Melville Society—Bezanson Archive Fellowship 2023

Melville Society—Bezanson Archive Fellowship 2023 Arturo Corujo Click for larger view View full resolution Arturo Corujo aboard the USS Constitution, Boston, Massachusetts, May 30, 2023. Photo courtesy of Mary K. Bercaw Edwards. End Page 107 Epiphany: a word that shines bright, so much so that it illuminates the fabric of reality; a word that refers to the appearance of a divine being to one's perception. Epiphany: a sudden moment of manifestation, revelation, realization; or, dare I say, in a more common way, understanding. Epiphany: a clear feeling, a feeling of clarity, feeling clearer about something. Epiphany: a feeling of satisfaction at a major discovery; an exclamation of joy: Eureka! For Archimedes, the Greek scholar and mathematician, his eureka moment came about through a long process of study: he discovered a method of determining the amount of gold and silver in a crown made for the King of Syracuse. Such method led him to find a law of buoyancy: a ship—say, the Pequod—will float provided that the proportion of water that Melville's whaleship displaces equals its weight. For the Gold Rush miners in California, their eureka was the finding of the precious metal, a moment so memorable that the Greek interjection would become the motto of the state. But Epiphany is also about gifts: the three gifts given to the newborn prophet Jesus Christ in recognition of his manifestation to the world: "gold, and frankincense, and myrrh" (Matthew 2.11). Nowadays Epiphany, a Christian festivity, is celebrated across the globe.1 Today is December 25, 2023. I'm writing these lines from my hometown in the Canaries after a fabulous semester teaching literature in Barcelona. It's that time of the year again, and I look back on my adventures in the US with sheer joy and profound gratitude. In January 2023, I was studying at the Univeristy of Caifornia, Berkeley. My Melville-related research was conducted with the generous support of a US-Spain Fulbright grant during the academic year 2022–2023. I had spent a joyful holiday season away from Spain, my birthplace, for the first time in my life. Coming from such a place, Epiphany to me had always been associated with the commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ and, more specifically, with the mysterious individuals who gifted him their treasures. Noche de Reyes is in fact the exciting night (the Twelfth Night) when children and adults alike celebrate the visit of the pilgrims (the so-called Magi) to their homes late at night. Día de Reyes is the following day (January 6), when people traditionally receive their long-awaited gifts. Around this date last year, I received the most generous—though unexpected—gift ever: I had been selected as the recipient of the Walter Bezanson Fellowship for the year 2023. Robert K. Wallace was the bearer of the good news, but Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Wyn Kelley soon wrote to me words of congratulation and welcome on behalf of the Melville Society. I wouldn't have ever imagined a better way to kick off the year: I, Arturo, a Ph.D. student from Europe, conducting archival research for the first time at the Melville Society Archive. Would I be able to answer my questions? Or ask new ones and find my eureka? End Page 108 Like the other Archive Fellows who preceded me,2 my motivation to go to the Melville Society Archive housed in the Research Library of the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts was, unsurprisingly, my deep admiration for Herman Melville, his life, and his works. But I was also doing doctoral research on one of his less-studied works: White-Jacket (1850). Eclipsed by Moby-Dick (1851), Melville's White-Jacket still remains largely unknown, even among Melville enthusiasts, both inside and outside the United States. But in my experience as a reader, I've always felt magnetically attracted to White- Jacket. And however inscrutable I found that attraction to be, I was more than willing to read into it as much as I needed to understand why a still under-analyzed text had such an impact on me and why it was so...