Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II

by Herman Melville

  MEDIA (_to Abrazza_)--Be not impatient, my lord; he'll recoverpresently. You were talking of Lombardo, Babbalanja.

  BABBALANJA--I was, your Highness. Of all Mardians, by nature, he wasthe most inert. Hast ever seen a yellow lion, all day basking in theyellow sun:--in reveries, rending droves of elephants; but his vastloins supine, and eyelids winking? Such, Lombardo; but fierce Want,the hunter, came and roused his roar. In hairy billows, his great manetossed like the sea; his eyeballs flamed two hells; his paw hadstopped a rolling world.

  ABRAZZA--In other words, yams were indispensable, and, poor devil, heroared to get them.

  BABBALANJA (_bowing_)--Partly so, my literal lord. And as with yourown golden scepter, at times upon your royal teeth, indolent tattoosyou beat; then, potent, sway it o'er your isle; so, Lombardo. And ereNecessity plunged spur and rowel into him, he knew not his own paces._That_ churned him into consciousness; and brought ambition, ere thendormant, seething to the top, till he trembled at himself. No mailedhand lifted up against a traveler in woods, can so, appall, as weourselves. We are full of ghosts and spirits; we are as grave-yardsfull of buried dead, that start to life before us. And all our deadsires, verily, are in us; _that_ is their immortality. From sire toson, we go on multiplying corpses in ourselves; for all of which, areresurrections. Every thought's a soul of some past poet, hero, sage.We are fuller than a city. Woe it is, that reveals these things. Heknows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity. To scalegreat heights, we must come out of lowermost depths. The way to heavenis through hell. We need fiery baptisms in the fiercest flames of ourown bosoms. We must feel our hearts hot--hissing in us. And eretheir fire is revealed, it must burn its way out of us; though itconsume us and itself. Oh, sleek-cheeked Plenty! smiling at thine owndimples;--vain for thee to reach out after greatness. Turn! turn! fromall your tiers of cushions of eider-down--turn! and be broken on thewheels of many woes. At white-heat, brand thyself; and count thescars, like old war-worn veterans, over camp-fires. Soft poet!brushing tears from lilies--this way! and howl in sackcloth and inashes! Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of afurrowed brow. Oh! there is a fierce, a cannibal delight, in the griefthat shrieks to multiply itself. That grief is miserly of its own; itpities all the happy. Some damned spirits would not be otherwise,could they.

  ABRAZZA (_to Media_)--Pray, my lord, is this good gentleman a devil?

  MEDIA.--No, my lord; but he's possessed by one. His name is Azzageddi.You may hear more of him. But come, Babbalanja, hast forgotten allabout Lombardo? How set he about that great undertaking, his Kortanza?

  ABRAZZA (_to Media_)--Oh, for all the ravings of your Babbalanja,Lombardo took no special pains; hence, deserves small commendation.For, genius must be somewhat like us kings,--calm, content, inconsciousness of power. And to Lombardo, the scheme of his Kortanzamust have come full-fledged, like an eagle from the sun.

  BABBALANJA--No, your Highness; but like eagles, his thoughts werefirst callow; yet, born plumeless, they came to soar.

  ABRAZZA--Very fine. I presume, Babbalanja, the first thing he did,was to fast, and invoke the muses.

  BABBALANJA--Pardon, my lord; on the contrary he first procured a reamof vellum, and some sturdy quills: indispensable preliminaries, myworshipful lords, to the writing of the sublimest epics.

  ABRAZZA--Ah! then the muses were afterward invoked.

  BABBALANJA--Pardon again. Lombardo next sat down to a fine plantainpudding.

  YOOMY--When the song-spell steals over me, I live upon olives.

  BABBALANJA--Yoomy, Lombardo eschewed olives. Said he, "What fastingsoldier can fight? and the fight of all fights is to write." In tendays Lombardo had written--

  ABRAZZA--Dashed off, you mean.

  BABBALANJA--He never dashed off aught.

  ABRAZZA--As you will.

  BABBALANJA--In ten days, Lombardo had written full fifty folios; heloved huge acres of vellum whereon to expatiate.

  MEDIA--What then?

  BABBALANJA--He read them over attentively; made a neat package of thewhole: and put it into the fire.

  ALL--How?

  MEDIA--What! these great geniuses writing trash?

  ABRAZZA--I thought as much.

  BABBALANJA--My lords, they abound in it! more than any other men inMardi. Genius is full of trash. But genius essays its best to keep itto itself; and giving away its ore, retains the earth; whence, the toofrequent wisdom of its works, and folly of its life.

  ABRAZZA--Then genius is not inspired, after all. How they must slavein their mines! I weep to think of it.

