PILGRIM (continued 3)

Vere has no belief whatever in Budd’s guilt; but this act swiftly alters the case. The perjurer has been struck dead by an angel of God; but in this world, the angels must hang. A swift deck court-martial is held in the captain’s cabin, and Vere is caught by the dual nature of his position. He is commander of the ship, a captain, a disciplinarian, responsible for the safety of all aboard, committed by the terms of his commission to the Articles of War and all that they imply. As a man, with fatherly feelings toward this innocent boy, he would be merciful: as commander, he acts against his innermost wishes and urges his subordinates not to be swayed by motives of compassion. His fellow officers reluctantly respect their superior’s probity: they sentence Billy Budd to be hanged for murder. Privately, as man to man, as father to son, Vere announces the sentence to Budd. Justice done, pity, magnanimity, stir Vere to the bottom: the feelings of the judge and the judged are transferred; for the burden now lies on Captain Vere rather than on the victim; and Vere, in turn, is the instrument of an institution. When the hemp is placed around Billy Budd’s neck, Billy turns to the quarter-deck and cries out: God bless Captain Vere. He dies happily, in the first vapoury glory of the dawn—dies, and becomes a legend among the sailors, and the spar from which he was hanged is followed through its vicissitudes, and ballads are sung and tales are told about him.

Billy Budd is the story of three men in the British Navy: it is also the story of the world, the spirit, and the devil. Melville left a note, crossed out in the original manuscript, “Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this incongruous world of ours—innocence and infirmity, spiritual depravity and fair respite.” The meaning is so obvious that one shrinks from underlining it. Good and evil exist in the nature of things, each forever itself, each doomed to war with the other. In the working out of human institutions, evil has a place as well as the good: Vere is contemptuous of Claggart, but cannot do without him: he loves Budd as a son and must condemn him to the noose: justice dictates an act abhorrent to his nature, and only his inner magnanimity keeps it from being revolting. These are the fundamental ambiguities of life: so long as evil exists, the agents that intercept it will also be evil, whilst we accept the world’s conditions: the universal articles of war on which our civilizations rest. Rascality may be punished; but beauty and innocence will suffer in that process far more. There is no comfort, in the perpetual Calvary of the spirit, to find a thief nailed on either side. Melville had been harried by these paradoxes in Pierre. At last he was reconciled. He accepted the situation as a tragic necessity; and to meet that tragedy bravely was to find peace, the ultimate peace of resignation, even in an incongruous world. As Melville’s own end approached, he cried out with Billy Budd: God bless Captain Vere! In this final affirmation Herman Melville died. September 28, 1891, was the date of the outward event.

EPILOGUE