[In the following essay, Severino traces the influence of The Lusiads on Herman Melville's Moby Dick.]

In the middle of the last century, an American man of letters who had gone to sea as a young man became acquainted with the work of a Portuguese poet of the sixteenth century, like him, a former sailor and a lover of the sea.¹ Out of this encounter across the centuries sprung forth a novel which many consider the greatest by an American writer and one of the major sea epics of world literature.

The presence of Luis de Camoens (1524-1580) and of his epic poem The Lusiads (1572) in the work of Herman Melville (1819-1891), especially in Moby Dick (1851), has scarcely been studied. As Luther S. Mansfield, a Melville scholar, wrote in a personal letter in 1963: “I am sure there has never been a full study of Camoens' influence, and probably any American would feel that this required more knowledge of Camoens than he is likely to have.”² Professor Mansfield, in a critical edition of Moby Dick he prepared in 1952, together with Howard P. Vincent, had himself been responsible for transcribing and explaining for the first time many of the references to Camoens present in the novel.³ Another important reference to the Portuguese poet's influence had been made in 1950 by Newton Arvin.⁴ While discussing the American writer's major influences, he singles out Shakespeare's plays and The Lusiads as the most important:

The sense of spatial vastness, of remote oceanic horizons, is intense in The Lusiads, and so too is the sense of the fearfulness and peril of the untamed forces of nature, the forces that Camoens embodies in the mythical figure of Adamastor, the Spirit of the Cape, the monster who attempts to wreak destruction on da Gama and his men. … The Lusiads abounds in the imagery of nautical terror—of water spouts and corposants, of cold and darkness, of raging tempests, thunderbolts, and turbulent seas.⁵

A year after Professor Mansfield had answered our inquiry saying that there had never been a full study on Camoens' influence in Melville, a lengthy article on the subject was published in a Brazilian scholarly journal devoted entirely to Camoens, Revista Camoniana.⁶ Authored by Professor Brian F. Head, an American professor of Portuguese, the article examined the biographical and literary affinities between the two authors, identifying the most obvious references to Camoens contained in Melville's novels and poems. When there was no obvious reference, Professor Brian Head juxtaposed significant passages from the two authors' works in an attempt to show possible influences by comparing the texts. As thorough as this study is in what it attempts to do, it can only scratch the surface of a literary problem as vast and complex as the one examining Melville's debt to Camoens. Professor Brian Head seems to be aware of this when he says: “This study can make no pretense of completeness … this study has dealt only with the most evident manifestations of influence, not with the more subtle similarities in poetic imagery and vision and philosophical themes.”⁷

Nor will this study make any attempt at completeness. Its intention is to further examine Melville's Moby Dick in order to consider those artistic manifestations which may have been derived from a knowledge of Camoens. To do so, it will be necessary to review existing data, proving the basis for the analogy. Afterwards, the study will focus on the epical structure of Moby Dick, in an attempt to determine structural comparisons with The Lusiads. Finally, the symbology and function of the sea, and sea phenomena—the Spirit of the Cape, the Spirit-Spout, St. Elmo's Fire—will be examined. Since there are very few direct references to Camoens in Moby Dick, the Portuguese poet's impact having been assimilated into the novel's organic whole, the best means of establishing comparisons is through the analysis of the epical structure and through the meaning and function of symbols. Our aim is not to simply determine borrowings but to throw light on the overall meaning of Moby Dick by examining, from the perspective of one familiar with The Lusiads, how Melville assimilated and transformed certain suitable elements from the Portuguese epic, in order to respond to the creative requirements of the work before him.

Proof that Melville knew Camoens' work comes from the following three sources. From the novels and poems where he mentions the Portuguese poet; from a book of Camoens' lyrical poems found in his library; and from the innerworkings of his artistic creation where the bard's presence, as we hope to demonstrate, may be perceived.

The first concrete reference Melville makes to Camoens appears in White-Jacket (1850), a novel published a year before Moby Dick (1851). Before October, 1849, when the American writer went to England, taking with him the manuscript of White-Jacket, there is no overt reference to Camoens in his work. Even so, it is difficult to ascertain whether his knowledge of the Portuguese poet, which is so evident in White-Jacket, dates back to the time he was writing the novel (1849) or to the period in which the action takes place, that is, from August, 1843 to October, 1844, when Melville served in the United States Navy on board the frigate U.S. United States.

Professor Brian Head seems to detect Camoens' influence in an earlier novel, Mardi (1849).⁸ If that is so, Melville's encounter with the Portuguese poet would have occurred at an earlier date, probably as Melville narrates, on board the U.S. United States. However, since Professor Head's observations are based on conjecture, albeit most convincingly stated, the question of Melville's first encounter with Camoens' work is still unresolved. One thing is certain. When Melville began writing Moby Dick, in February, 1850, after he returned from England, he had already behind him the experience of writing a novel where Camoens' name and excerpts from The Lusiads appear throughout. Judging from the enthusiasm shown for the Portuguese epic poet in White-Jacket, it is easy to assume that Melville was writing Moby Dick at a time in his life when he was most influenced by Camoens.

