Pacific portraits; Herman Melville

Person I think portrays radio sketches of men and women whose lives illustrate times and places south of the equator in the Pacific can reality be found in the Pacific Ocean. Tomorrow must be thought of only in the Pacific of the mind. I thirst for geographical knowledge but come to the Pacific a passion for scientific knowledge through Darwin. But it was the knowledge of self that Herman Melville tracked down like a hound on the sand. It is because we ourselves are in ourselves that we know ourselves not. At the edge of the attic at the edge. Women loan program for in a series of Pacific portraits produced by

radio station WAGA of the University of Wisconsin under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. Now speaking to you from Auckland New Zealand. Here is the planner and writer of the series Professor John Reed. Little by little in the 19th century men learned the ways of the Pacific with Islands mapped untrodden laws established in towns planted the great ocean became decade by decade like a blue past flames and cropped. But man must have myths to live by as the gods of the trees of the rivers and the rocks disappear. The gods of the city the silver screen and the radio leap into their vacant places. The myths of winds and waves surrender to the myths of the test tube and the cyclotron. And so it was in the Pacific to replace the legends of Terra Australis and of the dark jaws of the ocean leviathans came the legend of the Pacific

paradise. The arm spoiled tropical utopia the blizzard haven from the cares of civilization seeking this writer after writer came to the South Seas. Some never to see the reality for the veils of the green others to pluck from disillusionment symbols by which to interpret the larger world of man's soul. In this program we look at one of the greatest of these latter a mighty Miss maker who found the springs of his inspiration in the Pacific. The first imaginative writer to reveal the South Sea Islands to the Western mind. Herman Melville his own writings have given us the words you will hear Al Melville speak. What after all is reality is it the mountain the plane the green growing things of the land or is it perhaps the ideal muse the spiritual inward the dark complex in

which external things can be made to stand. Can reality be found in the Pacific Ocean or must it be sought only in the Pacific of the mind. What is reality. BERMAN Melville had no doubt what reality he had won out of his quest in the uninsured heartless immensities of the Pacific. The greatest marvels of first trucks and first truths are the last one to which we attain. Things nearest furthest off. Man has a more comprehensive view of the moon than the man in the Moon himself. It is because we ourselves are in ourselves that we know ourselves not. I thirst for geographical knowledge brought Cooke to the Pacific. A passion for scientific knowledge through Darwin. But it was the knowledge of self that Melville tracked down like a hound on the scent and from the ocean he learned the truth lives as powerfully in

symbols as in statistics. But to apprehend the symbol to see it as a rope from heaven he had first to experience the terrors and trials the ripeness and the rottenness of the tangible. In his youth he could say for he and philosophy are air. But events brass amidst is great philosophizing life breaks upon a man like a morning but as a man. He peered deeper finding a purer reality in books in Shakespeare's books. No other surprise can come to him who reaches Shakespeare's Khowar that which we seek and Sharon is their Earth's final lore in the Pacific Melville pursued two quests at once one a search for a center for a piece of land on which to plant his foot and call home. The other an odyssey into the ocean of the spirit to find out the heart of a man.

We were shipmates together on the cushion. He was three years older than myself and quite friendly enough but never gives much of himself away. Yet he seemed to take to me. Perhaps because I wasn't forever grumbling some of the men were. In the fo'c's'le his bunk was above mine and often when the others were asleep he told me a little about his home and family. Once I asked him why a man of education and refinement like him had shipped I know I don't know that I can truly answer that Toby. When my father died something went out of my life that has never been replaced. It was as if he had gone away to a distant land and I had to go seeking him. And then those years when I was growing up great years when my mother tried to blunt the edge of poverty and gentility. Years of bankruptcy appeals to relations bad luck and quarrels these ended by planting a damp drizzling November in my so

I had to get away. Even as he told me this that there was much unsaid. It wasn't only escaped from an embittered home that drove him. But as with me I thirst for adventure and I wanted to see the world. But why on a whaler. Then one night as we lay unsleeping in the creaking ship he told me of his first voyage as a boy across the Atlantic to Liverpool. I shall never forget the terrible slums of that great city Toby. Imagine Twenty thousand people living in dark cellars as crowded as folks with twice as many in equally damp and filthy dwellings above ground poverty and misery were indescribable. From these squalid dens the poor wretches swarmed into the smoky daylight and presented a horrible sight. Young drabs nursing babies of grimy bosoms children and Terminus regs every possible vice and wickedness flourished in the streets.

