American Literature Melville Orientalism in his poem Clarel

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Melville's Orientalism in his poem Clarel
Clarel has been presented in the form of an exhaustively long epic poem divided into
four roughly equal parts. Each part has been envisaged under one particular theme which has
been further subdivided into more than thirty cantos in each part. The length of the poem is not
the only deciding factor which brings it to the consideration for an epic, but the manifestation
of the life of Melville makes it equally relevant to consider it as one of the epics in American
Orientalism literature. The first part, Jerusalem, introduces the reader to the title character in
the poem. The character is the American divinity student who has been portrayed to have
travelled to the Holy Land of Jerusalem in his quest of achieving knowledge that will quell his
increasing doubts regarding religious theories and principles. The journey has been portrayed
in the image of a pilgrimage where the title character meets some of the other important
characters depicted in the poem and those who will accompany the student in his pilgrimage.
In Jerusalem, the title character falls in love with a Jewish girl named Ruth, a woman of the
Holy Land whose father was murdered by Arab terrorists. The second part, The Wilderness,
Clarel and other fellow travellers accompanying him in his journey travel to the Dead Sea from
the Holy Land. In the third part, named Mar Saba, the central setting has been made around a
fifth-century Greek monastery while in the last part, Bethlehem, the characters surviving,
including Clarel finally goes to the places of Christ’s nativity and then return back to the Holy
Land Jerusalem only to find out that his beloved Ruth has passed away in his absence. Poets
of epic works carry the inherent responsibility of portraying the whole life relative to their
culture. During the shift of focus of epic literary works since the Renaissance to the modernist
era of literature, from emphasising the core idea of the epic as spiritual life to the life of the
poet, the centre has shifted from God to poet hero (Clarel).
Orientalism is a perspective of Arab and Asian cultural differences compared to
Western cultural inhibitions. The concept is widely centred on the stereotyping of Arab and

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Asian cultures as exotic, backward, uncivilised and dangerous. Edward Said, the famous
Palestinian American author in his work Orientalism refers to the term as being extensively
used in a disparaging context to refer to stereotyped and demeaning conceptions of Arab and
Asian cultures as per the views of western scholars. In the European context, orient referred to
the eastern Mediterranean, in US context, it referred to more distant regions apart from the
Arab and Mediterranean region to include Asian context while in the colonial and neo-colonial
context, near of Middle East was the earliest references. As the literary focus on Orientalism
increased among 18th and 19th-century literary scholars and authors, works on the Oriental
lands, their languages, literature, religions, laws, values and art of Asian and Arab oriental
lands started gaining popularity and Melville's Clarel is one of the most important citations in
this context. Melville’s reference to the oriental lands of Jerusalem and the nativity of Christ
holds more personal significance to the author reflected through the approach of the title
character of Clarel. This has been reflected in the pessimistic standpoint of the poet in the poem
as the poem, inspired by the journey of the poet into the oriental lands in search for a rationale
for his disbeliefs in Biblical assertions. Thus the poem expresses the utter disappointment and
disillusionment that the poet felt when he visited the Holy Land.
The reference to Orientalism has been made in a destructive way that the poet uses to
express his scepticism regarding the religious views, especially of Biblical context that draws
their setting in the oriental backdrop of the Holy Land and other places of Biblical significance.
For instance, in the poem, Mortmain harbours a pessimistic approach to the mountains of
Moab. In the second part of the poem, even on witnessing the sight of the Moab Mountains in
its enormity and sacred relevance was not sufficient in quelling Mortmain’s pessimism. Thus
Mortmain exclaims “Lo, how they trail, / The mortcloths in the funeral, /Of Gods.” This
appropriately sums up the situation where the quest of Clarel to clear his doubts of religious
scepticism has been put forward even in the face of all the glory of the Moab Mountains in
front of Mortmain. Thus, far from being inspired by the beauty of the creation of the Almighty,
Mortmain interprets the visual as the end of religious beliefs (Clarel).
Representations of the Orient in the poem
While referring to Melville and Orientalism, his other more famous work, Moby Dick
is often cited due to its relevance to oriental ideologies and setting. Clarel, however, is more
obscure yet epic, as it derives, are geographical setting in the Oriental lands of Jerusalem and
Christ's nativity directly inspired by the poets travel to the Orient in his personal quest of