  BABBALANJA--My lord, all men are inspired; fools are inspired; yourhighness is inspired; for the essence of all ideas is infused. Ofourselves, and in ourselves, we originate nothing. When Lombardo setabout his work, he knew not what it would become. He did not buildhimself in with plans; he wrote right on; and so doing, got deeper anddeeper into himself; and like a resolute traveler, plunging throughbaffling woods, at last was rewarded for his toils. "In good time,"saith he, in his autobiography, "I came out into a serene, sunny,ravishing region; full of sweet scents, singing birds, wildplaints, roguish laughs, prophetic voices. "Here we are at last,then," he cried; "I have created the creative." And now the wholeboundless landscape stretched away. Lombardo panted; the sweat was onhis brow; he off mantle; braced himself; sat within view of the ocean;his face to a cool rushing breeze; placed flowers before him; and gavehimself plenty of room. On one side was his ream of vellum--

  ABBRAZZA--And on the other, a brimmed beaker.

  BABBALANJA--No, your Highness; though he loved it, no wine forLombardo while actually at work.

  MOHI--Indeed? Why, I ever thought that it was to the superior qualityof Lombardo's punches, that Mardi was indebted for that aboundinghumor of his.

  BABBALANJA--Not so; he had another way of keeping himself wellbraced.

  YOOMY--Quick! tell us the secret.

  BABBALANJA--He never wrote by rush-light. His lamp swung in heaven.--He rose from his East, with the sun; he wrote when all nature wasalive.

  MOHI--Doubtless, then, he always wrote with a grin; and none laughedlouder at his quips, than Lombardo himself.

  BABBALANJA--Hear you laughter at the birth of a man child, old man?The babe may have many dimples; not so, the parent. Lombardo was ahermit to behold.

  MEDIA--What! did Lombardo laugh with a long face?

  BABBALANJA--His merriment was not always merriment to him, yourHighness. For the most part, his meaning kept him serious. Then he wasso intensely riveted to his work, he could not pause to laugh.

  MOHI--My word for it; but he had a sly one, now and then.

  BABBALANJA--For the nonce, he was not his own master: a mereamanuensis writing by dictation.

  YOOMY--Inspiration, that!

  BABBALANJA.--Call it as you will, Yoomy, it was a sort of sleep-walking of the mind. Lombardo never threw down his pen: it droppedfrom him; and then, he sat disenchanted: rubbing his eyes; staring;and feeling faint--sometimes, almost unto death.

  MEDIA--But pray, Babbalanja, tell us how he made acquaintance withsome of those rare worthies, he introduces us to, in his Koztanza.

  BABBALANJA--He first met them in his reveries; they were walkingabout in him, sour and moody: and for a long time, were shy of hisadvances; but still importuned, they at last grew ashamed of theirreserve; stepped forward; and gave him their hands. After that, theywere frank and friendly. Lombardo set places for them at his board;when he died, he left them something in his will.

  MEDIA--What! those imaginary beings?

  ABRAZZA--Wondrous witty! infernal fine!

  MEDIA--But, Babbalanja; after all, the Koztanza found no favor in theeyes of some Mardians.

  ABRAZZA--Ay: the arch-critics Verbi and Batho denounced it.

  BABBALANJA--Yes: on good authority, Verbi is said to have detected asuperfluous comma; and Batho declared that, with the materials hecould have constructed a far better world than Lombardo's. But, didstever hear of his laying his axis?
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  ABRAZZA--But the unities; Babbalanja, the unities! they are whollywanting in the Koztanza.

  BABBALANJA--Your Highness; upon that point, Lombardo was frank. Saithhe, in his autobiography: "For some time, I endeavored to keep in thegood graces of those nymphs; but I found them so captious, andexacting; they threw me into such a violent passion with their fault-findings; that, at last, I renounced them."

  ABRAZZA--Very rash!

  BABBALANJA--No, your Highness; for though Lombardo abandonedall monitors from without; he retained one autocrat within--hiscrowned and sceptered instinct. And what, if he pulled down one grossworld, and ransacked the etherial spheres, to build up something ofhis own--a composite:--what then? matter and mind, though matchingnot, are mates; and sundered oft, in his Koztanza they unite:--theairy waist, embraced by stalwart arms.

  MEDIA--Incoherent again! I thought we were to have no more of this!

  BABBALANJA--My lord Media, there are things infinite in the finite;and dualities in unities. Our eyes are pleased with the redness of therose, but another sense lives upon its fragrance. Its redness you mustapproach, to view: its invisible fragrance pervades the field. So,with the Koztanza. Its mere beauty is restricted to its form: itsexpanding soul, past Mardi does embalm. Modak is Modako; but fogle-foggle is not fugle-fi.

