Radical Freelance, Esq. |
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Riffs William Gibson, USN Augustus Ely Silliman |
The Philosophers of Foufouville
(New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868)
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 | Utopia and Utopians in Melville's Lecture
on "Statues in Rome" In October 1856, Melville sailed from New York for an extended tour of Europe and the Holy Land. He returned home from his Mediterranean trip (which had included a stay of nearly two months in Italy) in May 1857. During the winter of 1857-8, Herman Melville lectured on Roman statuary, not only for audiences in New England and New York, but also Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee. A composite reading text of Melville's "Statues in Rome" lecture, reconstructed from contemporary newspaper reviews, is printed in Melville's Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, ed. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle, et. al. (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1987), at pp. 398-409. Although published in 1868, the bulk of The Philosophers of Foufouville appears to have been written a decade earlier. A later footnote observing the prophetic quality of Leander Lovell's reference to southern secession (see pp. 146-147) shows that the main narrative was written before the outbreak of the Civil War, most likely around 1858 or 1859. Thus, if The Philosophers of Foufouville was the "new book" that Melville was writing in 1858 when George Duyckinck visited Arrowhead, the "Statues in Rome" lecture of that year would offer nearly contemporaneous evidence for ideas and themes then on Melville's mind. The preoccupation with art and aesthetics that motivated Melville's first choice of lecture subjects may be found in chapter 8 of The Philosophers of Foufouville, entitled "The Doctor invests in the Fine Arts" (pp. 172-195). Even more revealing, perhaps, is Melville's concern in "Statues in Rome" with the impracticability of utopian schemes for social reform, since this is the chief object of satire in The Philosophers of Foufouville. Utopians ancient and modern are crucially involved at the close of "Statues in Rome." In Melville's view, the sculptors of classical times were "the dreamers and idealists of old." The proper sphere of dreamers and idealists, with whom Melville clearly sympathizes, is Art, not Politics. "Can Art, not life, make the Ideal?" asked Melville in what amounts to the rhetorical climax of "Statues in Rome." The implied answer is obviously, "Yes." "Here, in statuary, was the Utopia of the ancients expressed," Melville claimed. He was talking about such supremely great examples of classical sculpture as the Apollo Belvidere, the Minerva in the Villa Albani, Cellini's Perseus, and the Farnese Hercules. In case anybody missed his unfavorable comparison with modern attempts to realize Utopia, Melville explicitly invoked the founder of utopian socialism in another rhetorical question: "Or shall the scheme of Fourier supplant the code of Justinian?" Again, Melville's question has an obvious answer―this time, "No," assuming that principles of law and justice inherited from the Romans are, despite their antiquity, more consistent with the realities of human nature and the human condition than the socialist ideals of Fourier. Not satisfied merely to pose rhetorical questions, Melville reformulated his argument in a declarative sentence that effectively summarizes a major argument of "Statues in Rome": |
The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes. ("Statues in Rome," NN Piazza Tales, p. 409)
In The Philosophers of Foufouville Radical Freelance pokes fun at modern dreamers who fail to heed Melville's critique of utopian schemes for social reform as "impracticable chimeras." Chief among these is Doctor Jonathan Goodenough, founder of the Harmony Hall commune. The philosophical basis of Goodenough's scheme is supposed to have been set forth in a manifesto entitled "The New Utopia." The residents of Harmony Hall are thus notorious in the surrounding community as "New Utopians." In Melville's terms as articulated in his lecture on Roman statuary, the big mistake of Goodenough and his disciples was to think that life (instead of Art), once "imbued with the spirit of the New Utopia," could make the Ideal.
A more perfect illustration of what Melville meant by "impracticable chimeras" and "social and political prodigies" can hardly be imagined than Jonathan Goodenough's vision of the New Utopia. Goodenough flatters himself "on the happy realization of my grand scheme of human regeneration" and confidently awaits "the influx of the coming multitudes of rejoicing Utopians" (The Philosophers of Foufouville, p. 118). He absurdly aims through his experiment in communal living at Harmony Hall to prove "to all nations the advisability of at once establishing phalansteries in every part of the globe" (118).
More than a satire of misguided attempts to reform human nature, however, The Philosophers of Foufouville is a romantic comedy. The implicit moral of the main story was well-stated by Melville in Book 2 of Pierre:
Love is this world's great redeemer and reformer...
Links to The Philosophers of
Foufouville
| at Making of America, University of Michigan...
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also available online at Google Books |