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knowledge and clarification of Biblical assertions. Melville’s state of mind pertaining to his
personal religious holdings and rational inquiry can be rightfully identified from the viewpoint
of Melville’s friend Nathaniel Hawthorne whom Melville met while on his tour of Europe and
the Middle East in 1857. A major influence of oriental literature himself, Hawthorne
incorporated from Indian epics like The Ramayana and Kalidasa’s Shakuntala. Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet letter holds a close similarity with Kalidasa’s Abhijanam Shakuntalam.Shakuntala
in Abhijanam Shakuntalam and Hester in The Scarlet Letter are the most significant
protagonists and equally dominate the plot. Hawthorne’s heritage and fame were mostly
created by Luedtke’s biographical work on Hawthorne of which the first two chapters consist
of Hawthorne's extravagant material dealing of East but the main matter of Orientalism remains
untouched in his early tales written before 1830 (Patterson, 94).
The true relevance to Orientalism in Clarel is embedded in the pursuit of Melville in
the lands of the Orient with a view of resolving the clash between traditional revealed religion
and modern scientific rationality. However, as one can see the pessimistic viewpoint of
Melville represented in the poem as the title character portrays the journey from Jerusalem to
Bethlehem depicted through rather obscure experiences with Clarel’s fellow companions
encompassing 30 characters. In the first part, accompanied by Nehemiah, a character who
nurtures simple blind faith, Clarel visits the holy sites of Jerusalem during which time he falls
in love with Ruth, Nehemiah and Agar’s daughter. Several other places of Oriental background
and biblical significance have been identified in the poem as in the later parts, Clarel travels to
the Dead Sea through Jericho. As one reads further, the encounters with other sites of Oriental
reference like the Greek Orthodox monastery on top of the cliffs of Kedron Valley named Mar
Saba comes into evidence. Assertions to the conflicting thoughts of Melville are very clear
from how the poet portrays characters and their ultimate fate in the poem. Paintings and literary
works of European artists from the 19th and early 20th century lay evidence to the oriental
depiction of the Arab world. The Orient has been represented as a land of mystery and
fascination with exotic elements like mysterious places of sand, harems and belly dancers
feeding the Orientalist fantasies of the West. Even photographic publication of The Colonial
Harem by Malek Alloula, although intended to depict Algerian life in the early 1990s, reveals
more of French colonial perspectives. The scepticism with exoticizing and eroticizing oriental
women to feed the pleasure of European male voyeur has been addressed in Clarel’s love affair
with Ruth, a woman of Jewish origin during his travel of Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. One can
interpret it as a vague attempt by Melville himself to break the stereotyping of Oriental women

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in the West by depicting a love affair between Clarel, a divinity student and an oriental woman.
Although very little can be seen of Ruth in the poem, one may argue that Ruth is the ideal
projection of Clarel rather than a person. Mortmain, a Swede character having a background of
the revolutionary leader in Paris in 1848 has been shown to possess a pessimistic approach to
the Biblical significance of the Moab Mountains and which the poet identifies through the
perspective of the title character as Mortmain exclaims as the end of religious blind beliefs.
Mortmain dies at the Greek Monastery in the Dead Sea committing suicide motivated by the
despair caused to him, caught between the ancient and modern rationales of belief. Referring
to how Hawthorne identifies Melville's thought process as he met him in Liverpool, Mortmain's
quest to dismiss unsolicited religious beliefs based on the fantastical depiction of oriental
religions and Melville's viewpoint of the same can be seen to be complementing each other.
Mortmain failed to find his own form of faith and in despair, he descended into the Dead Sea.
Christ sacrifice on the cross, an event of sheer Biblical significance can be interpreted as a
representation of man’s tragic fate. This tragic fate also finds significance as Mortmain is
depicted to drown in the Dead Sea which is conventionally impossible as one knows of the
salty contents of the water body which makes everything float over the surface. Clarel is written
with an essence of disillusionment of the narrator and the poet Melville himself and the tragic
fact that the poet through his journey fails to find the right answers to his quests.
A number of reflections and reviews of Clarel by the proponents of Melville makes
critical emphasis on colonial perspectives of Melville as a fundamental link to Orientalism in
the epic poem. Rolfe’s critic of the American Civil War clearly reflects the disappointments
faced by Melville in the American ideas during and post the Civil War. The journey that
Melville made to the Oriental lands of Jerusalem and Christ’s nativity is essentially his quest
for religious truth. The despairing narration of Clarel as Orientalism put into verse tries to
answer the baffling Kantian question: what is a man? Clarel signifies the quest of Melville into
discovering the Orient in his own terms to answer subsequent questions regarding religious
truths which can be traced back to the Holy Land. Thus Melville’s perspective and reproduction
of Orientalism in Clarel is a direct repercussion of the time spent and experiences that he
gathered during his journey to the Holy Land.
One of the essential components of an epic is an epic community and this is where the
incorporation of 30 characters in the poem starts becoming g justified. In the poem, the
community of the Orientals is represented by the band of pilgrims. On a contrary perspective,
this community exhibits symptoms of communal aspects. Agath escaped the plague at his home