  MEDIA (_to Abrazza_)--My lord, you start again; but 'tis only anotherphase of Azzageeddi; sometimes he's quite mad. But all this you mustneeds overlook.

  ABRAZZA--I will, my dear prince; what one can not see through, onemust needs look over, as you say.

  YOOMY--But trust me, your Highness, some of those strange things fallfar too melodiously upon the ear, to be wholly deficient in meaning.

  ABRAZZA--Your gentle minstrel, _this_ must be, my lord. ButBabbalanja, the Koztanza lacks cohesion; it is wild, unconnected, allepisode.

  BABBALANJA--And so is Mardi itself:--nothing but episodes; valleysand hills; rivers, digressing from plains; vines, roving all over;boulders and diamonds; flowers and thistles; forests and thickets;and, here and there, fens and moors. And so, the world in theKoztanza.

  ABRAZZA--Ay, plenty of dead-desert chapters there; horrible sands towade through.

  MEDIA--Now, Babbalanja, away with your tropes; and tell us ofthe work, directly it was done. What did Lombardo then? Did he show itto any one for an opinion?

  BABBALANJA--Yes, to Zenzori; who asked him where he picked up so muchtrash; to Hanto, who bade him not be cast down, it was pretty good; toLucree, who desired to know how much he was going to get for it; toRoddi, who offered a suggestion.

  MEDIA--And what was that?

  BABBALANJA--That he had best make a faggot of the whole; and tryagain.

  ABRAZZA--Very encouraging.

  MEDIA--Any one else?

  BABBALANJA--To Pollo; who, conscious his opinion was sought, wasthereby puffed up; and marking the faltering of Lombardo's voice, whenthe manuscript was handed him, straightway concluded, that the man whostood thus trembling at the bar, must needs be inferior to the judge.But his verdict was mild. After sitting up all night over the work;and diligently taking notes:--"Lombardo, my friend! here, take yoursheets. I have run through them loosely. You might have done better;but then you might have done worse. Take them, my friend; I have putin some good things for you:"

  MEDIA--And who was Pollo?

  BABBALANJA--Probably some one who lived in Lombardo's time, and wentby that name. He is incidentally mentioned, and cursorily immortalizedin one of the posthumous notes to the Koztanza.

  MEDIA--What is said of him there?

  BABBALANJA--Not much. In a very old transcript of the work--that ofAldina--the note alludes to a brave line in the text, and runs thus:--"Diverting to tell, it was this passage that an old prosodist, onePollo, claimed for his own. He maintained he made a free-will offeringof it to Lombardo. Several things are yet extant of this Pollo, whodied some weeks ago. He seems to have been one of those, whowould do great things if they could; but are content to compass thesmall. He imagined, that the precedence of authors he had establishedin his library, was their Mardi order of merit. He condemned thesublime poems of Vavona to his lowermost shelf. 'Ah,' thought he, 'howwe library princes, lord it over these beggarly authors!' Well read inthe history of their woes, Pollo pitied them all, particularly thefamous; and wrote little essays of his own, which he read to himself."

  MEDIA--Well: and what said Lombardo to those good friends of his,--Zenzori, Hanto, and Roddi?

  BABBALANJA--Nothing. Taking home his manuscript, he glanced it over;making three corrections.

  ABRAZZA--And what then?

  BABBALANJA--Then, your Highness, he thought to try a conclave ofprofessional critics; saying to himself, "Let them privately point outto me, now, all my blemishes; so that, what time they come to reviewme in public, all will be well." But curious to relate, thoseprofessional critics, for the most part, held their peace, concerninga work yet unpublished. And, with some generous exceptions, in theirvague, learned way, betrayed such base, beggarly notions ofauthorship, that Lombardo could have wept, had tears been his. But inhis very grief, he ground his teeth. Muttered he, "They are fools. Intheir eyes, bindings not brains make books. They criticise my tatteredcloak, not my soul, caparisoned like a charger. He is the greatauthor, think they, who drives the best bargain with his wares: and nobargainer am I. Because he is old, they worship some mediocrity of anancient, and mock at the living prophet with the live coal on hislips. They are men who would not be men, had they no books. Theirsires begat them not; but the authors they have read. Feelings theyhave none: and their very opinions they borrow. They can not say yea,nor nay, without first consulting all Mardi as an Encyclopedia. Andall the learning in them, is as a dead corpse in a coffin. Werethey worthy the dignity of being damned, I would damn them; but theyare not. Critics?--Asses! rather mules!--so emasculated, from vanity,they can not father a true thought. Like mules, too, from dunghills,they trample down gardens of roses: and deem that crushed fragrancetheir own.--Oh! that all round the domains of genius should lie thusunhedged, for such cattle to uproot! Oh! that an eagle should bestabbed by a goose-quill! But at best, the greatest reviewers but preyon my leavings. For I am critic and creator; and as critic, in crueltysurpass all critics merely, as a tiger, jackals. For ere Mardi seesaught of mine, I scrutinize it myself, remorseless as a surgeon. I cutright and left; I probe, tear, and wrench; kill, burn, and destroy;and what's left after that, the jackals are welcome to. It is I thatstab false thoughts, ere hatched; I that pull down wall and tower,rejecting materials which would make palaces for others. Oh! couldMardi but see how we work, it would marvel more at our primal chaos,than at the round world thence emerging. It would marvel at ourscaffoldings, scaling heaven; marvel at the hills of earth, banked allround our fabrics ere completed.--How plain the pyramid! In this grandsilence, so intense, pierced by that pointed mass,--could ten thousandslaves have ever toiled? ten thousand hammers rung?--There it stands,--part of Mardi: claiming kin with mountains;--was this thing piecemealbuilt?--It was. Piecemeal?--atom by atom it was laid. The world ismade of mites."

