Mardi: And a Voyage Thither [Paperback]

Apologies and thanks to a previous reviewer (1999), from whom I borrowed the idea of the 'nutty middle ground' between Typee and The Whale. What a whale of a book! what a mess! what great fun!
Typee and Omoo were , well, non-fictional accounts of young Melville's travels in the South Pacific. He wrote in the Mardi foreword, that nobody believed him, so he made up some fiction and was sure to be believed this time. Not likely.
The book was a flop in the commercial sense, like all future Melville books would be. What an idiot the market can be.
The 'story': the hero of the 2 previous adventure tales takes off from an island on a small whaling ship, to go home, and true to his personal tradition, runs away from it, with a fellow sailor in a whaling boat. (The fact that he actually steals the boat in the process, not to mention breaks his contract, seems irrelevant to the young man.)
They meet a small and nearly deserted ship, take it over, find an odd couple on it, Samoa and Annatoo, have adventures with them sailing the ship, lose the ship and Annatoo, then the 3 men are again on the boat, they meet some natives in a prao, save a beautiful virgin from human sacrifice. She turns out to be a kind of goddess, so the hero has to promote himself to play in the same league, then they land on the island group called Mardi, and the story gets very long and tedious, but never quite stops being fun. Mardi is supposed to mean the 'world', by the way. See the allegoric meaning?
The structure of the short chapters (nearly 200 of them) helps to maintain momentum. The chapters are half way to Moby Dick: some are plain story telling, some are ruminations on God and the World, some are observations of nature, some are the mystical phantasies of the South Seas mythology that M. created for the purpose of this book.
And it is a collection of aphorisms, that would make the visit worth while on their own.
The whale's brain enlightens the world.
Death has a mouth as black as a wolf's.
He looked infernally heartless.
He who hates is a fool. Yet some dislikes are spontaneous.
Some revelations show best in twilight.
One of my AFs said that nothing prepares the reader of Typee and Omoo for the Melville of later years. I would add, that Mardi already breaks the barriers. Sometimes he comments on his own text in the text: e.g. ...which sentence reads like a pattering of hailstones.
If you can, don't read it without access to Google, otherwise the constant allusions to the world of history and literature make you lose a lot of the contents (unless you are an encyclopedia yourself).
P.S. and not to forget, greetings to the hermit goats that they spotted on the island of Massafuero. Wherever that is, if it is anywhere.

Mardi, the forgotten child ,is yet entirely singular and needs to be read by those who have fallen under the spell of Melville. An encyclopaedic romp through an almost fantastical landscape of isles and warriors; Melville attempts to pull off one the most extraordinary acts of metaphysical fiction ever. He doesn't quite rein it all in but the experience of reading Mardi is utterly disorientating in the best way. Coming after Typee and before Moby Dick, it is somewhat of a nutty middle ground. The anthropological concerns of Typee are stretched to the limit. Like the stars in the sky, Mardi is vast; (the word is Polynesian for the world)--and as full of wonder.

Although on its surface it appears to be a travelogue like his first two books (TYPEE and OMOO), MARDI is actually much more than that: it's a commentary on the age in which it was written, it's a quest story, it's an allegory, it's a love story. It's about many strange things and is not an easy book to follow, mainly because of Melville's use of allusions and digressions. Like Joyce's ULYSSES it almost requires a guide to help interpret what's in the book. As always with Melville its strength is in its language: the descriptions that are almost like poetry and the "borrowings" from favorite authors such as Shakespeare and Swift.

Basically, the story involves a shipwreck in the South Pacific, an attack by native islanders, and the falling in love of the narrator (Taji) with one of the native woman (Yillah). The make their way to the island of Mardi where they live happily for a while, until Yillah disappears. Taji searches for her throughout the islands with some companions; during this search they discuss many topics (here Melville satirizes life in America and England - slavery, politics, Indian policy, the war with Mexico, and also the failures of Christians to follow the love of Christ), until they find Yillah on an island transformed into a handmaiden. Implored to stay there with her, Taji decides to sail on in his endless quest for . . . truth?

The novel sold poorly during Melville's day (the London publisher lost money on it), with the public put off by its utter strangeness. Language lovers will appreciate this novel, however, and perhaps those who enjoy interpreting symbols and allusions. Not an easy book, but worth the effort to get a better picture of what Melville was all about as a great novelist.

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