Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

Who could possibly have foreseen that the author of “Typee” and “Omoo” would at last appear as the author of a poem of 18,000 lines, inspired by religious doubts, questions and aspirations? That Mr. Melville has a vein of native poetry in his nature was already manifested by some ballads which he published during the civil war; but it still remains an amazement that the hero of whaling and Polynesian adventures had become a theological mystic in his ripened years. The plot of Clarel has been constructed as a frame upon which to hang descriptions of the scenery of Palestine and the theological discussions of a chance company of tourists. The principal characters are an American student, an English clergyman, a Jew, a Smyrniote Greek and a Jewish girl of whom we see little, as she dies in order to introduce a tragic element. The poem is divided into four parts, respectively entitled: Jerusalem, The Wilderness, Mar Saba and Bethlehem.