Raymond Melbourne Weaver (1888 – April 4, 1948) was a professor of English and comparative literature at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1916–1948, and a literary scholar best known for publishing ''Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic'', the first full biography of American author
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...
(1819–1891) in 1921 and editing Melville's works. Weaver's scholarly credentials, training, and persuasiveness were important in launching the "
Melville Revival
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...
" of the 1920s that brought Melville from obscurity to wide recognition.
Weaver was an influential teacher. He published a novel, wrote introductions for editions of American fiction, book reviews, and literary essays, but never published another scholarly book after his book on Melville.
Discovery of Melville
Weaver was born in
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
, in 1888. In 1909 when Weaver was an undergraduate, he came across Melville's first book, ''
Typee
''Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life'' is American writer Herman Melville's first book, published in 1846, when Melville was 26 years old. Considered a classic in travel and adventure literature, the narrative is based on Melville's experiences on ...
'', but "stopped at the beginning," as he later wrote, and did not return to Melville for another decade. He graduated from
Columbia Teachers College
Teachers College, Columbia University (TC), is the graduate school of education, health, and psychology of Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. Founded in 1887, it has served as one of the official faculties and ...
in 1910. In pursuit of teaching, he went to Japan, where he taught English in Hiroshima, and started his career as a writer by publishing articles of travel and reporting. He returned to become a graduate student at Columbia University, where his initial interest was in the literature of the Renaissance.
Weaver first taught at
Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute
The New York University Tandon School of Engineering (commonly referred to as Tandon) is the engineering and applied sciences school of New York University. Tandon is the second oldest private engineering and technology school in the United Sta ...
, then was hired by Columbia to replace a socialist professor who had been fired because of his peace activities (Weaver left to teach again at Brooklyn Polytechnic, only to return to Columbia for good in 1922).
Carl Van Doren
Carl Clinton Van Doren (September 10, 1885 – July 18, 1950) was an American critic and biographer. He was the brother of critic and teacher Mark Van Doren and the uncle of Charles Van Doren.
He won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autob ...
, then an editor of ''
The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' magazine, had discovered the works of Melville and was impressed by Weaver's "ability to deal with a speculative subject." When they were seated side by side at a faculty dinner, Van Doren commissioned Weaver to write an article for ''The Nation'' to mark the centennial of Melville's birth in November, 1919. Weaver at first thought the project would be "child's play" and "a day's job," but when he went to the library, he was surprised to find that while there were many works ''by ''Melville there was almost nothing ''about '' him. Weaver's article for ''The Nation'' said that ''Moby-Dick'' was "born in hell-fire, and baptized in an unspeakable name" and that it "reads like a great opium dream," but contains "some of the most finished comedy in the language."
Preparing that article led to a realization that a biography was needed, and his decision to fill that gap made Weaver the key player in the "Melville revival" which had been gathering momentum. At Van Doren's urging, he launched into deeper research. In particular, he won the confidence of Melville's granddaughter, Eleanor Metcalf, who had inherited the Melville family papers and documents. Weaver's most important discovery among these papers was the unfinished manuscript for ''
Billy Budd
''Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)'' is a novella by American writer Herman Melville, left unfinished at his death in 1891. Acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece when a hastily transcribed version was finally published in 1924, it quick ...
'' on which Melville had been working at the time of his death in 1891.
''Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic''
''Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic'' (1921) was the first full-length study of Melville. Weaver presents Melville as a disappointed and disillusioned genius who rebelled against social convention and paid the price: "His whole history is the record of an attempt to escape from an inexorable and intolerable world of reality." Weaver praises Melville for establishing the South Seas as a suitable topic for literature and for his depictions of a sailor's sea-life, but saved his highest praise for ''Moby-Dick'', Melville's "undoubted masterpiece." But Weaver saw the cold reception from critics as leading to the "Long Quietus," that is, Melville's withdrawal from engagement with literature. He characterized Melville's work after 1851 as inferior, sometimes even unacceptable.
The warm reception and wide circulation of Weaver's biography made it a prime source for later biographers who were not always aware that, in the words of a recent Melville scholar, "it is often inaccurate in its details and too dependent on Melville's travel narratives for autobiographical reference and documentation." Later scholars also hold Weaver partly responsible for the idea that Melville withdrew from literature; it is now more widely held that he turned to poetry, a genre in which he is now recognized as a leader.
''Billy Budd''
In 1924 Weaver published Melville's ''
Billy Budd
''Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)'' is a novella by American writer Herman Melville, left unfinished at his death in 1891. Acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece when a hastily transcribed version was finally published in 1924, it quick ...
'', whose manuscript he had found in 1919. It appeared in the last volume of a 13-volume edition of Melville's works which he helped the British publisher
Constable & Co. prepare.
