What we’re about
"Wisdom and Woe" is a philosophy and literature discussion group dedicated to exploring the world, work, life, and times of Herman Melville and the 19th century Romantic movement. We will read and discuss topics related to:
- Works of Herman Melville: Moby-Dick, Clarel, Bartleby the Scrivener, Billy Budd, the Confidence Man, Mardi, reviews, correspondence, etc.
- Themes and affinities: whales, cannibals, shipwrecks, theodicy, narcissism, exile, freedom, slavery, redemption, democracy, law, orientalism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, psychology, mythology, etc.
- Influences and sources: the Bible, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Milton, Cervantes, Dante, Emerson, Kant, Plato, Romanticism, Stoicism, etc.
- Legacy and impact: adaptations, derivations, artworks, analysis, criticism, etc.
- And more
The group is free and open to anybody with an interest in learning and growing by "diving deeper" (as Hawthorne once said of his conversations with Melville) into "time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters."
"There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces."
(Moby-Dick, chapter 96)
"Though wisdom be wedded to woe, though the way thereto is by tears, yet all ends in a shout." (Mardi, chapter 2.79)
"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." (Ecclesiastes 7:4)
![[Series] Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants cover photo](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/8/d/e/c/event_514896332.webp "[Series] Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants")
NOTE: This page is intended as a thematic overview of the meetups in the series, but is not itself a meetup. To RSVP, please see the individual events as they are announced on the Wisdom and Woe calendar.
Clothing is protective of health and hygiene, but it is also ornamental, communicative of wealth, status, political ideals, emotional states, group membership, and personal identity. It can be expressive or repressive of one's inner life (via disguise, compulsory uniforms, sumptuary laws, etc.). It functions symbolically not only to distinguish one's relationship with society, but as synecdoche for society itself.
In the 19th century, dandyism promoted extravagant costume and opulent lifestyles closely associated with aristocracy. Dandies provided a surprisingly consistent foil for Melville's satire, while scantily-clad Polynesians dramatized his philosophy of austere egalitarianism, ala Thoreau, Tolstoy, and others.
According to Baudelaire, the dandy's slogan is "To live and die before a mirror." But according to Melville, what Narcissus fatally sees there is "the ungraspable phantom of life" (Moby-Dick, 1).
The sacred and profane aspects of ceremonial clothing were treated by Melville in "The Whiteness of the Whale" and "The Cassock" chapters of Moby-Dick, respectively. For Edward Carpenter, clothing's spiritual significance was in its ability to stifle both body and soul: "one might almost as well be in one's coffin as in the stiff layers of buckram-like clothing commonly worn nowadays.... Eleven layers between him and God! .... Who could be inspired under all this weight of tailordom?"
Political revolutions and counter-revolutions can manifest sartorially, as in White-Jacket's fictionalized "Rebellion of the Beards." The psychologist J.C. Flügel protested the so-called "Great Male Renunciation" that stigmatized colorful menswear, while (ironically) also prophesying a more enlightened "nude future." His views were lobbied by the "Men's Dress Reform Party" and the "Sunlight League"--the latter of which euphemistically promoted nudity as "helio-therapy." While reminiscent of later Women's Liberation protests, there were no rumors of a Bonfire of the Unmentionables.
This series will explore society and individuality, formal and feral.
Series schedule:
- A Discourse Upon the Origin of Inequality - Rousseau - 5/19
- The Theory of the Leisure Class - Veblen - 5/26
- Of Dandyism and of George Brummell - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly - 6/2
- Typee: A Peep At Polynesian Life - 6/9, 6/16, 6/23
- Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas - 6/30, 7/7, 7/14
- Totem and Taboo - Freud - 7/21
- Letters to His Son - Lord Chesterfield - 7/28
- Don Juan - Lord Byron - 8/4
- D'Orsay; or, The Complete Dandy - W. Teignmouth Shore - 8/11
- Henrietta Temple - Benjamin Disraeli - 8/18
- Pierre; or, The Ambiguities - 8/25, 9/1, 9/8, 9/15
- Movie night: "Pola X" - 9/22
- The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge - Carlos Castaneda - 9/29
- A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift - 10/6
- Sartor Resartus - Thomas Carlyle - 10/13, 10/20
- The Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope - 10/24 [Thu]
- Dandy Doodles - 10/27
- The Sea Lady - H.G. Wells - 11/3
- The Book of Job - 11/10
- Cinderella [Thu] - 11/14
- The Women of Trachis - Sophocles - 11/17
- John Rutherford, The White Chief - George Lillie Craik - 11/24
- A Fringe of Leaves - Patrick White - 12/1, 12/8, 12/15
- White Shadows in the South Seas - Frederick O'Brien - 12/22, 12/29
- White Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War - 1/5, 1/12, 1/19, 1/26
- The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - 2/2, 2/9, 2/23
- The Monastery - Walter Scott - 3/2, 3/16
- Movie night: "White Shadows in the South Seas" & "Fig Leaves" - 3/9
- The Overcoat - Gogol; Master and Man - Tolstoy - 3/23
- The Rebel - Camus - 3/30, 4/6
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey - 4/13, 4/20
- The Trembling of a Leaf - W. Somerset Maugham - 4/27, 5/4
- Murat - Alexandre Dumas [Thu] - 5/8
- Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) - 5/11
- On Revolution - Hannah Arendt - 5/18, 5/25
- Movie night: "Beau Travail" - 6/1
- Red Jacket - John N. Hubbard - 6/8
- The Scarlett Letter - Hawthorne - 6/15, 6/22
- Melville: Fashioning in Modernity - Stephen Matterson - 6/29, 7/6
- Pacifism and Rebellion in the Writings of Herman Melville - John Bernstein - 7/13
Trivia:
- Nathaniel Hawthorne once noted that Melville was "a little heterodox in the matter of clean linen."
