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WILFRED MCCLAY: Today weíre going to discuss Herman Melvilleís story, ìBartleby, the
Sciveneróa Story of Wall Street.î And Leon, this is a very different kind of fiction then
what we are accustomed to think of Herman Melville producing. We tend to think of Moby
*** and Billy Budd, these great sea-faring tales, and yet the setting for this is something
very different from the ocean. Tell us a little bit about the basic structure of the story.
LEON KASS: This is a very different story, this is set in New York City, on Wall Street.
And while, the meaning of the story, as I suspect weíll discover, is very complicated,
the basic plot is rather simple. A middling Wall Street lawyer, whoís also the narrator
of the story, needing more assistance, hires a new scriveneróa scrivener is a copyistóto
join his firm. Enter Bartleby. Although initially very productive in his copying, he calmly
refuses when asked to help with proofreading or other rather ordinary office tasks. ìI
would prefer not toî is his reply, and this one is repeated more than 20 times in the
story. The lawyer and his other employees are absolutely shocked, but Bartleby holds
fast: he prefers not to. Both touched and disconcerted, yet choosing not to fire him,
the lawyer is strangely drawn in to coping with Bartleby and his growing refusals and
eccentricities, and the theme of the rest of the story is the lawyerís attempt to deal
with Bartleby. Bartleby, we learn, is always in the office, either incessantly working,
or staring out of the window at a facing wall. On a chance Sunday visit to the office the
lawyer discovers that Bartleby also lives there. Eventually Bartlebyís refusals extend
also to his work as a copyistóhe prefers not to do any work, yet he prefers not to
quit the office. The lawyeró waffling between pity and indignationófinally asks him, bribes
him to leave, then commands him to leave the office. But Bartleby prefers not to. So instead,
the lawyer moves his office leaving Bartleby behind. Another lawyer moves into the building
and quickly learns that Bartleby comes with the territory. He complains to the narrator
who disclaims any responsibility for him. The new proprietor has Bartleby arrested for
vagrancy, and heís imprisoned in ìThe Tombs,î the Halls of Justice. There too, he prefers
not to, including not to eat. The narrator visits Bartleby, but he canít get through
to him. On his next visit, the narrator finds Bartleby lying dead of starvation, huddling
against the wall in the prison yard. At the very end, in a brief coda, the narrator informs
us of a late-arriving rumor to the effect that Bartleby had previously worked as a clerk
in an obscure branch of the post office, known as the Dead Letter Office, sorting through
undeliverable mailómail that would have brought hoped-for news and gifts to people who died
with their hopes unfulfilled.
WILFRED MCCLAY: This is a very gloomy story, thatís not full of a lot of happy, redemptive,
easy thoughts.
AMY KASS: It isÖ it is a gloomy and dark story, but it is alsoóand one of the things
Leon left out is the very beginningóit is also a comical story. And you get this from
the very beginning with his characterization of the lawyerís staff. Uhh, Turkey and Ginger
NutsÖ
WILFRED MCCLAY: Yes, even the names
AMY KASS: Even the names. So thereís that comedy, thatís a kind of comic relief, or
you could even say a foil for Bartleby, uhh those two characters. But also in the writing
in the rest of the story, thereís a kind of irony which, every time youíre taken in
by what seems to be dark and gloomy thoughts of the lawyer, you also tend to laugh because
of the way in which he expresses himself.
WILFRED MCCLAY: Melville does devote a lot of time to the office and to setting the scene
before Bartleby enters onto the scene. So letís talk about that. Letís talk not just
about the comical, almost Dickensian, other scriveners, but the lawyer himself.
