Melville. La casa nella Wilderness

Abstract

Th e oceanic vastness of Moby Dick and the novels set in the Pacifi c Islands alternate with the cramped rooms of Bartleby: in their heterogeneity, these spatial elements – transposed into allegories – highlight Melville’s awareness of the physical limits of his writing. Th e reader perceives a dynamic sense of dwelling, where public and private intersect; we witness the realization of communion with the “Other” in the wild crew members of the Pequod. Yet, the yearning for individual freedom coexists with Jonah’s prison-like home inside the belly of the whale – a warning and ethical code of an American Puritanism which is settled in/projected onto a natural dimension. Equally ambivalent is the furious power radiating from Captain Ahab’s cabin: from there originates a question about the possibility of inhabiting modernity by following the Pequod’s course/route – that is, embarking on a journey into the wilderness, which will culminate in silence as the sublime and terrifying unspeakability of things.