[In the following essay, Bach discusses the various levels of narration in Pierre and suggests that the alternating narrative voices help to unify the work.]

In late 1851 Herman Melville, weary from his struggles to see Moby-Dick through publication, had no burning ambition for his next fictional production. Pierre would be a pastoral romance with a touch of the gothic and would, he hoped, regain some of the money and reputation with publishers that he had lost by his two previous publications, Mardi and Moby-Dick. In a letter written to his publisher Bentley on April 16, 1852, he indicated his assumption that his new book would prove agreeable to public taste: “And more especially am I impelled to decline those overtures upon the ground that my new book possessing unquestionable novelty, as regards my former ones,—treating of utterly new scenes & characters;—and, as I beleive [sic], very much more calculated for popularity than anything you have yet published of mine—being a regular romance, with a mysterious plot to it, & stirring passions at work, and withall, representing a new & elevated aspect of American life—all these considerations warrant me strongly in not closing with terms greatly inferior to those upon which our previous negotiations have proceeded. … If nothing has been made on the old books, may not something be made out of the new?”¹

Whatever Melville considered a “regular romance” to be, he certainly knew that the symbolic and allegorical patterns employed in Mardi and Moby-Dick were not “calculated for popularity.” He was also aware that they created a situation in which misreading and over-interpretation could easily take place. On January 8, 1852, he wrote Sophia Hawthorne, suggesting that her interpretations of certain symbolic sections of Moby-Dick had gone beyond his symbolic intention. In the same letter he asserted that Pierre would not be open to such over-interpretation, the implication being that the book would not be heavily symbolic: “But, my Dear Lady, I shall not again send you a bowl of salt water. The next chalice I shall commend, will be a rural bowl of milk.”² How, we may ask, did Melville alter this original intention? The answer to the question rests principally in his use of narrative and structural devices that had not previously been a part of his aesthetic repertoire.

Almost every critic of Pierre has assumed both that it is related in the third person and that the third-person narrator is omniscient. Actually, neither of these assumptions is entirely true. On numerous occasions the narrator employs first person, and on other occasions he indicates existing limitations on his narrating powers. It is relevant, then, to clarify the exceptions to these general assumptions. A second cause for difficulty arises from the necessity to distinguish between levels of narration in the novel. Besides the semi-omniscient first narrator who relates most of the novel in the third person, there is also a second level of narration, represented by the character Pierre, who serves as the principal recorder or reflector of experience. Throughout the novel there is alternation from first to second level of narration, thus constituting a rhythmical quality which unifies the work. Moreover, the functions of the two levels of narration differ. The first is concerned with observation and imparting of knowledge; the second is concerned with the recording of experience.

Since the alternating modes of narration constitute Melville's principal structural devices in this novel, it is imperative to evaluate the first narrator's changing attitudes toward Pierre. The arcadian imagery of the first part of the novel is soon abandoned, and the narrator warns the reader to distinguish between Pierre's own thoughts and those thoughts which simply relate to him: “But the thoughts we here indite as Pierre's are to be very carefully discriminated from those we indite concerning him.”³ In The Modern Psychological Novel, Leon Edel cites a comparable situation in The Turn of the Screw, where there are actually three narrators, but the second is not really independent “since his account is at first being quoted or summarized by the First Narrator.”⁴ Melville's method is clearly not so systematic as James's; thus, from the first narrator's warning, one must conceive of his narration and that of the character Pierre as separate entities. Pierre is, of course, the catalyst for the novel's narrative progression; the principal pattern of the novel is constituted by his attempt to find a course of action, his finding it and meeting its results, and his continuous evaluation of the motives for which he has made his choice. Throughout the novel this threefold pattern is subservient to the rhythm of the juxtaposed narrative voices. Although R. P. Blackmur is incorrect in recognizing but three situations in the novel for which Pierre is not the sole register,⁵ he is correct in assuming that such episodes are extremely rare. For this reason, if one accepts E. M. Forster's definition of plot as “a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality,”⁶ he must also assert that Pierre, as principal catalyst and register, is central to all structural devices employed in the novel. A brief description of the spiral form of the novel, emphasizing a near perfect balance of imagery and character relationship, is therefore relevant. Pierre is made up of twenty-six books, each of different length and an unequal number of subsections. As the narrator says, “This history goes forward and goes backward, as occasion calls. Nimble center, circumference elastic you must have” (p. 62). Thus, while most of the books deal with the present and Pierre's actions in it, others are flashbacks or are devoted to narrative commentary not necessarily continuing the action which has taken place in the previous book.