Extracts:
- "But do these buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King." (Billy Budd, Sailor, 21)
- "... if yonder Emperor and I were to strip and jump overboard for a bath, it would be hard telling which was of the blood royal when we should once be in the water." (White-Jacket, 56)
- "... one's dress was legislated upon, to the last warp and woof. All girdles must be so many inches in length, and with such a number of tassels in front. For a violation of this ordinance, before the face of all Mardi, the most dutiful of sons would cut the most affectionate of fathers." (Mardi, 2.23)
- "People may say what they will about the taste evinced by our fashionable ladies in dress. Their jewels, their feathers, their silks, and their furbelows, would have sunk into utter insignificance beside the exquisite simplicity of attire adopted by the nymphs of the vale on this festive occasion. I should like to have seen a gallery of coronation beauties, at Westminster Abbey, confronted for a moment by this band of island girls; their stiffness, formality, and affectation, contrasted with the artless vivacity and unconcealed natural graces of these savage maidens. It would be the Venus de' Medici placed beside a milliner's doll." (Typee, 22)
- "Give me my grandfather's old ... cane, with the gold-loaded top—a cane that, like the musket of General Washington's father and the broadsword of William Wallace, would break down the back of the switch-carrying dandies of these spindle-shank days; give me his broad-breasted vest, coming bravely down over the hips, and furnished with two strong-boxes of pockets to keep guineas in; toss this toppling cylinder of a beaver overboard, and give me my grandfather's gallant, gable-ended, cocked hat." (White-Jacket, 76)
- "“All is vanity.” All." (Moby-Dick, 96)
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- The Rebel - Camus (week 2)Link visible for attendees
Albert Camus (1913-1960) was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century: a philosopher, political activist, and recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature. The topic of The Rebel (1951) was of profound personal and intellectual importance to him, having risked his own safety serving with the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France--and the book is listed among the "1001 Books to Read Before You Die."
The Rebel continues the exploration that Camus began in The Myth of Sisyphus, asking: is it possible to live meaningfully and ethically in an Absurd universe, i.e., one which maintains an "unreasonable silence" in the face of life's ultimate questions?
Camus seeks the resolution to his question in the nature of rebellion, not conceived as a mere negative opposition, but as a creative impulse that constitutes one of the "essential dimensions" of humanity. He surveys a wide range of figures, ideologies, and movements from Western thought and art--including Melville, De Sade, the French Revolution, dandyism, and surrealism--and their relationship to justice, freedom, progress, and totalitarianism.
A distinction is drawn between metaphysical rebellion--a Promethean struggle "by which man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation"--and historical rebellion--the attempt to recast the world in a political or cultural vision. The latter intrinsically carries with it the temptation of excess, the threat of becoming oppressive and perpetuating a cycle of violence. Ultimately, therefore, Camus concludes that the rebel must learn to temper revolt with a sense of humanity, dignity, and common solidarity.
Schedule:
- Week 1 (March 30): Chapters 1-3 (through "The Deicides")
- Week 2 (April 6): Chapters 3 (starting from "Individual Terrorism") to end
The Rebel:
Supplemental:
- Albert Camus - The Rebel - Part 1
- Albert Camus - The Rebel - Part 2
- Albert Camus - The Rebel - Part 3
- Albert Camus - The Rebel - Part 4
- Albert Camus - The Rebel - Part 5
Extracts:
- "Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature. It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God." (Pierre, 14.1)
This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey (week 1)Link visible for attendees
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, 1962) is included on Time magazine's list of "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005," and was voted among "the U.K.'s 200 best-loved novels" in a 2003 BBC poll. The story was adapted into a critically and commercially successful film starring Jack Nicholson, with what is considered one of the greatest villains in film history.
