Benito Cereno

Herman Melville 1860, 5 years after Benito Cereno first published

Benito Cereno is a story of the American writer Herman Melville , the first time in three impressions in October, November and December 1855 in the journal Putnam's Monthly Magazine published and, along with five other shorter stories in a slightly different version in the collection 1856 The Piazza Tales added has been.

The story, which was largely ignored for a long time by literary criticism after its initially mostly positive reception, is from today's perspective one of Melville's most significant shorter prose works.

Benito Cereno is the longest of the shortened forms of prose that Melville published after the appearance of his famous novel Moby Dick between 1853 and 1856, and consists of three different parts that differ from each other in style and narrative.

In the three parts of the narrative, the background events on board a Spanish merchant ship with a cargo of black slaves are gradually revealed, which under the command of the young captain Don Benito Cereno after a mutiny of the slaves and the murder of most of the white sailors and officers got into distress in the upstream waters of the harbor bay of an uninhabited island off the Chilean coast in 1799. When Captain Delano, the commander of an American freighter and seal-catching ship anchored in this harbor bay, tries to help the Spanish ship, which is obviously in distress, the rebellious slaves on board the merchant ship create the illusion that the ship is through heavy loads Storms off Cape Horn as well as scurvy and a deadly epidemic on board, which took the white crew into distress, are still under the command of Captain Benito Cereno, who has long been ousted by them.

The first German translation by Richard Kraushaar was published by Herbig Verlag in Berlin under the same title in 1938 and was later published as a licensed edition in numerous new editions by other publishers. More recent translations were published in 1987 by Günther Steinig and in 2007 by Richard Mummendey .

content

The events in the story, described by an unnamed authorial narrator, are presented in the first part mainly from the point of view of the American captain Amasa Delano from Massachusetts , who, as the commander of the Bachelor's Delight , a large sealer traveling as a cargo ship, with a valuable cargo in the fall of 1799 The harbor of the uninhabited island of St. Maria at the southern end of the Chilean coast is moored to take water. On a gray, cloudy morning with silhouettes that appear to be "harbingers of older, deeper shadows", his helmsman draws Delano's attention to a strange ship without a flag. In Delano's assessment, this ship is apparently in distress and is drifting too close to the coast with uncontrolled maneuvers towards the bay in the harbor, with a dangerous cliff right on its course.

Against the advice of his helmsman, Captain Delano has a whale boat launched in order to rush to the aid of the sailing ship with some of his sailors and various supplies on board and to support its commanders. As Delano approaches the strange ship, it becomes clear that it must be a Spanish merchant who is apparently transporting a load of black slaves along with other valuable cargo. The large, once magnificent ship is in a desolate state with signs of neglect visible everywhere. Round timber, rigging, and large parts of the bulwark are completely shabby; the sails are torn; the superstructures are also dilapidated. A figurehead or ornament on the bow can no longer be seen, as the ship has been covered with canvas at the front. A closer look under the canvas reveals an inscription in Spanish, painted in awkward letters: “Seguid vuestro jefe” (English: “Follow your guide”); The ship's name is written in faded letters on the side of the ship: San Dominick .

On boarding the ship, Delano immediately noticed the lack of discipline and the utter confusion among the blacks on board, who spoke of their suffering with loud voices and screams of pain: they barely escaped a shipwreck off Cape Horn and fell into a doldrums for days; the food and water supplies were running low and scurvy and a malignant fever had killed almost the entire Spanish occupation. The slaves, apparently occupied with work on the cordage and other repairs or cleaning work, behave in an extremely strange way, just like the black ax polishers; their activities hardly correspond to the usual way of working. The hustle and bustle on the ship not only seems strange, but also in a certain way unreal.

When captain Delano finally finds the Spanish commander of the ship, Benito Cereno, in the turmoil, the general dissolution of the ship's rules and the suffering of the people on board seem to affect him no further or even, as Delano initially has the impression, not even disliked .

Nevertheless, Delano thinks it is possible that the youthful-looking, distinguished-looking and strikingly lavishly dressed captain of the ship no longer has the situation on board under control and has given up on ensuring order and discipline. Cereno looks very closed; his face is marked by the traces of sleepless and worrying nights and his physical suffering is unmistakable. Cereno's expression is sad and despondent; reacts to his visitor and his offer of help without any joy with stiff, formal words of thanks.

Next to Cereno stands a short black man named Babo, whom Delano takes to be the personal servant of the Spanish captain. He does not leave his side and does not let the commandant out of sight for a moment; Delano believes to see in this a remarkable good behavior and a loving solicitude of the black servant towards his master.

Despite his extremely unfriendly reception and his discomfort on board the Spanish ship, Captain Delano sees the great danger in which the Spanish sailor and his crew find themselves. He therefore has the supplies brought on board in his whale boat and, not least out of pity, orders his people to row back in order to fetch as much water and food supplies as possible, since the dilapidated Spanish ship threatens to drift further seaward in the prevailing calm wind.

