The International MelvilleConference, Rome

PETER RILEYCambridge University

The bag containing the notes I made during this conference—along withalmost all of my earthly possessions—was stolen at Termini Stationthe day I was supposed to leave Rome. Appropriately enough, I was

the victim of a confidence trick; my crime report has me “waiting outside thebookshop for a train, turning to help a man who had tripped over in front ofme, turning back to find my bag gone, and then turning back again to see thatthe man I had helped had also disappeared.” Under a section that read “Haveyou suspicions on anybody?,” I answered earnestly, “Yes: the man I helpedhad dyed black hair—long at back (a ‘Mullet’)—impressively moustached—in his fifties—soccer shirt (purple) tucked into shorts—belt with Brazilianflags on it.” As I was writing this out, three things occurred to me: first thatI was adopting the terse, paratactic style Melville uses in his travel journal(which pleased me); second, that the description I had provided was absolutely

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ridiculous; and third, that under “Property Lost,” I would have to list TheConfidence-Man by Herman Melville (I had brought my copy along with me)and other items including my driving license and, crucially, my passport.Indeed, without an identity, I spent the next day trying to convince the Britishconsulate in Rome that I was actually who I said I was. (Only two dayspreviously I had heard Leslie Marmon Silko speak about the importance of“confidence” in her writings.)

This set of coincidences flowered into all-out farce when I used my extraday in Rome—I was anxiously waiting for an emergency ID card to be issued—to visit the Colosseum. Not looking where I was going, I accidentally walked infront of someone taking a picture of one of the mock centurions that guard theentrance. The fake centurion gesticulated at me violently to get out of the way.Disillusioned now, I retaliated by gesticulating back, at which point he raisedhis wooden sword and swore brutally. I was on the verge of challenging himto mortal combat but stopped myself and walked on. Dennis Berthold, duringhis entertaining plenary lecture, explored Melville’s heightened sensitivity totransnational and—perhaps by extension—trans-epochal exchanges. I did notneed to have a fight with a centurion; Northern Europeans, after all, have hada terrible record against the Romans in battle.

So with my conference notes now circulating among the criminal under-world of Rome, I will write this account from memory, which is no great choreas the conference itself was both memorable and enjoyable. It was a pleasureto see all the friendly faces again, many of whom I had met for the first andonly time two years ago in Jerusalem. The Centro Studi Americani, housedin the baroque Palazzo Mattei di Giove Antici, was the magnificent venue forthe first day of the conference. This grandeur pleasantly contrasted with themore modest university buildings of Sapienza that hosted the subsequent days.The papers were of a consistently high standard, with the newer scholars inparticular producing imaginative and exciting work. Unlike Jerusalem, therewere simultaneous panels at the Rome conference, and so difficult decisionshad to be made: for me, highlights included Ellie Stedall’s discussion of themultivalent connotations of “impressment” that sinew White-Jacket, MichaelJonik’s beautifully considered twenty minutes on the potency and potential oflove in Melville’s writing, and Laura Lopez Pena’s nuanced reading of Clarel’sambivalent meditations on the fate of democracy.

A particularly stimulating session explored Melville’s complicated re-lationship to Asian, and particularly East-Asian, cultures. Jincai Yang poseddifficult questions for the formulations of race in Moby-Dick, and Souad BaghliBerbar delicately explored the relationship between Islam and American Ro-manticism. What made many of these sessions so special was that the scholars

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cited by the speakers invariably turned up to hear their papers, offering anarray of suggestions, advice, and encouragement. In this case, the inimitableTim Marr generously guided the lively proceedings. Of particular interest tomy work was Gordon Poole’s keynote lecture on “Melville the Poet,” in whichhe explored Melville’s “chafing against the metric bound” and the difficultiesof translating a poetry so replete with metrical eccentricities. The task ofrendering Melville into Italian was charmingly compared to a game of billiards:between the conception of the shot and the subsequent deviations in executionfalls the shadow.

The Pulitzer Prize winning biographer John Matteson forgave his au-dience in advance if they felt compelled to contemplate the early sixteenth-century frescos that adorned the ceiling above their heads, rather than listen tohis paper. His observation neatly sums up the problem with hosting anythingin Rome; of course John’s impressive paper on Margaret Fuller’s relationshipwith Giuseppe Mazzini and the Risorgimento held sway, but the temptation toweigh anchor and start exploring the city was great. A group of us eventuallysuccumbed and decided to spend the late afternoon at galleries of the VillaBorghese, a collection of paintings and sculptures that Melville visited threetimes during his stay in Rome. Of one particular bronze, Melville remarks howsurprising it is that “such a metal could be melted into such flexible-lookingforms” (NN Journals 107). I had never really grasped the allure and dynamismof the plastic arts until my visit to this magnificent gallery. Bernini’s life-sizemarble sculpture of the moment Apollo seizes Daphne and she turns into alaurel tree was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Many thanks are due to the organizers of the conference, Giorgio Mar-iani, Gordon Poole, and John Bryant, and to the students and staff who wereso courteous and helpful. You can tell when a huge amount of work hasbeen put into something; the result seems effortless. Despite the mauling Itook towards the end of my trip, the Melville Conference was once again awonderful experience.

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