“IN MERCY’S NAME: WHO IS HE?” – THE SYMBOLIC IDENTITY OF THE MELVILLEAN HERO BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
“IN MERCY’S NAME: WHO IS HE?” – THE SYMBOLIC IDENTITY OF THE MELVILLEAN HERO BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER

Summary/Abstract: The starting point of the present paper is represented by the similarity between the existential adventure Melville projects in Bartleby the Scrivener and the sense of entrapment in and the desire to escape from a flawed condition of heavy corporeality dramatized in the Gnostic and Orphic myths and rituals. The immersion of the Orphic Apollo into the lower nature and the subsequent withdrawal into the intelligible has as ultimate goal the imparting of Gnosis, the salvific knowledge to the prisoners of illusions and imperfect knowledge. The identity of the title-hero of the Melvillean story under discussion is derived from the soteriological significance of his role as a mediator between two dimensions of reality. He represents an actualization of the figure of “the Mysterious Stranger” who acquires a symbolic quality while embarking on a cosmic voyage patterned upon the Classical katabasis and anabasis of the Logos.

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