"Night Ride" Rama

[herm melville]

All,

   This is going to be a rough week. Cleveland plays New York on Tuesday for the first of five games. Cleveland has a magical Cinderella team. It works as a unit. It is the youngest team in major league baseball. I suspect New York will be too much, but.....

        "Far, un upland spot

A light is seen in Rama paling;

But Clarel sped, and heeded not,

At least recalled not Rachel wailing."   ll. 113-116

 

I do not understand this stanza.  That's all for now.  John G

[Scott Norsworthy]

John, thank you for calling attention to these beautiful lines. So touching and terrible in the reminder of Rachel's inconsolable grief, with strong biblical echoes that Clarel really should have remembered:

"In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
"https://biblehub.com/matthew/2-18.htm (recalling Jeremiah 31:15,  https://biblehub.com/jeremiah/31-15.htm)

In Moby-Dick Melville poignantly memorialized the crying that Clarel forgot.  Parallels to scripture in Melville's verse are especially strong in

A light is seen in Rama paling

which echoes

A voice was heard in Rama / weeping (evoked again in Melville's rhyme of "wailing" with "paling").

Our landmark here is Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem. The light in Rama bit probably derives from Chateaubriand, one of Melville's known sources (Bercaw, Melville's Sources #131). According to James Silk Buckingham,

"Chateaubriand, for the sake of introducing with effect a specimen of Hebrew eloquence, sees lights in the village of Ramah, though no such village existed; but he says nothing more of it in his way to Bethlehem."

--Travels in Palestine (London, 1821) page 165.

Here's Chateaubriand himself, translated from the French by Frederic Shoberl:

I cannot admit what is now denominated Rachel's tomb to be an antique monument : it is evidently a Turkish edifice , erected in memory of a santon .

We perceived in the mountains, for night had come on, the lights of the village of Rama. Profound silence reigned around us. It was doubtless in such a night as this that Rachel's voice suddenly burst upon the ear : “ A voice was heard in Rama , lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children, refused to be comforted, because they were not.” 

Here the mothers of Astyanax and Euryalus are outdone: Homer and Virgil must yield the palm of pathos to Jeremiah.

-- Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt and Barbary (London, 1812) Volume 1, pages 376-77. 

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.31378008355862?urlappend=%3Bseq=397%3Bownerid=13510798902335836-417

[Scott Norsworthy]

Bible-minded persons like Herman Melville might recall Rachel's plight anytime, not only in the experience of tragedy. Down on Middle Creek, Louisiana in my grandfather's pasture, Dr. G. Earl Guinn (himself a widower by then) formally asked for permission to marry my aunt Neva. In the telling of it, Uncle Earl always recalled his pitch with a twinkle in his eye: "Sir, in your daughter I found a widow who would be comforted."

https://lcuniversity.edu/homage-to-dr-g-earl-guinn/

[Hardeman]

Dear Scott,

Thanks for the excellent research revealing the Chateaubriand quote that allows one to compare once again Melville rewriting his source. In the subtle differences, we find keys to his intentions.

Even better your own anecdote humorously resonates with Melville’s style of making the profound a comprehensible event. Uncle Guinn embodies Rama for those who know Rachel’s story source. 

In alluding to Jeremiah 31:15  “A god he was, but knew it not” because God is the speaker in that famous quote.

 

This is what the Lord says:

“A voice is heard in Ramah,

    mourning and great weeping,

Rachel weeping for her children

    and refusing to be comforted,

    because they are no more.”

Melville in his metaphysics asserts a human “Retains the consciousness of self” in that “elf” like innocence where “Live they who, like to Rama, led

Unspotted from the world aside.” Canto 32 Of Rama.

This is a continuation of his metaphysical conceptions expressed in Mardi and rephrased and reformed in his mystical experience with Hawthorne. “The divine magnet is in you, and my magnet responds. Which is the biggest? A foolish question — they are One.” 

He is saying the divine is consciousness within. In Mardi  XCVII Faith And Knowledge he details the “I am” experience that becomes Rama in Clarel. The implications of this mystic heart in the art of telling the truth; .  .  . “I am he, that from the king’s minions hid the Charter in the old oak at Hartford; I harbored Goffe and Whalley: I am the leader of the Mohawk masks, who in the Old Commonwealth’s harbor, overboard threw the East India Company’s Souchong; I am the Vailed Persian Prophet; I, the man in the iron mask; I, Junius.”

Melville is well aware that most of his readers agree with Hawthorne, that his metaphysics is “everything that lies beyond human ken” so he uses a double entendre to convey a message that would be too “dismal and monotonous” for those who lack confidence in their mystic heart.

 “Far, in upland spot

A light is seen in Rama paling;

But Clarel sped, and heeded not, ⁠115

At least recalled not Rachel wailing.”

Clarel’s paling light of consciousness is ignored as he looks forward to save Ruth from her suffering with his “love.” 

He remembers

“Recurred one mute appeal of Ruth

(Now first aright construed, he thought)”

But deep inside he knows he missed his chance, 

“To grieve with them and lend his aid,”

Instead the suppressed memory of his choice

“No, I'll not leave her: no,

'Tis fixed; I waver now no more.--

  But yet again he thought it o'er,”  Canto 1.43  A Procession

 

And he left and is about to learn the lesson of “first Truth”

Hardeman

[Hardeman]

Dear John,

I know you have expressed no interest in the mystical so I will not propose any of Melville's metaphysics. However, you have posed several metaphysical questions that have offered me a challenge to meet and mate unlike things in the art of ascertaining truth. I am still working on your “Is his own art and any art a substitute for faith?” for which I thank you.

As for the magic of underdogs beating the Yankees, as a fan of the 1960 Pirates who beat the Maris, Mantle, Berra team has inspired me to this day to have confidence no matter what the odds. I can only wish the same for you.  

Hardeman