In the introduction, Weaver called "Billy Budd" a "novel finished by Melville five months before his death," although later scholars established that in fact Melville was still revising the work when he died. Weaver wrote in the Introduction for the 1928 edition for
Horace Liveright
Horace Brisbin Liveright (pronounced "LIVE-right," anglicized by Horace's father from the German ''Liebrecht;'' 10 December 1884 – 24 September 1933) was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Libr ...
entitled ''The Shorter Novels of Herman Melville'' that the story was "witness to
elville'sultimate faith that evil is defeat and natural goodness invincible in the affections of man." He compared ''Billy Budd'' with ''Pierre'', saying that each "ends in disaster and death" and that "each is a tragedy (as was Melville's life)...." Tragedy, Weaver went on, was not the representation of human misery," but" the representation of human goodness or nobility," for only when "worldly disaster has worked its utmost can we realize that there remains something in man's soul which is for ever beyond the grasp of the accidents of existence, with power in its own right to make life beautiful. Only through tragedy of this type could Melville affirm his everlasting yea..."
''Black Valley''
Weaver's 1927 novel ''Black Valley'' is set in Japan, where Weaver had taught English for three years, and presents a critical view of missionaries and intense psychological family relations. The reviewer in the ''New York Times'' called it a "strange novel" and compared it to E.M. Forster's 1924
A Passage to India
''A Passage to India'' is a 1924 novel by English author E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of 20th century English litera ...
in their doubts about the superiority of the West over the East. The reviewer concluded that Weaver was "no great lover of the gospel in far lands." The novel pictured the "sincere but wasted effort of a community of evangelical Christians engaged in a sort of spiritual shadow boxing, raiding the heathen for an occasional convert and, when off-duty, indulging in a good deal of spiteful and narrow gossip....." The plot revolves around a bigoted missionary, his dying wife, their son, who has fallen in love with a Japanese girl, and an older woman whose almost sexual doting on the son turns to revulsion when she sees him in the arms of the Japanese girl.
Teaching career at Columbia
The General Honors program at Columbia, which emphasized the close reading of Great Books of Western Civilization, was developed by a group of faculty who, in the words of a semi-official history, "were at odds with the research ethos that permeated their departments" and who "saw themselves as teachers and only incidentally as professors...." They may also, the history adds, have placed a higher value on "the good life" than on a "successful career." Weaver, known to his friends as "Buck," was a leading member of this group, which included
Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thin ...
(with whom he shared an office),
Irwin Edman
Irwin Edman (November 28, 1896 – September 4, 1954) was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy.
Biography
Irwin Edman was born in New York City to Jewish parents. He grew up in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, ...
, and
Mortimer J. Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for long stretches in N ...
, among others. Weaver continued to teach Dante and Renaissance literature, however, in addition to the General Honors course.
A memoir of the college at this time evoked Weaver:
:Raymond Weaver was celebrated for a multitude of eminences. He had invented Herman Melville; he had lived in Japan; he wore
plus fours
Plus fours are breeches or trousers that extend four inches (10 cm) below the knee (and thus four inches longer than traditional knickerbockers, hence the name). Knickerbockers have been traditionally associated with sporting attire sinc ...
in which he could have carried his entire library; he spoke with an accent of perfect clarity and force, but which apart from him was never heard on land or sea. He dramatized the whole of life which was wonderful for the teaching of literature and aesthetics but petrifying in personal relations. He could ask the eternal pedagogic question: "What do you mean, Mr. Doe, by 'interesting'?", and make it sound like an irrefutable accusation of incompetence; and yet he did not merely terrify, he taught. What he taught was an outlook of combined wonder and critical resiliency. Never to take literary platitudes at their face value, and never to become a cheap skeptic...
Students recalled his disdain for popular literature. One story recounted decades later was that Weaver was at a cocktail party in the late 1930s when a guest asked him if he had read ''
Gone With the Wind
Gone with the Wind most often refers to:
* Gone with the Wind (novel), ''Gone with the Wind'' (novel), a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell
* Gone with the Wind (film), ''Gone with the Wind'' (film), the 1939 adaptation of the novel
Gone with the Win ...
''. When he said no, the guest said, "Well, you should. It's been out six months." The professor then asked the guest if he had read ''
The Divine Comedy
The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and ...
''. When the guest said no, the professor said, "Well, you should. It's been out 600 years." Another student recalled Weaver's ''sang–froid'' after a heavy snow-storm knocked out power to the upper west side of New York and left others without water. Weaver appeared on campus freshly shaved. When a student asked how he had done it, and Weaver replied, "I boiled ice cubes."
