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Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is the first book of poetry of the American author Herman Melville. Published by Harper & Brothers of New York in 1866, the volume is dedicated "To the Memory of the Three Hundred Thousand Who in the War For the Maintenance of the Union Fell Devotedly Under the Flag of Their Fathers" and its 72 poems deal with the battles and personalities of the American Civil War and their aftermath. Also included are Notes and a Supplement in prose in which Melville sets forth his thoughts on how the Post-war Reconstruction should be carried out.
 | |
| Author | Herman Melville |
|---|---|
| Genre | Poetry |
| Published | 1866 Harper & Brothers, New York |
| Publication place | United States |
| Preceded by | The Confidence-Man |
| Followed by | Clarel |
The book had sold only 486 copies by 1868 and recovered barely half of its publications costs and critics at the time were at best respectful and often sharply critical of Melville's unorthodox style.[1] The critical opinion on Battle-Pieces did not change until the latter half of the 20th century, when scholars began to re-evaluate it as worthy of praise and attention.[2]
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The book is Melville's return to poetry after a hiatus which began in 1860 when Harper & Brothers turned down a book of his poems, which is now lost. After moving his family from Massachusetts to New York in 1863, Melville contemplated writing a book of poems on the war, but evidently did not begin to do so until 1864.[3] The book was not published until 1866, a year after the end of the war. The title refers to the familiar paintings by Dutch and British artists who depicted scenes of battle at sea and musical settings of these battles.[4] Melville's major source for the poems were the early volumes of Frank Moore's (compiler) eleven-volume The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, with Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, Etc. (New York:G.P. Putnam, 1861–1868).[5]
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Battle-Pieces is made up of 72 short lyric and narrative poems grouped into two sections. The first and longer sequence is composed of 52 poems that portray the history of the war, starting with John Brown's hanging in "The Portent" and ending with an account of the Confederate surrender in "The Surrender at Appomattox." It is centered on battles with a special emphasis on the personalities of the officers who led them. The second, shorter series of 16 poems is titled "Verses Inscriptive and Memorial" and is made up of elegies, epitaphs, and requiems.[6] Three final poems, "The Scout Toward Aldie," "Lee in the Capitol," and "A Meditation," do not fall into either section.[7]
The poems in this collection utilize a wide variety of poetic forms and meters. However, they are united by a series of recurring symbols, such as the river, bird, meteor, and Dome. Melville also utilizes Miltonic imagery and references to Paradise Lost in several poems such as "The Conflict of Convictions" and "The Canticle."[8][9]
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The Supplement in prose is Melville's meditation on the period after the Civil War, now known as the Reconstruction Era. As the scholar Robert L. Gale summarizes, "Melville urges Christian charity and common sense with respect to Reconstruction efforts, a wide and humane patriotism, an awareness that victory came to the North not by greater heroism but because of greater resources and population, sympathy for the liberated slaves, and decency in Congress."[10]
In the prose "Supplement", Melville says that he is "one who never was a blind adherent" and advocates reconciliation with the South. He does not favor enfranchising former slaves immediately, for they are "in their infant pupilage to freedom" and argues that sympathy for them "should not be allowed to exclude kindliness to communities who stand closer to us in nature". He continues, "Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, we well as philanthropists toward the blacks, our fellow-men."[11]
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The initial reception in the major journals was sympathetic but not entirely approving. Richard Henry Stoddard, for instance, wrote
- The habit of his mind is not lyric, but historical, and the genre of historic poetry in which he most congenially expatiates finds rhythm not a help but a hindrance. The exigencies of rhyme hamper him still more, and against both of these trammels his vigorous thought habitually recalcitrates.... That it is not the nature of his thought which is at fault, may be plainly perceived from multitudes of strong and beautiful images, many thoughts picturesquely put, which, belonging legitimately to the poetic domain, still refuse to obey the rigid regimental order of the stanza, but outly its lines, deployed as irregular, though brilliant skirmishers....
Stoddard also found it
- a book which, without having one poem of entire artistic ensemble in it, possesses numerous passages of beauty and power. For these it is well worth going through, and belongs, at any rate, to a place on the shelves of those who are collecting the literature of the war, as well as of that much larger class who would not be without a book of Typee's gifted author.[12]
More recent critics praise Melville's poetry in general and Battle-Pieces in particular. Lawrence Buell writes that, next to Walt Whitman, Melville wrote the best series of Civil War lyrics.[13] He also notes that Melville wrote from a Yankee viewpoint but that Battle-Pieces seldom voices jingoism or triumphalism.[6]
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- Melville, Herman (2001). Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. ISBN 1573928933. foreword by James M. McPherson; introduction by Richard H. Cox and Paul M. Dowling; interpretive essays by Helen Vendler et al.
- —— (2009). Robert Ryan (ed.). Published Poems. The Writings of Herman Melville The Northwestern-Newberry Edition Volume 11. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 9780810111127.
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