The novel is set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital run by the tyrannical Nurse Ratched and her staff of "white coats." Enter Randle McMurphy: a rebellious, charismatic convict who openly flouts the rules of the establishment and challenges her authority. His defiance starts as sport, but soon develops into a grim struggle between the forces of conformity and individualism, unfolding the novel's critique of psychiatry and the dehumanizing effects of bureaucracy.
The spotless white of the hospital coats--emblematic of sterile absolutism--bolsters the symbolism of another of the novel's prominent articles of clothing: McMurphy's boxer shorts. Gifted to him by a literature major and featuring a pattern of white whales on a black satin background, they are suggestive of Moby Dick and (like the White Whale himself) open to many interpretations. Do they proclaim the ward's pervasive evil? Are they an icon of McMurphy's untamable nature? A phallic symbol, emphasizing his sexuality? A representation of God and Christ-like martyrdom? Or perhaps just a satire on academia's overindulgence in symbolism?
Schedule:
- Week 1 (April 13): Part 1
- Week 2 (April 20): Parts 2-4
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: ~288pp
Supplemental:
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) movie trailer
- Ken Kesey and Moby-Dick
This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey (week 2)Link visible for attendees
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, 1962) is included on Time magazine's list of "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005," and was voted among "the U.K.'s 200 best-loved novels" in a 2003 BBC poll. The story was adapted into a critically and commercially successful film starring Jack Nicholson, with what is considered one of the greatest villains in film history.
The novel is set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital run by the tyrannical Nurse Ratched and her staff of "white coats." Enter Randle McMurphy: a rebellious, charismatic convict who openly flouts the rules of the establishment and challenges her authority. His defiance starts as sport, but soon develops into a grim struggle between the forces of conformity and individualism, unfolding the novel's critique of psychiatry and the dehumanizing effects of bureaucracy.
The spotless white of the hospital coats--emblematic of sterile absolutism--bolsters the symbolism of another of the novel's prominent articles of clothing: McMurphy's boxer shorts. Gifted to him by a literature major and featuring a pattern of white whales on a black satin background, they are suggestive of Moby Dick and (like the White Whale himself) open to many interpretations. Do they proclaim the ward's pervasive evil? Are they an icon of McMurphy's untamable nature? A phallic symbol, emphasizing his sexuality? A representation of God and Christ-like martyrdom? Or perhaps just a satire on academia's overindulgence in symbolism?
Schedule:
- Week 1 (April 13): Part 1
- Week 2 (April 20): Parts 2-4
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: ~288pp
Supplemental:
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) movie trailer
- Ken Kesey and Moby-Dick
This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- The Trembling of a Leaf - W. Somerset Maugham (week 1)Link visible for attendees
"Extreme happiness, only separated from extreme despair by the trembling of a leaf, isn't this life?" --Sainte-Beuve
W. Somerset Maugham first claimed fame as a novelist and dramatist. With The Trembling of a Leaf (1921), he also established his reputation as a preeminent short story and travel writer. His inspiration came from first-hand observations of the Pacific: "I had always had a romantic notion of the South Seas," he said. "I had read of those magic islands in the books of Herman Melville, Pierre Loti, and Robert Louis Stevenson, but what I saw was very different from what I had read."
His poignant collection of tales, pervaded by a sense of disillusionment and dark irony, explores the culture clash of colonialists, natives, and half-castes, set against the backdrop of tropical beauty. The tales offer a glimpse into the complexities of love and loss, the fragility of human emotions, and (for better or worse) the transformative power of the South Seas.
"There may be only the trembling of a leaf between extreme joy and extreme despair," said The Saturday Review, "but there is the whole crashing of a tree" between this and lesser works: "each separate tale is begun by inspiration and completed by artistic perfection." "Rain" is the most famous story among them--"a sheer masterpiece of sardonic horror"--having been adapted several times for both theater and film.
Schedule:
- Week 1 (April 27): Stories 1 through 4
- Week 2 (May 4): Stories 5 through 8
The Trembling of a Leaf:
Supplemental:
- Rain 1932 movie trailer
- Somerset Maugham's review of Moby-Dick, from Ten Greatest Novels of All Time
Extracts:
- "But is life, indeed, a thing for all infidel levities... that what we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event—the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper...?" (Pierre, 4.2)
This meetup is part of the series Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
