Moby Dick

http://berkshirehistory.org/exhibits/reflections-on-melville。 In 1832, a young Herman Melville took his first fateful trip to Pittsfield, MA. Visiting his Uncle Thomas, Melville, spent the summer working the farm and exploring the bucolic Berkshire Hills. Just nine years later, in 1841, he signed on the whaler Acushnet for a three-year whaling voyage which took him to parts of the world unknown to the young man, opening his eyes to whaling culture and distant Pacific islands. Upon leaving the Acushnet, Melville spent considerable time with island natives and discovered an appetite for the “watery part of the world,” according to Melville. His sailing days though did little to provide him with consistent work and money, however they laid a considerable foundation for future stories, most famously for his seminal novel, Moby-Dick. /

This is a unique celebration of the 160th anniversary of the publication ofMoby-Dick, a novel not appreciated by the literary world until well after Melville’s death for its

brilliance. Reflections on Melville retraces the author’s steps through a lens unique to these artists and Berkshire County. With photography and contemporary art, Moby-Dick and the late Herman Melville are interpreted like they’ve never been before. The artists spent their time searching for their own elusive whale, and found him in places they never imagined.

http://berkshirehistory.org/herman-melville/herman-melville-and-arrowhead/

After settling back with his family in Lansingburgh, New York, outside Albany, Herman began to write down his stories at the urging of his sisters. The result was five books all drawing on his experiences at sea. Typee _(1846) was based on Melville’s adventures after jumping ship in the Marquesas Islands; its sequel was _Omoo (1847). Mardi (1849) was a South Seas fantasy. Redburn (1849) was a semi-autobiographical account of Melville’s days in the merchant marine, and White-Jacket (1849) told the tale of life on a U.S. man-of-war. In 1850, Herman, Lizzie, and their baby son Malcolm spent the summer in Pittsfield at the Melvill farm. Herman was inspired by the beauty of the region, particularly the view of Mount Greylock, highest point in Massachusetts, from the farm house window. He was working on a story about the whale fisheries as well as writing some literary reviews for a friend’s magazine when he was invited to go on a picnic to Monument Mountain, just south of Pittsfield. Also invited on the excursion were two other literary notables: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Nathaniel Hawthorne, both Berkshire residents. Melville and Hawthorne met for the first time and struck up an instantaneous close friendship.

The impulsive Melville made the decision to follow

Hawthorne’s example and move permanently to the Berkshires to find a quiet solitude in which to write. Melville thought of the beautiful view of Mount Greylock from the Melvill farm, and within a week had purchased the neighboring farm which commanded a similar view. He named the farm “Arrowhead” after the native relics he discovered as he was plowing the fields. The home would remain his for the next 13 years, and there he would write some of his finest works.

The house at Arrowhead had been built in 1783. A rambling old farm house, it became the home for Herman, Lizzie, Malcolm, and three more children, all born at Arrowhead: Stanwix, Bessie, and Fanny. Herman’s mother and sisters Augusta, Helen, and Fanny all moved to Arrowhead as well. Sister Kate and numerous other friends and relations would make their home there as well at various times. It was a busy, chaotic household.

Herman created a refuge from this chaos in his

second-floor library. Keeping to a regular writing schedule, he completed four novels, a collection of short stories, and 10 magazine pieces, as well as beginning work on a volume of poetry. The works Melville wrote at Arrowhead included Moby-Dick, Pierre, The

Confidence-Man, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, and such short stories as “I and My Chimney,” “Benito Cereno,” “Bartleby the Scrivener,” and “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids.

http://www.s9.com/Biography/Melville-Herman

1851 - American author, best known for his novels of the sea and especially for his masterpiece Moby Dick, a whaling adventure dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. The work was only recognized as a masterpiece years after Melville's death.

1891 - Died of heart failure on the 28th of September.

1924 - Through the narrator of Moby Dick, Ishmael, the author meditated questions about faith and the workings of God's intelligence. He returned to these meditations in his last great work, Billy Budd, a story left unfinished at his death and posthumously published.