When he was left alone on board, the American captain noticed numerous other peculiarities. He wonders whether the mismanagement on the Spanish ship is due to the apparent exhaustion and lack of energy of the young captain Benito Cereno, who apparently hopelessly takes note of the offer of help and advice from his American colleague with no apparent joy. Imprisoned in the oak walls, he seems tied to his command post; he stares aimlessly ahead, bites his lip and gnaws his fingernails. To Delano, in his unsteady, melancholy, and morbid state of mind, he only looks like skin and bones; his voice is just a harsh whisper and sounds as if he is only breathing with half his lungs. The body servant Babo follows the helplessly staggering man with every step - as Delano thinks, with great concern. The American captain sees an excessive caring in Babo's handouts, a kind of special brotherhood, as it were. He remembers that with such a special gift the black valet attained the reputation of being the most agreeable servants in the world, whom their master did not need to meet from above, but could treat them like close confidants or loyal family members.

Nevertheless, despite Babo's good behavior, he cannot overlook the loud and stubborn hustle and bustle of the blacks on board and their lack of discipline. Nor is he able to understand the downright unfriendly indifference of the captain Don Benito and his ill-tempered disdain for the ship's crew, which he does not even try to hide. In his charity and philanthropy, however, as the narrator notes, the American captain attributes this to the effects of the illness of Cerenos. With the exception of the reports of his loyal personal servant, Captain Cereno listens to the reports due by the crew members with disinterest and impatience and understands the reports as undesirable disturbances. Whenever an order on his part is required, to Delano's astonishment he always leaves the command to his personal servant Babo, who is constantly surrounded by a crowd of messenger boys, both young Spaniards and black slaves, within shouting distance.

Delano noticed more and more the demoralization and the gross violations not only of general discipline but also of human decency on board the Spanish ship; he explains the lack of discipline and order, however, by the absence of the deck officers.

As he felt an increasing urge to find out more about the circumstances surrounding the unfortunate voyage of the Spanish ship, he decided to ask Don Benito for a confidential talk in private, in which he once again expressed his participation and helpfulness.

Cereno initially stammered him off, but then, at Delano's insistence, agreed to a conversation on the aft deck of the ship in a generally inaccessible place, but only in the presence of his black body servant Babo. Cereno reports that the sea voyage began 189 days earlier from Buenos Aires to Lima in Peru , with mixed valuable cargo, fifty Spanish sailors and officers and over 300 blacks on board, of whom only 150 would have survived the crossing. After a heavy storm off Cape Horn, he lost three officers and fifteen members of the crew and the ship was also badly damaged. In order to lighten his ship and regain speed in the ensuing slack , he got rid of most of the water supplies.

When Don Cereno tries to continue his report, a coughing fit interrupts him; Delano believes that his servant pulls a fortifying agent from his pocket and presses it to Cereno's lips. The latter continues with his report, but now haltingly and rambling or incoherently. His servant Babo provides him with the key words for the continuation of his story: the plague after the storm, the scurvy , the terminally ill, languishing sailors, the impossibility of keeping the ship on course and, last but not least, the malignant fever that set in due to the lack of drinking water almost all of the rest of the crew and the officers left over. Since then it has not been possible to call at a port; more and more deaths had to be mourned every day. It was only thanks to the black slaves that the rest of the crew managed to survive in the adverse winds and currents. The owner of the black slaves, Don Alexandro Aranda, who had also fallen victim to the fever epidemic, advised him to free them from their chains; he owed special thanks to his servant Babo.

Captain Delano also praises the black servant's particular loyalty; For Delano, there seems to be a special relationship of trust and equality between Don Cereno and Babo. There are only differences in the clothing of the two. What is surprising about Cereno's report for Captain Delano, based on his own experience as a seaman, is the long-lasting calm and the aimless drifting of the ship. The suspicion arises that the unfortunate voyage was due to insufficient seafaring skills and faulty navigation of the young Spanish captain. Delano does not openly articulate this assumption, but instead offers Cereno with compassion not only the provision of food and water supplies, but also help with the repair of the sails and the rigging. He also agreed to bring his best people on board the Spanish ship to assist with navigation so that it could reach its port of destination without delay.

Before Cereno can answer, however, his servant takes him aside; allegedly the current excitement is not good for Don Cereno. When he returns, the brief flicker of hope in him is gone again. On deck, the clatter of hatchet is getting louder; On the lower decks, Captain Delano watched a black Negro boy stab a young Spaniard with a knife after an argument without Commander Cereno intervening and having the perpetrator punished. Instead, he plays down the attack on the Spaniard as a boy prank despite his severe wound.