DIANA SCHAUB: Yeah, and the narrator himself begins with himself. He says Iím going to
tell the story of Bartleby, the Scrivener, but to really understand Bartleby youíre
going to have to understand me, and my employees, and my business. And he presents himself with
really a great deal of frankness. He says, ìI am an eminently safe man.î Uhh, he makes
clear that heís not really ambitious and that this is the source of his very remunerative
law business. Uhh, he says he prides himself on his prudence and his method. But this is
clearly not the prudence of which the ancients spoke, itís not practical wisdom, itís,
itís extremely narrow kind of prudence. Heís very cautious, heís very conventional. He
doesnít take any strong or decisive action. So even though heís the boss of this place,
uhh, heís extremely accommodating towards his employees, regarding them simply as instrumentsóflawed
instrumentsóbut heís going to find his way to kind of work around them.
AMY KASS: That goes to usefulnessówhat is useful is eminently important to him. And
when he says heís an eminently safe man, that really means he wonít take any risks,
and you see that by his keeping these people who are ineffective half of the day, each
one of them, employed. But also I think the reference to the Master of Chancery that he
has just received that, which is the occasion for his hiring Bartleby as Leon described.
Umm, at that..and in the same sentence he says it lasted too short a time, and as you
put it, he was really interested in the money. But I think the point is, he also sees himself
as a victim, a victim of progress.
WILFRED MCCLAY: In some ways heís not that efficient. He keeps on employees who are not
entirely reliable. AMY KASS: Isnít it important to know what
kind of business his law practice is?
WILFRED MCCLAY: YesÖcan we talk a little bit more about that?
DIANA SCHAUB: Right, he says, rich manís mortgages and title deeds, heís a kind of
conveyancer of thisÖ
WILFRED MCCLAY: Heís a kind of backstairs operator for the wealthy, yes.
AMY KASS: But he calls it a snug business, so that even that is comfortable. Thereís
nothing, no risk to be taken there.
WILFRED MCCLAY: And indeed, what finally makes him decide he has to do something about Bartleby
is the fact that heís being gossiped about by other people in the legal trade and this
is going to be bad for business.
LEON KASS: Yeah, and he puts up with these characters in the officeóTurkey, who is an
alcoholic and gets violent in the afternoon. Nippers who is a younger man, ambitious and
dyspeptic whoís violent in the morning. And Ginger Nut whoís a 12-year-old kid whose
father sent him so he wouldnít be a carman but instead would have a seat on the bench.
He puts up with these people who, at best, do a half a days work and are a cause of difficulty,
partly because he doesnít like confrontation and heíll work around their deficiencies,
and after all, when they do work, they do pretty good work. Itís just the path of least
resistance and as Amy says, the safest course. Heís an accommodationist.
WILFRED MCCLAY: So, uhh, we have a kind of picture of the office, and in all of its sort
of, vivid peculiarity, and then this emotionless..
LEON KASS: Could I have..could I have one more thing? Since you said picture of the
office, weíve talked about the personnel. But itís worth a couple sentences about the
office.
AMY KASS: The office is walled-in, itís a walled-in room, basically, with a partitionófolding
doorsóin-between. And it has windows on one side that point to a white wall, and on the
other side that point to a red wall that has turned black. Uhh so, and itís on the second
floor surrounded by huge structures so that one imagines that itís quite dim, and probably
dingy, and thereís no carpeting on the floor, so itís rather bleak.
WILFRED MCCLAY: So, so we have the entrance of the motionless young man, Bartleby. I think
itís tempting to get drawn in to a long, and ultimately I think fruitless, speculation
about just what is going on with Bartleby. What happened to him, what is he working through,
how do we diagnose him. And I donít want to try to suppress that, because thereís
a certain amount of that you have to do. But letís try for a while to talk about how the
others respond to him.
AMY KASS: Prior to their response, just how heís described. And the description that
we get of him is mostly through the eyes of the lawyer, so what do we see before us when
we see Bartleby? So, heís young, heís palatably neat, heís pitiably respectable, heís Öwrites
silently, palely, heís often said to be looking out at this dead wall, his window, in his
little cubicle, looks out only three feet away into the dead red wall. And often heís
said to be in a dead-wall reverie. Umm, you want to add some things about Bartleby?
