Melville was "a great, deep artist, even if he was a rather sententious man. He was a real American in that he always felt his audience in front of him. But when he ceases to be American, when he forgets all audience, and gives us his sheer apprehension of the world, then he is wonderful his book commands stillness in the soul, an awe.
"In his 'human' self, Melville is almost dead. That is, he hardly reacts to human contacts any more; or only ideally: or just for a moment. His human-emotional self is almost played out, He is abstract, self-analytical and abstracted. And he is more spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings of Matter than by the things Men do."
What the heck does all that mean?
D.H. Lawrence, who was himself IMHO a "deep artist, even if he was a rather sententious man," did not use the phrase "a real American" as a compliment. Ever. For him, the real American prototype was Ben Franklin, whom he saw as a wealth-obsessed schemer, sort of a P.T. Barnum with an unfortunate smattering of scientist cred.
So Melville, when he felt his audience, was desperate for their approval (on Lawrence's reading), and in effect for their coin. Melville wanted to sell the sort of story that they would like, as exemplified by the success of Richard Dana in TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST (1840). MOBY DICK (1851) was meant, then, on what Lawrence understands to be Melville's surface level, to be that sort of yarn.
But there is a deeper level, too deep even to react to human contact, and so in a social sense "almost dead." It is at a symbolic and very intellectualizing level at which Melville's greatness works its way.
It takes Lawrence a long time yet to get around to it, so it isn't in the brief passage above, but what he is saying in this essay is that Melville made both Ahab and the White Whale symbols of the white race. The novel is the allegorical story of how whites as a race are rushing to commit suicide in the struggle with their own elemental nature. The crew is of course multi-racial, starting with Ishmael's bunkmate ... because the whites have brought along other races on this suicidal ride of theirs.
Lawrence is often idiosyncratic -- it is part of his power -- but in this case one is likely to be taken aback by his identification of the abstract with the unconscious. He is saying that Melville has to sink into his unconscious in forgetting the Franklin/American side of himself, but if I read him correctly he is also identifying this unconscious with the abstract and analytical. This is not the way we usually think of these distinctions. The more common take is that abstract and analytical thoughts are precisely achievements of the conscious mind, and that sinking into the unconscious means becoming more concrete. Not, apparently, for Lawrence's Melville.
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