The Misty Insularity of Mystic
Caroline Hildebrandt. Photo courtesy of Caroline Hildebrandt.
I had flown in from sultry France, and arrived by the end of a Sunday afternoon, the day before the conference started. After leaving my things at the hotel, my feet infallibly led me to water. I could see the 1882 Training Ship Joseph Conrad from afar, guessing her shape behind the silhouettes of the graves of the nearby Mystic graveyard. I came to a sea shack, fishiest of all fishy places, that cunningly served chowder, but also burger and fries for less adventurous stomachs. A timely place to see again some friendly Melvillean faces that had also gained their share of spectral quality from the precincts or, perhaps, jet lag might have played a role there. [End Page 147]
The next morning, we, renegades and castaways from all over the world, were brought to the University of Connecticut Avery Point by a fleet of brisk yellow buses that delighted Europeans and awoke nostalgic middle school memories in the minds of the American colleagues. The Avery Point Lighthouse, overlooking the bluffs just in front of the university buildings, welcomed us with its radiating green light. The four conference days that followed were an oceanic feast of science, friendship, and lively conversations, as is expected whenever the Melville Society gathers, here cradled by the intimate misty insularity of the Avery Point campus. Panels, roundtables, performances, and exhibitions all celebrated the textual and human legacy that Melville's works still foster, this time through the perspective of the "ocean." Within a variety of contexts—ecocritical, aesthetic, ethical, sociopolitical, posthuman—the conference sought to read and return to Melville's oceanic texts and themes. The ecocritical and posthuman perspectives were of course central to the participants' proposals, yet the topic invited us to think about these with the global span that the ocean allows. As such, thematic focuses on energy, extractivism, and infrastructures were even more present this year than during previous conferences, testifying as well to the vibrant power of Melville's texts, which keep speaking back to our times, as we keep questioning their depths and surfaces. The ocean also enabled affective, haptic and even "odorous" studies, while also navigating the troubled seas of translation. The sea, as such, is truly where embodiment takes place in Melville's works. Participants thus took the opportunity to question the material realities of the ocean, but also its political possibilities and its many communities and practices—pirates and mutineers of all sorts, and castaways trying (not) to belong.
It would be impossible here to summarize each and every panel, but I would like to highlight some of the amazing events that Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, Wyn Kelley and Tony McGowan put together during these four wonderful days. The first highlight was of course the visit to Mystic Seaport Museum, during which we had the amazing opportunity to be given a private tour of the Charles W. Morgan, the only surviving wooden whaling ship from the nineteenth-century American whaling fleet. I still cannot truly fathom that I got to handle sails while singing original sea chanteys.
The second high point were the artistic performances we were lucky enough to attend: the live-printing by Jos Sances, with prints generously given to the attendees, a 35-minute rendition of Moby-Dick, which used quotations from the novel itself, not to mention an upstairs exhibition at the Avery Point Branford House, which showcased beautiful artworks, all Melville-inspired. Art and performances were also central to several of the panels, focusing on [End Page 148]
Avery Point Lighthouse. Photo courtesy of Caroline Hildebrandt.
the intermedial resonances of Melville's texts in popular culture or on works directly engaging with Melville's poetics and themes.
The third highlight was, for me, the optional trip to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which I had never visited. Is there a more transformative experience for any Melvillean than standing next to a sperm whale skeleton? [End Page 149]
Rigging of the Charles W. Morgan. Photo courtesy of Caroline Hildebrandt.
Here was that brow put before us. Facing the gigantic skull, I recalled Melville's injunction: "Read it if you can" (NN Moby-Dick 347). Well, Herman, here were a bunch of us trying, and let me tell you we are still not done. The Research Library team then showed us exceptional documents, such as the original crew-list of the New York Port, which registered the names of the Acushnet's [End Page 150]
The Seamen's Bethel pulpit. Photo courtesy of Caroline Hildebrandt.
crew—among which we could read Melville's. Finally, a few steps away from the Museum, we entered the Seamen's Bethel, where a pew was dedicated to Melville and where we paused to remember some lines of Father Mapple's sermon.
The fourth highlight gathers off-track memories. First, a fond memory of the only Mystic pub open after 8pm, that fellow Melvillean revelers kept open [End Page 151]
Sunset on Monument Mountain. Photo courtesy of Caroline Hildebrandt.
until late, several nights in a row. Second, the little road-trip my friend Alan Van Brackel and I did on the Saturday just after the conference. We rented a car and started with a stop at Arrowhead. Here again, this was my first visit at the Melville house. There is, of course, no words to describe the intense emotion one can experience while facing the view from the desk, where Melville recalled [End Page 152] his own views from the masthead. We then drove to Balance Rock, a few miles away, that Melville would feature in Pierre, then past Lake Pontoosuc on our way to Monument Mountain, which we climbed by the end of the afternoon. We were lucky enough to view the sunset from the top before gently proceeding downhill, in total silence. "Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature," Melville wrote (NN Pierre 204). But our path was lighted by little fireflies, and "for some few fleeting moments," we did feel the "cool dew of the life immortal" (NN Moby-Dick 492).
Recalling these last moments, I also recall a line by Lorenz Oken that Sammy Moriarty quoted in his paper on Oken and Melville, during one of the very first panels of the conference: "love arose out of the sea-foam." I have only attended two Melville conferences so far: Paris and Mystic. In each, however, I saw that the power of the Melville community lies in the love that binds his readers together—a feeling truly oceanic. [End Page 153]