LEON KASS: At the first appearance, heís motionless, when an ad is placed and he arrives
at an open door, he just appears out of nowhere, motionless at the door and Amyís described
part of it, but also incurably forlorn, thatís his look. He looks like a lost sheep. Pale,
respectable but pale. He appeals to the lawyer in part, because unlike the other guys in
the office, heís not going to make any trouble. In fact, he has this fantasy that heís going
to bring Bartleby into the office and maybe Bartlebyís calmness and placidity will spread
to the obstreperous other two.
AMY KASS: Heís described, several times heís compared to a ghost, several times heís compared
to an apparition, heís said to look cadaverous at least 3 times. His place is referred to
as a hermitage, his little cubicle. So he is really isolated from the rest.
DIANA SCHAUB: You might say itís his aspiration to become like the walls that he looks at.
At one point, when the lawyer finally moves his office to another location and Bartleby
is left behind heís described as standing like a column of a ruinedÖa pillar of a ruined
temple.
LEON KASS: And in fact itís this, itís this allegedly inhuman qualityóitís not the stone-like
characteróbut his absence of any real affect. His absence of any anger, spirit, evidence
of loves, evidence of hates, that both infuriate and also in a way, interest the lawyer. He
says at a certain point, ìif heíd only shown any human qualities I would have fired him
on the spotîóNow I doubt that the lawyer would have, because the lawyer strikes me
as a person whoís not going to fire anybody. But itís clear thatÖ. this man will talk
about his preferences, but itís with this absolutely flat voice and flat affect. And
it doesnít look like heís countermanding your will Öit doesnít look like heís responding
to you at all in any kind of way.
WILFRED MCCLAY (cont.): What is it about him, and really this is a question more about the
lawyer than about him, I think Bartleby, in some ways reflects, like a mirror, reflects
back on those of us who contemplate him. Itís said several times that, the lawyer is disarmed
by him. And when he does one of those outrageous ìI would prefer not to,î he thinks to respond
and then he says ìwell, something in him just disarmed me.î What is it, is it the
forlornness? IsÖ at one point he talks about feeling a kind of commonality with the sons
of Adam.
DIANA SCHAUB: YeahÖIÖ.I donít know that itís so much a response to the forlornness
, there are times when he does respond to that, in this very human way he is touched
by that. But the being disarmed, I think, is more the willfulness of Bartleby, because
there is something very willful about it in these refusals. So, the lawyer says he himself
operates on assumptions. And those assumptions are usually wrong, and then he engages on
all these kind ofÖrationalizations, and uses his prudence and his reason to come up with
explanations for why heís behaving the way heís behaving. But Bartleby acts, he comes
to realize this, he says Bartleby acts just on the basis of preferences. And, and the
preference is always a negative preference. Itís never a preference to do something,
itís a preference that I would prefer not to. And so it is that rejectionist attitude
that he comes up against and he doesnítÖ the lawyer himself is very passive. And so
BartlebyÖhe says Bartleby came to assume a kind of ascendency over me. Itís itís
itísÖBartleby, who is in a way ruling through this rejectionÖ
AMY KASS: But Diana, isnít there a difference between saying ìI prefer not toî and ìI
will notî?
DIANA SCHAUB: Well, the lawyer at one point says, ìYou mean, you will not,î and Bartleby
just reiterates, ìNo I prefer not,î but Iím not sure the lawyer isnítÖisnít right
about thatóthat there is something willed about the choices that Bartleby is making.
AMY KASS: See, I think itís precisely because heís not willful that he unmans, or disarms
the lawyer. That he says very quietly, steadily, calmly, ìI prefer not to.î Thereís nothing
human in that, thereís nothing you could really respond to.