According to the events narrated in White-Jacket, it was Jack Chase who was responsible for the protagonist's knowledge of Camoens. Jack Chase was a British officer, Captain of the Maintop, portrayed by the narrator as a very cultured man, immensely knowledgeable of English literature. Above all, he was a great admirer of Camoens. He would at every opportunity quote whole passages from The Lusiads, in the original Portuguese as well as in the William Julius Mickle translation, first published in England in 1776. Jack Chase specifically mentions the Mickle translation as the one from which he is quoting. Curiously, he perpetuates the legend, vigorously refuted by Mickle, that Camoens had traveled to India together with Vasco da Gama. The following passage, although quoted by others, is so basic to this study that it needs repeating:

‘But how we boom through the billows!’ cried Jack,
gazing over the top rail; then flinging forth his arms recited,
                    “Aslope, and gliding on the leeward
side,
                    The bounding vessel cuts the roaring tide.

‘Camoens! White-Jacket, Camoens, did you ever read him? The Lusiad, I mean? It's the man-of-war epic of the world, my lad. Give me Gama for a commodore, say I—Noble Gama! And Mickle, White-Jacket, did you ever read of him? William Julius Mickle? Camoens' Translator? A disappointed man, though, White-Jacket. Besides his version of the Lusiad, he wrote many forgotten things. Did you ever see his ballad of Cumnor Hall?—No?—Why, it gave Sir Walter Scott the hint of Kenilworth. My father knew Mickle when he went to sea on the old Romney man-of-war. How many great men have been sailors, White-Jacket? They say Homer himself was once a tar, even as his hero Ulysses, was both a sailor and a shipwright. I'll swear Shakespeare was once the captain of the forecastle. Do you remember the first scene in The Tempest, White-Jacket? And the world-finder, Christopher Columbus, was a sailor! and so was Camoens, who went to sea with Gama, hence we had never had the Lusiad, White-Jacket. Yes, I've sailed over the very track that Camoens sailed round the East Cape into the Indian Ocean. I've been in Don Jose's garden, too, in Macao, and bathed my feet in the blessed dew of the walks where Camoens wandered before me. Yes, White-Jacket, and I have seen and sat in the cave at the end of the flowery, winding way, where Camoens, according to tradition, composed certain parts of his Lusiad. Aye, Camoens was a sailor once!. …’⁹

Besides Jack Chase's mention of Camoens and The Lusiads, further evidence of the Portuguese poet's influence may be found earlier in the novel, when the narrator refers to Viscount Strangford's translation of Camoens' lyrical poems.¹⁰ Melville had in his library a copy of this translation, the 1824 edition, with the annotation “H. Melville N.Y., May 17, 1867,” almost certainly the date of purchase or acquisition.¹¹ The earlier mention of this work in White-Jacket indicates that Melville, before beginning to write Moby Dick, was acquainted with Camoens' lyrical poems. It further indicates what is widely accepted: Camoens continued to interest Melville in his later years. He mentions him in another novel, Billy Budd, completed just before his death. Also late in life, he wrote a poem, “Camoens,” where he bemoans the neglect shown to the Portuguese poet by his countrymen, revealing, in the process, an awareness of his own estrangement from the public. Melville's awareness of Camoens, once begun, became an innate part of his artistic life. It remained a positive force till the end.¹²

Did Melville carry his admiration for Camoens to the point of wanting to learn Portuguese? That is a question that deserves some attention. Melville states in White-Jacket that Jack Chase recited from The Lusiads in the original Portuguese, and it is possible that Melville wanted to emulate his friend and mentor in the ability to read Camoens in the original. There is evidence that it might have been so. On at least one occasion he wrote a few words in the Portuguese language, albeit only a few elementary phrases of greeting. The scene takes place in White-Jacket, during the Brazilian Emperor's visit to the Neversink.

“Que gosto!” cried a Marquis …
“Que gloria!” cried a crooked,
          coffee coloured Viscount …
“Que alegria!” cried a little count …
“Que contentamento he o meu!” cried
          the Emperor himself …

Later the Emperor asks as he sees his accompanying Marquis disappear down the fore-passage: “Onde ides?”¹³

These Portuguese expressions are perfectly correct, according to the language at that time. The phrases are appropriate to the occasion. Admittedly, there are not enough of them to allow us to suppose he could have done better. Even so, to write even this much would have required some knowledge of Portuguese. Further evidence that Melville knew Portuguese may be found in his own copy of Camoens' lyrical poems. According to Merton M. Sealts, Jr., the book is annotated, with passages in both English and Portuguese marked. Melville must have annotated some of the first lines of the original poems, which Viscount Strangford included with the translations.¹⁴

Admittedly, these two instances of Melville's use of Portuguese cannot be considered sufficient proof that he knew the language well or that he knew it well enough to read The Lusiads. Melville must have heard Portuguese spoken on board the whaling ships he served from 1841 to 1843. On the Acushnet, as one can infer from the log, there were four Portuguese: an officer and three seamen.¹⁵ Two of these seamen could not read or write, since they signed their names with a cross; one was an officer, the only one who could teach Melville Portuguese and awaken in him an awareness of Portuguese culture. Until further information on this subject becomes available, it is best to infer, taking the author-narrator at his word, that Melville's admiration for Camoens was first awakened in him by his good friend, Jack Chase.¹⁶

