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== Inspiration ==
== Inspiration ==
Herman Melville may have written the story as an emotional response to the bad reviews garnered by ''[[Pierre: or, The Ambiguities|Pierre]]'', his preceding novel.<ref>Daniel A. Wells, [http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/wells.html ""Bartleby the Scrivener," Poe, and the Duyckinck Circle"]{{dead link|date=May 2014}}, ''ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance'', 21 (First Quarter 1975): 35–39.</ref> Christopher Sten writes, in "Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville's Dead Letter to Emerson." that Melville found inspiration in [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]'s essays, particularly "[[The Transcendentalist]]" which shows parallels to "Bartleby".<ref>Christopher W. Sten, "Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville's Dead Letter to Emerson." ''Modern Language Quarterly'' 35 (March 1974): 30–44.</ref>
Herman Melville may have written the story as an emotional response to the bad reviews garnered by ''[[Pierre: or, The Ambiguities|Pierre]]'', his preceding novel.<ref>Daniel A. Wells, [http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/wells.html ""Bartleby the Scrivener," Poe, and the Duyckinck Circle"], ''ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance'', 21 (First Quarter 1975): 35–39. {{wayback|url=http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/wells.html |date=20070302215846 }}</ref> Christopher Sten writes, in "Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville's Dead Letter to Emerson." that Melville found inspiration in [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]'s essays, particularly "[[The Transcendentalist]]" which shows parallels to "Bartleby".<ref>Christopher W. Sten, "Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville's Dead Letter to Emerson." ''Modern Language Quarterly'' 35 (March 1974): 30–44.</ref>


Bartleby is a [[scrivener]]—a kind of clerk or a copyist—"who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him." During the spring of 1851, Melville felt similarly about his work on ''Moby Dick''. Thus, Bartleby may represent Melville’s frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story itself is “about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions.”<ref name="marx">Leo Marx, [http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/MARX.HTML "Melville's Parable of the Walls"]{{dead link|date=May 2014}} ''Sewanee Review 61'' (1953): 602–627.</ref> Bartleby may also be seen to represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.<ref>{{cite web |title=Compassion: Toward Neighbors |publisher=What We So Proudly Hail |date= |url=http://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/curriculum/the-meaning-of-america/compassion-toward-neighbors#1.introduction |accessdate=21 May 2014 }}</ref>
Bartleby is a [[scrivener]]—a kind of clerk or a copyist—"who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him." During the spring of 1851, Melville felt similarly about his work on ''Moby Dick''. Thus, Bartleby may represent Melville’s frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story itself is “about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions.”<ref name="marx">Leo Marx, [http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/MARX.HTML "Melville's Parable of the Walls"] ''Sewanee Review 61'' (1953): 602–627. {{wayback|url=http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/MARX.HTML |date=20070819113442 }}</ref> Bartleby may also be seen to represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.<ref>{{cite web |title=Compassion: Toward Neighbors |publisher=What We So Proudly Hail |date= |url=http://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/curriculum/the-meaning-of-america/compassion-toward-neighbors#1.introduction |accessdate=21 May 2014 }}</ref>


Melville made an allusion to the [[John C. Colt]] case in this short story. The narrator restrains his anger toward Bartleby, his unrelentingly difficult employee, by reflecting upon "the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more unfortunate Colt and how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams ... was unawares hurled into his fatal act."<ref>{{cite book| last=Melville |first=Herman |authorlink=Herman Melville |title=Bartleby the Scrivener| year=1853}}</ref><ref name=Schechter>{{cite book|last=Schechter|first=Harold|title=Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making of an American Legend|year=2010|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-0-345-47681-4}}</ref>
Melville made an allusion to the [[John C. Colt]] case in this short story. The narrator restrains his anger toward Bartleby, his unrelentingly difficult employee, by reflecting upon "the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more unfortunate Colt and how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams ... was unawares hurled into his fatal act."<ref>{{cite book| last=Melville |first=Herman |authorlink=Herman Melville |title=Bartleby the Scrivener| year=1853}}</ref><ref name=Schechter>{{cite book|last=Schechter|first=Harold|title=Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making of an American Legend|year=2010|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-0-345-47681-4}}</ref>
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===As a reflection of the narrator===
===As a reflection of the narrator===


