Bartleby the Scrivener By Herman Melville
A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication
英語畢業(yè)dissertationBartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville is a publication of the Pennsylvania State University.This Portable Document file is furnished free and without any charge of any kind. Any personusing this document file, for any purpose, and in any way does so at his or her own risk. Neitherthe Pennsylvania State University nor Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, nor anyone associated
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Melville
Bartleby the Scrivener
By
Herman Melville
Chapter 1
I AM A RATHER ELDERLY MAN. The nature of my avocations
for the last thirty years has brought me intomore than ordinary contact with what would seem
an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, ofwhom, as yet, nothing that I know of has ever beenwritten — I mean the law-copyists, or scriveners. Ihave known very many of them, professionally andprivately, and, if I pleased, could relate divers historiesat which good-natured gentlemen might smileand sentimental souls might weep. But I waive thebiographies of all other scriveners for a few http://www.400190.com/dissertation_writing/linguistic/passagesin the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener, the strangestI ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists
I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothingof that sort can be done. I believe that no materials
exist for a full and satisfactory biography ofthis man. It is an irreparable loss to literature.
Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothingis ascertainable except from the original sources, and,in his case, those are very small. What my own astonishedeyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know ofhim, except, indeed, one vague report, which willappear in the sequel.Ere introducing the scrivener as he first appeared
to me, it is fit I make some mention of myself, myemployees, my business, my chambers and generalto an adequate understanding of the chiefcharacter about to be presented. Imprimis: I am aman who, from his youth upwards, has been filledwith a profound conviction that the easiest way oflife is the best. Hence, though I belong to a professionproverbially energetic and nervous even to turbulenceat times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever4Bartleby the Scrivenersuffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitiouslawyers who never addresses a jury or inany way draws down public applause, but, in thecool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug businessamong rich men’s bonds, and mortgages, and titledeeds. All who know me consider me an eminentlysafe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage littlegiven to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncingmy first grand point to be prudence, mynext, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply#p#分頁標題#e#
record the fact that I was not unemployed in myprofession by the late John Jacob Astor, a name which,
I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded andorbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. Iwill freely add that I was not insensible to the lateJohn Jacob Astor’s good opinion.Some time prior to the period at which this littlehistory begins my avocations had been largely increased.
The good old office, now extinct in the Stateof New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred
upon me. It was not a very arduous office, butvery pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper,much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignationat wrongs and outrages, but I must be permitted
to be rash here and declare that I considerthe sudden and violent abrogation of the office ofMaster in Chancery, by the new Constitution, as apremature act, inasmuch as I had counted upon a
life lease of the profits, whereas I only received thoseof a few short years. But this is by the way.
My chambers were upstairs at No.___ Wall Street.At one end they looked upon the white wall of the
interior of a spacious skylight shaft, penetrating thebuilding from top to bottom.
This view might have been considered rather tamethan otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters
call “life.” But, if so, the view from the other endof my chambers offered at least a contrast, if nothingmore. In that direction, my windows commandedan unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall,
black by age and everlasting shade, which wall requiredno spyglass to bring out its lurking beauties,5
Melvillebut, for the benefit of all nearsighted spectators,was pushed up to within ten feet of my windowpanes.Owing to the great height of the surroundingbuildings, and my chambers’ being on the secondfloor, the interval between this wall and minenot a little resembled a huge square cistern.
