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48-476: Melville began work on the novella in November 1886, revising and expanding it from time to time, but he left the manuscript in disarray. Melville's widow Elizabeth began to edit the manuscript for publication, but was not able to discern her husband's intentions at key points, even as to the book's title. Raymond M. Weaver , Melville's first biographer, was given the manuscript and published the 1924 version, which

96-401: A foundling from Bristol , has an innocence, good looks and a natural charisma that make him popular with the crew. He has a stutter , which becomes more noticeable when under intense emotion. He arouses the antagonism of the ship's master-at-arms , John Claggart. Claggart, while not unattractive, seems somehow "defective or abnormal in the constitution", possessing a "natural depravity." Envy

144-457: A bewildering array of corrections, cancellations, cut and pasted leaves, annotations by several hands, and with at least two different attempts made at a fair copy . The composition proceeded in three general phases, as shown by the Melville scholars Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., who did an extensive study of the original papers from 1953 to 1962. They concluded from the evidence of

192-501: A book off the brain is akin to the ticklish and dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—and even then the painting may not be worth the trouble...." The "scrapings" of Billy Budd lie in the 351 leaves of manuscript now in the Houghton Library at Harvard University . The state of this manuscript has been described as "chaotic," with

240-449: A character caught between the pressures between unbending legalism and malleable moral principles, other critics have differed in opinion. Such other critics have argued that Vere represents a ressentient protagonist whose disdain for Lord Admiral Nelson he takes out on Billy, in whom Vere sees the traits of Nelson's that he resents. One scholar argues that Vere manipulated and misrepresented the applicable laws to condemn Billy, showing that

288-733: A homage to Melville. Buddusky dies in a brawl with the Shore Patrol. The book was later made into a 1973 film by Hal Ashby . The film omits the original ending by Ponicsan. Adaptations for cinema and television: Raymond M. Weaver Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.226 via cp1108 cp1108, Varnish XID 227924247 Upstream caches: cp1108 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 08:46:00 GMT Houghton Library Houghton Library , on

336-440: A lack of empathy or remorse. Since the late 20th century, Billy Budd has become a central text in the field of legal scholarship known as law and literature . The climactic trial has been the focus of scholarly inquiry regarding the motives of Vere and the legal necessity of Billy's condemnation. Vere states, given the circumstances of Claggart's slaying, condemning Billy to death would be unjust. While critics have viewed Vere as

384-421: A literary masterpiece. In its first text and subsequent texts, and as read by different audiences, the book has kept that high status ever since. In 1990 the Melville biographer and scholar Hershel Parker pointed out that all the early estimations of Billy Budd were based on readings from the flawed transcription texts of Weaver. Some of these flaws were crucial to an understanding of Melville's intent, such as

432-552: A private meeting. Claggart makes his case and Billy, astounded, is unable to respond, due to his stutter. In his extreme frustration he strikes out at Claggart, killing him instantly. Vere convenes a drumhead court-martial . He acts as convening authority , prosecutor , defense counsel and sole witness (except for Billy). He intervenes in the deliberations of the court-martial panel to persuade them to convict Billy, despite their and his beliefs in Billy's moral innocence. (Vere says in

480-417: A professor at Columbia University , doing research for what would become the first biography of Melville, paid a visit to Melville's granddaughter, Eleanor Melville Metcalf, at her South Orange, New Jersey home. She gave him access to all the records of Melville that survived in the family: manuscripts, letters, journals, annotated books, photographs, and a variety of other material. Among these papers, Weaver

528-446: A professor who has written books on American serial killers, has said that the author's description of Claggart could be considered to be a definition of a sociopath . He acknowledges that Melville was writing at a time before the word "sociopath" was used. Dr. Robert Hare might classify Claggart as a psychopath, since his personality did not demonstrate the traits of a sociopath (rule-breaking) but of grandiosity, cunning manipulation, and

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576-527: A reprinting of the essay, slightly expanded, in The New York Times Book Review (August 10, 1924). In relatively short order he and several other influential British literati had managed to canonize Billy Budd , placing it alongside Moby-Dick as one of the great books of Western literature. Wholly unknown to the public until 1924, Billy Budd by 1926 had joint billing with the book that had just recently been firmly established as

