is a viscous and somewhat cloying quality about the style, which like the substance of the unconscious worlds, with which it deals, is at first repellant.’ But repugnance turned to fascination, and Watson concluded with extravagant claims: ‘Pierre . . . was the center of Melville’s being, and the height of his achievements, and although his literary style and his artistic sense are seen to better advantage in Piazza Tales, Pierre, like a mountain, towers above the rest. It is a mountain that will need many explorers; and like Hamlet, Lear, and life itself, will remain largely unexplored. Psychoanalysts of future generations will no doubt make high picnic there [as Dr. Murray does in his lengthy 1949 “Introduction” to Pierre]” (pages xlv-xlvi; the ellipsis in in Parker’s text; however, I have dispensed here with the italicization in Parker’s text of the entire quotation from Watson).
Speaking in his own voice, Parker says that “the short [Kraken Edition] version of Pierre [is] surely the finest psychological novel anyone had yet [by 1852] written in English” (page xii).
Now, in effect, Watson is crediting Melville with experiencing what Jung and his followers refer to as active imagination in the process of writing Pierre. For Jung’s own record of his experiences with active imagination, see his posthumously published 370-page illustrated oversized book The Red Book: Liber Novus, edited and translated by Sonu Shamdasani, with assistance on translation by Mark Kyburz and John Peck, and with a preface by Ulrich Hoerni (2009).
Now, Parker is the author of the two-volume 2,000-page Herman Melville: A Biography (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 and 2002). In the first volume, Parker discusses the composition and publication of Moby-Dick (pages 688-883). In the second volume, he discusses its reception (pages 1-52 and 90-110). But in the second volume, Parker also discusses the composition and publication of Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre (pages 53-89) and of his long 1876 centennial poem Clarel (pages 690-814) – both of which feature a semi-autobiographical character based on earlier versions of Melville. However, Clarel (1876) also features a character loosely based on the then-deceased Hawthorne.
Parker is also the author of the book Melville: The Making of the Poet (Northwestern University Press, 2008). Yes, Melville wrote enough poetry to warrant such a book about him. In short, he was both a novelist and a poet.

(V.)

Now, people who are interested in psychological insight into Melville and his works should check out Dr. Edward F. Edinger’s Jungian commentary Melville’s Moby-Dick: An American Nekyia, 2nd ed. (1995) and Dr. Henry A. Murray’s lengthy, occasionally Jungian, “Introduction” to the 1949 Hendricks House edition of Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre (pages xiii-ciii).
In it, Dr. Murray says, “Melville’s position in Mardi [1849] might be defined in these words: ‘If I fail to reach my golden haven, may my annihilation be complete!’; in Moby-Dick [1851]: ‘I see that I am to be annihilated, but against this verdict I shall hurl an everlasting protest!’; in Pierre [1852]: ‘I must make up my mind if possible, to the inevitability of my annihilation’; in 1856, at Liverpool, with Hawthorne: ‘I have pretty much made up my mind to be annihilated’; and in 1891, in Billy Budd [posthumously published in 1924]: ‘I accept my annihilation’” (pages xiv-xv). (I will further discuss Dr. Murray’s lengthy 1949 “Introduction” to Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre below.)
Dr. Murray’s various quotations from Melville about his annihilation express his abiding quarrel with American Protestantism.
For a perceptive discussion of the American Protestant tradition of thought out of which both Melville and Hawthorne emerged, see that American Jesuit philosopher and theologian Donald L. Gelpi’s book Varieties of Transcendental Experience: A Study in Constructive Postmodernism (2000). In it, Gelpi highlights what he refers to as the American Protestant tradition of the dialectical imagination (pages 82, 132, 164, 172, 174, 192, 193, 206, 223, 224, 280(?), 281, and 282).
Unfortunately, Gelpi fails to note that what he refers to as the American Protestant tradition of the dialectical imagination goes back to the Ramist tradition of logic that Perry Miller describes in his massively researched book The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1939).
For further discussion of Ramist logic, see Ong’s massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press, 1958).
For Dr. Murray’s Freudian commentary on Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick, see his essay written on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the novel’s publication, “In Nomine Diaboli” in the New England Quarterly, volume 24, number 4 (December 1951): pages 435-452.
For a biography of Dr. Murray in which his extensive work on Melville is discussed extensively, see Forrest G. Robinson’s book Love’s Story Told: A Life of Henry A. Murray (Harvard University Press, 1992; see the “Index” for specific page references to Melville [page 455]).

