• Melville, Moby-Dick, and Blasphemy
• Jonathan A. Cook (bio)

On October 1, 1856, the New York editor and publisher Evert Duyckinck wrote in his diary of a visit to his Clinton Street (now East 8^th Street) residence from a previously estranged literary friend living in the Berkshires, during which visit the two discussed passages from Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and Boccaccio’s Decameron as well as an incident from the career of the well-known New York Supreme Court judge and spiritualist John Edmonds:

Herman Melville passed the evening with me—fresh from his mountain charged to the muzzle with his sailor metaphysics and jargon of all things unknowable—a good stirring evening ploughing deep and bringing to the surface some rich fruits of thought and experience. Melville instanced old Burton as atheistical—in the exquisite irony of his passages on some sacred matters; cited a good story from the Decameron[,] the Enchantment of the husband in the tree; a story from Judge Edmonds of a prayer meeting of female convicts at Sing Sing which the Judge was invited to witness and agreed to, provided he was introduced where he could not be seen. It was an orgie [sic] of indecency and blasphemy.¹

It is not known to which passages in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy Melville was referring; but the allusion to Boccaccio’s Decameron is clearly to the ninth tale of the seventh day—an obscene story that Chaucer had used as the basis for his Merchant’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales. Melville’s mention of Judge John W. Edmonds (1799–1874) refers to an untraced story from his career as a New York State prison inspector, which began in 1843. Edmonds became a prominent spiritualist in 1851, and served as a justice on the New York State Supreme Court from 1847 to 1853.

It is richly ironic that Duyckinck was commemorating his participation in a prolonged “orgie of indecency and blasphemy” with the sailor-author whose career [End Page 145] he had helped launch, given the fact that as Melville’s closest friend in the New York literary establishment and a devout Episcopalian he had been increasingly concerned about Melville’s religious heterodoxy; just a few years before, he had complained about Ishmael’s remarks on Christianity in his two-part November 1851 Literary World review of Melville’s new whaling novel and advised his friend to show more respect for the public’s religious sensibilities. Unhappy with Duyckinck’s mixed review of Moby-Dick and his apparent disapproval of Melville’s morally subversive new novel, Pierre, Melville had in fact had broken off his friendship with Duyckinck in mid-February 1852, when he cancelled his subscription to the Literary World—a rift only aggravated by Duyckinck’s harsh review of Pierre in the Literary World later that August.²

Duyckinck’s record of Melville’s exuberant indulgence in “an orgie of indecency and blasphemy” shortly before the latter’s departure on an extended trip to Europe and the Holy Land potentially raises questions about Melville’s relation to the verbal offense of blasphemy—a crime firmly enshrined in Anglo-American law throughout Melville’s literary career. Not just Melville’s recorded conversation but his greatest work of fiction, Moby-Dick, manifestly challenged the traditional religious beliefs of his era and deliberately incorporated scenes that might well be deemed blasphemous. We may therefore legitimately ask whether Melville, as a writer of theologically provocative fiction, was in danger of violating the Anglo-American blasphemy laws in place when he was publishing his greatest works—laws enforced by his own father-in-law in a notorious blasphemy case in the mid-1830s. In short, did Melville’s so-called quarrel with God include the potentially actionable crime of blasphemously ridiculing or cursing Him, and if so, what were the risks involved, and what purpose of the author’s would this have served?³

As chronicled by Leonard Levy in a comprehensive history of the offense, blasphemy may be defined as verbal abuse or defamation of the deity, or as profanation of the sacred generally. In older religious societies, blasphemy was thought not...