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in Egypt and has been shown as a shipwreck survivor. Other characters like Djalea, exiled from
his home, Mortmain, exiled from Europe, Rolfe and Ungar are some of the most identifiable
characters who have deserted their original communities. Clarel himself becomes part of that
epic community as he returns to Jerusalem to find that Ruth had died long before which assert
a sense of loss to the title character allowing him to merge and identify equally with the
immediate community. Thus, the community depicted by Melville has been depicted in a
negative manner defined by negative attributes like exile, loss and alienation. Perhaps Melville
tried to draw attention to the negative stereotyping of the oriental by eminent western scholars
and authors of the 18th and the 19th century through the depiction of such an oriental community
in this poem (Hayes, 96).
The western stereotypical look towards the orient and oriental people
The Orient is characterised by ancient civilisations and wisdom and has been identified
by westerners as a place of lunar phenomena. Fundamentally, stereotyping of the orient and
the Orientals can be attributed to the perception of a spectacular land with extraordinary and
essentially exotic people encompassing cultural values and traditions which differ from the
cultural inhibitions of the western world. Therefore, a conceptual notion has been embedded
deep in the Western minds regarding the orient as an insightfully puzzling riddle and a
seductive subject encompassing women and elements of enchanting and exotic beauty and
attractiveness. Said's Orientalism acts as a discourse to filter out the stereotypes of the orient
thus providing a host of misconceptions regarding the inherent characteristic of the Orient and
Oriental people. Bozdogan refers to this cultural stereotyping as a standardisation over the
perception and the reception of the Orient. Thus the image of the Orient and Oriental people
reflected in the works of eminent western artists can be reproduced to signify an object of
consumption by westerners (Hassiba).
Said’s viewpoint of Orientalism allows one to identify a host of distinct characteristics
as the Orient has been increasingly referred to as a European invention. It has been stereotyped
as a place of romance, exotic beings and landscapes and lunar experiences. Through the
perspective of the waster, the Orient and the Oriental people have been stereotyped to be a land
and people who seek to be controlled by a superior force or civilisation as the westerners. The
interaction between the East and the West has thus been ritually presented in a relationship of
domination and superior power. In the work of 18th-century author William Beckford, the
evident preoccupation of race in the western literature has been identified. During the medieval

