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Paul Bryant's Reviews > Billy Budd, Sailor
Billy Budd, Sailor (Enriched Classics)
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Melville’s style : Go to war against the reader, make every sentence an obstacle course, make it rebarbative, crabbed, recursive, stogged and clogged. Make it like this (Melville describes some parts of Billy Budd) :
The ear, small and shapely, the arch of the foot, the curve in mouth and nostril, even the indurated hand dyed to the orange-tawny of the toucan's bill, a hand telling alike of the halyards and tar-bucket; but, above all, something in the mobile expression, and every chance attitude and movement, something suggestive of a mother eminently favored by Love and the Graces; all this strangely indicated a lineage in direct contradiction to his lot.
And here, one of the sailors decides to embellish some innocent gossip about Billy Budd to please his boss :
From his Chief's employing him as an implicit tool in laying little traps for the worriment of the Foretopman---for it was from the Master-at-arms that the petty persecutions heretofore adverted to had proceeded--the Corporal having naturally enough concluded that his master could have no love for the sailor, made it his business, faithful understrapper that he was, to foment the ill blood by perverting to his Chief certain innocent frolics of the goodnatured Foretopman, besides inventing for his mouth sundry contumelious epithets he claimed to have overheard him let fall.
My head! My head! My kingdom for an aspirin! Then there’s the ridiculous melodramatic ultravictorian moustache-twirling verbiage he comes out with when something actually happens (only four things actually happen in this novelette) :
He stood like one impaled and gagged. Meanwhile the accuser's eyes removing not as yet from the blue dilated ones, underwent a phenomenal change, their wonted rich violet color blurring into a muddy purple. Those lights of human intelligence losing human expression, gelidly protruding like the alien eyes of certain uncatalogued creatures of the deep.
Is this the Melville of Moby Dick which I read years and years ago and loved thoroughly? I can’t believe it.
The logic of the story of Billy Budd is tragic and perfect. The way it’s told is excruciating. Melville took a sad song and made it bitter.
The ear, small and shapely, the arch of the foot, the curve in mouth and nostril, even the indurated hand dyed to the orange-tawny of the toucan's bill, a hand telling alike of the halyards and tar-bucket; but, above all, something in the mobile expression, and every chance attitude and movement, something suggestive of a mother eminently favored by Love and the Graces; all this strangely indicated a lineage in direct contradiction to his lot.
And here, one of the sailors decides to embellish some innocent gossip about Billy Budd to please his boss :
From his Chief's employing him as an implicit tool in laying little traps for the worriment of the Foretopman---for it was from the Master-at-arms that the petty persecutions heretofore adverted to had proceeded--the Corporal having naturally enough concluded that his master could have no love for the sailor, made it his business, faithful understrapper that he was, to foment the ill blood by perverting to his Chief certain innocent frolics of the goodnatured Foretopman, besides inventing for his mouth sundry contumelious epithets he claimed to have overheard him let fall.
My head! My head! My kingdom for an aspirin! Then there’s the ridiculous melodramatic ultravictorian moustache-twirling verbiage he comes out with when something actually happens (only four things actually happen in this novelette) :
He stood like one impaled and gagged. Meanwhile the accuser's eyes removing not as yet from the blue dilated ones, underwent a phenomenal change, their wonted rich violet color blurring into a muddy purple. Those lights of human intelligence losing human expression, gelidly protruding like the alien eyes of certain uncatalogued creatures of the deep.
Is this the Melville of Moby Dick which I read years and years ago and loved thoroughly? I can’t believe it.
The logic of the story of Billy Budd is tragic and perfect. The way it’s told is excruciating. Melville took a sad song and made it bitter.
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Reading Progress
August 25, 2024
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Started Reading
August 25, 2024
– Shelved
September 3, 2024
– Shelved as:
novels
September 3, 2024
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Finished Reading
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Henry
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Sep 03, 2024 01:41PM
My experience with the melville short stories is that the first 30 pages are a total slog and a struggle and then halfway through a fog lifts and the tragedy or comedy is made clear and devastating. But there was definitely some sort of divine inspiration going with Moby Dick where it's beautiful basically the whole way through.
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I just don't remember struggling at all with Moby - maybe I was tougher back then, or maybe Melville with his decade of tinkering with BB just developed a bad late style like old Henry James did.
really enjoyed Moby Dick but that was years ago now. I also really enjoyed Bartleby the Scrivener. I'm curious now about Billy Buddy!
it is...sometimes known as Hey Bude
I love reading reviews of books I haven't read <3
Chuckling here. Oh, Billy Budd. Feel sorry for the English teachers amongst us who were required to "teach" this book.
I do wonder about 'Moby Dick'... I read it as a kid in what I realise now was an abridged version (maybe published by Oxford?) - there was a whole series designed to appeal to the young reader, including Treasure Island, Kidnapped etc. I loved them!Then when much older I realised that the original text was much longer, and attempted to read Moby Dick again... all I recall was an endless description of the tattoos on some sweaty bedchamber sharer of our protagonist... it went on, and on, and on... I gave up before they even got on the ship.
Are you 100% certain you read the whole book? Just asking...
