Journal of Research in Gender Studies

Volume 4(2), 2014, pp. 1073–1081, ISSN: 2164-0262

“IN MERCY’S NAME: WHO IS HE?” –

THE SYMBOLIC IDENTITY OF THE MELVILLEAN HERO
BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER

IRINA DUBSKÝ
Spiru Haret University
irinadubsky@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT. The starting point of the present paper is represented by the similarity
between the existential adventure Melville projects in Bartleby the Scrivener and the
sense of entrapment in and the desire to escape from a flawed condition of heavy
corporeality dramatized in the Gnostic and Orphic myths and rituals. The immersion
of the Orphic Apollo into the lower nature and the subsequent withdrawal into the
intelligible has as ultimate goal the imparting of Gnosis, the salvific knowledge to
the prisoners of illusions and imperfect knowledge. The identity of the title-hero of
the Melvillean story under discussion is derived from the soteriological significance
of his role as a mediator between two dimensions of reality. He represents an
actualization of the figure of “the Mysterious Stranger” who acquires a symbolic
quality while embarking on a cosmic voyage patterned upon the Classical katabasis
and anabasis of the Logos.

Keywords: symbol; voyage; cosmic; illumination; sacrifice

In his brilliant study of the various esoteric traditions that gave substance to
the American Renaissance, Arthur Versluis makes the insightful remark that
Melville’s novels, short stories and poetry (…) dramatize the desire to
escape the world and the clutches of an ignorant demiurge (…) it is a world
from which one can imagine escape via death (…) and thus Melville’s
Gnosticism harks back clearly to ancient heretical predecessors (104).

The critic draws a parallel and reveals the similarities between the Gnostic
view Melville projects in his work and the sense of entrapment in and the
desire to escape from a flawed condition of heavy corporeality dramatized
in the Gnostic myths and rituals.