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times, English literature was highly influenced by the distortion of the perception of the Orient
and the Oriental people. Arabs, referring to the Middle East has been portrayed as weak
emperors, medieval Saracens, filthy Bedouins, pagans, moor, tyrant invaders and caliphs,
mysterious explorers and immoral women (Said, 56).
Arabs have been identified as anti-occident in the French epic, The Song of Roland. The
storyline portrays the Arabs as fundamentally pagans and people who worship idols. According
to Orientalist Jullian, Orientalism has been referred to as a stage in the cult of the exotic. This
lays strong evidence to the fact that the Orient has been referred to as the land of exoticism and
supernatural phenomena. More recently, Locke identified the concept of oriental exoticism as
the evocation of a place and its people which is inherently different from the Western world
(ACHIR, 17).
One of the most important aspects of stereotyping of the Orient and the Oriental people
can be found in the depiction of Oriental women in Western literature. Much like the average
oriental Arabs’ depiction of the helpless and ignorant community who seeks to be controlled
by western superpowers, likewise, the oriental woman, in general, has been consolidated in the
cultural and gender stereotype as an object for consumption and a destination for western white
people. Much like Clarel’s characters who are depicted to be either exiled, alienated or fled as
negative attributes, Oriental women has been identified as seeking their liberation from western
men. The Harem has been a fundamental focus in western oriental literature with the Harem
depicted as a site for exotic sexuality and eroticism for the western man. The use of the veil by
the oriental women especially of Arab origin has been referred to as the restrictive mask which
conserves their virility and erotic attractiveness significantly characterising them as an object
of voyeurism and espionage.
Relevance to Edward Said’s book: Orientalism
Edward Said’s work Orientalism has a strong relevance to the destructive viewpoint of
Melville of the Oriental stereotyping depicted in his epic poem Clarel. As Knapp puts down,
Clarel is regarded as a rejection of the American dream and the rejection of the westward
movement, in general, identifying it as a contrary eastward movement much to the irony of the
stereotypical superiority of the western world over the eastern world (Rabhi, 35). Melville
ventured into his journey of the Orient driven by his personal innuendoes to satiate his religious
knowledge and convictions. He bore a mindset free of bias and stereotype and with the attitude
of an explorer. Thus, the unconventional evocation of the places, landscape, geography and

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other aspects of the orient lends the richness to the epic poem. In the poem, the physical world
has been attributed to reflect inner world of character for instance in the first part, the decay of
Jerusalem reflects the inward deterioration of the faith of Clarel, the title character. Melville’s
venture to solve his metaphysical doubts is the most important driver of the text of Clarel which
renders the physical outcome of the poem (Rollyson and Paddock, 47-66). Much of the
reasoning that the title character draws is not based on questioning but more on observation
leading to the futility of the purpose which has been intensified by the death of Ruth in the
poem. Edward Said shared a similar viewpoint in Orientalism where he identified that the
general stereotyping of the oriental is based on the presumed representativeness of everything
oriental. Every element with a background to the Orient has been attributed the Orientalness in
character to such a vague extent that the attribute of being oriental surpassed by any
countervailing instance. Thus a person of Oriental background is first referred to as an Oriental
and then only as a person (Said, 35).
Conclusion
Since the establishment of the pioneering studies made by Arthur Christy in the field
of Orientalism, this topic has evolved as a major interest of research by eminent writers. Clarel
in its epic quality, bridges the dimensions of God to self by setting the poem at the Holy Land,
one of the most distinctly identifiable places in Orientalism literature of western eminent and
adopts the subject of the clash between faith and scepticism which had already reached the
threshold limit of educated contemporaries questioning religious viewpoints, principles and
beliefs during the second half of the nineteenth century. Through the reference to Orientalism,
Clarel effectively portrays the shift in focus from God to self. The pessimistic essence of the
poem reflects how unsuccessful the poet has been in his quest when to his surprise, he might
have come upon to discover that the stereotyping nurtured by Westerners in personal fantasises
regarding the Orient was lies and inappropriate translations.

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Works Cited
ACHIR, Houria. The Perception of the Orient in TE Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of
Wisdom. Diss. 2017.
Clarel, A. "Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land." Evanston and Chicago:
Northwestern University Press 1 (1991): 1-6.
Hassiba, Boukhatem. American Orientalism within the East/West Dichotomy. Diss.
Université d’Oran, 2016.
Hayes, Kevin J. The Cambridge Introduction to Herman Melville. Cambridge
University Press, 2007.
Patterson, Lena. "Melville's Oriental Parsee: Reimagining Fedallah as Reader and Sign
in Moby-Dick." (2010).
Rabhi, Wadia. "Nation and Its Configuration: The (Mis) representation of the Orient in
the Literary Imagination of Melville." (2006).
Rollyson, Carl Edmund, and Lisa Olson Paddock. Herman Melville Ato Z: the essential
reference to his life and work. Facts on File, 2001.
Said, Edward. "W. 1978. orientalism." New York: Pantheon(1995).