Moby Dick, Myth, and Classical Moralism: Bulkington as Hercules
Jonathan Cook, Leviathan 5.1 (2003): 15+
Readers of Moby-Dick have long been fascinated by the figure of Bulkington, who makes an exemplary appearance
early in the novel and then mysteriously vanishes from the narrative. First introduced in "The Spouter Inn" (Ch. 3),
Bulkington subsequently appears at the helm of the Pequod in "The Lee Shore" (Ch. 23), where he serves as the
inspiration for Ishmael's well-known disquisition on the choice between sea- and land-based values. Bulkington
accordingly impresses Ishmael in "The Spouter Inn" as an extraordinary physical specimen; whereas in "The Lee
Shore" his reappearance inspires the narrator with rhapsodic praise of Bulkington's moral fiber as a man preferring
the open sea over the port, hardship over comfort, solitude over society, and intellectual freedom over dogma.
Students of the novel's composition have wondered whether Bulkington was meant to play a larger role in the
narrative, despite Ishmael's initial disclaimer that Bulkington was "but a sleeping-partner" shipmate, and his later
verbal cenotaph of the heroic sailor's life and death in "The Lee Shore" ("this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave
of Bulkington"). Harrison Hayford, for example, interprets Bulkington as an "unnecessary duplicate" originally
intended for the major role of Ishmael's companion that Queequeg later assumed, but kept as a vestigial presence
after final revision of the novel. (1)
Other critics have sought an underlying thematic meaning in Bulkington's appearance, or adduced his significance
from an assumed biographical model. Thus half a century ago, Melville's first important myth critic, Richard Chase,
postulated that Bulkington was the novel's "true" Promethean and democratic hero, who nevertheless had to
disappear from the narrative because if he remained he would have been compelled to resist the despotic command
of Ahab, the novel's "false" Prometheus. In the late sixties, S.A. Cowan argued that Bulkington represented the
virtues of Emersonian self-reliance in the quest for truth, and the preference for philosophical realities over social
conventions that forms part of an intellectual tradition going back to Plato. More recently, Robert K. Wallace
asserted that the figure of Bulkington embodied Melville's admiration for the painter J.M.W. Turner, whose work
allegedly influenced the writing of Moby-Dick. (2) Although occasionally suggestive, none of these potential
sources for the character of Bulkington has proved to be fully convincing.
Quite possibly, another implicit model for this mysterious Southern seaman exists, one that combines the
mythological, philosophical, and iconographic levels of significance that the critics cited above have imputed to this
character. Keeping in mind that Bulkington is ultimately invoked as a "demigod" and given a parting "apotheosis," I
would like to suggest that the figure of Bulkington is a modern embodiment of the semi-divine Greek hero Hercules
(Herakles), and his appearance in "The Lee Shore" draws on a famous moral topos associated with Hercules's life,
the "Choice of Hercules" between Pleasure (or Vice) and Virtue, as well as the example of the hero's agonizing
death through self-immolation and subsequent apotheosis. These mythic associations, in turn, may enhance our
understanding of Bulkington's role in the novel and resolve some of the mystery arising out of his emblematic
appearance.