At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby,I had two persons as copyists in my employment,and a promising lad as an office boy. First, Turkey;second, Nippers; third Ginger Nut. These may seem
names the like of which are not usually found inthe Directory. In truth, they were nicknames, mutually
conferred upon each other by my three clerks,and were deemed expressive of their respective personsor characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman,of about my own age — that is, somewherenot far from sixty. In the morning, one mightsay, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelveo’clock, meridian — his dinner hour — it blazedlike a grate full of Christmas coals; and continuedblazing — but, as it were, with a gradual wane —till six o’clock, P.M., or thereabouts; after which Isaw no more of the proprietor of the face, which,gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to setwith it, to rise, culminate, and decline the followingday, with the like regularity and undiminished
glory. There are many singular coincidences I have#p#分頁標題#e#
known in the course of my life, not the least among
which was the fact, that, exactly when Turkey displayed
his fullest beams from his red and radiantcountenance, just then, too, at that critical moment,began the daily period when I considered his businesscapacities as seriously disturbed for the remainderof the twenty-four hours. Not that he was absolutelyidle or averse to business then; far from it.The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether tooenergetic. There was a strange, inflamed, flurried,flighty recklessness of activity about him. He wouldbe incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand.All his blots upon my documents were dropped thereafter twelve o’clock, meridian. Indeed, not onlywould he be http://www.400190.com/dissertation_writing/linguistic/reckless and sadly given to making blots6
Bartleby the Scrivenerin the afternoon, but some days he went furtherand was rather noisy. At such times, too, his faceflamed with augmented blazonry, as if cannel coalhad been heaped on anthracite. He made an unpleasant
racket with his chair; spilled his sandbox;in mending his pens, impatiently split them all topieces and threw them on the floor in a sudden passion;stood up and leaned over his table, boxing hispapers about in a most indecorous manner, very sadto behold in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless,as he was in many ways a most valuable person tome, and all the time before twelve o’clock, meridian,was the quickest, steadiest creature, too, accomplishinga great deal of work in a style not easily tobe matched — for these reasons I was willing tooverlook his eccentricities, though indeed, occasionally,
I remonstrated with him. I did this very gently,
however, because, though the civilest, nay, the blandest
and most reverential of men in the morning,
yet, in the afternoon he was disposed, upon provocation,
to be slightly rash with his tongue — in fact,
insolent. Now, valuing his morning services as I did,
and resolved not to lose them — yet, at the same
time, made uncomfortable by his inflamed ways
after twelve o’clock and being a man of peace, unwilling
by my admonitions to call forth unseemly
retorts from him, I took upon me one Saturday noon
(he was always worse on Saturdays) to hint to him,
very kindly, that perhaps, now that he was growing
old, it might be well to abridge his labors; in short,
he need not come to my chambers after twelve
o’clock, but, dinner over, had best go home to his
lodgings and rest himself till teatime. But no; he
insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His countenance
became intolerably fervid, as he oratorically
assured me — gesticulating with a long ruler at the
other end of the room that if his services in the
morning were useful, how indispensable, then, in
the afternoon?#p#分頁標題#e#
“With submission, sir,” said Turkey, on this occasion,
“I consider myself your right-hand man. In
the morning I but marshal and deploy my columns,7
Melville
but in the afternoon I put myself at their head, and
gallantly charge the foe, thus” — and he made a
violent thrust with the ruler.
“But the blots, Turkey,” intimated I.
“True; but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs!
I am getting old. Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm
afternoon is not to be severely urged against gray
hairs. Old age even if it blot the page — is honorable.
With submission, sir, we both are getting old.”
This appeal to my fellow feeling was hardly to be
resisted. At all events, I saw that go he would not.
So I made up my mind to let him stay, resolving,
nevertheless, to see to it that, during the afternoon,
he had to do with my less important papers.
Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered,
sallow, and upon the whole rather piratical-looking
young man of about five and twenty. I always
deemed him the victim of two evil powers — ambition
and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by
a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist,
an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional
affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents.
The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional
nervous testiness and grinning irritability,
causing the teeth to audibly grind together over
mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions,
hissed rather than spoken, in the heat of
business; and especially by a continual discontent
with the height of the table where he worked.
Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers
could never get this table to suit him. He put
chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits of pasteboard,
and at last went so far as to attempt an exquisite
adjustment by final pieces of folded blotting
paper. But no invention would answer. If, for
the sake of easing his back, he brought the table lid
at a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote
there like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch
英語dissertation網house for his desk, then he declared that it stopped
the circulation in his arms. If now he lowered the
table to his waistbands and stooped over it in writing,
then there was a sore aching in his back. In