Melville among the Philosophers by Corey McCall

Author:Corey McCall [McCall, Corey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
ISBN: 9781498536752
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Tattooing, Taboo, and the Face

I have said that what is striking about Melville’s discussion is his repeated admission of his inability to make any sense at all of Typee religion. Religion for the Typee appears to him to have no positive content whatsoever. “I am inclined to believe,” he reflects, “that the islanders in the Pacific have no fixed and definite ideas whatever on the subject of religion. . . . In truth, the Typees, so far as their actions evince, submitted to no laws human or divine—always excepting the thrice mysterious taboo.”[67] The natives, he continues, display “no reverence” for their idols. Throughout the book, Tommo encounters that which is taboo—without however it ever making very much sense. In one case, he does manage to get Fayaway a dispensation from the taboo of accompanying him in a canoe on the water of the lake.[68] But even then, as with other occurrences, the reasons are unfathomable. (Starting to eat freshly caught fish is taboo; killing the wild and annoying dogs is taboo and so forth—with never a reason offered, nor discovered.[69])

Tommo himself is pronounced “taboo,” and he takes this as a sign of being protected. The “taboo” practice is widespread and whenever possible enforced, but not at cost of one’s own life. When, prior to Tom’s flight from the ship, his captain had on a hunting expedition infringed the taboo of killing some cocks, the narrator indicates that had it not been for the presence of a large party of French, the natives would have doubtlessly “inflicted summary vengeance.”[70] Yet taboo remains mysterious. The only consistent theme to that which is taboo is that it is forbidden. There turn out to be more prohibitions than expected (he refers to having fifty times in one day infringed a prohibition of taboos).[71] In the absence of contract, taboo thus functions as a kind of negative social rule—no one of the Typee are told what to do, only what they cannot do. Melville seems to be here suggesting that ethical and religious systems do and probably can sensibly in general only function by forbidding—even though the reasons for such will be simply unknowable. In any case, it appears that all we can know of religion is that which it forbids.

He is convinced that there is a relation between the religion and tattooing—and in part for this reason systematically refuses the repeated attempts to tattoo him—which if successful would have made him one of the Typee.[72] Like the religion, the reasons for tattooing are “inexplicable.”[73] The link he assumes between religion and tattooing proves, however, to be without significance. Melville thinks that all religion is inexplicable. He is not in the end particularly afraid of converting to the Typee religion. Religion is inexplicable because it is an attempt to put one into a relation with that for which one can have no words, a realm that transcends human speech. There is a Calvinism in Melville; his deus is always absconditus.[74]

What Tommo is desperately afraid of, however, is tattooing.

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