624-814: A series of proposals which eventually led to the creation of Houghton Library, Lamont Library , and the New England Deposit Library . Funding for Houghton was raised privately, with the largest portion coming from Arthur A. Houghton Jr. , in the form of stock in Corning Glass Works . Construction was largely completed by the fall of 1941, and the library opened on February 28, 1942. Along with much else, Houghton holds collections of papers of Samuel Johnson , Emily Dickinson , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Margaret Fuller , John Keats , Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family, Amos Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May Alcott , along with

672-446: A short, prose head-note to introduce the speaker and set the scene. The character of "Billy" in this early version was an older man condemned for inciting mutiny and apparently guilty as charged. He did not include the poem in his published book. Melville incorporated the ballad and expanded the head-note sketch into a story that eventually reached 150 manuscript pages. This was the first of the three major expansions, each related to one of

720-707: A stage play, and an opera. Billy Budd is an English seaman impressed into service aboard the Royal Navy warship HMS Bellipotent in 1797, when the Navy was reeling from the Spithead and Nore mutinies and threatened by the First French Republic 's military ambitions. He is impressed onto Bellipotent from the British merchant ship The Rights of Man (named after the book by Thomas Paine ). Billy,

768-502: A story not unwarranted by what happens in this { word undeciphered } world of ours—innocence and 'infamy', spiritual depravity and fair 'repute'." Melville had written this as an end-note after his second major revision. When he enlarged the book with the third major section, developing Captain Vere, he deleted the end-note, as it no longer applied to the expanded story. Many of the early readers, such as Murry and Freeman, thought this passage

816-467: Is Claggart's explicitly stated emotion toward Budd, foremost because of his "significant personal beauty," and also for his innocence and general popularity. (Melville further opines that envy is "universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime.") This leads Claggart to falsely charge Billy with conspiracy to mutiny. When the captain, Edward Fairfax "Starry" Vere, is presented with Claggart's charges, he summons Claggart and Billy to his cabin for

864-514: Is an appropriate description of the book, but he adds a proviso. [E]xamining the history and reputation of Billy Budd has left me more convinced than before that it deserves high stature (although not precisely the high stature it holds, whatever that stature is) and more convinced that it is a wonderfully teachable story—as long as it is not taught as a finished, complete, coherent, and totally interpretable work of art. Given this unfinished quality and Melville's reluctance to present clear lessons,

912-527: The Closet (1990/2008), Eve Sedgwick , expanding on earlier interpretations of the same themes, posits that the interrelationships between Billy, Claggart and Captain Vere are representations of male homosexual desire and the mechanisms of prohibition against this desire. She points out that Claggart's "natural depravity," which is defined tautologically as "depravity according to nature," and the accumulation of equivocal terms ("phenomenal", "mystery", etc.) used in

960-513: The Royal Navy in the era in which the book takes place, Weisberg argues that Vere deliberately distorted the applicable substantive and procedural law to bring about Billy's death. Judge Richard Posner has sharply criticized these claims . He objects to ascribing literary significance to legal errors that are not part of the imagined world of Melville's fiction and accused Weisberg and others of calling Billy an "innocent man" and making light of

1008-401: The blow itself, fatal or not, is a capital crime. The court-martial convicts Billy following Vere's argument that any appearance of weakness in the officers and failure to enforce discipline could stir more mutiny throughout the Royal Navy. Condemned to be hanged the morning after his attack on Claggart, Billy's last words prior to his execution are "God bless Captain Vere!", which are repeated by

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1056-413: The confusing manuscripts, the published versions had many variations. For example, early versions gave the book's title as Billy Budd, Foretopman , while it now seems clear Melville intended Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) ; some versions wrongly included as a preface a chapter that Melville had excised (the correct text has no preface). In addition, some early versions did not follow his change of

1104-552: The early 1960s are, strictly speaking, versions of one or the other of these two basic texts. After several years of study, in 1962, Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., established what is now considered the correct, authoritative text. It was published by the University of Chicago Press , and contains both a "reading" and a "genetic" text. Most editions printed since then follow the Hayford-Sealts text. Based on

1152-478: The explanation of the fault in his character, are an indication of his status as the central homosexual figure in the text. She also interprets the mutiny scare aboard the Bellipotent , the political circumstances that are at the center of the events of the story, as a portrayal of homophobia. Melville's dramatic presentation of the contradiction between the requirements of the law and the needs of humanity made

