AN ENDLESS SERMON: RELIGIOUS MOTIFS IN MELVILLE’S LETTERS TO HAWTHORNE

Herman Melville’s letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne during their joint residence in the Berkshires in 1850-51 have regularly drawn the close scrutiny of scholars interested in the literary, psychological, and cultural dynamics of this historic friendship, but they have seldom examined the religious language that infuses these missives. For just as Melville’s writings are permeated by the influence of the King James Bible, especially the whaling novel he was composing at this time, his letters to Hawthorne also bear the imprint of this key literary source. If Melville called his informal homilies to Hawthorne part of an “endless sermon,” his major letters of April, May, and November 1851 each bear the moral weight of a series of biblical “texts” from Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Gospel of John, respectively, with the mystical language of John being of special importance for understanding Melville’s creative and emotional identification with Hawthorne.