Bartleby’s character can be interpreted as a “psychological double” for the narrator that criticizes the “sterility, impersonality, and mechanical adjustments of the world which the lawyer inhabits.”<ref name="Marcus">Mordecai Marcus, [http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/marcus.html "Melville's Bartleby As a Psychological Double"]{{dead link|date=May 2014}}, ''College English'' 23 (1962): 365–368.</ref> Until the very end of the short story, the work gives the reader no history of Bartleby. This lack of history suggests that Bartleby may have just sprung from the narrator’s mind. Also consider the narrator’s behavior around Bartleby: screening him off in a corner where he can have his privacy “symbolizes the lawyer’s compartmentalization of the unconscious forces which Bartleby represents.”<ref name="Marcus"/>
Bartleby’s character can be interpreted as a “psychological double” for the narrator that criticizes the “sterility, impersonality, and mechanical adjustments of the world which the lawyer inhabits.”<ref name="Marcus">Mordecai Marcus, [http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/marcus.html "Melville's Bartleby As a Psychological Double"], ''College English'' 23 (1962): 365–368. {{wayback|url=http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/marcus.html |date=20110107111254 }}</ref> Until the very end of the short story, the work gives the reader no history of Bartleby. This lack of history suggests that Bartleby may have just sprung from the narrator’s mind. Also consider the narrator’s behavior around Bartleby: screening him off in a corner where he can have his privacy “symbolizes the lawyer’s compartmentalization of the unconscious forces which Bartleby represents.”<ref name="Marcus"/>


The psychoanalyst [[Christopher Bollas]] insists the story is more about the narrator than the narrated. "The narrator’s willingness to tolerate [Bartleby's] work stoppage is what needs to be explained ... As the story proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that the lawyer identifies with his clerk. To be sure, it is an ambivalent identification, but that only makes it all the more powerful."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/reconsiderations/pushing-paper.php?page=all |title=Pushing Paper – Lapham’s Quarterly |publisher=Laphamsquarterly.org |date= |accessdate=2012-09-04}}</ref>
The psychoanalyst [[Christopher Bollas]] insists the story is more about the narrator than the narrated. "The narrator’s willingness to tolerate [Bartleby's] work stoppage is what needs to be explained ... As the story proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that the lawyer identifies with his clerk. To be sure, it is an ambivalent identification, but that only makes it all the more powerful."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/reconsiderations/pushing-paper.php?page=all |title=Pushing Paper – Lapham’s Quarterly |publisher=Laphamsquarterly.org |date= |accessdate=2012-09-04}}</ref>

Revision as of 17:27, 19 October 2015

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: a Story of Wall Street"
Short story by Herman Melville
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Short story
Publication
PublisherPutnam's Magazine
Publication dateNovember 1853
Pages45

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" (1853) is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December editions of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. Numerous essays are published on what according to scholar Robert Milder "is unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction" in the Melville canon.[1]

Plot

The narrator, an elderly, unnamed Manhattan lawyer with a comfortable business, relates the story of the strangest man he has known: Bartleby. At the start of his story the lawyer already employs two scriveners to copy legal documents by hand: Nippers and Turkey. An increase in business leads him to advertise for a third, and he hires the forlorn-looking Bartleby in the hope that his calmness will soothe the irascible temperaments of the other two.

At first, Bartleby produces a large volume of high-quality work. But one day, when asked to help proofread a document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his perpetual response to every request—"I would prefer not to." To the dismay of the lawyer and to the irritation of the other employees, Bartleby performs fewer and fewer tasks, and eventually none. The narrator makes several futile attempts to reason with him and to learn something about him; and when he stops by the office unexpectedly, he discovers that Bartleby has started living there.

Tension builds as business associates wonder why Bartleby is always there. Sensing the threat to his reputation but emotionally unable to evict Bartleby, the narrator moves his business out. Soon the new tenants come to ask for help: Bartleby still will not leave—he now sits on the stairs all day and sleeps in the building's doorway. The narrator visits him and attempts to reason with him, and surprises even himself by inviting Bartleby to come live with him. But Bartleby "would prefer not to." Later the narrator returns to find that Bartleby has been forcibly removed and imprisoned in the Tombs. The narrator visits him. Finding Bartleby glummer than usual, he bribes a turnkey to make sure Bartleby gets enough food. But when he returns a few days later Bartleby has died of starvation, having preferred not to eat.

Some time afterward, the narrator hears a rumor that Bartleby had worked in a dead letter office, and reflects that dead letters would have made anyone of Bartleby's temperament sink into an even darker gloom. The story closes with the narrator's resigned and pained sigh, "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!"