DIANA SCHAUB: Right..thatís what I meant by saying he tries to become a stone, but
I..it does seem to me it is something he is aiming at or he is choosingÖthat heÖ
LEON KASS: Look, could I try to walk between the two of you. Umm, I think Iím inclined
to agree with Amy that thereís something ìwill-lessî about Bartleby, and the general
formulation, ìI would prefer not to:___î and then you can fill in the rest of the infinitive
as you please, whatever the verb is, ìI prefer not to act,î which means, whatever his preferences
are, they donít translate into that principle of action which is an act of will. I think
the lawyer experiences these expressions of preferences as if they were willful acts,
as if they were, as you say, a denial of the world of assumptions, which is after all,
the rational world in which people have reasons to do the things that you would expect them
to do, out of interests which lead them to assert themselves in the world. And here you
have this passive fellow, who every time an action is called for he wonít act, and he
wonít even put it in the form of ìI wonít do it,î ìI defy you.î It is operationally
a form of defiance, itís experienced periodically with irritation and annoyance. But thatís
not the whole thing because the other side of that is that heÖheís in a wayÖtouched
by Bartleby. Heís touched by the existence of a creature who seems either less than human,
or maybe superhuman in his not asserting himself, in his merely stating his preferences and
passÖ.being somehow there for you to make something of him. So that in one of the places
he said, I was disarmedÖ Iíve forgotten exactlyÖbut itísÖ I was both touched and
disconcerted. ìTouchedî seems to be a kind of expression of motion toward and sympathy,
on the other hand, he doesnít know what to make of him.
AMY KASS: I just want to emphasize one thing that you said the lawyer is a man of assumptions.
He sees the world and you make certain assumptions and people act rationally, and the world is
a logical placeóitís ordered and logical. Bartleby is not. Bartleby is a man of preferences
and negative preferences which presents itself as a kind of absolute freedom, but makes absolutely
no sense. So the two of them, though spiritually *this* far apart, are really bound in some
way, the lawyer doesnít know what to make of him.
DIANA SCHAUB: So Bartleby rejects reason, it seems to me he absolutely rejects reason,
and the alternative to that is preferenceÖand IÖI guess I still donít quite see why that
isnít will. And it seems to me that in rejecting reason thatís why he has to reject this entire
world of letters and the world. Thatís why he doesnít read, why he wonít write, why
he wonít have anything to do with the post office. And the lawyer is absolutely wedded
to the world of letters. He actuallyÖwhen he tries to get rid of Bartleby he says, you
know, why donít you go off, and then write me a letter if thereís anything that you
need from me and Iíll come to your aid. Or he says, if I could only find out whether
he has family, and then I could write a letter to them. So he really believes in the efficacy
of letters, which is to say of reason, even though his understanding of reason is a rather
narrowed one.
LEON KASS: The lawyer is simply looking for reasons why Bartleby is the way he is. He
does not try to probe the character of Bartlebyís wishes.
DIANA SCHAUB: But the way the lawyer treats him from the beginning would not cause Bartleby
to open up in any way. I mean, their first time, the first time that Bartleby refuses
is when the lawyer is busy with something, heís looking down, heís looking at one document,
and he hands the document out to Bartleby and then summons him, and does not look up
from what he is doingósort of, you know, just treating him in this purely instrumental
way, and I think thatís the first occasion on which Bartleby says, ìIíd prefer not.î
WILFRED MCCLAY: And it isÖthe story is Bartleby the Scrivener, not anything else. We never
really know anything else about his background, his origins, where he came from, let alone
what the source of this malady in him is.