It is not difficult to imagine why Melville was so receptive to Jack Chase's praise of Camoens. Like him, Camoens had been a sailor, having sailed on the same route as Vasco da Gama, not together with the great navigator, but fifty years later, in 1553, when he had stayed away from Portugal, stationed throughout Asia, for close to twenty years. Camoens had been to far-off lands, to Macao, to the China Sea, to the Mollucas—the land, sea, and sky he describes in The Lusiads. Moreover, he had personally observed such sea phenomena as the Spirit-Spout, St. Elmo's Fire, the perilous Cape of Tempests (Tormentoso), later Cape of Good Hope. Camoens had been able to bring together experience and aesthetics, transforming the sights he had seen into art. The result is a harmoniously structured, powerful sea epic. On a different level, it is a symbolic voyage taken not by a particular national hero representative of a race, but by a people—similarly representing all humanity—embarked on an adventure of discovery which is also a quest for an understanding of man's destiny.

Moby Dick, on the other hand, tells the story of Ishmael on a whaling ship, the Pequod. He sails as a deck hand from Nantucket on Christmas day, headed for what at first appears to be the Cape Horn and the Pacific but later becomes the western coast of Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. After rounding the Cape, the Pequod sails from the Indian Ocean, to the Pacific as far as the Sea of Japan. Under the domineering influence of Captain Ahab, the Pequod's crew is forced to hunt for the white whale, Moby Dick, a gigantic sperm whale that had mutilated Ahab on a previous expedition. Ahab behaves like a man possessed. He is so overcome with hate and revenge that he obstinately leads the whole crew, himself included, to destruction. In the course of the unfolding tale, Melville describes the techniques of whaling; he gives a detailed account of the methods for extracting oil from whales and expounds at length on the intricacies of the whale's anatomy. From time to time, the Pequod sails by certain landmarks and through natural sea phenomena, which become symbolic premonitions for the oncoming disaster. These portentous signs create an atmosphere of terror and expectancy in the crew, laying the setting for the grand finale: the appearance of the huge white whale, gliding through the sea in all her majestic and impervious beauty. It is chiefly through these signs, acting as symbols, that Melville is able to invoke the other-worldliness that permeates throughout Moby Dick.

The book's organizing structure is much closer to an epic than to a novel. Although written in prose, the high seriousness, the majestic style, the language which moves along rhythmically, swaying the reader into experiencing, and not just visualizing the reality described, is more akin to poetry than prose. The classical definition of an epic applies to Moby Dick, since it, too, reflects a vision of the cosmos rendered through the ideals expressed by a group representative of a particular nation or a race. The chase after the white whale is a superhuman adventure that will test human valour and nobility. Since it is a modern epic, however, Moby Dick ends in defeat. Instead of the reaffirmation of man's courage and the wonder of human achievement, there is drawning and death and darkness attended, at most, by a silent or indifferent God.

The same note of despair occurs at the end of The Lusiads. Camoens laments the inner-defeat and turpor he finds among his countrymen, upon returning home. The epic ends in a negative, somber note, a far cry from the exalted note of affirmation prescribed in the classical treatises.

The two works are alike in one fundamental aspect. They are both sea epics, and as such, they tell of a voyage through the unknown, over unchartered seas, which are synonymous with the mystery and depth of the unfathomable mind. Padraic Colum, defending the maritime qualities of Melville's epic, says: “If Melville had consciously proposed to himself to make an epic of man's invasion of the oceans, his theme and his handling of it could hardly, it seems to me, be different.”¹⁷ Padraic Colum does not mention the importance The Lusiads had in the elaboration of Melville's sea epic. Yet, the American writer's familiarity with The Lusiads at this time seems pertinent to his having written the only one of his novels which may be considered an epic.

Further instances of epical organization are manifest in the use Melville makes of epic similes: “As the unsetting polar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months' night sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze, so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew.”¹⁸ Or in the following passage, where Ahab is compared to an elm:

As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab's many of the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay.”¹⁹

Calling attention to meanings hidden in reality, which offer a clue to the transcendental, this epic simile links Ahab's fearful stature to an elm from which one runs in a storm. The image of the elm is particularly appropriate, for it highlights the phonetic significance of St. Elmo's fire, one of the ominous sea signs we are going to meet later in the novel.

