梅尔维尔(1819～1891年)

Melville, Herman，原名Herman Melvill。

美国作家，出生於纽约富裕家庭，後来遭逢变故，一夕之间破产，故只受了一点正式学校教育，1839年开始海上流浪生活。1841年他踏上了一艘前往南海的捕鲸船，第二年在马克萨斯群岛跳船而逃。他在玻里尼西亚的冒险经历成为第一批成功小说《太比》（1846）和《奥摩》（1847）的蓝本。他在讽喻式幻想小说《玛地》（1849）失败以後，很快又写出有关水手艰苦生活的《雷得朋》（1849）和《白夹克》（1850）。经典巨着《白鲸记》（1851）既是一部生动的捕鲸小说，又是一部对美国民主问题和可实现性的象徵探讨。但当时这本书的出版并没有为梅尔维尔带来任何名利。他开始失望并远离人群，1852年写了《皮尔》小说，冀望它能打进国内「小姐们」喜爱的小说之列，但却成了拙劣的模仿作品。他还撰写了《以色列陶工》（1855）、《骗子》（1857）和别的一些杂志小说，包括《录事巴托比》（1853）和《班尼托.西兰诺》（1855）。1857年以後开始写散文。1866年找到一份海关检查员的职位才使经济状况稳定下来。他又开始动笔写下最後一部作品：小说《水手比利.巴德》，但一直到1924年死後多年才出版。梅尔维尔在大部分的写作生涯里并未受到重视，如今却被现代评论家视为美国最伟大的作家之一。

English version：

1819～1891年

Melville, Herman

U.S. writer. Born to a wealthy New York family that suffered great financial losses, Melville had little formal schooling and began a period of wanderings at sea in 1839. In 1841 he sailed on a whaler bound for the South Seas; the next year he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. His adventures in Polynesia were the basis of his successful first novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847). After the allegorical fantasy Mardi (1849) failed, he quickly wrote Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), about the rough life of sailors. Moby-Dick (1851), his masterpiece, is both an intense whaling narrative and a symbolic examination of the problems and possibilities of American democracy; it brought him neither acclaim nor reward when published. Increasingly reclusive and despairing, he wrote Pierre (1852), which, intended as a piece of domestic “ladies” fiction, became a parody of that popular genre; Israel Potter (1855), The Confidence-Man (1857), and magazine stories, including “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853) and “Benito Cereno” (1855). After 1857 he wrote verse. In 1866 a customs-inspector position finally brought him a secure income. He returned to prose for his last work, the novel Billy Budd, Foretopman, which remained unpublished until 1924. Neglected for much of his career, Melville came to be regarded by modern critics as one of the greatest U.S. writers.