DIANA SCHAUB: I want to say something about that subÖ the subtitle, ìThe Scrivener,î
actually itís in the main title, Bartleby the Scrivener. I think that we really should
remind ourselves of what a scrivener is, or a scribe. A scrivener is a public copyist,
an official writer, but it is a role that had a much higher status in the past. So if
you go back to Ancient Israel or all the way up through New Testament times, that the scribes
were those who studied scripture, they served as copyists, and editors, and teachers, and
jurists. So that the letters they dealt with were living letters, the living letters of
the word of God. And there are a number of biblical references in the story, uhh John
1:1 is not mentioned, but another verse of John is mentioned. But if we think about John
1:1, the word is identified with God himself, ìIn the Beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.î But Bartleby now lives in a world where letters
serve a very different and a much attenuated function, and where scribes and scriveners
have a much reduced function. So, so, if I could just tie this into the end of the story,
at the end, the lawyer passes along this rumor that he had heard about Bartleby having maybe
worked in the Dead Letter Office. The lawyer, who very much believes in the efficacy of
letters, speculates that this experience of letters gone awry would have perhaps contributed
to Bartlebyís affliction: ìon errands of life, these letters speed to death.î But
it seems to me that what the lawyer doesnít really understand is that for Bartleby the
letters he deals with in the law office are just as much dead letters as those that he
dealt with in the Dead Letter Office of the Post Office. And itís that dawning realization
of Bartlebyís that I think is the origin of his progressive refusals, and there is
a progress in those refusals, of those withdrawals from life. So Bartleby has really given up
on the Word; heís given up on communication, and thatís why he lapses into silence, speaks
only to refuse engagement, and starts at these blank walls instead. So it does seem to me
that Melville might be suggesting, the lawyer is not, but Melville might be suggesting,
that there really is a kernel of truth in Bartlebyís intuition about the status of
letters, and the status of the word in modern life.
WILFRED MCCLAY: Iím very moved by what you say thinking back to the origins of the scribe
and how great the fall. I think that is clearly one of the meanings hereóthese guys are human
Xerox machinesÖ
AMY KASS: Thatís I think exactly the point. It is the lawyer that calls him the scrivener,
the scrivener. But he is the quintessential scrivener, heís a copyist. He does what a
machine will later do. So Dianaís description of the difference between the Ancient and
the Modern with respect to being a scribe is very, very important and poignant. The
modern scribe, he, as a modern scribe, does nothing but copy what other people have done.
He is not doing anything thatís important, he is working with dead letters, even when
he is actually working.
LEON KASS: I like whatís been said here aboutÖ the changing meaning of the writing, the diminished
character of work which has now been replaced byÖit was first replaced by carbon paper,
and has now been replaced by Xerox machines and the like. But umm, thereís also a human
element in the story which is central from the beginning. He has to describe his employees.
And they are to him employees. The word ìemployeeî literally means, ìa tool,î that which is
used. And when he sets Bartleby up as somebody whoís already sat in his office, he puts
him behind a screen so he doesnít have to see him, but that he will be there to command.
Even before he reaches outÖthe paperÖ
DIANA SCHAUB: Right heís already walled him off
LEON KASS: Without looking at him heís put him in a place where he wonít have to look
at him. He talks about how he has society and privacy together, right? But the view
of society is, ìI am present with my tools.î Yes they have their human qualities, but I
can ignore them providing they do their work. And the emergence of Bartleby compels him
to see that there is more to this man than his utility, because he refuses to be useful
in the ordinary way so what he is then left with is Bartleby not the Scrivener, but Bartleby
the human being. And I think uhh, it would be worth talking about, what we make of how
well the lawyerÖhe does somehow recognize that thereís something left over that he
has to deal with, the question is, does he do a good job of it?
AMY KASS: Well, to begin with, I would say he doesnít act. Heís acted upon. Bartleby
has a wondrous ascendency over him, so his actions are all responsive, theyíre reactive.
He is not a manÖhe hasÖthatís what it means to be disarmed, he was literally disarmed
by this manÖand un-manned, and un-manned. And he waffles always between pity and between
repulsion.
WILFRED MCCLAY: Well what didnít he do that he should have done?