A wide range of mythic lore surrounds the life of Hercules, the classical Greek hero par excellence, and has
provided the subject matter for a substantial amount of literature and art from classical times to the present. (3)
Among the many allusions to his life in classical literature, Hercules was the subject of surviving dramas by
Sophocles (The Women of Trachis), Euripides (Herakles) and Seneca (Hercules Furens, Hercules Oetaeus). In
classical art and sculpture, Hercules was most often represented with a lion-skin cloak, club or bow. (On his trip
through Naples in February 1857, Melville would observe the well-known Farnese Hercules, a full-length statue
featuring the brawny hero leaning on his club.) (4) Originally known as an embodiment of physical strength and
courage, Hercules was eventually given a complementary identity as a representative of moral fortitude, an identity
influential in both classical and modern Western culture. In keeping with the latter tradition, the Victorian art critic
John Ruskin asserted in a mythological treatise that Hercules was "the perpetual type and mirror of heroism, and its
present and living aid against every ravenous form of human trial and pain." (5)
According to Greek myth, Hercules was the son of Zeus and Alcmene, the mortal wife of Amphitryon, and was
early endowed with a god-like strength that included superior skills in archery and wrestling; but he was also
afflicted with a violent temper and subject to fits of madness due to persecution from a jealous Hera. (6) Hercules is
perhaps best known for the Twelve Labors he performed for King Eurystheus of Argos, during which he vanquished
a number of terrible beasts and accomplished several superhuman tasks throughout the Peloponnese and greater
Mediterranean world: strangling the Nemean lion, destroying the nine-headed Lernean hydra, capturing the goldenhorned Cerynthian hind, overcoming the Eurymanthian boar, cleaning the filthy stables of King Augeus of Elis,
driving off the noisome Stymphalian birds in Arcadia, capturing the Cretan bull, harnessing the man-eating mares of
Diomedes in Thrace, procuring the girdle of the Amazon queen Hippolyta on the Black Sea, obtaining the cattle of
the three-bodied Geryon on the island of Erytheia off the coast of Spain, procuring (with the help of Atlas) the
golden apples of the Hesperides in the far west, and collaring (with the help of Athena and Hermes) the three-headed
dog Cerberus in the underworld.
Along with these tasks Hercules had time to overcome the giant Anteus, set up the Pillars of Hercules, establish the
Olympic Games, sail with Jason and the Argonauts, fight the centaurs, conquered Troy, liberate Prometheus, and
rescue Alcestis from Hades. In his domestic life, Hercules married several times and was accidentally killed by his
last wife Dejaneira, who inadvertently gave him a poisoned shirt to wear (the Shirt of Nessus), thinking it was a love
charm. Realizing that his death was foredoomed, Hercules built a funeral pyre for himself on Mount Oeta in Trachis.
As his body was being consumed on the pyre, his father Zeus sent a thunderbolt to extinguish the flames and
announced that the hero's immortal half would ascend in a chariot to Olympus, where he would be made the twelfth
Olympian god and, once reconciled to Hera, married to the young Hebe. Hesiod noted of Hercules' apotheosis in the
Theogony: "Happy he! For he has finished his great work and lives amongst the undying gods, untroubled and
unaging all his days" (Loeb Edition, 11. 951-53).
The episode in Hercules' life that made him an influential symbol of moral fortitude was the famous "Choice of
Hercules" between Vice and Virtue first set forth as parable by the sophist Prodicus (a teacher of Socrates) in
Xenophon's Memorabilia (ii, 1, 21 ff.), elaborating on a motif found in Hesiod's Works and Days (11. 286-92). In
Xenophon's account, the youthful Hercules, on his way to tend his father's cattle on Mount Cithaeron, was met at a
crossroads by two women representing Pleasure (Hedone) and Virtue (Arete); the former urged Hercules to take the
path into a pleasant glade, the latter the path up a steep hill. After listening to the arguments of the two figures,
Hercules chooses the steep path recommended by Virtue, with its sacrifices and hardships but eventual assurance of
renown. The following is a sample of the opposing benefits that Pleasure and Virtue present to the impressionable
young hero:
"First [said Pleasure], you will worry neither about war nor about
business. Instead, you will roam about examining what delightful
food or drink you might find, and what delight you might see or
hear, what pleasant things you might smell or touch, which favorites
would especially delight you in associating with them, and how you
might sleep most comfortably, and how you might obtain all these
things with the least trouble."
At this point the other woman [i.e., Virtue] approached and said, "I
too have come to you, Herakles, since I knew those who begot you
and that nature of yours, having observed it in your
education. Therefore, I have hope: for you, that if you should take
the road toward me, you will become an exceedingly good worker of
what is noble and august; and, for me, that I will appear still far
more honored and more distinguished for good things. I shall not
deceive you with preludes about pleasure. But I shall fruitfully
describe the disposition the gods have made of the things that
are." (7)
Following its use as a moral topos in the classical world (as, for example, in Cicero's De Officis), the "Choice of
Hercules" outlined above was revived by early humanists beginning with Petrarch in his De Vita Solitaria. The
theme of Hercules choosing Virtue over Vice eventually became a particular favorite for many Renaissance writers
and artists, and continued to be a neoclassical commonplace in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well.