(VI.)

Now, in my estimate, the far more important point that Dr. Murray makes repeatedly is that Melville resembles Hollingsworth in Hawthorne’s then-new 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance (pages lxxvi, lxxvii, lxxviii-lxxix, lxxxiii-lxxxiv, and lxxxviii) – an important theme in Dr. Murray’s lengthy essay that Parker does not even mention.
Let’s look at each of Dr. Murray’s five comments in turn about Hollingsworth and Melville.
(1) On page lxxvi, Dr. Murray says that “Hawthorne emphasizes [certain points that are also applicable to Melville] in his analysis of Hollingsworth, the inflexible enthusiast in The Blithedale Romance [1852]” – namely, “the injuries he does to others, the self-deceptions which blind him to essential truths, the hidden egotism which cancerously invades his heart, the progressive estrangement which brings him to misanthropy.” But those are characteristics that Melville gives the Melville-character Pierre in his 1852 novel Pierre.
(2) On page lxxvii, Dr. Murray says that “the moral of Blithedale Romance insofar as it concerns Hollingsworth” is stated in this fashion by Hawthorne: “‘I see in Hollingsworth [Melville?] an exemplification of the most awful truth in Bunyan’s book of such – from the very gate of heaven there is a by-way to the pit.’” But is Hawthorne here referring in a veiled way to Melville circa 1850-1852? If he is, then Melville himself portrays Pierre in much the same way in his own 1852 novel. 
(3) On pages lxxviii-lxxix, Dr. Murray says, “Hawthorne said openly that ‘after Hollingsworth [Melville?] failed me, there was no longer man alive with whom I could think of sharing all.’” But does Hawthorne’s comment about Hollingsworth apply to his relationship with Melville circa 1850-1852? For example, was Melville for a time a man with whom Hawthorne could share all? Or is Hawthorne here exaggerating about Hollingsworth to make a point?
(4) On page lxxxiii-lxxxiv, Dr. Murray says, “In The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne concedes that Hollingsworth [Melville?] had a ‘noble nature’ with a ‘great spirit of benevolence,’ but, unhappily, ‘he had taught his benevolence to pour its warm tide exclusively through one channel; so that there was nothing to spare for other great manifestations of love to man, nor scarcely for the nutriment of individual attachments, unless they would minister, in some way, to the terrible egotism which he mistook for an angel of God.’” But is Hawthorne here also characterizing Melville circa 1850-1852?
(5) On page lxxxvii, Dr. Murray says, “Hawthorne portrays Hollingsworth’s last condition in these words: ‘the powerfully built man showed a self-distrustful weakness, and childlike or childish tendency to press close, and closer still, to the side of the slender woman whose arm was within his.’” But is Hawthorne here describing Melville circa 1850-1852?
Now, regardless of how we adjudicate the possible connection of Plinlimmon with Hawthorne, the connection of Vine in Melville’s 1876 centennial poem Clarel with the then-deceased Hawthorne is widely attested by Melville scholars, including Dr. Murray (page lxxviii).
In conclusion, it seems to me that Hawthorne and Melville felt close to one another for a short time in the early 1850s. But then something happened that ended their sense of affinity with one another. Perhaps Hawthorne’s critique of Hollingsworth in his 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance was, in effect, also his critique of Melville. But Melville’s portrayal of the Melville character Pierre in his 1852 novel Pierre appears to make the character Pierre open to Hawthorne’s critique of the character Hollingsworth in his 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance.
However, if Melville’s portrayal of Plotinus Plinlimmon in his 1852 novel Pierre is his counter-critique of Hawthorne, as Dr. Murray has tentatively suggested in his 1949 “Introduction” to Pierre, then that portrayal of Plinlimmon may account for why the two men were never able to restore their previous relationship with one another. In any event, Melville’s portrayal of Vine in his long 1876 poem Clarel does not strike me as a sharp critique of his former friend Hawthorne – or at least not as sharp as the possible critique implied in his portrayal of Plinlimmon in his 1852 novel Pierre.



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