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 This condition of submission to the limitations of the lower quaternary
which is transcended by a movement of re-integration into the supersensible
is also experienced by the solar heroes who perform a “descent and ascent
journey” (Penglase 93) which is also referred to as “the cosmic journey”
(Penglase 45).
In the Orphic Mysteries, the journey constructed upon the pattern of
descent and return is performed by the solar god Apollo, “since Orpheus is
an Apollonian priest” (Wolf 144). “Melville’s Orphic tendencies” - to quote
Jack C. Wolf’s phrase from his provocative study of Orphism in Heart
Crane’s poetry - are revealed in his use of the motif of the mythical journey
“mentioned by the Orphics, alluded to by the Y symbol of the Pythagoreans,
(…) described by Virgil, revealed by the Gospels” (Gebser 72) and spoken
of by Plutarch and Dante.
The immersion of the “Orphic Apollo” (Wolf 144) into the lower nature
and the subsequent withdrawal into the intelligible has as ultimate goal the
imparting of “salvific knowledge-Gnosis” (Riffard 60) to the prisoners of
illusions and imperfect knowledge. This cosmic voyage is mirrored in the
Classical katabasis and anabasis of the Logos.
For the Orphics, this two-beat process is undergone by “the summer
Dionyssos, identifiable with Adonis, Apollo or any other solar deities or
solar heroes” (Wolf 8).
In Bartleby the Scrivener, Melville “tries his hand at the Orphic style”
(277) - to quote Raymond Weaver. Orphic echoes resound in the thematic
structure and the portrayal of the mythic hero of the story.
Bartleby the Scrivener is structured around the theme of the symbolic
journey and of suffering as a source of enlightenment.
The hero, an emissary of the intelligible, descends into the lower
quaternary assuming the limiting conditions of the phenomenal, suffers the
tribulations of this level of being, then, through death, is set free to return
into the reality he emerged from.
The title-hero belongs to the same gallery of mythical figures who
discharge symbolic functions and aim to operate beneficially upon a
distorted order of being with a view to separating the real from the apparent.
In fact, they are the protagonists of “the great ‘Gnostic drama’ enacted on a
worldly stage” (Lavery 47).
Bartleby’s pilgrimage in the visible world is an illustration of a
sacrificial gesture performed with a view to abolishing the dominion of
ignorance and delusion over human mind.
Bartleby is a passer-by through the office world, but not an indifferent
one; his having embarked on this pilgrimage in the sublunary sphere results
in redeeming the Lawyer from the spiritual winter which is gradually taking
possession of him. As Andre Furlani aptly observes, Bartleby does not
possess the defining traits of a conventional character, emerging as “an
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affect rather than a personality (…) He is a force, almost talismanic, exert-
ing an influence on a character” (340).
This “talismanic force” embodied in the person of the Scrivener is made
manifest in the area contained within the sphere of the moon. According to
those “who [have] come to know him” (to quote the Lawyer’s words) he is
“moon-struck” or “luny.” Both of these labels point to a reality situated
symbolically under the influence of the moon. Bartleby sank into the
elemental world subject to corruption and change. His “passage” through
the narrator’s office may be interpreted as “moon – struck” if the meaning
of this word is corroborated with the significance of the moon as a “symbol
of passage from life to death and from death to life” (Chevalier & Gheer-
brant 309).
The first movement, the passage from life to death, is illustrated by
Bartleby’s coming into the office. He passes from death to life when he
returns “whence he came” (119), namely, into the immutable realm. His evo-
lution in the story is that of a solar hero on pilgrimage in the phenomenal.
A. W. Plumstead in Bartleby: Melville’s Venture into a New Genre
states that the story displays at least four features that are new in Melville’s
writing. After seven narratives in which the main structural device had been
a journey, he writes a story in which there is a confined setting (90).
If taken at face value, the idea of a “confined setting” is accurate; however,
if the perspective is shifted from the visible space into the realm of the Invisible,
it becomes apparent that there is no confinement at all. If the perspective
includes the idea of a Beyond, it may be easily inferred that Bartleby, just as the
seven preceding narratives is centered around “a journey”, but not a journey
within the bounds of the tangible: Bartleby emerges from an intelligible Reality,
descends into the conditioned space assuming a human shape, then returns
home leaving the corporeal level behind.
During his earthly sojourn, Bartleby borrows a human appearance, or, as
the narrator perceives it, an “apparition.” It is the duty of the Lawyer - the
representative of this world - to furnish the guest from Above with “office
room” (112). Surprisingly enough, the old man is aware that Bartleby is
only paying a flying visit down here, that he will “remain” in his office as
long as he sees “fit”: My mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you
with office room for such period as you may see fit to remain (112).
The transcendent, in the person of Bartleby, places itself under the laws
of being and suffering. That he chooses to be the guest of a lawyer is by no
means a simple coincidence. He becomes the “hired clerk” (110) of a lawyer
to offer a faithful illustration of the submission of the Higher to the rules of
the manifested life. The Transcendent becomes immanent by wrapping
itself in the basic laws of this life.
Bartleby, the Archetypal Man, sets forth on his sublunary periplus, clad in
the appearance of a “poor,” “pallid” copyist; he willingly submits himself to
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the limiting conditions of the space he visits. The purpose of his existential
mission is to reveal another “way of life” as an alternative to the “easiest” and
“best” - in which his host so indulges - which accounts for his ability to “live
on ginger-nuts” (124) while possessing “no visible means of support” (131).
The mystery of Bartleby’s identity lies at the very core of his cosmic
adventure. The desperate question: “In mercy’s name: who is he?”(134)
launched by a character in the story “probes at the very axis of Bartleby’s
reality,” to paraphrase Melville’s own words from his celebrated piece
Hawthorne and His Mosses.
The narrator himself “shares” in the curiosity “as to who Bartleby was.”
The sequel to the story is meant to spark off the quest for Bartleby’s
meaning, upon which quest the reader is invited to embark.
In his study of the 19th century American short-story, Douglas Tallack
submits an original opinion regarding the fictional dimension of the title
character: “Yet Bartleby is too extraordinary a character to elicit credibility.
As a fictional character, he lacks complexity. He mainly functions as a point
of reference in dramatizing the spirit of resistance” (Tallack 147).
Therefore, Bartleby emerges as “too extraordinary a character” - a
description which perfectly illustrates Bartleby’s “problem”: his meaning is
