Canto 32: Passion Week

[Scott Norsworthy]

In real time we happen to be in the middle of Advent, season of hope, peace, love and joy, faithfully awaiting the birth of Jesus. But the time feels out of joint since fate has us finishing CLAREL, where Melville devotes Part 4 Canto 32 to "Passion Week."

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Clarel/Part_4/Canto_32

In imagination then, prompted by the suggestive  title,  sympathetic readers will recall the "Passion" 

https://catholicstand.com/the-catholic-meaning-of-the-passion-and-resurrection/

or sufferings of Jesus from Gethsemane to the Cross of Calvary. Observance of Passion Week or Holy Week traditionally would begin with the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and continue through to Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07435a.htm

More broadly, the mood throughout CLAREL Part 4 Canto 32 is that of Lenten penance--somber, sad, like Clarel himself "chastised and fasting." 

The young hero's most valued traveling companions--Derwent, Rolfe, Vine--leave Clarel in Jerusalem. Without fanfare. Melville chooses not to detail their departures, except for a few words of assurance to the effect that Clarel got over his awkward infatuation with Vine and they left each other as friends, equally "blameless." I kind of wish Melville had said more about all of them here. Still, I'm grateful for one great thought about life and leave-takings, poetically expressed:

"... the world is rent ⁠
With partings."

In his grief over Ruth, Clarel gravitates to views over Kedron Valley. From the walled-up Golden Gate Clarel looks on a modern tomb that blocks the way and makes it (sealed since the Middle Ages) extra "Impassable."

One morn he sate
Down poring toward it from the gate ⁠
Sealed and named Golden. There a tomb,
Erected in time's recent day,
In block along the threshold lay
Impassable. From Omar's bloom
Came birds which lit, nor dreamed of harm,
On neighboring stones.

This Golden Gate where Clarel mourns and muses has been regarded as the same gate through which Christ entered Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. First the carefree birds, then a group of Armenian Christians interrupt his Lenten penance with their joyful celebration of Palm Sunday. In what seems to me a pretty big ask, Melville wants us to believe that Clarel does not know what day it is. 

Melville calls them a "rainbow throng," comparing Armenians in their colorful costumes to dolphins:

"Like dolphins off Madeira seen
Which quick the ship and shout dismay."

Probably meaning not the mammals but dolphin fish aka Dorado aka Mahi Mahi.

Poor Clarel however fixates on a different "train," the funeral procession he witnessed back in Part 1 Canto 43.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Clarel/Part_1/Canto_43

Ever since, he has been haunted by dark, recurring thoughts of the female corpse on "that Armenian bier," foreshadowing the death of Ruth.

At the Arch of Mary on Holy Thursday Clarel views a procession of monks bearing crosses. Again the live look dissolves into a kind of dream or nightmare, based in past experience. At the start of Holy Week, glad Armenians reminded Clarel of the ominous Armenian funeral he previously encountered. Now the "march of friars" on Holy Thursday yields to a ghostly procession of walking dead. The zombie "train" that visits Clarel before dawn on Good Friday features companions of Carel who died in the Holy Land: Nehemiah, Celio, Mortmain, and Nathan, followed by Nathan's wife Agar and their daughter, Ruth.

Although placed together in the same imaginary "train," Melville emphasizes their individuality and separateness in death:

And each and all kept lonely state,
Yea, man and wife passed separate.
But Ruth—ah, how estranged in face!
He knew her by no earthly grace :
Nor might he reach to her in place. 

https://books.google.com/books?id=BvRDAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA564&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

As I write this in December, Christmas time, the procession of Clarel's dead friends and companions first makes me think of Scrooge and his ghostly visitants. Then Shakespeare's ghosts, of Hamlet's father in Hamlet and Banquo in Macbeth. Thematically, the scene evokes those famous visits to the underworld by Odysseus and Aeneas, not to mention Dante and The Inferno. By the end of Canto 32, Clarel definitely has landed in some kind of hell. In Advent believers look forward to the birth of Jesus the Comforter. In "Passion Week" Melville offers Clarel no such expectation of comfort, hope, peace, love, or joy. The focus remains on suffering--Clarel's and Christ's. They say the way out is the way through. In which case, Melville obliges at the end of Canto 32 by consulting "Erebus," darkness and darkness personified in Greek myth. Thus concludes this poetical Descent into Hell. 

* * *

Is it only coincidence that one of Sir John Franklin's lost ships was named the Erebus?