Painters who produced works in the tradition included Durer, Cranach, Veronese, Annibale Carracci, Rubens,
Poussin, and Benjamin West. (At the end of this life, Melville himself owned a print of Hercule Entre le Vice et la
Virtue by the seventeenth-century Flemish artist Gerard de Lairesse. See fig. 1.) Literary, theatrical, and musical
adaptations of the theme included Ben Jonson's masque Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue; Steele's Tatler essay no. 97;
Shenstone's masque The Judgment of Hercules; Lowth's poem "The Judgment of Hercules"; Handel's oratorio The
Choice of Hercules; Metastasio's libretto Hercules at the Crossroads, and Wieland's drama The Choice of Hercules
(a). (8)
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Evidence of the popularity of the Choice of Hercules in the classically conscious new American nation can be seen
in the fact that in 1776, John Adams suggested it as the image to be depicted on the Great Seal of the United States,
in keeping with the current belief that a republic must be upheld by the virtue of its citizens. As an inspirational
message in education, the theme was a familiar topos within the classical curriculum that served many American
schools and colleges throughout the nineteenth century. So, for example, it was adapted by a Princeton literary
society, the American Whigs, who in 1819 commissioned the well-known Philadelphia portraitist Thomas Sully to
paint a version of the scene that was subsequently engraved for use on the society's diplomas. Melville doubtless
encountered the Choice of Hercules, along with other classical lore, during his student days in the 1830's at the
Albany Academy and the Albany Classical School, or as a member of the Ciceronian and Philo Logos societies,
whose heavily moralistic debates led to Melville's first appearance in print in the Albany Microscope in 1838. The
classically educated Margaret Fuller set forth the general significance of this well-known moral topos in an 1845
review of Thomas Carlyle's edition of Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: "The temptations in the wilderness,
choices of Hercules, and the like, in succinct or loose form, are appointed for every man that will assert a soul in
himself and be a man." (9)
With Hercules' mythical career in mind, Bulkington in Moby-Dick may be seen as an exemplar of the classical
hero's physical prowess and moral fortitude. Significantly, Bulkington's name associates him with both supreme
muscular strength (bull) and an elevated character (king), the two most outstanding traits of the Greek hero in the
main classical tradition. (10) Bulkington's first appearance in the novel, as a member of the returning Grampus's
crew at the Spouter Inn, is notable for its depiction of an elevated moral nature united to a remarkable muscular form
that features "noble shoulders" and a "chest like a coffer-dam" (i.e., the watertight compartment used in the
construction of a bridge or pier):
I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and
though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates
by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making
as much noise as the rest. The man interested me at once; and since
the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my ship-mate
(though but a sleeping partner one, so far as this narrative is
concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him.
He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders and a chest
like a cofferdam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face
was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the
contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some
reminiscences that did not give him much joy. His voice at once
announced him to be a Southerner, and from his fine stature I
thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the
Alleganian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had
mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw
no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. (NN MD, 16)
While he is given a tentative geographical origin in western Virginia, the bronzed and brawny figure here may also
evoke the demigod Hercules, an association enhanced by Ishmael's allusion to the "sea-gods" who allegedly
arranged his voyage. (Bulkington, in fact, has a mythical analogue in the Hercules who sailed with the Argonauts in
quest of the Golden Fleece.) By the same token, Bulkington shuns the bibulous "revelry" of his comrades, in
accordance with the figure of the moralized Hercules, while the hint of a mysterious sorrow in his eyes may recall
that aspect of Hercules' life associated with his occasional bouts of madness, which at one point caused him to
murder his children by his first wife, Megara of Thebes (the subject of Euripides's Herakles and Seneca's Hercules
Furens, and in most accounts the immediate reason for his undertaking his Twelve Labors in penance). It should be
noted that in Chapter 86 of Moby-Dick ("The Tail"), in a discussion of the combined power and beauty of the
whale's flukes, Ishmael evokes the beauty of Hercules' statuesque form (probably with the Farnese Hercules in
mind) in a manner that also may reflect back on Bulkington's representation as a paragon of physical and moral
strength: "Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly
beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the
marble in the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone" (376).