There was a general for every one hundred fifty inhabitant the slums of Liverpool were seldom out of Herman's mind. One day just before we reached Rio we caught a huge whale enough to bring our take up to 200. We'd worked for hours making the slippery carcass fast to the ship. Herman and I helped the whales monstrous head and to bail out the pressure spermaceti oil slimy with blood in oil market slime like like demons in the smoke of the tripods. We were exhausted with a weariness which drew the very bones from our body. As we lay limp on our bunks. Herman without preliminary told me this story. One day passing through those slums I heard a feeble wail which seemed to come out of the earth. The sound seemed the hopeless cry of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening which communicated

downward with the piers of cellars beneath a crumbling old warehouse and there some fifteen feet below the walk crouching in nameless squalor with their heads bowed over with the figure of what had been a woman's blue arms folded to her bosom two shrunken things like children. I made no sign. They did not stir but from the vault came that sickening wail. And as I brought them water in my hat I found that the mother was clutching to her bosom a meagre third child who had been dead for hours. I knew then that Herman had joined your question it not only to escape from home and to seek adventure but to flee from all that Liverpool represented to wash away civilizations taint in the pure blue of the ocean. Toby was right. Melville was grasping at the symbol of innocence to set

against the symbol of degraded experience which is living the sickening squalor of the city's rotten rose and gin alleys. Tattered beggars diseased children starving women and brutal men became the major frame of reference for what he saw under the Pacific's. SCAR. But in the meantime there was a reality of life on a whaler to be enjoyed during our 18 months on the course it things went from bad to worse for Herman and me and for many others besides. During the voyage both the first and third mate as well as 13 members of the crew had desert life on the ship goddess but not the work but the brutal conditions the usage on board was tyrannical the sick had been inhumanly neglected the provisions had been doled out in scanty allowance. The captain was the author of these abuses his conduct was arbitrary and violent in the extreme. His reply to all complaints was the butt end of a handspike before the

whaler dropped anchor in the lovely bay of Tire high on the island of New Haven the Marchesa's thoughts of desertion had already flowered in the heads of both young men. And when Melville gazed on his first Pacific Island his heart soared like a gong. As we sailed into the bay we caught short glimpses of blooming valleys deep waterfalls and waving Groves hidden here and there by projecting an rocky headland every moment opening to the view some new and startling scene of the reality was very different from the dream Bowl rock bound coast with the surf beating high against the lofty cliffs and broken here and there into deep inlets which reveal thickly wooded valley. We were still a mile and a half from the shore when we saw what it first appeared to be a shoal of fish but which proved to be a group of young girls coming off a store to welcome us. As they drew nearer and I watched the rising and thinking of their

forms and their long dark hair trailing behind them as they swam. I fancy they could be nothing else then so many made their appearance perfectly amazed me in their extreme youth. The light clear brown of their complection the delicate features an inexpressibly graceful figure and softly molded limbs and unstudied action seemed a stranger as beautiful worshippers. Well as her crew were completely in the hands of the mess our ship was not wholly given up to all kinds of riots and departure not the feeblest barrier was interposed between the unholy passions of the crew and their unlimited gratification. Alas for the coarse savages when exposed to the influence of these polluting examples the corruptions of civilization whether shown in the filth of a whale or the brutality of its captain the licentiousness of a crew are enormously

