Canto 29 :The Night Ride"
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herm melville
Oct 7, 2022, 10:59:48 PM10/7/22
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All,.
This Canto is rather straightforward in getting Clarel and others to Jerusalem. Melville mentions carnival on line 33. Was there any hint of carnival before this canto?
"Ah! God, keep from me
Cursed Manes and the Manichee!" ll. 103-4
Clarel wants no part of raw duality.
"Down in the wave, one mellow star;
Then, glancing up, beheld afar
Ensiled serene, the orb itself:---
Apt auspice here for journeying elf." ll. 123-26
That star should be Venus as the evening star by itself.
Scott Norsworthy
Oct 8, 2022, 10:18:09 AM10/8/22
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Cool how Melville plays the omniscient-narrator card to get us inside the heads of selected characters. First the guard and guide, Belex and Djalea, then our wandering hero Clarel.
Both Belex and Djalea dream of coins, with different pictures representing different values. Coins for Belex mean extra money in pocket; Djalea hopefully and perhaps more more nobly anticipates the sight of his beautiful lady, wearing gold coins in her curls:
"starry sequins woven fair
Into black tresses."
Though exiled, Djalea we learned somewhere is the son of an Emir. As depicted here, Djalea's ideal looks something like the lady of Emir Solyman as described in Godey's Lady's Book with her "hair elaborately braided and mixed with artificial locks of silk, thickly bespangled with small golden coins, hung down over the shoulders in innumerable tresses."
https://books.google.com/books?id=t2EkByC2G7IC&pg=RA1-PA285&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
.jpg?part=0.1&view=1)
With the end of the trip and payday so near, Belex in imagination could already hear the "chink" of his "guineas bright." Reading that I wondered if a better word would be "clink" but Melville knew his business, of course.
From Bartlett's 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms, volume 1 pages 73-4:
TO CHINK. To rattle, jingle; to cause to rattle or jingle.
Used especially of the noise of coin shaken in a purse or bag.
At length the busy time begins,
“ Come, neighbours, we must wag.”-
The money chinks, down drop the chins,
Each lugging out his bag.– Cowper, Yearly Distress.
He chinks his purse, and takes his seat of state ;
With ready quills the dedicators wait.—Pope, Dunciad.
CHINK. A term for money ; used in various parts of England, as well as in the United States.—Grose. Forby.
Both Belex and Djalea dream of coins, with different pictures representing different values. Coins for Belex mean extra money in pocket; Djalea hopefully and perhaps more more nobly anticipates the sight of his beautiful lady, wearing gold coins in her curls:
"starry sequins woven fair
Into black tresses."
Though exiled, Djalea we learned somewhere is the son of an Emir. As depicted here, Djalea's ideal looks something like the lady of Emir Solyman as described in Godey's Lady's Book with her "hair elaborately braided and mixed with artificial locks of silk, thickly bespangled with small golden coins, hung down over the shoulders in innumerable tresses."
https://books.google.com/books?id=t2EkByC2G7IC&pg=RA1-PA285&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
With the end of the trip and payday so near, Belex in imagination could already hear the "chink" of his "guineas bright." Reading that I wondered if a better word would be "clink" but Melville knew his business, of course.
From Bartlett's 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms, volume 1 pages 73-4:
TO CHINK. To rattle, jingle; to cause to rattle or jingle.
Used especially of the noise of coin shaken in a purse or bag.
At length the busy time begins,
“ Come, neighbours, we must wag.”-
The money chinks, down drop the chins,
Each lugging out his bag.– Cowper, Yearly Distress.
He chinks his purse, and takes his seat of state ;
With ready quills the dedicators wait.—Pope, Dunciad.
CHINK. A term for money ; used in various parts of England, as well as in the United States.—Grose. Forby.
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