While Bulkington's brief appearance at the Spouter Inn suggests that he may be a modern type of the classical hero,
his unexpected reappearance at the helm of the Pequod in "The Lee Shore" (Ch.23) adds another dimension to the
portrait. As noted, this chapter postulates an emblematic contrast between the values of the sea and the land, as
suggested by Bulkington's immediate shipping out on the Pequod after his recent return from a lengthy voyage on
the Grampus. And it is here that the well-known moral dimension of the Hercules myth may serve as an implicit
prototype, for Melville appears to have adapted the "Choice of Hercules" between Pleasure and Virtue to this
chapter's paradigmatic opposition of sea and land, while subversively rewriting the conventionalized, quasiChristian message of the hero's sacrificial choice.
In "The Lee Shore," Bulkington successfully resists the creature comforts of the port, which paradoxically represent
a deadly threat to the mariner trying to land in stormy weather. The passage relies on an epic simile comparing
Bulkington to the homeward-bound ship, the latter standing for the heroic sailor's "soul," in the manner of Platonic
allegory, as the comparison later makes clear:
Let me say that it fared with him [Bulkington] as with the
stormtossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The
port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is
safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all
that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land,
is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one
touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder
through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off
shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would
blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again;
for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her
bitterest foe! (NN MD, 106)
Just as the figure of Pleasure promises the young Hercules the free indulgence of his physical nature (not the least, a
comfortable bed), so the "port" here offers supreme physical comfort, including "warm blankets" and "all that's kind
to our mortalities." But to reach the port may involve self-destruction on the lee shore, just as the full indulgence of
Pleasure's mandates may eventually bring about physical as well as moral disintegration (the "one touch of land"
that will make the ship "shudder through and through").
Ishmael goes on to extrapolate a further moral lesson from this nautical paradigm, claiming that Bulkington's choice
of the open sea symbolizes the freedom of the "soul" to shun all conventional wisdom and inherited beliefs, even if
this leads to an "ocean-perishing"; for it is better to perish at sea in the lonely pursuit of truth than to die while
seeking the mundane comforts of the "slavish shore":
Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that
mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but
the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her
sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast
her on the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as God--so, better is it to perish in that howling
infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that
were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to
land! Terrors of the terrible! Is all this agony so vain? Take
heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from
the spray of thy ocean-perishing--straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!
(NN MD, 107)
While there is no overt suggestion here of the traditional iconography of the Choice of Hercules, with its "high" road
to virtue and "low" road to pleasure, we may nevertheless note that the existential choice presented in this chapter of
Moby-Dick posits the attainment of the "highest truth" in the realm of the sea, as opposed to the vile abasement
required in the realm of the "slavish shore." The quasi-Shakespearean and Byronic language of this passage may
remind us of a comparable assertion of intellectual and creative freedom by Taji, the narrator of Mardi; in fact, such
an assertion of spiritual autonomy for the artist is a recurring topos of literary Romanticism. (11) While in the latter
stages of Moby-Dick's composition, Melville himself used similar language in a letter to Hawthorne, imputing to his
Berkshire friend a rebellious message of "NO! in thunder." (12) But the actual moral paradigm described in "The
Lee Shore" is still suggestively patterned after the lore of Hercules, particularly the ascription of the term "demigod"
to Bulkington, as well as the latter's final apotheosis, a seemingly direct borrowing from the legend of the Greek
hero's divine apotheosis from his funeral pyre at Zeus's command. The reference to an unspecified "agony" in the
passage cited above also conveys a distinctly Herculean suggestion in connection with the Greek hero's agonizing
death (poisoned shirt and searing flames), the subject of a host of literary, artistic, and theatrical adaptations, as was
Hercules' ensuing apotheosis. (13)
We know from the novel's conclusion that Bulkington will perish with the rest of the crew of the Pequod, but he will
nevertheless arise from the wreck in spirit, according to Ishmael's confident projection, because of the nobility of his
choice of sea- over land-based values. And whereas Hercules is rewarded by his father Zeus with immortality for his
heroic life, Bulkington is given a symbolic deification for his stoical championship of intellectual and moral
freedom. Significantly, the stark contrast between the lonely but noble independence of the open sea and the
deceptive appeal of the "slavish shore" suggests that moral fortitude, acceptance of adversity, and studied emotional
detachment typical of Roman Stoicism. Melville read Seneca in the late 1840's during the composition of Mardi, and
at some point--possibly at this time of wide philosophical reading--he also read Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, all
of them leading representatives of Roman Stoicism. In this and other related classical literature, the moralized
Hercules was regularly represented as a model stoic hero. (14) In the first chapter of Moby-Dick ("Loomings"),
Ishmael had noted of his decision to go to sea as a common sailor: "The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.
