Now, the Lord of Misrule was a theatrical custom created by the old salts in bygone days, on crossing the Equator…. and ends in appropriate tragedy.įor a nautical Daemon is also a Lord of Misrule. Neither man is the picture of a stalwart seaman - they are both Odd Men Out.įor just so the clash of Good and Evil Daemons within us evokes a veritable supernatural storm of Misrule. On one side, the dumbstruck adherence to painful honesty and virtue in young Billy, whom the captain of this 18th century Royal Navy Man ‘o War calls “the Angel of God,” and on the other, the slimy and envious maleficence of Master of Arms Claggart. Such is the title of a book on the enormous influence of an ancient Gnostic tenet on American writing of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by our preeminent critic, Harold Bloom.Īnd two faces of the Daemon rule this short but unfinished masterpiece by Melville. And, with Edgar Allan Poe, to Descend into the Maelstrom. To read Melville, as the Buddha once said, is to finally Join the Stream.
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