too deep to be fathomed, “too extraordinary” to be grasped by a limited
appraisal.
Elizabeth Hardwick offers a subtle reading of Bartleby in her essay
Bartleby and Manhattan. She makes the point that to interpret Bartleby as
someone other than himself “dishonors him” (9). Thinking of Bartleby as
anyone else is “unthinkable, a vulgarization, adding truculence, idleness,
foolishness, adding indeed ‘character’ and altering a sublimity of definition”
(13).
When the Lawyer earnestly declares that he cannot see anything “ordi-
narily human” (125) about him he makes a perfectly accurate statement
since Bartleby’s qualities belong to the super-human. As Todd F. Davis
points out “some critics recognize in Bartleby a Christ-like figure, others
like Donald Fiene have pushed this analysis further, arguing that Bartleby is
Christ exactly. Graham Nicol Forst sees in Bartleby “a mythic presence”
(183).
Davis contends that “it is certainly possible that Bartleby may represent
some celestial power” (187) and goes on to advance an assessment of
“Bartleby as transcendent” (187) from a Kantian perspective.
Considering the wider design of the story, it would be illuminating for
the meaning of the “little narrative” to look upon Bartleby not as a “pale,
passive mortal” (115) - as the narrator describes him at some point - but as
the embodiment of a cosmic function. Regarding him as an existential
symbol, the Herald of a Higher Reality, might bring the reader-quester
closer to a revelation of Bartleby’s “quiet mysteries”(129).
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 Douglas Tallack advances a provocative interpretation of the title character,
considering him “a symbol of the ineffable” (175), rather than a literary
character in the traditional sense of the word, since his meaning is too
complete to be taken in by human explanations which are mere approxi-
mations and should hold no claim to completeness or infallibility.
In fact, to paraphrase Tallack’s comment, Bartleby is too “extraordinary”
to be human. Ceasing to be human, he becomes a symbol, a cosmic agent.
The narrator himself depicts Bartleby as “one of those beings of whom
nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case
those are very small” (103).
The Romanian esoteric thinker Vasile Lovinescu is of the opinion that
“disindividuation is realized through excess”: when a trait of character is
exaggerated till it loses credibility the possessor of that particular feature
acquires “an immediate symbolic quality,” “becoming a symbol of first
degree” (Al Patrulea Hagialîc, 49).
Bartleby realizes dis-individuation through excess of “mildness,” gentle-
ness,” silence and stillness, in a word, through excess of perfection. Being
“too extraordinary (…) to elicit credibility” (Tallack 147), and too consum-
mate to be human, he emerges as the embodiment of a “symbolic quality,”
which is in consonance with Liane Norman’s observation that “in many
ways, Melville has exempted Bartleby from judgment, representing him
more as a phenomenon than as a specific individual” (35).
Liane Norman’s reader-response approach “comes closer to freeing the
scrivener from the fetters of narrowly realistic readings, (…) insist[ing] that
he is not quite human” (33).
If read in the context of Bartleby’s “not quite human,” “symbolic”
identity and corroborated with the story of his pilgrimage into matter, the
idea of “suffering” - put forward by the narrator and a number of critics -
assumes different connotations and points to Suffering on a higher level of
understanding.
Suffering concentrates the essence of the bondage of Spirit in matter, the
latter standing for ignorance. The Scrivener may be said to experience suf-
fering in the sense that he assumes the limitations of this world; he plunges
into a conditioned existence where he undergoes separation from his Reality.
This dimension of Bartleby’s suffering prefaces the sacrificial aspect of
his descent into the Lawyer’s world. His sacrifice may be regarded as an
attempt to rejuvenate the old man’s microcosm.
Through his passive resistance Bartleby tries to liberate the Lawyer’s
life from the fetters of matter. By limiting his own nature and conditioning
his activity - acts which characterize the Archetypal Sacrificer - Bartleby
performs a sacrificial gesture intended to deliver the Wall Street world from
chaos. His passions are meant to give a fresh dimension to the existence of a
man who is “getting old” (134).
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 Bartleby dies into this order of being in order to redeem it. During his
journey through the elemental, he is torn apart by the limiting conditions of
the phenomenal world, just as, according to Goethe’s theory of colors,
“white light is broken down into colored light” (Vietor 41). Goethe looked
upon the solar spectrum as the passion of the white light, an idea which can
be corroborated with Bartleby’s condition as the white light itself refracted
on this level of being.
The White Light, the ultimate Reality, is transformed into colors which
constitute the solar spectrum. The colors compounding the world of appear-
ances are mere specters in relation to the Reality of the White Light,
epitomized by Bartleby, the Archetypal Man.
The Scrivener’s whiteness, which is absolute in itself, presides over the
“colored” world of the office which is a tiny fragment of the manifested
existence. Bartleby’s solar attributes assume richer connotations in the con-
text of his association with white - the absolute “color” - which symbolizes
both the East and the West, that is to say, “those two distant and mysterious
points at which the Sun is born and dies everyday” (Cirlot 317).
The Bartleby-Lawyer couple is analogous to the Summer-Winter anti-
thetic pair, the latter being symbolic of the “fruitfulness and bareness” pair
of opposites. Mentioned should be made of the fact that the Lawyer is a
“rather elderly man” who is rich in the experience of the temporal world,
which is unfruitful and desert-like. Enters Bartleby with his youth and
luminous aura; moreover, it is summer time when Bartleby comes: “In
answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man, one morning, stood
upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer.”
The crucial moments of Bartleby’s journey in the quaternary correspond
to the key points of the yearly solar cycle.
Bartleby’s “motionlessness” equates with a momentary dissolution of time;
his “standing immovable” is suggestive of the restoration of the Eternal
Present; therefore, his “standing on the threshold” corresponds to the
Summer Solstice which marks the apogee of light: the sun reaches its
highest point in the sky from which it starts its descending movement.
This is how the Scrivener first appeared to the old man: in the stillness
of a glorified light. This moment represents the starting point of two
different new cycles of life: for the Lawyer, it marks the beginning of the
progress toward self-knowledge while for Bartleby, it represents the com-
mencement of his pilgrimage.
From the Summer Solstice on, the day begins to decrease; the light
gradually wanes; the Sun enters the sign of Cancer which, in the Orphic
tradition, is regarded as “the threshold through which the soul enters upon
its incarnation” (Guénon, Symboles 237). This symbolism may be perfectly
correlated with Bartleby’s sublunary itinerary unfolding between two