1200-463: The fact that he "struck a lethal blow to a superior officer in wartime." The first issue of Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature is devoted to Billy Budd and includes essays by Weisberg and Posner. H. Bruce Franklin sees a direct connection between the hanging of Budd and the controversy around capital punishment . While Melville was writing Billy Budd between 1886 and 1891, the public's attention

1248-535: The famous "coda" at the end of the chapter containing the news account of the death of the "admirable" John Claggart and the "depraved" William Budd (25 in Weaver, 29 in Hayford & Sealts reading text, 344Ba in the genetic text) : Weaver : "Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this incongruous world of ours—innocence and 'infirmary', spiritual depravity and fair 'respite'." The Ms : "Here ends

1296-467: The first, holds that Billy Budd is ironic, and that its real import is precisely the opposite of its ostensible meaning. Still a third interpretation denies that interpretation is possible; a work of art has no meaning at all that can be abstracted from it, nor is a man's work in any way an index of his character or his opinion. All three of these views of Billy Budd are in their own sense true. —R. H. Fogle Hershel Parker agrees that "masterpiece"

1344-400: The gathered crew in a "resonant and sympathetic echo." The novel closes with three short chapters that present ambiguity: Composed fitfully over the last five years of his life, the novella Billy Budd represents Melville's return to prose fiction after three decades of only writing poetry. Melville had a difficult time writing, describing his process with Moby-Dick as follows: "And taking

1392-440: The laws of the time did not require a sentence of death and that legally any such sentence required review before being carried out. While this argument has been criticized for drawing on information outside the novel, Weisberg also shows that sufficient liberties existed in the laws Melville describes to avoid a capital sentence. Darryl Ponicsan's 1970 novel The Last Detail involves a Navy enlisted man protagonist, Billy Buddusky,

1440-532: The moments following Claggart's death, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!") Vere claims to be following the letter of the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War . Although Vere and the other officers did not believe Claggart's charge of conspiracy and think Billy justified in his response, they find that their own opinions matter little. The martial law in effect states that during wartime

1488-466: The name of the ship to Bellipotent (from the Latin bellum war and potens powerful), from Indomitable , as Melville called it in an earlier draft. His full intentions in changing the name of the ship are unclear, since he used the name Bellipotent only six times. The book has undergone a number of substantial, critical reevaluations in the years since its discovery. Raymond Weaver, its first editor,

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1536-435: The novella an iconic text in the field of law and literature . Earlier readers viewed Captain Vere as good man trapped by bad law. Richard Weisberg , who holds degrees in both comparative literature and law, argued that Vere was wrong to play the roles of witness, prosecutor, judge, and executioner, and that he went beyond the law when he sentenced Billy to immediate hanging. Based on his study of statutory law and practices in

1584-514: The novella, where he is described by Captain Vere as "the young fellow who seems so popular with the men—Billy, the Handsome Sailor," have led to interpretations of a homoerotic sensibility in the novel. Laura Mulvey added a theory of scopophilia and masculine and feminine subjectivity/objectivity. This version tends to inform interpretations of Britten's opera, perhaps owing to the composer's own homosexuality. In her book Epistemology of

1632-499: The paper used at each stage, the writing instruments (pencil, pen, color of ink), insertions, and crossings out that Melville introduced the three main characters in three stages of composition: first Billy, in a draft of what became "Billy in the Darbies"; then Claggart: and finally Vere. The work started as a poem, a ballad entitled "Billy in the Darbies", which Melville intended for his book, John Marr and Other Sailors . He added

1680-400: The papers of other notable transcendentalists . Significant collections include those relating to Theodore Roosevelt , T.S. Eliot , E.E. Cummings , Henry James , William James , James Joyce , John Updike , Jamaica Kincaid , Tennessee Williams , The Cockettes , John Lithgow , Gore Vidal , and many others. Houghton also holds the letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw , who commanded

1728-465: The personal papers and archives of major American and English writers. Harvard's first special collections library began as the Treasure Room of Gore Hall in 1908. The Treasure Room moved to the newly built Widener Library in 1915. In 1938, looking to supply Harvard's most valuable holdings with more space and improved storage conditions, Harvard College Librarian Keyes DeWitt Metcalf made