More important to this study, which tries to examine the influence The Lusiads' structure may have had in the composition of Moby Dick, is the change in the Pequod's itinerary which occurs after the novel begins. Before the ship leaves from Nantucket, Ishmael, the first person narrator, has hinted that the ship will go around the Horn, following the same route Melville took when he sailed on the Acushnet. Without explanation, the route is changed and the Pequod follows the same course taken by Vasco da Gama on the way to the Indies.²⁰ Curiously, the Pequod meets its tragic fate in the sea of Japan, the extent of the known world presented in Camoens' epic. In other words, Melville's description of the Pequod's itinerary around the Cape of Good Hope, through the Indian and Pacific oceans, covers the extent of the Eastern world known at the time of Camoens. Most curious of all, these were parts of the world which Melville had never seen.²¹ Contrary to his other novels, Melville's Moby Dick is not autobiographical. His previous works had been based on his experience as a sailor or on his adventures in the Marquesas Islands and Hawaii. The events had been fictional, but the places and the people portrayed had been real, for the most part. Not so in Moby Dick. Here, intellect and creative imagination take over to transcend real life. For that reason, it is not surprising that he changed the Pequod's itinerary in order to conform to Vasco da Gama's. Writing about places where he had never been, Melville was free to use his imaginative and creative powers, going beyond experience to the knowledge he had accumulated from books, The Lusiads, among others.

In Canto X of The Lusiads, Thetis, the goddess to whom Vasco da Gama is wed—the Portuguese marry the sea goddesses, thereby becoming immortal—takes the Portuguese captain to the top of a mountain in order to disclose to him the existence of other lands. These were regions not yet known to the Portuguese when Vasco da Gama sailed, although they were known to Camoens who writes seventy years later. Most of these regions are going to appear in Moby Dick: The Moluccas, whose fragrance Melville compares to the women of Salem, whose “sailor sweethearts smell them miles offshore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.”²² Malacca's Peninsula, Asia's most southern point; Sunda Islands, through whose straits the ships bound to China from the West enter the China Sea; Sumatra, Timor and the Solomon Islands, called Ophir by Melville, in accordance with the Biblical legend, invoked also by Camoens;²³ Pactolus, a river in Lydia, famous for the gold washed from its sands;²⁴ the birds of paradise, described by Camoens and Melville as the bird that never alights, both paying heed to a legend prevalent in the Renaissance which caused the merchants who brought these birds for sale in Europe to cut their legs.²⁵

Besides mentioning people and places he had never seen but which he had assimilated, principally from The Lusiads, Melville alludes to places he had visited but whose memory he needed to reactivate through reading. In reference to the Southern constellations, he mentions Hydra, Argo and Cetus, all of these cited by Camoens as well.²⁶ In Cetus,²⁷ the sea monster, Melville sees the precursor of the whale, describing its mythological origins as if they were the whale's. To do so, he refers to the cavern-pagoda of Elephanta in India and to the sculptures found there, one of which, he claims, is that of a whale:

No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of the true whale's majestic flukes.²⁸

Mickle, translator of The Lusiads, had included in his translation, read by Melville, an essay in which he discusses the cavernpagoda of Elephanta.²⁹ Later, alluding to metempsychosis, Melville invokes Pythagoras, to whom Camoens also had referred in connection with similar beliefs of the Brahmans.³⁰ Similarly, both Melville and Mickle refer to Manichaeism, the former in regard to Ahab's attitude toward the whale: “That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning, to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds;”³¹ the latter in reference to Brahmanism: “A species of the ancient manicheism of Persia is mixed with their religion, and the destroyer, or the frightful demon, as already observed, is worshipped by the authority of their sacred books.”³²

We have already seen how Melville follows Camoens' epic closely in regard to the itinerary of the Pequod as well as the regions and the heavens mentioned in Moby Dick. There are two other structural elements linking the two works. One is the lengthy digressions which from time to time deviate from the main story. The other is the several interpolations made by the author-narrator into the narrative. These authorial intrusions are usually made in the form of personal confessions or ontological observations. Melville often ends the chapters with reflections on his condition or with considerations regarding man's plight on earth. At the end of Chapter VII, “The Chapel,” there is a reflection upon the smallness of man before the eternal mystery:

Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through thick water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.³³

Similarly, Camoens, at the end of Canto I of The Lusiads, comments on the lot of man:

By land what strife, what plots of secret guile,
How many a wound from many a treacherous smile!
O where shall man escape his numerous foes,
And rest his weary head in safe repose!(34)

Such practices were condemned by scholars who expected to see in the epic an entirely objective narration.³⁵

Contrary to classical dictum, Melville digresses extensively. He expounds on the whaling industry; on the methods used in extracting and processing oil from whales, and on the intricacies of the whale's anatomy. Camoens, on the other hand, incorporates within the structure of The Lusiads several long segments narrating Portugal's past. These digressions are immensely important to the structure of the two epics, for on them depends the narrative's mythical plane—the center symbol of the whale and the extraordinary achievement of the Portuguese, which eventually will allow them to become gods.

Another structural device common to both is the insertion of a shorter narrative within the frame of the larger one, a “narrative within the narrative.” Members of the crew narrate “The Town-Ho's Story,” later told by Ishmael at an inn in Lima, Peru, which tells of a mutiny on a whaling ship whose irascible mate was later devoured by the white whale. In The Lusiads, the story-within-a-story is narrated by the ship's crew to pass the idle hours on board. “Magriço and the Twelve of England” is the story of twelve Portuguese warriors who are called upon to defend the honor of twelve British ladies by defeating in battle the twelve knights who had insulted them. Both of these interpolated episodes serve as a microcosm of the larger theme. The “Town-Ho's Story” highlights the function of the whale as a great leveller, while the “Magriço episode” gives proof of Portuguese gallantry and service to the cause of love. Both of the inner narratives are interrupted in order to make clear their dependence on the main story.

