OF WATERS AND DESERTS: THE METAMORPHOSIS OF A SYMBOL IN HERMAN MELVILLE'S CLAREL

The essay examines how, in his narrative poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876), Herman Melville applied the symbolism of water to explore various aspects of nineteenth-century American culture. In this late work inspired by his Grand Tour of the Mediterranean and the Holy Land, Melville revisits the sites of some of his earlier quandaries related to Judeo-Christian theology, the search for religious certainty, and the moral lessons of Euro-American civilization. As he describes the arid sights of the desert by poetic images of water associated throughout his work, with intellectual quests, Melville gives artistic expression to issues of religion, science, history, empire building, and race relations. This essay argues that by examining the history of the New World from the perspective of the Old, the poem Claret makes a powerful critical statement on the failed covenantal history of the United States after the Civil War and during the Reconstruction.