Herman Melville - Mardi and a Voyage Thither

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

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

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

ABRAZZA-Your gentle minstrel, this must be, my lord. But Babbalanja, the Koztanza lacks cohesion; it is wild, unconnected, all episode.

BABBALANJA-And so is Mardi itself:-nothing but episodes; valleys and 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 the Koztanza.

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

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

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

MEDIA-And what was that?

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

ABRAZZA-Very encouraging.

MEDIA-Any one else?

BABBALANJA-To Pollo; who, conscious his opinion was sought, was thereby puffed up; and marking the faltering of Lombardo's voice, when the manuscript was handed him, straightway concluded, that the man who stood 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 your sheets. I have run through them loosely. You might have done better; but then you might have done worse. Take them, my friend; I have put in some good things for you:"

MEDIA-And who was Pollo?

BABBALANJA-Probably some one who lived in Lombardo's time, and went by that name. He is incidentally mentioned, and cursorily immortalized in 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 of Aldina-the note alludes to a brave line in the text, and runs thus:-"Diverting to tell, it was this passage that an old prosodist, one Pollo, claimed for his own. He maintained he made a free-will offering of it to Lombardo. Several things are yet extant of this Pollo, who died some weeks ago. He seems to have been one of those, who would do great things if they could; but are content to compass the small. He imagined, that the precedence of authors he had established in his library, was their Mardi order of merit. He condemned the sublime poems of Vavona to his lowermost shelf. 'Ah,' thought he, 'how we library princes, lord it over these beggarly authors!' Well read in the history of their woes, Pollo pitied them all, particularly the famous; 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 of professional critics; saying to himself, "Let them privately point out to me, now, all my blemishes; so that, what time they come to review me in public, all will be well." But curious to relate, those professional critics, for the most part, held their peace, concerning a work yet unpublished. And, with some generous exceptions, in their vague, learned way, betrayed such base, beggarly notions of authorship, that Lombardo could have wept, had tears been his. But in his very grief, he ground his teeth. Muttered he, "They are fools. In their eyes, bindings not brains make books. They criticise my tattered cloak, not my soul, caparisoned like a charger. He is the great author, think they, who drives the best bargain with his wares: and no bargainer am I. Because he is old, they worship some mediocrity of an ancient, and mock at the living prophet with the live coal on his lips. They are men who would not be men, had they no books. Their sires begat them not; but the authors they have read. Feelings they have none: and their very opinions they borrow. They can not say yea, nor nay, without first consulting all Mardi as an Encyclopedia. And all the learning in them, is as a dead corpse in a coffin. Were they worthy the dignity of being damned, I would damn them; but they are 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 fragrance their own.-Oh! that all round the domains of genius should lie thus unhedged, for such cattle to uproot! Oh! that an eagle should be stabbed by a goose-quill! But at best, the greatest reviewers but prey on my leavings. For I am critic and creator; and as critic, in cruelty surpass all critics merely, as a tiger, jackals. For ere Mardi sees aught of mine, I scrutinize it myself, remorseless as a surgeon. I cut right 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 that stab false thoughts, ere hatched; I that pull down wall and tower, rejecting materials which would make palaces for others. Oh! could Mardi but see how we work, it would marvel more at our primal chaos, than at the round world thence emerging. It would marvel at our scaffoldings, scaling heaven; marvel at the hills of earth, banked all round our fabrics ere completed.-How plain the pyramid! In this grand silence, so intense, pierced by that pointed mass, — could ten thousand slaves have ever toiled? ten thousand hammers rung? — There it stands, — part of Mardi: claiming kin with mountains;-was this thing piecemeal built? — It was. Piecemeal? — atom by atom it was laid. The world is made of mites."

YOOMY (musing.)-It is even so.

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

BABBALANGA-Your Highness, Lombardo never presumed to criticise true critics; who are more rare than true poets. A great critic is a sultan among satraps; but pretenders are thick as ants, striving to scale a palm, after its aerial sweetness. And they fight among themselves.

Essaying to pluck eagles, they themselves are geese, stuck full of quills, of which they rob each other.

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

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

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

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

MEDIA.-As most of these mortals do, my lord. That's the load, selfimposed, under which Babbalanja reels. But now, philosopher, ere Mardi saw 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 thought hugely of it, as my lord Abrazza says; but when abroad, among men, he almost despised it; but when he bethought him of those parts, written with full eyes, half blinded; temples throbbing; and pain at the heart-ABRAZZA-Pooh! pooh!