Further structural similarities occur when both Camoens and Melville interfere as authors in the narrative and assume the role of narrators. In Camoens, this is evident in the several passages of The Lusiads where he refers to events in his own life.³⁶ In Melville, this technique occurs in the chapter entitled “Moby Dick”, when Ishmael ceases to be the narrator and Melville clearly assumes that function: “all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go.” Similarly, in both The Lusiads and Moby Dick, the apparent heroes must yield the importance of their characters to others. For example, Vasco da Gama must yield his prominent place as protagonist to the whole Portuguese race, while Ishmael loses his narrative stature for the sake of Ahab's prominence.

The structural parallel is further corroborated by the character of Elijah and by the strategic place where he appears in the course of the narrative. Before the trip begins, moments before going on board the Pequod, Ishmael and his cannibal friend Queequeg are accosted by an old sailor, Elijah, who warns them against signing up for the venture. According to Elijah, the ship is doomed because its captain, Ahab, on a previous voyage profaned the temple at Santa and spat on the silver calabash. Because of this deed, and the subsequent evil omen that hangs over Captain Ahab—which is already responsible for the loss of his leg, bitten off by the white whale—Elijah prophecies Captain Ahab's death along with that of the crew.

As a character Elijah fulfills a function similar to that of Restelo's venerable old man in The Lusiads. At the time of Vasco da Gama's departure, the “reverend figure” warns Vasco da Gama and his crew against the dangers that lie ahead. It is foolish, he says, to invest the country's human energies and its riches in the imperialistic venture while at home the people are left defenseless and at the mercy of nearby enemies. Both characters' function is to present the antithesis to the main enterprise. Through the “old man,” the reader realizes the sacrifice and the dangers that may be incurred in order to carry out the super-human task, not the least of which being the temerity of defying the gods by going where no man has ever gone before:

Curst be the wretch, the fire of Heaven who stole,
And with ambition first debauch'd the soul!(37)

The perils that may ensue from the overt defiance of the gods is the message brought by Elijah to the two friends. Ahab and the crew are headed toward disaster because the one-legged, obstinate iconoclast is intent on chasing the whale, even if that means the destruction of the ship. He recognizes no limits; the same defiance that led him to spit in the silver calabash impels him now to defy the heavens, like Prometheus, by attacking Moby Dick. It is against this defiance that Elijah warns us, permitting the reader to perceive that the chase after whales is charged with sinister intent.

Restelo's venerable old man and the ragged sailor both appear just before the voyage begins. The former's speech is dialectical, while the latter's prophecy, veiled as it is in half-disclosed forebodings, is much more symbolic and mysterious. They are alike, however, in their dramatic function, which is to present the counter action: In The Lusiads, the reprisals which may follow Gama's expedition to the Indies; in Moby Dick, Captain Ahab's hidden cumpulsion.³⁸

Once on board the Pequod, Ishmael and Queequeg become members of a crew constituted by men of every race, hailing from every corner of the earth. This group, representing all humanity gathered together on a ship, which is really a symbol for the world, allows itself to be driven by the demoniac Ahab, whose intent is to rebel, like Prometheus, against God's sovereignty. The crew is consciously aware of Ahab's evil purpose and its dire consequences. As the voyage progresses and the time and the turn of the whale draws near, they become more and more imbued with terror, seeing in all of nature's phenomena premonitions of the impending catastrophe. Such land features and sea phenomena as the Cape of Good Hope, The Spirit of the Cape, The Spirit-Spout, St. Elmo's Fire act as nature's agents, warning the crew against Ahab's folly. All these elements are to be found in Camoens' The Lusiads or are introduced by Mickle in his translation.³⁹

As has already been mentioned, in the beginning, the Pequod appears to be headed for South America and Cape Horn, thus following the route taken by Melville when he sailed on board the Acushnet. Later, contrary to expectation, the ship sails for the Cape of Good Hope, where Melville had never been. By this change, Melville decided to locate the “Spirit of the Cape” in its proper place, in the Cape of Good Hope, where Camoens had originally placed it.

There were two other references to the Spirit of the Cape in White-Jacket, where it had been linked with Cape Horn, and in Billy Budd, a novel he completed just before he died. Throughout his creative life, Melville's original interpretation of the Cape's meaning did not change significantly.