• 梅尔维尔、白鲸和亵渎
• 乔纳森·A·库克（简介）

1856 年 10 月 1 日，纽约编辑兼出版商埃弗特·杜伊金克 (Evert Duyckinck) 在日记中写道，一位居住在伯克郡的先前疏远的文学朋友造访了他位于克林顿街（现为东 8街^）的住所，期间拜访了两位讨论了罗伯特·伯顿（Robert Burton）的《忧郁剖析》和薄伽丘（Boccaccio）的《十日谈》中的段落，以及著名纽约最高法院法官和唯灵论者约翰·埃德蒙兹（John Edmonds）职业生涯中的一个事件：

赫尔曼·梅尔维尔和我一起度过了这个夜晚——刚从山上出来，用他的水手形而上学和所有不可知事物的行话冲锋陷阵——这是一个令人激动的夜晚，深入挖掘并带来了一些丰富的思想和经验成果。梅尔维尔以老伯顿为例，认为他是无神论者——他在某些神圣问题上的段落充满了绝妙的讽刺；引用了《十日谈》中的一个好故事，《树上丈夫的魔法》；埃德蒙兹法官讲述了在新新举行的一次女囚犯祈祷会的故事，法官被邀请参加并同意参加，但前提是他被介绍到他看不到的地方。这是一场猥亵和亵渎的狂欢。¹

目前尚不清楚罗伯特·伯顿（Robert Burton）的《梅尔维尔忧郁剖析》（Anatomy of Melville）所指的是哪些段落；但薄伽丘的《十日谈》显然是指《第七天》的第九个故事——这是乔叟在《坎特伯雷故事集》中作为商人故事的基础的一个淫秽故事。梅尔维尔提到约翰·W·埃德蒙兹法官（John W. Edmonds，1799-1874 年），指的是他从 1843 年开始担任纽约州监狱督察的职业生涯中一段不为人知的故事。埃德蒙兹于 1851 年成为著名的唯心论者，并担任新州监狱法官。 1847 年至 1853 年担任约克州最高法院。

颇具讽刺意味的是，杜伊金克正在纪念他与一位由他帮助开启其职业生涯的水手作家的长期“猥亵和亵渎的狂欢” ，因为事实上，作为梅尔维尔在纽约文学界最亲密的朋友作为一名虔诚的圣公会信徒，他越来越担心梅尔维尔的宗教异端。就在几年前，他曾在 1851 年 11 月《文学世界》对梅尔维尔新捕鲸小说的两部分评论中抱怨以实玛利对基督教的言论，并建议他的朋友更加尊重公众的宗教情感。麦尔维尔对杜伊金克对《白鲸》褒贬不一的评论以及对梅尔维尔具有颠覆性的新小说《皮埃尔》的明显不满感到不满，实际上他在 1852 年 2 月中旬就断绝了与杜伊金克的友谊，当时他取消了对《文学世界》的订阅。那年八月晚些时候，杜伊金克在文学界对皮埃尔的严厉评论进一步加剧了分歧。²

杜伊金克记录了梅尔维尔在出发前往欧洲和圣地的长途旅行前不久过度沉迷于“猥亵和亵渎的狂欢”，这可能会引发人们对梅尔维尔与亵渎言语犯罪之间关系的质疑——这是一种在英语中被牢牢铭记的犯罪行为。美国法律贯穿了梅尔维尔的文学生涯。不仅是梅尔维尔的谈话录音，还有他最伟大的小说《白鲸》，都明显挑战了他那个时代的传统宗教信仰，并故意融入了很可能被视为亵渎的场景。因此，我们可以合理地问，梅尔维尔作为一位神学挑衅性小说的作家，在出版他最伟大的作品时是否面临着违反英美亵渎法的危险——这些法律是他自己的岳父在臭名昭著的事件中强制执行的。 1830年代中期的亵渎案。简而言之，梅尔维尔所谓与上帝的争吵是否包括亵渎嘲笑或咒骂上帝的潜在可起诉罪行，如果是的话，涉及的风险是什么，作者这样做的目的是什么？³

正如伦纳德·利维（Leonard Levy）在全面的犯罪历史中所记录的那样，亵渎可以被定义为对神灵的口头辱骂或诽谤，或者一般意义上对神圣事物的亵渎。在古老的宗教社会中，亵渎被认为不......