Ephemeris and Celestial Navigation. Melville’s Mardi as Astronomical Metaphor

Abstract

Melville as a sailor expressed his fascination for astronomy, ephemerides and their creative potential, which is evidenced in the metaphorical setting that structures the whole argument of Mardi ’s confusing world. Indeed, the hero sails on the orbit of stars. Melville had read many “travels to the moon,” and his novel might be directly inspired by Cyrano de Bergerac, Kepler or Godwin. Moreover, at the time he was writing his Polynesian novels, Melville could not ignore astronomical topics such as the passage of Halley’s comet. Its name is the nearly perfect palindrome of Yillah, which imparts a major metaphorical and celestial dimension to the topography of Mardi and its rings of islands. Instead of being a travelogue-satire, the entire novel operates as an astronomical metaphor.

Keywords

• Mardi
• astronomy
• Halley’s comet
• metaphor
• orbit
• trip to the moon