Selections from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
Herman Melville
Read by Clark University
Published in 1866, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a collection of poems about the Civil War by Herman Melville. Many of the poems are inspired by second- and third-hand accounts from print news sources (especially the Rebellion Record) and from family and friends. A handful of trips Melville took before, during, and after the war provide additional angles of vision into the battles, the personalities, and the moods of war. In an opening note, Melville describes his project not so much as a systematic chronicle (though many of the individual poems refer to specific events) but as a kind of memory piece of national experience. The “aspects” to which he refers in the title are as diverse as “the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance.” Much of the verse is stylistically conventional (more so than modern readers perhaps expect from the author of Moby-Dick), but the shifting subjectivities and unresolved traumas that unfold in the collection merit repeated contemplation. Melville’s Battle-Pieces do not offer a neatly versified narrative of the Civil War but rather kaleidoscopic glimpses of shifting emotions and ambivalent reflections of post-war America.(Professor Meredith Neuman) (2 hr 24 min)
Chapters
01 - The Portent (1859) | 0:58 | Read by Clark University |
02 - Misgivings | 1:14 | Read by Clark University |
03 - The Conflict of Convictions | 4:40 | Read by Clark University |
04 - Apathy and Enthusiasm | 2:27 | Read by Clark University |
05 - The March into Virginia | 1:59 | Read by Clark University |
06 - Lyon | 2:56 | Read by Clark University |
07 - Ball's Bluff | 1:21 | Read by Clark University |
08 - Dupont's Round Fight | 0:53 | Read by Clark University |
09 - The Stone Fleet | 2:16 | Read by Clark University |
10 - Donelson | 19:01 | Read by Clark University |
11 - The Cumberland | 2:20 | Read by Clark University |
12 - In the Turret | 2:34 | Read by Clark University |
13 - The Temeraire | 2:45 | Read by Clark University |
14 - The Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight | 2:04 | Read by Clark University |
15 - Shiloh | 1:32 | Read by Clark University |
16 - The Battle for the Mississippi | 2:42 | Read by Clark University |
17 - Malvern Hill | 1:53 | Read by Clark University |
18 - The Victor of Antietam | 2:55 | Read by Clark University |
19 - Battle of Stone River | 2:43 | Read by Clark University |
20 - Running the Batteries | 4:20 | Read by Clark University |
21 - Stonewall Jackson | 1:11 | Read by Clark University |
22 - Stonewall Jackson (ascribed to a Virginian) | 2:51 | Read by Clark University |
23 - Gettysburg | 1:54 | Read by Clark University |
24 - The House-top | 2:42 | Read by Clark University |
25 - Look-out Mountain | 1:15 | Read by Clark University |
26 - Chattanooga | 3:40 | Read by Clark University |
27 - The Armies of the Wilderness | 9:33 | Read by Clark University |
28 - On the Photograph of a Corps Commander | 1:25 | Read by Clark University |
29 - The Swamp Angel | 2:36 | Read by Clark University |
30 - The Battle for the Bay | 6:58 | Read by Clark University |
31 - Sheridan at Cedar Creek | 2:17 | Read by Clark University |
32 - In the Prison Pen | 1:23 | Read by Clark University |
33 - The College Colonel | 1:44 | Read by Clark University |
34 - The Eagle of the Blue | 1:24 | Read by Clark University |
35 - A Dirge for McPherson | 1:35 | Read by Clark University |
36 - At the Cannon's Mouth | 2:22 | Read by Clark University |
37 - The March to the Sea | 3:48 | Read by Clark University |
38 - The Frenzy in the Wake | 1:41 | Read by Clark University |
39 - The Fall of Richmond | 1:20 | Read by Clark University |
40 - The Surrender at Appomattox | 1:11 | Read by Clark University |
41 - A Canticle | 2:59 | Read by Clark University |
42 - The Martyr | 1:36 | Read by Clark University |
43 - 'The Coming Storm' | 1:01 | Read by Clark University |
44 - Rebel Color-bearers at Shiloh | 2:28 | Read by Clark University |
45 - The Muster | 1:32 | Read by Clark University |
46 - Aurora Borealis | 1:23 | Read by Clark University |
47 - The released Rebel Prisoner | 2:44 | Read by Clark University |
48 - A Grave near Petersburg, Virginia | 1:12 | Read by Clark University |
49 - 'Formerly a Slave' | 1:12 | Read by Clark University |
50 - The Apparition | 1:16 | Read by Clark University |
51 - Magnanimity Baffled | 1:11 | Read by Clark University |
52 - On the Slain Collegians | 2:44 | Read by Clark University |
53 - America | 2:42 | Read by Clark University |
54 - An Epitaph | 0:58 | Read by Clark University |
55 - The Mound by the Lake | 1:04 | Read by Clark University |
56 - Commemorative of a Naval Victory | 1:57 | Read by Clark University |