...going to take him by his jaw, however, before long, and finish him up in some fashion or other. What's the use of elaborating what, in its very essence, is so short-lived as a modem book? Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter. — I talk all...

...breaks mockingly through this long letter was due to the circumstances of his life and calling. " What's the use of elaborating what, in its very essence,...Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter." What he would have been in affluence and security, with power to order his life as he liked, it is...

...breaks mockingly through this long letter was due to the circumstances of his life and calling. "What's the use of elaborating what, in its very essence,...Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter." What he would have been in affluence and security, with power to order his life \ as he liked, it is...

...world anew, and show them deeper secrets than the Apocalypse!" (319) (Compare Melville to Hawthorne: "Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.") That web of highly charged aspirations that entered Melvillean authorship with Mardi, then reached...

...show them deeper secrets than the Apocalypse!' But as Melville wrote in a letter to Hawthorne in 1851: 'Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.' Pierre's health is undermined, his eyesight starts to fail, and as he writes on and on Melville asks:...

...going to take him by his jaw, however, before long, and finish him up in some fashion or other. What's the use of elaborating what, in its very essence,...Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter. Melville's language here, the "final hash," the "botches," resembles that he employed a few months...

...Melville, 202. grater. . . . What I feel most moved to write, that is banned, — it will not pay. . . . Though I wrote the Gospels in this century. I should die in the gutter."21 Four decades later he died in a gutter— in a private, final flicker of a low flame. In...

...Melville, like Pierre, was aspiring to "gospelize the world anew" when he wrote to Hawthorne in 1851: "Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter." There is evidence to suggest that Melville saw his task in such high ethical terms. For example, he...

...he did the job, there seemed no point to his driving himself as hard as he knew he would do: "What's the use of elaborating what, in its very essence,...Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter." Melville's jumping ship to live briefly among Polynesian natives was not one of the great adventures...

...Melville doubted that his effort would be appreciated, but his mistrust masks his intention: "What's the use of elaborating what, in its very essence, is so short-lived as a modern book? Tho I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter." See Leyda 1:411. In a recent...