Islams drove Melville to seek an authentic Eden in the pagan sea we had made up our minds to leave the ship and make our way to controller Bay on the other side of the island which the French had not yet envied but we learnt that while the nearest valley leading out of the bay was inhabited by a friendly tribe the harbors in the Central Valley was the abode of the type he dreaded by all the other tribes as notorious cannibals. Our greatest risk was the danger of getting into the wrong Valley. But it was a risk we were prepared to take. Seizing an opportunity while both were ashore with the work detail Melville and Toby stole away they found themselves in a seemingly impenetrable thicket of cane as stubborn as rods of steel. We finally meet just before sunset the highest lie under the eye of an immense overhanging cliff hung round with parasitical clack. We must have been more than 3000 feet above sea level and the scenery viewed

from this height was magnificent. For two days and nights we wandered the mountain ridges and ravines or look at parched with thirst and hunger under the brazen sky of day and drenched with rain by night. One of my legs was so swollen that I could hardly hold myself along. Then on the edge of despair I pushed aside a branch and disclosed such a scene that I had a glimpse of the gardens of paradise been revealed to me. I could scarcely have been more ravished by the side. I looked straight down into the bosom of our lovely valley which swept away in long wavy and relations to the blue waters in the distance peering through the foliage the commentor patched houses glistened in the sun that had bleached them to a dazzling whiteness. For three more difficult days they fought their way into the paradise of Valley. Here perhaps lay the untarnished Haven Eden before the serpent of civilization had entered. But as they approached they heard drums beating which

echoed as doubts in their brains Typee or happy. Paradoxically as so much about Melville is paradoxically they received a kindly reception from the fiercest of cannibals. The two lads had penetrated the valley of the dreaded type yet they were greeted with every appearance of friendliness. It was evening and by the dim light we could just discern the savage countenances around us gleaming with wild wonder. The naked forms and tattooed limbs of brawny warriors with here and there the slight hill figures of young girls all engaged in a perfect storm of conversation of which we were the only theme. We became the honored guests of the Typee eating their cook breadfruit smoking their tobacco and create a kind of pipes and conversing with their chiefs. Well the natives I guess with intense curiosity scanning especially the whiteness of our limbs they felt our skin much as a silk Mercer handle a remarkably fine

piece of satin and some of them went as far in their investigations as to apply their nose to it. But when after a week of incantations and primitive medicine Melville's injured leg did not improve. The type is allowed Toby to go for medical help. Toby never returned and it was not until years afterwards after Melville had published Typee that he turned up a respectable sign painter Richard Tobias Greene to testify to the truth of the story. He had fallen into the hands of a beachcomber who tricked him onto a whaler in the mean time Malveaux left alone among the savages believe that Toby had deserted him as he dwelt his weeks with the savages. He saw a happy sensualism as strange to him as it was fascinating a primitive beauty which drew his tender admiration. The three pliant figure of the beauteous girl by our way was the very protection of female grace and beauty.

The easy graces of such a child of nature breeding from infancy an atmosphere of perpetual summer and nurtured by the simple fruits of the years enjoying a perfect freedom from care and anxiety strike the eye in a manner which cannot be portrayed. By the way for the most part clung to the primitive and some of the people. But how becoming her costume for pleasure only jewel or sometimes she wore a necklace of small carnation flowers strung like rubies on a fiber of copper or displayed in her ears a single white bud chaplets two of intertwined leaves and blossoms often crowned her temples and bracelets and anklets of the same tasteful patterns were often her adornment. He watched their rituals their joyous games in the water their customs the elaborate Mandalay ritual of tattooing and at the feast of the calabashes his blood quickened to the savage ceremonial behind the sheds of Bengal reclined the principal chiefs and warriors while a miscellaneous throng lay

under the enormous trees upon the terraces of the gigantic altars were deposited green Gred through two large rows of top and bunches of ripe bananas and big dogs while Rudy implements of war were piled before the ranks of hideous idols. At the base of the altars were rows of drums standing at least 15 feet in height from the trunks of their heads covered with skin. A number of men beat violently with their hands upon the places were taken. In the midst of the seemingly idyllic life of the tropics the young American served his

apprenticeship to primitive innocence. But as the weeks went by following the patter and idyllic sameness questions began to circle in his mind and really go back to the primer. Is not your quest escape. The retreat of me not the strength of spirit and the reach of the depth of the savage. Well who knew in his heart he was trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. To recapture the primitive innocence of uncivilized man while retaining the complex instincts of a civilized one. And the recall was soon to follow. One day he made a frightful discovery.

