It would be many years before any of Kierkegaard’s works would be translated from Danish into English, and yet the themes of desperation and self-examination must have thoroughly permeated the Zeitgeist of the day. But it’s quite unlikely that he’d read Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death, published that same year. Melville had surely read Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience which came out in 1849. But to really convey what it’s all about is something far more demanding.įirst published in 1853, the story appeared in a time of great awakening in New England and great revolutions in Europe. The story itself is short and easy enough to summarize. “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, while hardly the Leviathan which is Melville’s magnum opus, Moby Dick, remains one of the author’s most enigmatic works. At the same time, I’d like to think I can tickle the fancy of older audiences as well. With these extended poems, I’m reworking classic works of Gothic and Romantic fiction, in hopes of making them more accessible to new audiences. This lyrical retelling of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is part of an ongoing series, entitled Simply Gothic.
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