But even this wears off in time" (NN MD, 6).
Beyond this association with the lore of Hercules are there any other literary sources or influences at work in the
representation of Bulkington? We should not overlook the fact that Emerson in his essay on "Intellect" (from
Essays: First Series [1841]) had presented a moral paradigm nearly identical to that figured by Bulkington in "The
Lee Shore," as Merton Sealts first pointed out in his concise overview of Melville's encounter with Emerson's
thought, (15) In the following passage, Emerson sets forth the high demands made on the "scholar" or thinker who
chooses to pursue "truth" rather than "repose":
Exactly parallel is the whole rule of intellectual duty, to the
rule of moral duty. A self-denial, no less austere than the saint's,
is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forgo all
things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in
thought is thereby augmented.
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take
which you please,--you can never have both. Between these, as a
pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates,
will accept the first creed, the first philosophy; the first
political party he meets,--most likely, his father's. He gets rest,
commodity; and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom
the love of truth predominates, will keep himself aloof from all
moorings and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize
all the negatives between which, as walls, his being is swung. He
submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but
he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the
highest law of his being. (16)
For Emerson's antithesis between "truth" and "repose," we may compare Melville's antithesis between the symbolic
associations of sea and shore. Both authors emphasize the high cost in suffering and uncertainty that an individual
must bear for preferring the demands of truth to the ease of convention; but such drawbacks are compensated by the
exalted reward that comes from such a preference (obeying the "highest law" of one's being for Emerson;
"apotheosis" for Melville). Given his receptivity to some aspect of Emerson's thought in the late 1840's, as Sealts has
noted, it would seem highly likely that the argument of "Intellect" carried over into "The Lee Shore," supplemented
by the imagery of moral fortitude and stoical self-renunciation found in Hercules' mythological and philosophical
career.
It is also relevant to note here that the figure of Hercules is later alluded to in Moby-Dick in connection with "The
Honor and Glory of Whaling" (Ch.82), a humorous disquisition in which Ishmael seeks to find exalted mythological
ancestors (e.g., Perseus, St. George, Vishnoo) for the modern whaleman. Considering whether to induct Hercules
into this select society, Ishmael notes the legend that the classical hero was once swallowed by a whale:
Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long
remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies,
that antique Crockett and Kit Carson--that brawny doer of rejoicing
good deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still,
whether that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted.
It nowhere appears that he ever actually harpooned this fish,
unless, indeed, from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a
sort of involuntary whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if
he did not the whale. I claim him for one of our clan. (363)
The passage shows Ishmael in the role of quixotic comparative mythologist a la Sir Thomas Browne and Pierre
Bayle, elaborating on the relatively obscure myth that Hercules was swallowed by a sea monster sent by Poseidon,
which Hercules fought while rescuing Hesione, daughter of King Laomedon of Troy; Ishmael goes on to note the
myth's obvious resemblance to the story of Jonah. (17) But Ishmael's disquisition here also demonstrates an
assimilation of the classical Hercules to a "frontier" American context ("that antique Crockett and Kit Carson")
similar to that which I have argued for in interpreting Bulkington as a Herculean hero. The passage's unabashed
identification of the Greek hero as a mythic ancestor of the modern whaleman thus provides a potential comic
complement to the tragic Herculean message of "The Lee Shore."