Returning unexpectedly I found several men in the hot seat today gather on the mats inspecting the contents of three packages. Despite the efforts to restrain me I forced my way into the midst of the circle and saw before they could be enveloped in the coverings. Three human heads two were those of islanders but the third to my horror was that a top white man. The gentle types were cannibals After all life in the valley was not as innocent as it appeared. Mel was mounting fear in his hunger for a satisfaction not to be gained here draw him elsewhere. He became a wanderer in search of that lost something he had not found in his valley. Nor did he find it at Tahiti where civilization had widely spread its taint. Or Melville the clothes of the islanders symbolize their degenerate state. Some wear coats but no plan to lose. A young sailor presented a native with a shaggy old pea jacket and with this buttoned up to his chin under a

tropical sun he paraded the main road deploring the innate idleness of the to Haitians which white man's economy had enlarged into degradation. And bewailing the white man's diseases which were eating their bodies away. Melville saw little hope for the two he sion who can remain blind to the fact that so far as temporal Felicity is concerned that the Haitians are far worse off than formerly. And although their circumstances are not improved by the presence of the missionaries the benefits conferred by the latter become utterly insignificant when confronted with the vast proportion of evil brought about by other means. Their prospects are hopeless. Tres shallow grow. Karo shallow spread. After a mutiny against an overbearing captain and ludicrously lax imprisonment in

addition calaboose Melville was on his way again. This time the illusion led to Tom on the island of Moria where once more symbol and reality appeared to few. Here it seemed was an idyllic life where the native girls danced for him by moonlight on the fern covered banks of a shimmering lake. Two girls taller than their companions stand side by side in the middle of the ring formed by the clasped hands of the rest. Presently the two girls joined hands overhead and cry out. Which being begins to circle slowly the dancers move sideways so they quickened their pace and at last fly round and round bosoms heaving streaming flowers dropping in every Sparkling Ice circling in what seems a line you might say. Again the two leaders waved their hands while the rest pause and now far apart

stand in the still moonlight like a circle of Fairy. Presently raising a strange chant they saw these three themselves gradually quickening the movement till at length there were few passionate moments. They abandon themselves to the spirit of the dance apparently lost to all the right way. Yet despite sups seductions Melville moved on to the Bay of Tara where the exiled queen of Tahiti was living. Perhaps this was the haven he sought. But no it was not. This was the end. Mel those tired eyes turned to an American ship in the bay. He had outgrown Polynesia. He had driven both fists into the heart of the myth. And found it hollow.

Weary weary of primitive existence weary of his own place lessness in anonymity he joined the ship and sailed away forever from the dream of innocence. Back in painful stages to his own age. Melbourne's apprenticeship to Pacific realities was and the symbol had been given and the way charter not back to dancing girls peace and the laughing beaches but inwards to the primordial world before right before City the graver world of images of rich of the tribe. Yet he looked sometimes backwards with a sad tenderness to the enviable aisles he had left behind. Through storms you reach them and then when storms are free

seen from the far lands are dreary and you but nearer the green and down the edge the sea makes under lowing mist of rainbows you. But inland where the sleet the old the hills a dreamy asleep the trance of God instills a song and. Our last song. And all. Mel bills later cruises where voyages into the deep dark seas of man's unconsciousness. But underneath that imperishable reality lay the Drowned World of the Pacific the enviable sea one man's memory of an ocean dotted with palm shaded Io's a boundless blue horizon and at last across those horizon sailed the mightiest symbol of them all the great white

whale. Here again is Professor Reed after Melville return to America rich in experience of seas and ships the South Sea islands became a romantic refuge for Europeans and Americans. We have home but nearly all of them came too late. The islands grew more and more Europeanized smudged by alcohol disease and avarice all in their own easy transition stages replicas of Melville's typee. He alone had caught them just before the changes a change painful but essential to the maturing of the Pacific and in the literary creation of a myth. His work proved more enduring than the trends and

reality. Today the valley of type-II is deserted and the tropical forest has repossessed it. But the symbol of innocence the projection of one pole of the mind of a great novelist remains. I'm tarnished in the pages of typing. Pacific portrays radio sketches of men and women whose lives illustrate times and places south of the equator in the Pacific Ocean. These programs are produced by radio station WAGA of the University of Wisconsin under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center. Professor John C. REED of Auckland University Auckland New Zealand is the writer and planner of the series. These programs are distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the national

educational radio network.