Hermann Melville

Years of training

Hermann Melville is the third of eight children (and the second wire) of Maria Gansevoort and Allan Melvill (without “E”). Maternal side, its aïeux is patricians of Dutch origin (one of them, the general Peter Gansevoort, is a hero of the American revolution. Paternal side, it is a line of tradesmen Scot. The father of Allan, major Thomas Melvill, has him also played a glorious part during the war of independence. Allan Melvill imports France “innovations”. In 1826, the US economy enters during one time of stagnation, and the father of the writer undergoes full whip British competition. Its business périclitant, it must make increasingly important loans with his father-in-law, Peter Gansevoort, who becomes the financial support of the family. Between 1820 and 1830, the family moves three times, before settling in 1830 near Gansevoort, with Albany, capital of the State of New York, where Allan Melvill works as employed in a factory of furs.

During voyage with New York in December 1831, Allan Melvill, which tries to assemble a new business of which he would be the owner, contracts a pneumonia. He dies on January 28th, 1832. The two elder ones, Gansevoort (born in 1815) and Hermann leave the college of Albany then. The first, helped by the uncle Peter, opens a trade of skins and furs which will thrive during three years (at that time, he adds a “E” to his name, which all the family takes again). The second becomes at thirteen years employed in the New York State Bank, whose uncle Peter is one of the administrators.

Two years later, perhaps because of a weakness of the eyes, Hermann Melville leaves his work at the bank and share in another uncle, who has a farm with Pittsfield, in the Massachusetts. After a few months in the fields, it returns in Albany at the beginning of 1835 and is registered with the traditional college of the city. During these years, it makes its first outstanding readings: James Fenimore Cooper, Walter Scott, Byron, English poets of the XVIIIe century. After the courses, it keeps the accounts of the trade of his Gansevoort brother.

In April 1837, a movement of panic financial drives back Gansevoort with the bankruptcy. Melville are installed with Lansingburgh, a small town on the edges of the Hudson. Hermann teaches some time as teacher in a school of countryside close to Pittsfield. Then, of return to Lasingburgh, it follows courses of land surveying to the college.

In 1839, Melville engages like foams on board a trading vessel for Liverpool, the St Lawrence . This first cruising between New York and Liverpool (from June 5th to September 30th) will inspire ten years later to him a novel of training of the life of sea and hell of the industrial town in Redburn . On its return, it finds a new station of school with Greenbush, in 1840 (who will never be remunerated). Then it goes in the Illinois, perhaps where it traverses the Western border and descends the the Mississippi until Cairo. At the end of 1840, disappointed in its hopes in the west, Melville goes to Nantucket, American cradle of hunting for the whale, where it signs, on December 26th, its inscription on the role of the Acushnet , three-masted ship Baleinier of 358 tons (it receives an advance of 84 dollars on its wages) and embarks with New Bedford on December 31st. He traverses the Pacific thus, visiting the Galapagos Islands and the Marquises where he deserted.

Work

Moby-Dick tells the history of the Péquod , whaler whose captain names Achab. This strange sailor is obsessed by a large white whale: Moby Dick. The narrator is a team member named Ishmaël which lays out, just like Melville, of a literary field crop and frequently resorts to it to put in scene the members of the crew and their adventure. The crew of the Péquod allows Melville to multiply the portraits and of the extremely excavated and detailed psychological analyzes or social; the action proceeding on this only whaler, work often was qualified by criticisms of closed universe . Descriptions of hunting for the whale, the adventure itself and the reflections of the narrator are interlaced in a gigantic screen where mix with the references to the History, the Western literature, with mythology, philosophy and science. The prose of Melville is complex and overflows of imagination; he is regarded as one of the largest American designers - at the sides of William Faulkner, Henry James, or Thomas Pynchon.

Melville was dependant of friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, and was influenced in its writings; Moby-Dick is thus dedicated in Hawthorne. In the last years of its life, Melville was not capable any more food of its work of writer, his work not meeting the favor of the public. It was thus during a time with the dependant of his wife (Elisabeth Shaw), then became agent of the customs for the town of New York. Billy Budd , a short novel published after its death, because of its scandalous aspects, was adapted to opera by Benjamin Britten then with the cinema. Melville is also the author of accounts drawn from his experiment of sailor, Typee , Omoo and Tuesday , of novels, Redburn , White-Jacket ( the white Jacket ), Pierre or Ambiguities , The Confidence Man , as well as several news, published essentially in the years 1850 in two concurrent reviews, the Putnam' S Monthly Magazine (which publishes five news, of which: Bartleby , Benito Cereno and magic islands ) and the Harper' S New Monthly Magazine (which publishes seven of them). Bartleby the scrivener is certainly most famous: it is considered that it contains already features of the literature existentialist and literature of the absurdity. Rare case among the poets, it did not write any major lyric work before a advanced age. After the American Civil War, it published some parts on the war ( Battle Pieces ), which were sold well. But once again it took its distances compared to the tastes and to waitings of the contemporary readers in the showpiece of its poetic work, Clarel , which tells the epopee of the pilgrimage of a student in Holy Land and remained she also almost unknown of alive sound.

Film adaptation

Moby-Dick was the subject of several film adaptations, of which most famous is Moby Dick (1956) of John Huston. More recently, Capitaine Achab (2004) of Philippe Ramos delivered a freer and more personal adaptation of it.
Pierre or ambiguities was adapted to the cinema in 1999 by Léos Carax under the title of Pola X .

Works

Taïpi (1846)
Omoo (1847)
Tuesday (1849), translated into French by Charles Cestre and Armel Guerne, Robert Marine, 1950
Redburn or its first cruising (1849), translated into French by Armel Guerne, Robert Marine, 1950
White Jacket (or the white Jacket) (1850), translated into French by Charles Cestre and Armel Guerne, Robert Marine, 1950
Moby Dick or the white whale (1851), translated into French by Armel Guerne, Sagittarius, 1954, rééd. Phébus, 2004
Pierre or ambiguities (1852)
the Happy Bankruptcy (1854), translated by Armel Guerne, Falaize, 1951 (cf Me and my chimney )
Jimmy Pink (1855), translated by Armel Guerne, Falaize, 1951 (cf Me and my chimney )
Israel Potter, or Fifty years of exile (1855)
Benito Cereno and other news (1855)
Tales of the veranda , including/understanding the Veranda , the Merchant of lightning conductors , Bartleby the scribe ( Bartleby - a History of Wall Street , transl. Jerome Vidal, illustrations Götting, annotated edition, Paris, Editions Amsterdam), Benito Cereno , magic islands (1856)
Me and my chimney (1856), translated by Armel Guerne, Falaize, 1951
the Large Swindler (1856)
Tables of battle and Aspects of the war (1866)
Clarel, Holy Land poem and pilgrimage (1876)
John Marr and other sailors , poem (1888)
Timoléon and other poems (1891)
the table of apple tree and other drafts (1922)
Billy Budd, gabier of foresail (1924) (Billy Budd, sailor, transl. Michel Leyris, Paris, Gallimard; and Billy Budd, sailor, transl. Jerome Vidal, Paris, Editions Amsterdam, edition annotated with postface of the translator)
insane Grasses and wild stocks, with a pink or two (last collection of poetry (posthumous), translated partially by Pierre Leyris in " Divers" poems; like in the review the Night, n°1, Arles, 2006)

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