antw. Re: What is Fluck talking about?

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2003-01-05 at 09:49, lorentzen-nicklaus wrote: 
> 
> 
>  + dear tess,
> 
>.. what i would really like to know: did melville actually 
>  read german philosophers? 

I know T has James Wood's The Broken Estate, which describes Melville's
reading (for the first time systematic rather than hit and miss) in the
period just before Moby Dick. 


"Intellectually his mind was abroad. His reading, which had been eager
but arbitrary , now took on a systematic wildness. In 1847 and 1848, he
brought or borrowed an edition of Shakespeare, a volume of Montaigne,
and a volume of Rabelais. In February 1848 he acquired Coleridge's
Biographia Literaria. In March, he read Sir Thomas Browne (clearly,
after Shakespeare, his chief influence) and Seneca; in June, Dante. In
1849 he brought Pierre Bayle's heretical Historical and Critical
Dictionary. In the same year, he noted in his new edition of Milton that
. . .. "  p 33. 

No mention of German philosophers.