By the mid-1930s, Weaver had lost interest in Melville. He freely gave advice to
Charles Olson
Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York ...
in preparing his study, ''Call Me Ishmael'', published in 1947, but declined to read the manuscript that Olson submitted for publication. His Columbia colleague
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Mordecai Trilling (July 4, 1905 – November 5, 1975) was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, ...
later said that Weaver "came to regard Melville with some irony, as too much a romantic," and that Weaver preferred
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...
and Italian Renaissance writers. Weaver was given tenure in 1937, but since he never completed his PhD (and perhaps because he was open about his homosexuality), he was not promoted to full professor until 1946. Weaver died in his apartment near Columbia University in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, on the morning of April 4, 1948, at the age of 59. He had recently been treated at a New York hospital, apparently for suicidal depression.
Students
Among the Columbia students who acknowledged Weaver as an important influence was
Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the ...
, the future scholar of mythology. Weaver told Campbell in the 1920s that he should not continue PhD work because he would not find what he was looking for in graduate school, but gave him a list of readings. Another who credited Weaver was the publisher
Robert Giroux
Robert Giroux (April 8, 1914 – September 5, 2008) was an American book editor and publisher. Starting his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus in 1955, where he becam ...
.
In the early 1930s
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Mordecai Trilling (July 4, 1905 – November 5, 1975) was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, ...
was first a student and then a colleague. Trilling's wife recalled that Weaver was "outspokenly hostile until a long time afterward when his enmity changed into affection as precipitously as it had appeared..." After Weaver's death, Trilling said that he was "personally and intensely implicated in every idea he ever dealt with. He related every moment of the classroom to life, and his vision of life was heroic."
In the 1940s the Beat novelist
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian a ...
and the Beat poet
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
were close to Weaver. Ginsberg, who was uncomfortable in the homophobic atmosphere at Columbia, recalled that Weaver was gay, and Kerouac recalled that Weaver gave him a list of books on
Zen Buddhism
Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
,
Plotinus
Plotinus (; grc-gre, Πλωτῖνος, ''Plōtînos''; – 270 CE) was a philosopher in the Hellenistic philosophy, Hellenistic tradition, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neop ...
, Melville's novel
Pierre
Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...
, and the American
Transcendentalists
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in New England. "Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Wald ...
.
Evaluations of Weaver's role in the Melville Revival
The scholars who came after him credit Weaver with writing the first biography of Melville and launching the Melville Revival, but also point out weaknesses in interpretation and misstatements which came from lack of information. The scholar
F. O. Matthiessen
Francis Otto Matthiessen (February 19, 1902 – April 1, 1950) was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies. His best known work, ''American Renaissance: Art and Expression in ...
wrote in 1941 that Weaver devoted only two chapters, an eighth of his biography, to all of Melville's career after ''Moby-Dick'', and that "this foreshortening was disproportionate..." Calling these two chapters "The Great Refusal" and "The Long Quietus" created an impression of Melville's "collapse into misanthrophy if not actual insanity...."
Later Melvillians further hold Weaver among those responsible for the lingering notion that Melville suffered from an inability to write after ''Moby-Dick''. The "narrative of Melville the Failed Poet," says
Elizabeth Renker
Elizabeth or Elisabeth may refer to:
People
* Elizabeth (given name), a female given name (including people with that name)
* Elizabeth (biblical figure), mother of John the Baptist
Ships
* HMS ''Elizabeth'', several ships
* ''Elisabeth'' (sch ...
, is entirely misleading. Weaver used the phrase the "Long Quietus" to envision Melville's three decades of "prolific poetic production as an extended period of failing artistic power that amounted to nothing but silence." In fact, Renker argues, while Melville wrote fiction for only a little more than a decade, he wrote and published poems for more than 30 years.
Major publications
* Reprinted in ''One Hundred Years of The Nation: A Centennial Anthology''. Ed. Henry M. Christman and Abraham Feldman (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 113–18.
* . Frequently reprinted
Full online textHathi Trust
HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...
* Volumes in the "Pequod Edition," including
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::
*
*
*
References
*
Hathi Trust full text
*
*
*
*, pp. 205–238.
*
Notes
External links
">Raymond M. Weaver papers, [ca. 1920/nowiki>-1940">a. 1920
">Raymond M. Weaver papers, [ca. 1920
/nowiki>-1940Columbia University Library.
Weaver, Raymond M. (Raymond Melbourne) 1888-1948
WorldCat Authority Page.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weaver, Raymond
1948 deaths
1888 births
People from Baltimore
American expatriates in Japan
American literary historians
American male non-fiction writers
American LGBT writers
LGBT people from Maryland
Teachers College, Columbia University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Herman Melville
Historians from Maryland