1776-405: The philosophical framework of the story. He understands the work as a comment on the historical feud between poets and philosophers. By this interpretation, Melville is opposing the scientific, rational systems of thought, which Claggart's character represents, in favor of the more comprehensive poetic pursuit of knowledge embodied by Billy. The centrality of Billy Budd's extraordinary good looks in

1824-619: The principal characters. As the focus of his attention shifted from one to another of these three principals, he modified the plot and thematic emphasis. Because Melville never entirely finished the revisions, critics have been divided as to where the emphasis lay and to Melville's intentions. After Melville's death, his wife Elizabeth, who had acted as his amanuensis on other projects, scribbled notes and conjectures, corrected spelling, sorted leaves and, in some instances, wrote over her husband's faint writing. She tried to follow through on what she perceived as her husband's objectives but her editing

1872-514: The range of critical response is not surprising. A wide range of views by about twenty-five different authors, including Raymond Weaver , Lewis Mumford , Newton Arvin , and W.H. Auden , are published in Melville's Billy Budd and the Critics . Some critics have interpreted Billy Budd as a historical novel that attempts to evaluate man's relation to the past. Thomas J. Scorza has written about

1920-629: The south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library , Lamont Library , and Loeb House, is Harvard University 's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library system of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences . The collections of Houghton Library include the Harvard Theatre Collection and the Woodberry Poetry Room , as well as

1968-444: The text that, despite numerous variations, may be considered essentially the same text. F. Barron Freeman published a second text in 1948, edited on different principles, as Melville's Billy Budd (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). He believed he stayed closer to what Melville wrote, but still relied on Weaver's text, with what are now considered mistaken assumptions and textual errors. Subsequent editions of Billy Budd up through

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2016-558: The world; with Billy Budd he would justify the ways of God to man." German novelist Thomas Mann declared that Billy Budd was "one of the most beautiful stories in the world" and that it "made his heart wide open"; he declared that he wished he had written the scene of Billy's dying. In mid-1924 Murry orchestrated the reception of Billy Budd, Foretopman, first in London, in the influential Times Literary Supplement , in an essay called "Herman Melville's Silence" (July 10, 1924), then in

2064-415: Was a foundational statement of Melville's philosophical views on life. Parker wonders what they could possibly have understood from the passage as printed. There appear to be three principal conceptions of the meaning of Melville's Billy Budd : the first, and most heavily supported, that it is Melville's "Testament of acceptance," his valedictory and his final benediction. The second view, a reaction against

2112-528: Was astonished to find a substantial manuscript for an unknown prose work entitled Billy Budd . After producing a text that would later be described as "hastily transcribed", he published the first edition of the work in 1924 as Billy Budd, Foretopman in Volume XIII of the Standard Edition of Melville's Complete Works ( London: Constable and Company ). In 1928 he published another version of

2160-462: Was confusing to the first professional editors, Weaver and Freeman, who mistook her writing for Melville's. For instance, she put several pages into a folder and marked it "Preface?" indicating that she did not know what her husband had intended. At some point Elizabeth Melville placed the manuscript in "a japanned tin box" with the author's other literary materials, where it remained undiscovered for another 28 years. In August 1918, Raymond M. Weaver,

2208-417: Was focused on the issue. Other commentators have suggested that the story may have been based on events on board USS Somers , an American naval vessel; Lt. Guert Gansevoort , a defendant in a later investigation, was a first cousin of Melville. If so then the character Billy Budd was likely inspired by a young man named Philip Spencer who was hanged on USS Somers on December 1, 1842. Harold Schechter ,

2256-479: Was initially unimpressed and described it as "not distinguished". After its publication debut in England, and with critics of such caliber as D. H. Lawrence and John Middleton Murry hailing it as a masterpiece, Weaver changed his mind. In the introduction to its second edition in the 1928 Shorter Novels of Herman Melville , he declared: "In Pierre , Melville had hurled himself into a fury of vituperation against

2304-523: Was marred by misinterpretation of Elizabeth's queries, misreadings of Melville's difficult handwriting, and even inclusion of a preface Melville had cut. Melville scholars Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts Jr. published what is considered the best transcription and critical reading text in 1962. In 2017, Northwestern University Press published a "new reading text" based on a "corrected version" of Hayford and Sealts' genetic text prepared by G. Thomas Tanselle . Billy Budd has been adapted into film,

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