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    In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville
    In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville
    In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville
    Ebook140 pages1 hour

    In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville

    By Lynn Michelsohn and Herman Melville

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    About this ebook

    Sail to the exotic Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville, author of "Moby-Dick." 

    Let History and Legend, Fiction and Fact, Myth and Mystery swirl around you as you enter "The Encantadas," a unique island world stretching along our planet's Equator.

    ~ Discover teeming seabird rookeries, stark volcanic landscapes, and world famous giant tortoises . . .

    ~ Meet buccaneers and explorers, colonists and castaways, whalers and naturalists . . . 

    ~ Explore these Enchanted Isles with one of America's greatest writers . . .

    ~ Enrich your once-in-a-lifetime visit to . . . The Galapagos Islands.

    Travelers have been arriving in the Galapagos Islands since at least 1535. While naturalist Charles Darwin made these volcanic peaks famous, Spanish explorers, English buccaneers, American whalers, Ecuadorian colonists, and a United States President all put in appearances here over the centuries.

    Herman Melville was one such visitor. He first glimpsed the Galapagos Islands as a young seaman on the whaler Acushnet out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Years later, after the failure of his novel Moby-Dick, he tried to regain his lost popularity with the reading public by writing a series ten of magazine sketches recalling the strange worlds he found in these Enchanted Isles. 

    This current book was created for today's visitor—or armchair visitor. Bring it with you, or read it before you leave home. Enhance your enjoyment of the Galapagos Islands with these glimpses of its captivating natural and human history written over 150 years ago by that famous fellow traveler. 

    Discover . . .
    - Herman Melville's ten sketches called "The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles."
    - Forty of Moses Michelsohn's striking photographs from the Galapagos islands: birds, iguanas, giant tortoises, sea lions, exotic plants, and volcanic landscapes.
    - Lynn Michelsohn's introduction to the work, and to each individual sketch.

    - 144 pages in paperback.

    Enjoy your visit to the Galapagos Islands!


    About the Authors

    Herman Melville wrote in the genre that has been called "dark romanticism." "The Encantadas," like Moby-Dick (considered by many to be the best novel ever written) and his well respected novella "Billy Budd," draws on his shipboard experiences in the South Seas as a young man. 

    Lynn Michelsohn has written such diverse books as Roswell, Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World! and Gullah Ghosts, Stories and Folktales from the South Carolina Lowcountry. Her longstanding interests in both the Galapagos Islands and Herman Melville led to this work.

    Like Melville, biologist and wildlife photographer Moses Michelsohn found tortoises on the Galapagos Islands fascinating. Tree frogs in Ecuador, Costa Rica, and the southeastern United States remain his primary research interest, however.
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCleanan Press, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 3, 2019
    ISBN9781386133704
    In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville
    Author

    Lynn Michelsohn

    Travel, history, and folklore often come together in Lynn Michelsohn's books. Ghost stories associated with particular historical locations especially interest her, as do fascinating characters and quirky facts about places she loves--the South Carolina Lowcountry, the American Southwest, and the Galapagos Islands. A Message from the Author: I write for three reasons. First of all, it's fun. Secondly, it keeps my brain alive and functioning as I learn new things. Finally, and probably most importantly, it keeps me out of my sons' hair (I just know I could run their lives, if only they would let me!). Several years ago, I closed my long-time New Mexico practice in clinical and forensic psychology to devote more time to writing--and beachcombing. My husband, a former attorney, and I now divide our time between Santa Fe and Hutchinson Island, Florida, where our two adult sons visit us regularly (but not often enough). 

    Read more from Lynn Michelsohn

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      Book preview

      In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville - Lynn Michelsohn

      DSC01380 copy copy

      PREFACE

      Visitors have been arriving in the Galapagos Islands since at least 1535. While naturalist Charles Darwin made these volcanic peaks famous, Spanish explorers, English buccaneers (a fancy name for pirates), American whalers, Ecuadorian colonists, and a United States President have all put in appearances here over the centuries.

      Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick, was one such visitor. Like many before him, he returned home to write about the strange worlds he found in these Enchanted Isles.

      We hope your own stay in the Galapagos Islands is enriched by these glimpses of its captivating natural and human history written over 150 years ago by that famous fellow visitor.

      Lynn Michelsohn 

      Moses Michelsohn

      eGal copyDSC02361

      INTRODUCTION

      Moby-Dick was a failure.

      So much trash and a monstrous bore proclaimed the nicest critics.

      Sales were poor.

      Even greater scorn greeted his next novel, Pierre. HERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY blasted one New York review . . . and he had tried so hard to make this a romantic—even sentimental—story that would appeal to the book-buying public. Instead, it grew to encompass challenging themes and innovative forms. Now, it too was failing . . .

      * * *

      Herman Melville’s career had started with such promise. His first two novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), quickly became bestsellers. These titillating debut novels, filled with embellished accounts of his own youthful adventures after deserting the New Bedford whaler Acushnet in the South Seas, caught the public's fancy both in England and America. Critical and financial success foretold a brilliant future.