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extremes marked by his “standing on the threshold” and his “death” out of
this world.
An analogy could be drawn between the interval delimited by the Sum-
mer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox and Bartleby’s active period. Then he
“give[s] up copying” thus becoming “a fixture” in the Lawyer’s chambers.
This moment of immobility has the Autumn Equinox as its correspondent in
the solar course: the instant when the forces of light and darkness are equal.
This is a point of balance when the Sun, just as his human counterpart does
not “make any change at all.”
When this perfect equilibrium is lost the power of darkness gradually
increases. Light is overcome by darkness; this is the period whose boundaries
are marked by the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice, which period
is reflected in Bartleby’s “stay” in “the Tombs.” The solar hero is placed
under the fierce dominion of brute materiality. Bartleby’s confinement is
the replica of the offensive of the shadows.
The victory of Night is completed in Bartleby’s “death”; threatening
gloom reigns undisturbed. The Winter Solstice, which signifies the defeat of
the Sun, is the physical counterpart of Bartleby’s return to his source.
Bartleby’s rebirth into the Unseen is mirrored into the Lawyer’s growing
awareness. The wisdom he attains is first expressed in his revelation that
Bartleby is a “king”; the Scrivener’s attributes pertain to his solar nature, for
the Sun is an imperial symbol.
The Scrivener’s being “conducted” to the Tombs at noon “at the head of
a silent procession” (138) represents an illustration of another aspect of solar
symbolism. Midday is the moment when the flux of change is interrupted; it
represents an interval of timelessness preceding the decline of light.
The protagonist of the mythic journey undertaken by the title hero of the
Melvillean tale is an actualization of the figure of “the Mysterious Stranger”
who disrupts the shallow world order of a narrator who is “characteristically
conservative, sentimental, and limited in perception:” (…) the Mysterious
Stranger [is] a construct that, in variation, emerges in the shape of Bartleby
in Bartleby, the Scrivener and Benito Cereno in Benito Cereno (Cahir 58).
The encounter between the Mysterious Stranger and the narrator-prota-
gonist leaves indelible marks upon the latter’s mind and soul, “tumultuously
affect[ing]” and “inexorably” changing him into “a knowledge-seeker”:
Thus, at the heart of each of Melville’s tales involving a Mysterious
Stranger is the urgent need of humankind’s search for certainty (Cahir 60).
The protagonist attains a degree of enlightenment as a consequence of
witnessing the Mysterious Stranger’s journey through the quaternary: the
Wall Street lawyer is awakened to the existence of another dimension of
being where it is possible to “live without dining.”