The “Spirit of the Cape” was to Melville synonymous with something huge and horrendous, “horrid form, that ridest the air,” he says in Billy Budd, following Camoens portrayal of the Adamastor in the fifth canto of The Lusiads. At the same time, it is something all but impossible to overcome, an insurmountable obstacle, which after it has passed is considered a watershed in one's life:

But sailor or landsman, there is some sort of a Cape Horn for all. Boys! Beware of it; prepare for it in time. Graybeards! thank God it is passed. And ye lucky livers, to whom by some rare fatality, your Cape Horns are placid as Lake Lemans, flatter not yourselves that good luck is judgment and discretion; for all the yolk in your eggs, you might have foundered and gone down, had the Spirit of the Cape said the word.⁴⁰

The reference in Billy Budd, on the other hand, emphasizes the Spirit of the Cape, not its terrorizing figure. Alluding to the Napoleonic Wars, Melville likens their genius to the Spirit of the Cape, menancing and fleeting: “But to the grandfathers of us graybeards, the more thoughtful of them, the genius of it presented an aspect like that of Camoens' ‘Spirit of the Cape,’ an eclipsing menace, mysterious and prodigious.”⁴¹

The circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope in Moby Dick is imbued with the symbolic characteristics attributed to the Spirit of the Cape in these two novels. In Melville's major novel, however, there is no direct allusion to the Cape, or to its “genius,” or to its ultimate meaning within the context of the story. The full significance of the chapter, “The Spirit-Spout,” where the rounding of the Cape occurs, may be derived from the meaning Melville gives it in the other two novels; an understanding of the Adamastor episode in The Lusiads may also be helpful.

The three sea phenomena that appear in The Lusiads close to one another, but as three distinct entities, are, in Melville, blended together into one complex symbol, equated with the ambiguous nature of the white whale. The Spirit-Spout, the Corposants, and the Spirit of the Cape are each called upon to create together the feeling of impending doom brought on by the imminent encounter with Moby Dick.

There is no doubt that Melville derived the idea for the Spirit-Spout from The Lusiads. As usual, he assimilated the derived element to his own creative purpose. Vasco da Gama describes the water spout together with the Corposants, a dozen or so stanzas before the Cape's crossing, as examples of the wonders he has seen. Melville presents all three elements as a combined symbol; to the water spout and the corposants, he adds the Spirit of the Cape, which Mickle had identified as the huge, horrendous figure that hovers over the Cape of Good Hope, threatening the Portuguese.

As a compound symbol, the Spirit-Spout is a most ingenious device.⁴² It is part Spirit of the Cape, for it appears in that region, it is part water spout, because it has the characteristics described by Mickle:

Thick as a mast the vapour swells its size;
A circling whirlwind lifts it to the skies;

As a spirit, the spout is awe-inspiring, ominous, not in a physical sense as is the Spirit of the Cape, but in the fears it instills in the crew.⁴³ As a spout, its snow-white jet directed to the sky, it is an eclipsing menace, as Melville calls the Spirit of the Cape in Billy Budd, appearing and disappearing, beckoning the crew onward to the abyss. Unlike the Adamastor, the Spirit-Spout does not need to threaten the sailors by prophesying disaster. Its mere fleeting presence is sufficiently awesome, since it is linked to the white whale's gushing spout. For the crew of the Pequod, who have a bad conscience for having agreed to follow Ahab, the apprehension derived from the Spirit-Spout's appearance is rooted in the same fear that leads Vasco da Gama to ask the Adamastor:

Have we the secrets of the deep survey'd,
Which these wide solitudes of seas and sky
Where doomed to hide from man's unhallow'd eye?(44)

As for the Spirit of the Cape, it is its genious, not its materialized ghost that interests Melville, although some sort of presence is intimated as the author depicts the “black waters” and the “captive fishes” endlessly swimming around it. As soon as the Pequod approaches the forbidding promontory, it “sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness.” The Spirit of the Cape quickly shows its ire. The black sea heaved, “as if its vast tides were a conscience and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.”⁴⁵

From whence comes this anguish and guilt? Melville goes on describing the Cape: “… that tormented sea, where guilty beings, transformed into these fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon.”⁴⁶ An examination of the symbology and function of the Adamastor episode in The Lusiads may help us to reach an answer.

In The Lusiads, the Spirit of the Cape appears structurally at the half-way mark. Up to that point, the Portuguese have trodden proven ground. Their greatest resource has been courage in battle and faith in the power of love. Now they are about to enter an expanse of sea and sky, an area of the earth's surface which is entirely unknown to them or to anyone else. To do so, they must seek the assistance of the gods, particularly Venus who has been friendly to the Portuguese from the start. The circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope is thus the nadir of Gama's attempt to reach the Indies by sea.

As an opposing force the Spirit of the Cape—Adamastor—is a most appropriate symbol. Geographically, he is the great obstacle to be overcome—not in vain did the Portuguese first call that landmark Cabo Tormentoso, Cape of Tempests.⁴⁷ In the war he had waged against the gods, the Spirit of the Cape had been lord of the seas, the very same domain the Portuguese are now attempting to invade. As Captain of the Sea, he had wanted to possess Thetis, who as Peleus' daughter was princess of the waters—she now favors the Portuguese and later will wed Vasco da Gama in the Island of Love. His brutish, uncontained passion for Thetis, juxtaposed to the Portuguese proven chivalry and constant homage to Venus, is what makes the Portuguese the Adamastor's nemesis, deserving the gods' help.