Books I-XIII are set in or near Saddle Meadows, a rural estate which is described by highly romantic and arcadian imagery. In time, the thirteen books consume five summer days, and events are arranged in each of these days so that the reader recognizes movement from morning to evening. This first setting serves as a background for introducing Pierre, Mrs. Glendinning, Lucy Tartan, Isabel Banford, Delly Ulver, and the ineffectual Reverend Falsgrave. The principal events include the close relation of Pierre and Mrs. Glendinning, the relation of Pierre to the “white” Lucy Tartan, Pierre's recounting the vision of a face and his receiving from Isabel the letter which claims she is his sister, Isabel's two narratives of her past life, Pierre's decision to abandon his past and present in order to fulfill his supposed sister's need of him, and his actual break with Lucy Tartan and his mother. Three significant image patterns are established: (1) Mrs. Glendinning is associated with past ideals and contemporary situations which suggest falsity of position; (2) Lucy Tartan is associated with images of whiteness, of purity, and of angelic qualities; and (3) Isabel Banford is associated with images of mystery, of uncertainty, and of darkness. Book XIV is the structural point of the spiral. In time, it constitutes a part of one day, beginning at 4 a.m. and extending for an unspecified time until Pierre has completed one act. It is set in a coach which is taking Pierre, Isabel, and Delly from Saddle Meadows to the city, and the one act related involves Pierre's finding, reading, and meditating on a piece of a pamphlet left in the coach by some previous occupant.

Books XV-XXVI are set in the city. They introduce three new characters: Plotinus Plinlimmon, the author of the document which Pierre had read in the coach and whom the reader deduces to be the counterpart of the Reverend Falsgrave in the first section, and Glendinning Stanly and Charlie Millthorpe, both of whom are associated with Pierre's past at Saddle Meadows and who demonstrate the various moral poles of that past. The principal events related are Pierre and Isabel's taking quarters in an old church called the Apostles, Pierre's varying success in attempting to write a book by which he could earn his livelihood, Pierre's rejection by his cousin Glen Stanly and the latter's inheriting of Saddle Meadows and courting of Lucy Tartan after the reported death of Mrs. Glendinning, Pierre's renewal of association with Charlie Millthorpe, Lucy's decision to come to the city to live with Pierre and Isabel, and the deaths of Lucy, Pierre, and Isabel. Books I-XIII, then, present a situation, offer a choice to the hero, and picture the making of that choice. Book XIV offers another view, an alternative emotional and intellectual position which could have been assumed by the hero. And Books XV-XXVI demonstrate the hero's facing the results of his choice and his eventual destruction by it.

Excluding the occasional use of the editorial “we,” there are six major episodes which demonstrate the self-conscious narrator's breaking from third into first person. In each he is serving to impart knowledge, to clarify his position and method as narrator, or to foretell the final results of an action already begun. The first of these occurs in Book V: Pierre's “grand enthusiast resolution,” his decision to abandon all that has previously constituted happiness, is “foetally forming in him” (p. 125). In a prayer, he employs a metaphor which likens his own potential sacrifice to that of Christ. The narrator, clarifying the ambiguity of the scene and anticipating the almost blasphemous nature of this facet of Pierre's character; comments: “How shall I steal yet further into Pierre, and show how this heavenly fire was helped to be contained in him, by mere contingent things, and things that he knew not. But I shall follow the endless, winding way,—the flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land. … I am more frank with Pierre than the best men are with themselves. I am all unguarded and magnanimous with Pierre; therefore you saw his weakness, and therefore only. In reserves men build imposing characters; not in revelations. He who shall be wholly honest, though nobler than Ethan Allen; that man shall stand in danger of the meanest mortal's scorn” (pp. 126-127).

The second commentary occurs in Book XIV. As Pierre is described reading a “curious paper-rag” written by Plotinus Plinlimmon, the narrator intervenes to present his reasons for inserting the document itself into the chapter. The reasons are that “Pierre may not in the end be entirely uninfluenced in his conduct by the torn pamphlet, when afterwards perhaps by some means he shall come to understand it; or, peradventure, come to know that he, in the first place, did …” (p. 246); and that Pierre will come to know the author of the pamphlet by reputation and be greatly influenced by seeing him from a distance. Following this the narrator shifts to the first person, commenting on the dubious authenticity of the views presented in the document: “For all these reasons I account sufficient apology for inserting in the following chapters the initial part of what seems to me a very fanciful and mystical, rather than philosophical lecture, from which, I confess, that I myself can derive no conclusion which permanently satisfies those peculiar motions in my soul, to which that lecture seems most particularly addressed. For to me it seems more the excellently illustrated re-statement of a problem, than the solution of the problem itself. But as such mere illustrations are almost universally taken for solutions (and perhaps they are the only possible human solutions), therefore it may help to the temporary quiet of some inquiring mind; and so not be wholly without use” (p. 246).