The character of Bulkington, then, would appear to represent Melville's version of human heroism based on the
well-known model of Hercules--a heroism of both physical and moral strength that prizes independence as the
ultimate measure of the soul's well-being. Since this is obviously more of a classical than a Christian ideal,
Bulkington may be said to serve as an early model for Ishmael's quest for an empirical system of truth beyond the
conventional pieties of Christianity; he is thus Ishmael's alternative to the blasphemous example of Ahab, whom
Bulkington resembles in a number of respects. And if Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah acts as an implicit religious
benchmark against which to measure Ahab's self-centered rebellion against God, the example of Bulkington
provides Ishmael with a positive philosophical ideal that encourages freedom and self-sacrifice in quest of truth, and
a stoical acceptance of solitude suitable for Ishmael's condition at the end of the narrative. (18) Bulkington thus
embodies what the classicist Karl Galinsky considers the essence of Hercules' multifarious mythical and literary
identity, a combination of strength and endurance. The Herculean aspect of Bulkington's character may accordingly
join the other mythical models that contribute to the rich matrix of characterization in Moby-Dick, as in Ahab's wellknown Promethean attributes. (19) In Bulkington, Melville's mythic imagination is again apparently at work,
merging the human exemplar with the archetypal model to create a powerful icon of physical and moral strength
anticipating the classically influenced depiction of Billy Budd late in his career.
(1) Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or the Whale, ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle
(Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, 1988), 16, 106; hereafter cited
as NN MD). Harrison Hayford, "Unnecessary Duplicates: A Key to the Writing of Moby-Dick," in Faith Pullin, ed.,
New Perspectives on Melville (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1978), 128-61.
(2) See Richard Chase, Herman Melville: A Critical Study (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 58-59; S.A. Cowan, "In
Praise of Self-Reliance: The Role of Bulkington in Moby-Dick," American Literature 38 (1967), 547-56; Robert K.
Wallace, "Bulkington, J.M.W Turner, and 'The Lee Shore,'" in Christopher Sten, ed., Savage Eye: Melville and the
Visual Arts (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1991). See also the discussion in the explanatory notes to
Moby-Dick, ed. Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent (New York: Hendricks House, 1952), 606-7; the
editors here suggest several figures as possible biographical exemplars of Bulkington, but consider the recently
deceased Virginian, Edgar Allan Poe, as perhaps the most likely (but not conclusive) model.
(3) On the rich and complex history of Hercules as a literary, philosophical and artistic subject, see G. Karl
Galinsky, The Herakles Theme: The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972). See also Jane Davidson Reid, ed., The Oxford Guide to Classical
Mythology in the Arts, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 1:515-60. For an excellent study of the
Use of classical myth by American Renaissance writers, see Robert D. Richardson, Myth and Literature in the
American Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978).
(4) See Herman Melville, Journals, ed. Howard Horsford, Lynn Horth, Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G.
Thomas Tanselle (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, 1989), 103,
460.
(5) The Queen of the Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1869), 6.
(6) For a detailed overview of Hercules's mythological history, see Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 2 vols. (New
York: Penguin Books, 1960), 2:84-206.
(7) Memorabilia, translated and annotated by Amy L. Bonnette (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 39-40. For
a discussion as Hercules as a philosophical hero in the classical world, see Galinsky, Ch. 5.
(8) For a complete list of works of art, literature, drama and music based on the "Choice of Hercules," see Reid,
1:527-30. On Melville's private collection of prints, see Robert K. Wallace, "Melville's Prints and Engravings at the
Berkshire Atheneum," Essays in Arts and Sciences 15 (1986), 59-90. Gerard de Lairesse's Hercule Entre le Vice et
la Virtue is identified on p. 83. It is not known when Melville acquired the de Lairesse print, but a likely time would
be the last decade of his life when he had enough money to purchase such items; see Wallace, 70. Born in Liege,
Gerard de Lairesse (1641-1711) was a painter, printmaker, draftsman and theorist who contributed to the gallicizing
of later seventeenth-century Dutch art. Sometimes called the Dutch Poussin, he painted allegorical and historical
subjects and promoted classicism in the arts. See Lyckle de Vries, Gerard de Lairesse: An Artist Between Stage and
Studio (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998).