The quality of evil associated with the Spirit of the Cape, which Melville discerned so well, stems basically from his rebellious confrontation with the gods. He had dared to take arms against Jupiter, but was defeated, having had to suffer the gods' wrath. As punishment, not only have his limbs been turned to stone, but he is also condemned to everlasting shame as he endures the tantalizing presence of Thetis and the Nereids in the waters surrounding him.

For all these reasons, the Spirit of the Cape represents the embodiment of evil. Mickle goes so far in his translation as to link him with Bacchus, both symbols of the Mohammedan religion, contrary to the Christian Portuguese. In his Promethean defiance of the gods, the Spirit of the Cape is like Ahab, who also defies the deity by his committed pursuit of Moby Dick.⁴⁸

The circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope and the portentous, eclipsing appearance of the Spirit-Spout represents, within the epical structure of Melville's Moby Dick, a transitory point from which the subsequent action departs. As the reader will recall, this watershed quality was associated with the reference to the Spirit of the Cape in White-Jacket: “for all the yolk in your eggs, you might have foundered and gone down had the Spirit of the Cape said the word.”

So it is in Moby Dick. After the crossing of the cape, the haunting white whale, whose name had been mentioned occasionally only, becomes an intrinsic part of the narrative right to the end. Juxtaposing the Spirit-Spout to Moby Dick's gushing spout, the two blended together in one ominous symbol of impending catastrophe, Melville manages to instill in the crew an awareness of the transgression they are about to perpetrate against nature.

Camoens and Melville: Two great writers and two great humanists from two very different countries drawn together across the centuries and over religious barriers by a common bond—their great love for the sea. They both breathed its saline air; they both spent long hours amid its vast, seemingly infinite expanse; they both watched its uncontrollable fury and contemplated in wonder its calm, mirror-like beauty. They both crystallized their sea experiences into a powerful epic, depicting man's conquest of the sea and the subsequent implications of that act: a greater comprehension of the meaning of nature and the destiny of man.

The present essay has attempted to study the more intangible references to Camoens' The Lusiads contained in Melville's major creative effort, Moby Dick. Such aspects as the epical structure—the author's digressions and interpolations, the narrative-within-a-narrative, people and places—the character of Elijah and the symbolism associated with the circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope were identified, their correlation with Camoens' epic established, and the symbols explained in the light of the treatment Camoens gives them in The Lusiads.

In spite of some critics' efforts to link the two writer's, most American Literature scholars and literary critics continue to ignore the importance of Camoens in Melville's personal and creative life. Let us hope that this essay will contribute toward a final and irrevocable recognition of Camoens place among those who influenced the genial creativity of America's greatest writer, Herman Melville.

Notes

1. An earlier Portuguese version of this paper was presented at the Congresso Camoneano, held in Maringa, Brazil in July, 1972. An abridged version, also in Portuguese, was presented at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in December, 1972.

2. This letter dated November 24, 1963, was sent by Professor Luther S. Mansfield to Professor Anson C. Piper, then his colleague at Williams College, who had asked him about the relation Melville-Camoens on my behalf. I would like to express my gratitude to both the late Professor Mansfield and Professor Piper. Their encouragement of twenty-three years ago has kept my interest in the Melville-Camoens literary relationship alive all these years.

3. Herman Melville, Moby Dick or, The Whale, ed. by Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent (New York: Hendricks House, 1952). The explanatory notes cover pp. 569-832.

4. Newton Arvin, Herman Melville (New York: The Viking Press, 1957), pp. 75,76,149,150,159,278.

5. Ibid., p. 150. For another important discussion of Camoens' presence in Melville's work see Lawrence Thompson's Melville's Quarrel with God (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 346-49.

6. Brian F. Head, “Camoes and Melville,” Revista Camoniana, I, i(1964), pp. 36-77. Another article, covering almost the same ground, appeared later, during the celebration of the 400th anniversary of The Lusiads' publication: Jack Schmitt, “Melville e Camoens,” Ocidente, November, 1972, pp. 151-162.

7. Ibid., p.75.

8. Ibid., pp. 62-4, in an episode (chapter LXXII) reminiscent of “The Island of Love” in The Lusiads. According to Americo da Costa Ramalho, Estudos Camonianos (Lisbon, 1980), p.120, Clifton Fadiman states in his introduction to Typee (New York: Bantam Books, 1958) that Melville repeatedly refers to an island paradise in his work.

9. White-Jacket, Vol. VI The Works of Herman Melville, Standard ed. (London: Constable and Co., 1922), pp. 339-40. Further insights into Jack Chase's character may be found in Howard P. Vincent's The Tailoring of Melville's “White-Jacket” (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970). The critic sees the character of Jack Chase, as portrayed by Melville, as a composite of biographical fact and myth.

10. Ibid., p.293. It is certainly pertinent to refer the reader to the several passages where Melville describes the beauties of Rio de Janeiro, pp. 198-99, 291-299, and most important, the beautiful account of “The Bay of All Beauties,” pp.261-264. It would appear that Melville was not only interested in Portuguese literature, but in a former Portuguese colony (Brazil had become independent in 1822), and in the Portuguese royal family, then still ruling Brazil.