Inspiration

Herman Melville may have written the story as an emotional response to the bad reviews garnered by Pierre, his preceding novel.[2] Christopher Sten writes, in "Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville's Dead Letter to Emerson." that Melville found inspiration in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays, particularly "The Transcendentalist" which shows parallels to "Bartleby".[3]

Bartleby is a scrivener—a kind of clerk or a copyist—"who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him." During the spring of 1851, Melville felt similarly about his work on Moby Dick. Thus, Bartleby may represent Melville’s frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story itself is “about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions.”[4] Bartleby may also be seen to represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.[5]

Melville made an allusion to the John C. Colt case in this short story. The narrator restrains his anger toward Bartleby, his unrelentingly difficult employee, by reflecting upon "the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more unfortunate Colt and how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams ... was unawares hurled into his fatal act."[6][7]

Analysis

Bartleby's character can be read in a variety of ways. Based on the perception of the narrator and the limited details supplied in the story, his character remains elusive even as the story comes to a close.

As an example of clinical depression

Bartleby shows classic symptoms of depression, especially his lack of motivation. He is a passive person, although he is the only reliable worker in the office other than the narrator and Ginger Nut. Bartleby is a good worker until he starts to refuse to do his work. Bartleby does not divulge any personal information to the narrator. Bartleby's death suggests the effects of depression—having no motivation to survive, he refrains from eating until he dies.[8]

As a reflection of the narrator

Bartleby’s character can be interpreted as a “psychological double” for the narrator that criticizes the “sterility, impersonality, and mechanical adjustments of the world which the lawyer inhabits.”[9] Until the very end of the short story, the work gives the reader no history of Bartleby. This lack of history suggests that Bartleby may have just sprung from the narrator’s mind. Also consider the narrator’s behavior around Bartleby: screening him off in a corner where he can have his privacy “symbolizes the lawyer’s compartmentalization of the unconscious forces which Bartleby represents.”[9]

The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas insists the story is more about the narrator than the narrated. "The narrator’s willingness to tolerate [Bartleby's] work stoppage is what needs to be explained ... As the story proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that the lawyer identifies with his clerk. To be sure, it is an ambivalent identification, but that only makes it all the more powerful."[10]

Analysis of the narrator

The narrator, Bartleby’s employer, provides a first-person narration of his experiences working with Bartleby. He portrays himself as a generous man, although there are instances in the text that question his reliability. His kindness may be derived from his curiosity and fascination for Bartleby. Moreover, once Bartleby’s work ethic begins to decline, the narrator still allows his employment to continue, perhaps out of a desire to avoid confrontation. He also portrays himself as tolerant towards the other employees, Turkey and Nippers, who are unproductive at different points in the day; however, this simply re-introduces the narrator’s non-confrontational nature. Throughout the story, the narrator is torn between his feelings of responsibility for Bartleby and his desire to be rid of the threat that Bartleby poses to the office and to his way of life on Wall Street. Ultimately, the story may be more about the narrator than Bartleby, not only because the narrator attempts to understand Bartleby’s behavior, but also because of the rationales he provides for his interactions with and reactions to Bartleby. The narrator's detached attitude, towards life in general, and his compatriots in particular, seems to become increasingly compromised as the story goes on through his emotional and moral entanglement with Bartleby, culminating in the story's pivotal final line "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!"

Philosophy in "Bartleby"

Various philosophical influences can be found in "Bartleby the Scrivener". The story alludes to Jonathan Edwards's “Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will” and Joseph Priestley's Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity. Jay Leyda, scholar and author of the introduction passage in The Complete Stories of Herman Melville, comments on the similarities between Bartleby and Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity by Joseph Priestley. Both Edwards and Priestley wrote about free will and determinism. Edwards states that free will requires the will to be isolated from the moment of decision. Bartleby’s isolation from the world allows him to be completely free. He has the ability to do whatever he pleases. The reference to Priestley and Edwards in connection with determinism may suggest that Bartleby's exceptional exercise of his personal will, even though it leads to his death, spares him from an externally determined fate.[11]

"Bartleby" is also seen as an inquiry into ethics. Critic John Matteson sees the story (and other Melville works) as explorations of the changing meaning of 19th-century "prudence". The story's narrator "struggles to decide whether his ethics will be governed by worldly prudence or Christian agape".[12] He wants to be humane, as shown by his accommodations of the four staff and especially of Bartleby, but this conflicts with the newer, pragmatic and economically based notion of prudence supported by changing legal theory. The 1850 case Brown v. Kendall, three years before the story's publication, was important in establishing the "reasonable man" standard in the United States, and emphasized the positive action required to avoid negligence. Bartleby's passivity has no place in a legal and economic system that increasingly sides with the "reasonable" and economically active individual. His fate, an innocent decline into unemployment, prison and starvation, dramatizes the effect of the new prudence on the economically inactive members of society.