      Melville soon wooed and married Lizzie Shaw, the only daughter of Massachusetts' Supreme Court Chief Justice. He purchased a small farm in the idyllic Berkshire Mountains. His emotional and financial struggles that had followed the bankruptcy and early death of his father, a once-wealthy New York businessman, seemed over.  

      But Melville wanted to make a positive impact on the world with his writing. He began to focus on serious issues: political injustice, human cruelty, religious intolerance, slavery, racial bigotry, and the rigid sexual mores of his time.

      He set his third novel, Mardi (1849), in the South Seas once again but this time explored intensely political and highly philosophical issues. Melville considered it his masterpiece. Critics called it a rubbishing rhapsody, a tissue of conceits, and a mass of downright nonsense. Not surprisingly, sales were disappointing.

      Perhaps simpler and more readable stories would regain him readers? He wrote Redburn (1849) about his first voyage as a cabin boy and White Jacket (1850) drawing on his year as a Navy seaman. But satirical criticism of the institutions he despised crept into these works as well; fans did not return.

      The reading public loved exotic tales set in exotic locations. Strong heroic characters, direct action, romanticized locales, and suggestive physicality were popular literary motifs.  Allegorical attacks on religious or political evils and innovative explorations of ambiguous aspects of the human condition most certainly were not. 

      Still determined to address important themes, Melville went on to write Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852), losing readers with each new novel. Royalties decreased pitifully. By the end of 1853 he had yet to recoup publication costs for Pierre—his publishers had stopped absorbing these charges as his popularity declined . . .

      Now, as 1854 began, the thirty-four year old author was supporting his growing family on borrowed money and advances from his wife’s expected inheritance. His moodiness increased with his alcohol intake as attacks of sciatica threatened chronic pain. Although he delighted in the antics of his two young sons, relations with his wife grew ever more strained.

      Family members pressured him to give up writing. Use the good education you received as a youth, his demanding mother probably urged. Take a diplomatic post like your brother! (her beloved successful older son whose early death had once again robbed her of her life of ease).

      Throughout that icy Massachusetts winter, Melville struggled to regain his readership with shorter and less challenging magazine articles. Hour after hour he scratched away at his cramped writing desk until each early dusk interrupted his efforts. 

      By January of 1854, Melville had begun to construct a series of ten sketches—really an extended travelogue—full of myth and exotic scenery but still reflecting complex themes of good and evil that dominated his thoughts. And Putnam’s Monthly Magazine had agreed to buy the stories at $5 a page! He could feel his career coming back to life.

      Once more he transported himself away from the snowy blasts that rattled his Pittsfield farmhouse; back twelve years and three thousand miles to the tropical South Seas of his youth.

      Could he bring readers along with him to that archipelago with the wonderfully alluring name, The Enchanted Isles? Could he blend his own experiences with stories from the forecastle and tales told by other adventurers to recreate that alien realm where the Acushnet had once put in for fresh water and tortoise steaks? Could he recapture his lost popularity with these sketches of the Galapagos Islands?

      Decide for yourself . . .

      ship copy

      Herman Melville clearly has no place writing travel brochures. His bleak depiction of volcanic Galapagos landscapes would certainly not entice tourists seeking a tropical paradise.

      And he quickly dispels any Disney-like associations with the archipelago’s nickname by conveying the understanding that Encantada was used in its negative sense of bewitched rather than with any more joyful connotation.

      Yet this first of four sketches describing the natural world of the Galapagos Islands (and beginning, like most of the ten, with a quote from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen), with its images of stark volcanic islands populated by demonic creatures—all probably a reflection of his own dark psyche—prepares visitors still today in an (almost) realistic way for their upcoming experiences.

      What better introduction could there be to the other-worldly environment of the Enchanted Isles?

      SKETCH FIRST.

      THE ISLES AT LARGE.

      —"That may not be, said then the ferryman,

      Least we unweeting hap to be fordonne;

      For those same islands seeming now and than,

      Are not firme land, nor any certein wonne,

      But stragling plots which to and fro do ronne

      In the wide waters; therefore are they hight

      The Wandering Islands; therefore do them shonne;

      For they have oft drawne many a wandring wight

      Into most deadly daunger and distressed plight;

      For whosoever once hath fastened

      His foot thereon may never it secure

      But wandreth evermore uncertein and unsure."

      "Darke, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave,

      That still for carrion carcasses doth crave;

      On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl,

      Shrieking his balefull note, which ever drave

      Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl,

      And all about it wandring ghosts did wayle and howl."

      Take five-and-twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and there in an outside city lot;  imagine some of them magnified into mountains, and the vacant lot the sea; and you will have a fit idea of the general aspect of the Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles. A group rather of extinct volcanoes than of isles; looking much as the world at large might, after a penal conflagration.

      It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness, furnish a parallel to this group. Abandoned cemeteries of long ago, old cities by piecemeal tumbling to their ruin,

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