11. Merton M. Sealts, Jr., “Melville's Reading: A Cheklist of Books Owned and Borrowed,” Harvard Library Bulletin, III, No. 1 (Winter 1949), p.119: “Camoes, Luis de. Poems from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoens with Remarks On His Life and Writings. Notes, etc., etc. By Lord Viscount Strangford … New Edition. London, Carpenter, 1824.”

12. For other instances of Camoens' influence, especially in the poems, see Head, pp. 68-72.

13. White-Jacket, pp.297-299. Needless to say, these events are all imagined. According to Charles R. Anderson, Melville in the South Seas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), Melville did not go ashore in Rio. The log of the frigate United States shows that no liberty was given to the crew during the week spent there. On the other hand, he may have gone ashore on a previous voyage, when the Acushnet touched at the “Bay of All Beauties” on its outward voyage.

14. See George Monteiro's “Poetry and Madness: Melville's Rediscovery of Camoens in 1867,” New England Quarterly, 21,4 (Dec., 1978), 561-66, for an account of some of the poem's impact on Melville's personal life.

15. The officer was George W. Galvan, Third Mate. Born, Fayal; residence, Rochester, Mass.; age, 25; height, 5′9″; complexion, light; hair, brown. See Wilson L. Heflin, Herman Melville's Whaling Years Diss. Vanderbilt University, 1952, pp. 65-68.

16. For a portrayal of Portuguese captains and seamen in the whaling industry see Eduardo Mayone Dias, Baleeiros Portugueses na America, (Angra do Heroismo: Instituto Historico da Ilha Terceira, Boletim No 35, 1975).

17. “Epic of the Sea,” A Half-Day's Ride (New York: Macmillan, 1932), pp.175-179.

18. Moby Dick, p. 527.

19. Ibid., p. 502.

20. “The Pequod appears to be headed for Cape Horn but actually, without sufficient reason for the change, rounds the Cape of Good Hope.” Richard Chase, The American Novel and its Tradition (New York, 1957), p.50.

21. Both Camoens and Melville's vast scope include Europe, Africa, Asia and America.

22. Moby Dick, p.33.

23. “Explanatory Notes,” Ibid., p.751.

24. Ibid., p.427. See Luis de Camoens' The Lusiads, or the Discovery of India, trans. by William Julius Mickle, The Works of the English Poets, vol. 21 (London, 1810), p. 701.

25. Moby Dick, p.372.

26. Ibid., p.272. For an example of Cetus as a whale see Moby Dick, Ibid., p.110; also, Mickle, p.168 n.41.

27. Mickle tells the story of Cetus, the sea monster, placed in the skies far away from Andromeda whom he was to devour. Mickle, p.708, n.41.

28. Moby Dick, p.262. See explanatory note, p.613: In the cavernpagoda of Elephanta, “there were no representations of the Matse Avatar of Vishnu.”

29. Mickle, p.723, n.11: Mickle does not mention the Matse Avatar as one of the sculptures in the Temple of Elephanta, but he does mention, on the previous page, the several metamorphoses Vishnu undergoes, such as being spawned a fish, and as the greatest God, lying sleeping on his back in a sea of milk … he lies on the snake Ananta. It was in this later condition that Melville portrays him in Moby Dick.

30. Moby Dick, p.426, 802.

31. Moby Dick, p.181.

32. Mickle, p.725.

33. Moby Dick, p.36.

34. Mickle, p.641. There are many examples of end-of-the-chapter personal observations in both The Lusiads and Moby Dick.

35. Mickle, p. 689. Mickle tries to defend Camoens' interpolations by saying that they do not impair the narrative.

36. In Camoens these interpolations may be explained by the fact that he is himself a Portuguese and therefore his life is as deserving of appearing in the epic as that of the others, since the Portuguese are the real heroes.

37. Mickle, p. 677.

38. Moby Dick, p.654. Mansfield and Vincent call attention to other sources for the creation of Elijah: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and the Biblical prophet of the same name.

39. Two examples of the latter are the Spirit of the Cape and the Spirit-Spout, which have no counterpart in the original.

40. White-Jacket, op. cit., p.137.

41. Herman Melville, Billy Budd, ed. by F. Barron Freeman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), p.171.

42. The corposants will play a larger role in a later chapter, when they will be associated with Ahab's worship of fire, Moby Dick, p. 500.

43. The Spirit-Spout's importance as a central symbol in Moby Dick is brought out when Ishmael and Queequeg stay at the Spouter Inn.

44. Mickle, p.682, line 520.

45. Moby Dick, p.232.

46. Ibid., p.233.

47. This is the way Mickle refers to the Cape's old name. Melville, however, using a Portuguese source which he misspells, refers to it as Cabo Tormentoto, Moby Dick, p.233. See “explanatory notes,” p. 738.

48. Mickle, p.685, n. 23. For a fuller treatment of the link between Ahab and Satan, and the satanical quality of the Spirit of the Cape, see Henry F. Pommer, Milton and Melville (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1950), p. 92.