Melville's debt to Milton: Inverted satanic morphology and rhetoric in the confidence-man

Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 2003 by Urbanczyk, Aaron

not with endented wave,

Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear,

Circular base of rising folds, that towr'd

Fold above fold, surging Maze! His head

Crested aloft, and carbuncle his Eyes;

With burnish'd Neck of verdant Gold . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . .sidelong he works his way. . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . and of his tortuous Train

Curl'd many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve. . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oft he bow'd

His turret Crest, and sleek enamell'd Neck.

The serpentine image of the Satanic rhetor is reinforced by the Cosmopolitan's previous conversation with Charlie Noble. Noble, who converses at length with the Cosmopolitan, turns out to be something of an operator himself. Most of the conversation between these two men consists in the one trying to dupe or outwit the other. When the Cosmopolitan demands of Charlie a loan for fifty dollars, Charlie himself takes on a serpentine character and violently denies his interlocutor's request. In the process of denouncing his erstwhile friend, Charlie becomes somehow transformed: "While speaking or rather hissing those words, the boon companion underwent much such a change as one reads in fairy-books. Out of old materials sprang a new creature. Cadmus glided into the snake" (180). The serpentine and Satanic "Confidence-Man" had met one of his own kind, a fellow rhetor and deceiver. The exaggerated and deceptive double-talk constituting the majority of their conversation, in terms of rhetoric, bears some resemblance to the speeches enunciated at the "close recess and secret conclave" of the council of war in Pandemonium (Book II, Paradise Lost]. Charlie Goodman and Frank Noble try to outwit and overpower each other in conversation and argument in a fashion mirroring the manipulative and contentious speeches of Moloch, Belial, Mammon, Beelzebub, and Satan as they sat together in council.

Jay Leyda once noted that "Melville's symbols slip away and elude one's keys" (Introduction xxvii), and nowhere is this principle more applicable than in the obscure novel The Confidence-Man. The principle of the infernal character of rhetoric may offer the key for unlocking one of the secrets of this cryptic tale. Locating the origin of rhetoric in the subversive ministry of Satan is consistent with Melville's own profoundly pessimistic view of humanity and the world. Melville was never consistently impressed by the inherent goodness of humanity, and his attraction to Milton's creation of Satan may have been an indication that Melville thought Milton was satirizing Christian theology and anthropology by focusing on its quintessential opponent, a gesture close to Melville's own heart (Grey 223). Melville was inclined to see the world in terms of life onboard the Fidele, or the tragic bustle of Vanity Fair from Hawthorne's "Celestial Railroad," where tragedy and evil are not only present, but contend with good and sometimes win the day. Both the Fidele and Vanity Fair can easily be read as allegories for post-lapsarian society and culture. Melville obviously pondered deeply the problem of evil in the world, and The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade may be his most self-conscious commentary upon the tragic imperfections obtaining to humanity.