(9) On John Adams's suggestion of the Choice of Hercules for the Great Seal, see Meyer Reinhold, Classica
Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 150,
153-54. On Thomas Sully's depiction of the theme for the American Whigs and its relevance to other student
societies, see James McLachlan, "The Choice of Hercules: American Student Societies in the Early 19th Century,"
in Lawrence Stone, ed., The University in Society, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 2:449-94.
For an overview of Melville's education in Albany and vicinity in the 1830's, see William H. Gilman, Melville's
Early Life and "Redburn" (New York: New York University Press, 1951), Chs. 2 and 3; for Melville's early articles
appearing in the Albany Microscope, see 251-63. Margaret Fuller's allusion to the Choice of Hercules is from a New
York Tribune review reprinted in Life Without and Life Within; or Reviews, Narratives, Essays and Poems, ed.
Arthur B. Fuller (Boston: Roberts Bros., 1890), 190.
(10) Compare a notation Emerson made in his journal in 1857: "The ancients to make a god added to the human
figure some brutal exaggeration, as the leonine head of Jove, the bull-neck of Hercules; and Michel Angelo added
horns to give mysterious strength to the head of Moses" (The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Vol. XIV, 1854-1861, ed. Susan Sutton Smith and Harrison Hayford [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1978], 194).
(11) See Chapter 169, "Sailing On," in which Taji likens his exploration of the "word of mind" of Mardi to
Columbus's discovery of the New World: "But this new world here sought is stranger than his; who stretched his
vans from Palos. It is the world of mind..." The passage concludes: "So if, after all these fearful, fainting trances, the
verdict be, the golden haven is not gained;--yet, in bold quest thereof, better to sink in boundless deeps, than float in
vulgar shoals; and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do" (NN Mardi, 557). For other literary analogues to
Ishmael's sea / land dichotomy, see the explanatory notes in Moby-Dick, ed. Mansfield and Vincent, 657.
(12) As Melville wrote while imputing his own beliefs to Hawthorne, "There is the grand truth about Nathaniel
Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie;
and all men who say no,--why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they
cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,--that is to say, the Ego [i.e., the conscious thinking
subject]. Whereas those yesgentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and damn them! they will never get through
the Custom House" (NN Correspondence, 186). We may note that Melville's nay-sayers are, like Bulkington,
"judicious, unincumbered travellers" who attain to truth through their freedom from any inhibiting sentimental,
cultural, or metaphysical "baggage"; the sea/land dichotomy of "The Lee Shore" is thus represented here by two
classes of land travelers, those who are loaded down with superfluous luggage, and those who travel light, with only
their minds.
(13) Over the last two centuries, the death of Hercules has inspired, among others, Samuel EB. Morse's "The Dying
Hercules" (a painting), Holderlin's "Dejaneira to Hercules" (a poem), Arnold's "Fragment of a Chorus of a
'Dejaneira" (a poem), Frank Wedekind's Herakles (a drama), Kurt Weill's Royal Palace (a ballet-opera), and T.S.
Eliot's "Little Gidding" (in Four Quartets). Representations of Hercules's apotheosis have been most popular among
Renaissance and Baroque artists (e.g., Correggio, Veronese, Rubens, and Tiepolo); but the subject has also been
treated by the German Romantic writers Holderlin ("On Hercules") and Schiller ("Zeus to Hercules"). For a full list
of representations of Hercules's death and apotheosis, see Reid, 544-48.
(14) On Hercules as a stoic, see Galinsky, Chs. 6 and 8. On Melville's reading of Seneca, see Merton M. Sealts, Jr.,
Melville's Reading, rev. and enlarged ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985), nos. 457 and 458.