LEON KASS: Each time I read this story I moveÖ well I move very far from where I was at the
beginning. When I first read the story and Bartleby refuses to proofread the copies that
he himself has written, that was it, he was out of there. Ummm, the conditions of our
relationship are employment, Iím not your social worker, or your father confessor, or
your friend. Youíve come here to do a job. We have, by everybodyís mutual understanding,
a relationship of utility. Thatís all there is here. When we cease to be useful the one
to the other, thatís it. Umm, and I think the story is meant to be an education of people
like me. Whether the lawyer is finally educated or not, Melville arranges it for the lawyer
to speak out of his own mouth so that I think he condemns himself without knowing it almost
at every step of the way. He doesnít fire him, so he recognizes that somethingís here
thatís curious, thatís touching, thatís pitiable, that weíre, after all, both sons
of Adam, oh my God, heís forlorn, heís afflicted in soul, what Öwhen he discovers when heís
living in the office, what lonesomeness! He even gets it into his head that after studying
Jonathan Edwards on the will and Priestly on necessity, that maybe Providence has sent
Bartleby to me, and my mission isÖ : to give him an office, not to tend to his wounded
soul, not to sit with him there on the banister when he finds him there. In the end he offers
to take him home only so long as we will find some other place to send you. And I think
he gets a 0 in terms of understanding the humanity of another human being.
DIANA SCHAUB: Can I make you be more concrete? What would be the right response?
LEON KASS: If youíre not going to fire him, in other words if youíre really going to
enter in some kind of relation, you should try to ÖummmÖfind out who this is, not in
the realm of asking for reasons and explanations, but by paying attention, by keeping company,
by providing a meal and sharing a meal.
AMY KASS: By offering to take him home, which is the last thing he offers to do when he
gives him a litany of choices, the last thing he says is ìoh, well Bartleby, Iíve decided
maybe you should come home with me.î I donít have as strong a view as you. I donít dislike
the lawyer and Iím not sure whether the lawyer learns something or whether he doesnít learn
something. But on the assumption that he doesnít learn something, itís because the lawyer
seems to be incapable of treating him as a human being. And the thing that disarms the
lawyer is that the lawyer is awareóor made aware by Bartlebyóthat the lawyer himself
is really not a human being.
LEON KASS: Thatís very nice. Thereís one momentóand then you should come back at meóbut
the one moment where Bartleby has refused not to do something, or preferred not to do
something. And the lawyer tries again, ìAnd what is the reason for that?î and he says
umm ìyou can see for yourself the reason.î And the lawyer looks at him, he says ìOh!
Your eyesight! Your eyesight is gone bad because youíve been scribbling here in the dark.î
Heís in a way, medicalized him. Bartleby is in effect saying, ìdonít you seeÖî
óand then, of course we can all fill in what you think would be seen if you saw Bartleby
as the broken, dispirited, hopeless human being that he is. But the lawyer is looking
for some kind of problem that he can fix.
AMY KASS: So what you are really suggesting is that what the lawyer could do for Bartleby
is what would mean treating him on a human level. He could give him some hope, he could
give him some encouragement. LEON KASS: He could give him some company,
some human company.
DIANA SCHAUB: Yeah, ok, companyÖbut remember Bartleby stands in dead wall reveries hour
after hour after hour after hour. And so if what youíre calling for is to join himÖright
so, you know, you canít engage him in conversation because he rejects conversationÖso youíre
going to stand with him and look at the wall. Now itís possible that Bartleby might recognize
that as some kind of reaching out to him and respond to it, and so itís maybe worth an
effort. But, but, in other words, I think youíre really underestimating in a way the
threat that Bartleby proposes. I mean, he represents death within us.
WILFRED MCCLAY: What Leonís saying may beÖyou know, I know Iím the one who asked the question
ìwhatÖwhatÖwhat should he have done?,î But maybe the most important thing to take
away from this story is a certain attitude, a certain movement of the heartóof the soul.