Legacy

Reception

Though no great success at the time of publication, "Bartleby the Scrivener" is now among the most noted of American short stories. It has been considered a precursor of absurdist literature, touching on several of Franz Kafka's themes in such works as "A Hunger Artist" and The Trial. There is nothing to indicate that the Bohemian writer was at all acquainted with the work of Melville, who remained largely forgotten until some time after Kafka's death.

Albert Camus, in a personal letter to Liselotte Dieckmann published in The French Review in 1998, cites Melville as a key influence.[13]

Adaptations

In popular culture

  • There is an angel named Bartleby in Kevin Smith's 1999 film, Dogma. He shares some resemblance to Melville's Bartleby.
  • Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas wrote in 2001 "Bartleby & Co.", a book which deals with "the endemic disease of contemporary letters, the negative pulsion or attraction towards nothingness."
  • The 2006 movie Accepted features Bartleby Gaines played by Justin Long. The characters share similar traits and the movie uses some themes found in the work.
  • Bartleby.com functions as an electronic text archive that publishes the classics of literature, nonfiction, and reference free of charge. Bartleby's welcome statement describes its correlation with the short story, "after the humble character of its namesake scrivener, or copyist."[16]
  • In 2011, French director Jérémie Carboni made a documentary, Bartleby en coulisses, around Daniel Pennac's reading of Bartleby the Scrivener.[17]
  • In Skorpio, the 6th episode of the first season of the television show Archer, Archer quotes Bartleby, and then makes reference to Melville being, "Not an easy read.".

References

  1. ^ Milder, Robert. (1988). "Herman Melville." Emory Elliott (General Editor), Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-05812-8, p. 439
  2. ^ Daniel A. Wells, ""Bartleby the Scrivener," Poe, and the Duyckinck Circle", ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, 21 (First Quarter 1975): 35–39. Template:Wayback
  3. ^ Christopher W. Sten, "Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville's Dead Letter to Emerson." Modern Language Quarterly 35 (March 1974): 30–44.
  4. ^ Leo Marx, "Melville's Parable of the Walls" Sewanee Review 61 (1953): 602–627. Template:Wayback
  5. ^ "Compassion: Toward Neighbors". What We So Proudly Hail. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
  6. ^ Melville, Herman (1853). Bartleby the Scrivener.
  7. ^ Schechter, Harold (2010). Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making of an American Legend. Random House. ISBN 978-0-345-47681-4.
  8. ^ Robert E. Abrams, '"Bartleby" and the Fragile Pageantry of the Ego", ELH, vol. 45, no. 3 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 488–500.
  9. ^ a b Mordecai Marcus, "Melville's Bartleby As a Psychological Double", College English 23 (1962): 365–368. Template:Wayback
  10. ^ "Pushing Paper – Lapham's Quarterly". Laphamsquarterly.org. Retrieved 2012-09-04.
  11. ^ Allan Moore Emery, "The alternatives of Melville's "Bartleby", Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 31, no. 2 (September 1976), pp. 170–187.
  12. ^ "'A New Race Has Sprung Up': Prudence, Social Consensus and the Law in 'Bartleby the Scrivener'". Leviathan. 10 (1): 25–49. 2008 – via Project MUSE. {{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |authors= (help); Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)
  13. ^ Jones, James F. (March 1998). "Camus on Kafka and Melville: an unpublished letter". The French Review. 71 (4). doi:10.2307/398858. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  14. ^ Stanley Hochman (ed.), "Albee, Edward", in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama: An International Reference Work in 5 Volumes, 2nd. ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984, vol. 2, p. 42.
  15. ^ "Britannica Classic: Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2012-09-04.
  16. ^ http://www.bartleby.com/sv/welcome.html
  17. ^ "Le spectacle de Daniel Pennac au coeur d'un documentaire télévisuel vendredi soir – La Voix du Nord". Lavoixdunord.fr. Retrieved 2012-09-04.

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