Melville's familiarity with the writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius is demonstrated by allusions in The
Confidence-Man (Chapter 19) and Clarel (Book IV, Canto 20), respectively.
(15) See "Melville and Emerson's Rainbow," in Pursuing Melville, 1940-1980: Chapters and Essays (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 264-65. In his 1967 article on Bulkington, Cowan does not cite the passage
from "Intellect" in relation to the alleged Emersonian aspects of "The Lee Shore."
(16) The Collected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. II, ed. Joseph Slater, Alfred R. Ferguson, and Jean
Ferguson Carr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 202.
(17) Graves notes of Hercules' encounter with the sea monster: "With Athene's help, the Trojans then built Heracles
a high wall which served to protect him from the monster as it poked its head out of the sea and advanced across the
plain. On reaching the wall, it opened its great jaws and Heracles leaped fully-armed down its throat. He spent three
days in the monster's belly; and emerged victorious, although the struggle had cost him every hair on his head"
(2:169). This curious incident ultimately derived from a few lines in Book 20 of the Iliad (11. 145-48) and later
scholiasts and commentators thereon; see Graves, 2:173. The explanatory notes in Moby-Dick, ed. Mansfield and
Vincent, 778-79, point out that much of the mythical lore in this chapter and the following ("Jonah Historically
Regarded") was likely drawn from the entry on "Jonas" in Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary, the
entries "Jonah" and "Whale" in John Kitto's Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, and passages from Sir Thomas
Browne. On Melville's use of Browne's "Of the Picture of St. George" in Vulgar Errors (Book 5) in "The Honor and
Glory of Whaling," see Brian Foley, "Herman Melville and the Example of Sir Thomas Browne," Modern Philology
81 (1984), 275. It should be noted that the entry for "Hercules" in Bayle's Dictionary is notably lacking in the usual
mythical stories of the Greek hero, focusing instead on his reputed "low" nature (as legendary glutton and
fornicator) and apparently composite identity in some ancient traditions. Bayle cites the story of Hercules being
swallowed for three days by the sea monster, but does not refer to the analogous Jonah legend; instead of being
disgorged, Hercules hacks his way out of the whale's belly See "Hercules" in The Dictionary' Historical and Critical
of Mr. Bayle, 5 vols. (London, 1734-38), 3:426-35. On Melville's familiarity with Bayle, see Sealts, no. 51. For
more on Bayle and Moby-Dick, see Millicent Bell, "Pierre Bayle and Moby-Dick," PMLA 66 (1951), 626-48. (It is
now, generally recognized that, contrary to his long-time reputation as an outspoken skeptic, Bayle was in fact a
fideist for whom the inconsistencies and absurdities of religious myth only emphasized the necessity of belief.)
(18) It should be noted that Ishmael presents an opposing view to Bulkington's Herculean renunciations two-thirds
of the way through the narrative in "A Squeeze of the Hand" (Chapter 94). Here Ishmael elaborates on his
experience squeezing the sperm oil in the whale's "case" while evoking the comforts of home: "Would that I could
keep squeezing that sperm forever. For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that
in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in
the intellect or fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I
have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally" (NN MD 416). The positive values of the shore and the
claims of the heart are now given their due, though still postulated as inferior to the values of the intellect.
(19) Galinsky, 7. The evolution of critical understanding of the role of myth in Melville's fiction can be found in
Chase; H. Bruce Franklin, The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1963); Gerard M. Sweeney, Melville's Use of Classical Mythology (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1975); and Richardson,
Ch. 7. On the classical dimensions to the character of Billy Budd, see Gail Coffler, "Classical Iconography in the
Aesthetics of Billy Budd, Sailor," in Sten, 257-76. It is interesting to note that the most extensive use of Hercules as
a heroic ideal in American literature occurs in George Cabot Lodge's 270-page epic poem, Hercules (1911).
Galinsky writes that in Lodge's poem, "the final deepest questions about man's existence and fate could be expressed
most worthily by being attached to Herakles.... Herakles is the timeless, universal symbol of the soul's or will's
pilgrim's progress toward the final vision of the truth" (218).