DIANA SCHAUB: I agree about the inadequacies of the lawyer, but I donít think we should
underestimate the obstacles to care in this case. I mean, this is not someone who is in
a persistently vegetative state. I mean, that is easy compared to this. Right? You know,
you care for the body, you recognize the dignity that was the person, all of, all of that.
But thisÖthis is much more intransigent, and really I think, more threatening, really
to human life and human society.
AMY KASS: I think youíre right if you simply concentrate on the dead wall reveries. But
you yourself made the point that there is some kind of gradual transformation of this
man. And the gradual transformation of Bartleby is accompanied by the responses of the lawyer.
And so, to begin with, when the lawyer says he is shocked and stunned like a pillar of
saltóhe was made, or heís turned intoóa pillar of salt. If we take this reference
seriously, well thatís obviously a reference to the Bible. And the person who is turned
into a pillar of salt is Lotís wife who looks at the destruction, the fiery destruction,
of the city that she was a part of. What does that mean for him? When he confronts Bartleby,
or Bartleby says, ìI prefer not to,î heís turned into a pillar of salt and heís made
to see something aboutÖhe rainsÖBartleby has rained destruction on his life. And so
that the, the narratoróthe lawyeróis brought into some kind of self awareness. At that
point, it seems to me, there is another option besides what he wonít do, which drives Bartleby
more and more and more into the tomb. He makes his office a tomb, and then he rightfully
goes to whatís called ìThe Tombs,î which is really the Halls of Justice.
WILFRED MCCLAY: Letís go back for a minute to Wall-Street, that this is a story of Wall-Street.
And we made the point earlier that there literally are that there are repeated images of walls,
of walls encasing the office, the walls that Bartleby favors as points of contemplation.
Is thereÖof course, when we think of Wall-Street, and in Melvilleís own time, this has already
been the case, we think, of the financial district of New York, of the NY Stock Exchange,
of the hub of American capitalism and a lot of American bankingÖIs that, that relevant
here, or not?
AMY KASS: It really is emblematic of the failure to communicate . People donít speak to another,
they have no relation one to the other. And so, thatÖthey are literally walled-off from
each other.
DIANA SCHAUB: But also that this is linked to the commercial character of the regime.
AMY KASS: : Sure, sure.
DIANA SCHAUB: It might be worth mentioning that Melville himself followed a course that
was somewhat reminiscent of Bartlebyís. His early novels, the sea-stories and sea-adventures
were immensely popular. But uhh, his later works, you know, neither Moby *** nor Pierre
was well-received. Melville really became something of a pariah in the literary world.
He turned to poetry, he encountered similar neglect, and in the last quarter-century of
his life, he wrote little and he published less. Friends feared for his sanity, his wifeís
family tried to get her to leave him and have him committed as insane. He wound up working
for 19 years as a customs inspector in New York. So he died in his 70s, he was completely
forgotten. He did not know that he would come to be regarded as the author of perhaps Americaís
greatest novel. So I think it would be possible to read Bartleby as a profoundly disheartening
allegory of the artistís relation to a commercial, democratic society.
LEON KASS: You are again emphasizing two different forms of reason, language, and speech, the
artist being a certain high-minded one and presumably the scrivener who copies other
peopleís financial arrangements being rather low. But Amy is emphasizing the other aspect
of speech which is communication and community.
DIANA SCHAUB: Arenít those the same? Man is the reasonable animal and therefore the
political animal.
LEON KASS: Itís one thing to say the world may have lost a great novelist. Itís another
thing to say that the rationalization of the world for the sake of usefulness puts a wall
between each man and his neighbor, whether they write great novels or not. The modern
world really does depend upon method, upon a certain understanding of prudence ñ not
in the ancient sense ñ, a certain kind of practicality, a certain kind of utility, no
nonsense, and assumptions, assumptions that causes have effects, and people have reasons,
and we can understand them. And donít bother us with the deep questions of the soul and
ultimate questions about the hereafter. And Melville shows us a kind of world in which
that kind of emphasis on that kind of rationalization, that kind of instrumentality produces a world
in which everybody is alone. Itís not just Bartleby who has no family. The lawyer, we
assume, has nobody at home. Nippers and Turkey have nobody at home. Ginger Nut has a father.
