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Rainbows, Fogs, and Other Smokescreens: Billy Budd and the Question of Ethics

2006; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 62; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/arq.2006.0022

1558-9595

Thomas Claviez,

Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy

Rainbows, Fogs, and Other Smokescreens:Billy Budd and the Question of Ethics Thomas Claviez (bio) while . . . common novels laboriously spin veils of mystery, only to complacently clear them up at last; and . . . common dramas do but repeat the same; yet the profounder emanations of the human mind . . . never unravel their own intricacies, and have no proper endings; but in imperfect, unanticipated, and disappointing sequels (as mutilated stumps), hurry to abrupt intermergings with the eternal tides of time and fate. Herman Melville, Pierre, or The Ambiguities 1. The Smokescreen of Expediency There hardly exists any novel in the literary history of the United States that has stirred a comparably heated debate and that has given rise to such controversial, if not outright opposed interpretations, as has Herman Melville's Billy Budd. If one short glance into the archives of Melville exegesis wouldn't suffice to support this assessment, the highly contradictory conclusions of one of the most famous commentators on Melville's work, Hannah Arendt, might be enough to verify such a claim. In one of her essays that refer to Billy Budd, she argues for a tragic view in regard to the "virtue" of Captain Vere: Virtue—which perhaps is less than goodness but still alone capable "of embodiment in lasting institutions"—must prevail at the expense of the good man as well; absolute, natural innocence, [End Page 31] because it only can act violently, is "at war with the peace of the world and the true welfare of mankind," so that virtue finally interferes not to prevent the crime of evil but to punish the violence of absolute innocence. . . . The tragedy is that the law is made for men, and neither for angels nor for devils. Laws and all "lasting institutions" break down not only under the onslaught of elemental evil but under the impact of absolute innocence as well . . . the virtuous man, Captain Vere, recognizes that only the violence of this goodness is adequate to the depraved power of evil. The absolute—and to Melville an absolute was incorporated in the Rights of Man—spells doom to everyone when it is introduced into the political realm. (Revolution 79) In this view, both Billy and Vere are tragic figures, in that Vere just fulfils his duty, while Billy's violence, though absolutely and archaically "innocent," poses a threat to a world of "lasting institutions." Rather surprisingly, however, in Arendt's essay "Reflection on Violence," Billy turns into the embodiment of the common man. Confronted with "outrageous events or conditions" that demand "swiftness" of action, Arendt here legitimizes Billy's use of violence, in that it at times represents "the only possibility of setting the scales of justice right again." Thus, it cannot and should not be deemed "irrational" (28). If such outright contradictory interpretations seem to support the common assumption that works of art are able to accommodate and negotiate conflicting stances that a theory could not afford to comprise, it is striking that in "Reflections on Violence" Arendt uses the argument of expediency to redeem Billy's attack on Claggart. This argument has usually been used to defend Captain's Vere's "swiftness" in hanging Billy, although such a view has been highly disputed in the meantime. However, some questions surrounding Melville's enigmatic and posthumously published novel still haven't been satisfactorily answered: Whether Melville indeed redeems Captain Vere's behavior and his decision to have Billy executed on the basis of the expediency of the situation; whether he considers the ship's commander as simply mad; or whether he unveils Vere as a self-interested, willing collaborator and servant of a machinery of war which, according to the narrator in the novel, is the "abrogation of everything but brute Force" (Billy Budd [End Page 32] 122). Such brute force, however, is also what Billy resorts to; the final question, then, is whether, if Vere's behavior is to be considered morally questionable, we are to conclude that Billy is consequently rehabilitated, as Arendt suggests in "Reflections on Violence." The novel's genealogy of reception and criticism can indeed serve as a small cultural history of ethics. The critics who share the first point of view—that...