Hymns of the pearl: Gnostic impulses in Emerson and Melville

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville are usually portrayed as opposites in American literary history, Emerson representing the voice of hope, unity, and man's divine inner spirit and Melville representing the voice of despair, division, and alienation. However, both writers share a powerful gnostic sensibility. While their world views are different, and although neither is a card-carrying gnostic, both paint this world as dualistic, dark, and hostile with man an alien, an isolato, in what Emerson once described as this "dual world, immense." Concurrently, Emerson and Melville maintain a gnostic faith in a divine spark that resides within man and holds the key to his salvation.;This first part of this study explores Emerson's and Melville's gnostic cosmology and the second part their gnostic eschatology. I use Emerson's essays, poems, and journals (the most revealing source, especially for his dualisms) and Melville's letters, journals, and many of his major works: Mardi, Moby-Dick, Pierre, The Confidence-Man, and Clarel. Mardi is the focus of the final chapter as it is strikingly similar to the gnostic poem "The Hymn of the Pearl." Indeed, like the hero in the "Hymn," Emerson and Melville are on their own gnostic quests for a divine pearl hidden within the coils of a slippery serpent that rules a dark, dual, and ultimately gnostic world.