The third and fourth first-person intrusions appear in Books XVII and XVIII. These two books comprise narrative commentary relative to Pierre's ability as a writer. The first, ironic in tone, commends in Pierre everything which the narrator apparently considers despicable in a writer. The second, in an authoritative tone, evaluates seriously Pierre's potential as a writer. In both books the “I” narrator is an advocate of a type of literature antithetical to the pastoral optimism favored by an audience which he ironically says is constituted of Pierre's “more intimate acquaintances” and of “the less partial applauses of the always intelligent, and extremely discriminating public” (p. 288).

The fifth intrusion comments on the spirit of the dwellers at the Apostles, suggesting later that Charlie Millthorpe exemplifies the essential charity of the group. Almost all the dwellers are artists of various sorts who have attempted to ground their lives on somewhat mystical bases. The narrator mocks their efforts, yet recognizes that in their charity they will not resent such mocking: “Yet let me here offer up three locks of my hair, to the memory of all such glorious paupers who have lived and died in this world. Surely, and truly I honor them—noblemen often at bottom—and for that very reason I make bold to be gamesome about them; for where fundamental nobleness is, and fundamental honor is due, merriment is never accounted irreverent. The fools and pretenders of humanity, and the imposters and baboons among the gods, these only are offended with raillery; since both those gods and men whose titles to eminence are secure, seldom worry themselves about the seditious gossip of old apple-women, and the skylarkings of funny little boys in the street” (p. 314).

The last of these intrusions, most significant because it clarifies the theme of the novel, occurs in Book XXI. Pierre sees at a distance the face of Plinlimmon, which seems to tell him to desist from his present course of action, to refrain from a vain quest. Pierre then looks for Plinlimmon's pamphlet which he had read in the coach. Ironically he carries it in the lining of his coat but is unable to find it, and he curses himself that he had never understood the document. The narrator enters to question the truth of this assumption: “I think that, regarded in one light, the final career of Pierre will seem to show, that he did understand it. And here it may be randomly suggested, by way of bagatelle, whether some things that men think they do not know, are not for all that thoroughly comprehended by them; and yet, so to speak, though contained in themselves, are kept a secret from themselves?” (p. 346)

To summarize, Melville's use of the first-person narrative voice on a basically third-person frame serves to intensify the series of intrusions by contributing a definitive tone. The first intrusion patterns with the sixth, since the subject of each is the vanity of Pierre's quest and the depths of human motivations. The second anticipates Pierre's later recognition of the distinction between “horological” and “chronometrical” reality, while the third and fourth demonstrate the effect of self-confident enthusiasm in clouding that distinction. The fifth emphasizes the ironic ambiguity of the protagonist's role, for Pierre also has followed the “mystical” course of the Apostles. One may perhaps strain a point to say that Melville consciously patterns intensified narrative intrusions. However, he may say that the effect of intensity gained by the use of the first-person intrusion demonstrates in Pierre an interesting artistic innovation which is not observed in the author's earlier novels.

The degree of the first narrator's omniscience must also be clarified. While his comments are generally forceful, he often reveals a lack of knowledge of incidental details. For instance, after the second narrative of Isabel's past, Pierre kisses her and leaves. Walking back to Saddle Meadows he stops to seek advice from the Reverend Falsgrave, and on the walk he obviously is attempting to assimilate the significance of Isabel's story for his own life. Of these thoughts the narrator says: “We know not Pierre Glendinning's thoughts as he gained the village and passed on beneath its often shrouding trees …” (p. 191). While examples of narrative limitation such as this are numerous, on more revealing occasions the narrator admits that his interpretation of Pierre's motives, as well as any interpretations of them, has possibility of error: “Ofttimes it is very wonderful to trace the rarest and profoundest things, and find their probable origin in something extremely trite or trivial. Yet so strange and complicate is the human soul; so much is confusedly evolved from out itself, and such vast and varied accessions come to it from abroad, and so impossible is it always to distinguish between these two, that the wisest man were rash, positively to assign the precise and incipient origination of his final thoughts and acts. Far as we blind moles can see, man's life seems but an acting upon mysterious hints; it is somehow hinted to us, to do thus or thus. For surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity” (p. 207). One may easily overestimate the omniscience of the overriding narrative voice, and the novel's subtitle, “The Ambiguities,” further emphasizes this possibility. Perhaps, then, as the narrator later says, we cannot definitively find the basis of Pierre's choice or the motives on which he makes that choice; we can only continue to restate the problem (p. 246).

Notes

1. The Letters of Herman Melville, ed. Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman (New Haven, 1960), p. 150.

2. Ibid., p. 146.

3. Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, ed. Henry A. Murray (N. Y., 1949), p. 196. Subsequent references to this edition appear in the text.

4. N. Y., 1955, pp. 39-40.

5. “The Craft of Herman Melville: A Putative Statement,” in Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Richard Chase (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962), p. 82.

6. Aspects of the Novel (N. Y., 1954), p. 86.