  YOOMY (_musing._)--It is even so.

  ABRAZZA--Lombardo was severe upon the critics; and they as much soupon him;--of that, be sure.

  BABBALANGA--Your Highness, Lombardo never presumed to criticise truecritics; who are more rare than true poets. A great critic is a sultanamong satraps; but pretenders are thick as ants, striving to scale apalm, after its aerial sweetness. And they fight among themselves.Essaying to pluck eagles, they themselves are geese, stuck fullof quills, of which they rob each other.

  ABRAZZA (_to Media._)--Oro help the victim that falls in Babbalanja'shands!

  MEDIA.--Ay, my lord; at times, his every finger is a dagger: everythought a falling tower that whelms! But resume, philosopher--what ofLombardo now?

  BABBALANJA--"For this thing," said he, "I have agonized over itenough.--I can wait no more. It has faults--all mine;--its merits allits own;--but I can toil no longer. The beings knit to me i
mplore; myheart is full; my brain is sick. Let it go--let it go--and Oro withit. Somewhere Mardi has a mighty heart---_that_ struck, all the islesshall resound!"

  ABRAZZA--Poor devil! he took the world too hard.

  MEDIA.-As most of these mortals do, my lord. That's the load, self-imposed, under which Babbalanja reels. But now, philosopher, ere Mardisaw it, what thought Lombardo of his work, looking at it objectively,as a thing out of him, I mean.

  ABRAZZA--No doubt, he hugged it.

  BABBALANJA--Hard to answer. Sometimes, when by himself, he thoughthugely of it, as my lord Abrazza says; but when abroad, among men, healmost despised it; but when he bethought him of those parts, writtenwith full eyes, half blinded; temples throbbing; and pain at theheart--

  ABRAZZA--Pooh! pooh!

  BABBALANJA--He would say to himself, "Sure, it can not be in vain!"Yet again, when he bethought him of the hurry and bustle of Mardi,dejection stole over him. "Who will heed it," thought he; "what carethese fops and brawlers for me? But am I not myself an egregiouscoxcomb? Who will read me? Say one thousand pages--twenty-five lineseach--every line ten words--every word ten letters. That's two millionfive hundred thousand _a_'s, and _i_'s, and _o_'s to read! Howmany are superfluous? Am I not mad to saddle Mardi with such a task?Of all men, am I the wisest, to stand upon a pedestal, and teach themob? Ah, my own Kortanza! child of many prayers!--in whose earnesteyes, so fathomless, I see my own; and recall all past delights andsilent agonies-thou may'st prove, as the child of some fond dotard:--beauteous to me; hideous to Mardi! And methinks, that while so muchslaving merits that thou should'st not die; it has not been intense,prolonged enough, for the high meed of immortality. Yet, thingsimmortal have been written; and by men as me;--men, who slept andwaked; and ate; and talked with tongues like mine. Ah, Oro! how may weknow or not, we are what we would be? Hath genius any stamp andimprint, obvious to possessors? Has it eyes to see itself; or is itblind? Or do we delude ourselves with being gods, and end in grubs?Genius, genius?--a thousand years hence, to be a household-word?--I?--Lombardo? but yesterday cut in the market-place by a spangled fool!--Lombardo immortal?--Ha, ha, Lombardo! but thou art an ass, with vastears brushing the tops of palms! Ha, ha, ha! Methinks I see theeimmortal! 'Thus great Lombardo saith; and thus; and thus; and thus:--thus saith he--illustrious Lombardo!--Lombardo, our great countryman!Lombardo, prince of poets--Lombardo! great Lombardo!'--Ha, ha, ha!--go, go! dig thy grave, and bury thyself!"