This is a world of isolated human beings. The question he is raising for us is, in a
way, the greatness of American finance and industry, capitalism, bought at the cost of
certain kind of erosion of the fundamental relations of human beings, one to the other.
You donít have to be a Marxist to at least raise this question about the alienation of
human beings under conditions of modern life, and it might be the very back side of whatís
wonderful about it.
WILFRED MCCLAY: That actually brings me to a question I definitely want to ask: why you
included this reading, this selection, this gloomy reading you could read as very critical
of America, rather than celebratory. How did you think of it in terms of the mosaic of
the whole?
DIANA SCHAUB: Well I think this isÖ the inclusion of the story is an indication that it is not
just cheerleading for America but really exploring the fundamental character of Americans including
perhaps the downside of that character, and it is Americaís poets above all who really
draw our attention to that. So, Melville is a poet who is trying to find some way to address
this commercial society, and maybe thatís one reason why he has a commercial man himself
narrate it.
AMY KASS: : There is an aspect of American individualism and American commercialism that
can lead us down this very dark and dangerous path. We did nothing with the Christianity
in this story which is very prominent and very important. But itís a false Christianity
that the lawyer has, and what Melville might be pointing to is that you need some kind
of religion to nurture this other more spiritual aspect of human beings.
WILFRED MCCLAY: It is interestingÖOn that Sunday when he comes to his office, and he
was going to Trinity Church ñ the famous Church on Wall Street and gets there a little
early and goes by his chambers. He discovers that Bartlebyís there and heís so disturbed
that he says I couldnít go to Church after that. And itís interesting. Could he not
go to Church because he felt unworthy to be there? I donít think so. I think itís because
of the feeling of what he would get there is somehow incommensurate with the reality
of what heís seen, of the desperation and the dark insight into the human prospect:
Ah, humanity!
AMY KASS: : But it also has to do with the fact that he has no understanding of what
Church is really for. Heís going to Church to hear some sermon by a famous man. Thatís
what leads him there. We have no reason to believe heís a regular churchgoer. So, heís
not fit to go there because he suddenly has a window into the human soul.
LEON KASS: Americans as a practical-minded people focus on the here and now and the bottom
line tend if at all only on Sundays to think about the ultimate matters, about the first
things, about the last things, about the soul and its fate. And we are in danger of being
forgetful about those ultimate things. Melville was always interested in those things. ìMoby
***î is about nothing so much as about those kind of ultimate questions. And here thereís
a story which, by its absence, save in the presence of Bartleby, who is nakedly and alone
confronting that large and mysterious thing, and maybe embracing it out of sickness or
despair. But nevertheless Bartleby at least goes to his death somehow knowingly. And that
aspect of what is the lot of all the sons of Adam tends to be forgotten, most of the
time for good. Itís best not see death staring at you in the face. But to be forgetful of
it is in fact to lapse into a kind of thoughtless living and to be in danger of a certain inhumanity
and I think Melville has that on his mind in the story, at least I certainly got that
from it. The more I read it the more I see things that never would have occurred to me
when I was like the lawyer in the opening scene.
AMY KASS: : Itís something also that a part of me which I think the lawyer wants to see.
When he finds Bartleby is dead, he says heís resting with kings and counselors. And thatís
from a very dark passage of Job which asks, Why was I ever born? So, there are intimations
that the lawyer has understood something by then that he just failed to get. Because to
be a counselor is to be a lawyer.
WILFRED MCCLAY: Thank you Amy and Diana, and Leon for this very stimulating discussion
which I think in its liveliness and disagreements shows why these stories and speeches and songs
continue to have life and are not easily exhausted, so far as their meaning is concerned. Thank
you all.