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 REFERENCES

Cahir, Linda Constanzo (1999), Solitude and Society in the Works of Herman
Melville and Edith Wharton. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Chevalier Jean, and Alain Gheerbrant (1969), Dictionnaire des Symboles. Paris:
Robert Laffont.
Cirlot, Juan Eduardo (1962), A Dictionary of Symbols. Trans. Jack Saye. New
York: Philosophical Library.
Davis, Todd F. (1997), “The Narrator’s Dilemma in Bartleby the Scrivener: The
Excellently Illustrated Re-statement of a Problem,” Studies in Short Fiction (34)2:
183-207.
Furlani, Andre (1997), “Bartleby the Socratic,” Studies in Short Fiction (34)3:
335-357.
Gebser, Jean (1984), The Ever-Present Origin. Noel Barstad and Algis Mickunas
(translator.), Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Guénon, Rene (1962), Symboles fondamentaux de la science sacrée. Paris:
Gallimard.
Hardwick, Elizabeth (1983), Bartleby in Manhattan, and Other Essays. New
York: Random House.
Lavery, David (1992), Late for the Sky: The Mentality of the Space Age.
Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.
Lovinescu, Vasile (1981), Al Patrulea Hagialic. Bucharest: Cartea Romaneasca.
Melville, Herman (1961), Billy Budd and Other Tales. New York: New
American Library.
Norman, Liane (1971), “Bartleby and the Reader,” New England Quarterly
(44)1: 22-39.
Penglase, Charles (1994), Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and
Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod. London: Routledge, 1994.
Plumstead, A. W. (1966), “Bartleby: Melville’s Venture into a New Genre,”
Bartleby the Scrivener: The Melville Annual. Howard P. Vincent (ed.), Kent, Ohio:
Kent State University Press, 82-93.
Riffard, Pierre (1990), L’Esoterisme. Paris: Robert Laffont.
Tallack, Douglas (1993), The Nineteenth-Century American Short Story: Lan-
guage, Form and Ideology. London: Routledge.
Versluis, Arthur (2001), The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance.
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Vietor, Karl (1950), Goethe: The Thinker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
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Wolf, Jack C. (1986), Hart Crane’s Harp of Evil: A Study of Orphism in the
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Irina Dubský is a Senior Lecturer Ph.D. in English and American Literature with
the Faculty of Letters of Spiru Haret University, Bucharest. The focal points of her
field of research are represented by the exploration of the alchemical tropes and
esoteric significance encoded in Herman Melville’s work alongside the study of the
initiatory patterns and symbolic imagery in the literature of the American Renaissance.
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The works of such esoteric writers as R. Guénon, A. Versluis, V. Lovinescu, Eliade,
Schuon, Borella etc. have provided the main interpretive tools for this intellectual
enterprise in which she has been involved throughout her academic studies (the BA,
MA and doctoral programs) at the University of Bucharest and onwards. In 2010 she
was awarded a PhD in Philology by the University of Bucharest upon defending her
doctoral dissertation entitled “Shadowings-Forth of the Invisible”: Esotericism in
Herman Melville’s Fiction - Moby Dick and the Tales. She has also worked as a
translator for Humanitas Publishing House.

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permission.