Due to the incomprehensible forbearance and apparently complete lack of authority of the Spanish commanding officer, Captain Delano becomes increasingly suspicious of other worrying events on board the Spanish ship, such as the trampling of one of the Spanish sailors by two black men, but continues to fluctuate in his assessment of the situation the ship between an understanding assessment of the events and the suspicion that something might not be right. In addition, the few remaining Spanish sailors seem to be secretly giving him signs, the significance of which, however, he is unable to assess. At the same time, he apparently heard ambiguous remarks from the few remaining white sailors, the meaning of which he was just as unable to decipher.

Finally, worried, he waits for his boat to return. When it finally reaches the San Dominick , there are further mysterious, sometimes threatening incidents during the unloading and distribution of the water and food supplies. Oscillating between suspicion and a feeling of threat on the one hand and a philanthropic sympathy for the Spanish captain and dismay for the fate of the people on board the ship on the other hand, Delano continues to try to gloss over or understand explanations for the strange happenings on the Spanish ship to be To suppress the feeling of discomfort. Once again, in his philanthropy and compassion, he sends the whaling boat back to fetch more water.

After rowing the boat away again, Delano tries to continue his conversation with Don Cereno. The answers to his questions, however, remain hesitant or evasive, sometimes even contradicting. Finally, Babo reminds Captain Cereno that it is time to shave, to which he reacts with a start.

The valet offers Captain Delano, his Lord and him while shaving in the trade continue to accompany and the conversation there. The fair turns out to be a hut-like attic room and a dormitory without proper furniture. The room is located above the captain's cabin below and is equipped with a makeshift barber's pool that, from Delano's point of view, looks like a torture tool. Delano incidentally learns that Captain Cereno has also been sleeping in this room since the weather was mild.

When the black valet begins to shave, Delano ponders that there is something in the nature of the black that makes him particularly suitable for personal assistance and services. Most blacks are born valets and hairdressers. They would have as natural a relationship with comb and brush as they would with castanets and would handle them with the same enthusiasm; in handling these tools she is characterized by a high degree of dexterity and sensitivity. Add to this their docility, the contentment of their limited minds and their blind devotion.

Delano curiously watches the process of shaving; another conversation with Cereno does not take place, as this no longer seems to be important to him.

Babo dips the soap into a bowl of salt water, but only soaps the upper lip and the area below Cereno's throat. He then chooses the sharpest of the available knives and sharpens it again by pulling it over the skin of the heel of his hand. When, bent over, he makes a movement with the razor in his raised hand, as if to begin, Captain Cereno winces nervously and his pale appearance looks even more pathological. The whole scene has something peculiar to the American captain; he cannot suppress the impression that he sees in the black man a head cutter and in Cereno a man on the block. Despite a humorous, cheering remark by Delano, the latter sees the Spanish captain trembling slightly.

When Delano once again expresses his astonishment that the Spanish captain's voyage from Cape Horn to St. Maria took over two months, while he himself only needed two days for the same route, Cereno cannot suppress his excitement and shock . Babo's knife goes into his skin and the lather turns bloody. Delano explains this incident through a temporary uncertainty Babo. Afterwards, Babo encourages his master to keep telling the American captain about the voyage while he rewinds the knife. Then Cereno repeats the previously presented story of the slack and the stubborn currents anew, combined with praise for the black slaves on board.

Delano believes that he perceives something ambiguous in the behavior of the Spanish captain and cannot avoid the suspicion of a deliberate deception or an arranged spectacle for him, but is unable to correctly interpret the signs or to find a plausible explanation.

When Delano asks Captain Cereno to continue the table conversation without his valet being present, the valet refuses, both firmly and brusquely. Likewise, he firmly rejects a friendly invitation from Delano to have a coffee with him on board the Bachelor's Delight in return for the hospitality he had enjoyed , especially since the wind has resumed and the San Dominick is moving in the direction of the Bachelor's Delight . The conversation is becoming more and more buttoned up and the atmosphere of the conversation is becoming more tense; the black valet is also there all the time, although Delano would like to have a private conversation with Cereno.

When Captain Delano finally has the San Dominick brought close to his ship with the help of a pilot commissioned by him and knows it is safely anchored there, he climbs into the Bachelor's Delight whaling boat, which has meanwhile returned , to get back on his own ship. At this moment Don Benito, who was on deck when saying goodbye, suddenly jumps over the tail dress of his ship and falls in the dinghy at Captain Delano's feet. Three other Spanish sailors jump into the water without delay and swim after their captain, pursued by Babo and a pack of black slaves.

Babo, who also manages to jump into the whaling boat, tries to stab Don Cereno with a dagger, but is prevented from doing so by Delano and his crew. Another attempt by Babo to kill Don Benito with a second dagger also fails. The Spanish sailors, who have in the meantime attached themselves to the whaling boat, are rescued by the crew, Captain Delanos. He now realizes that there must have been an uprising and mutiny by the black slaves on board the San Dominick . The black insurgents who killed the Spanish sailors and officers only staged a play in which Don Cereno, as commanding officer, only supposedly had the authority to deceive Captain Delano while he was on board the Spanish ship.

The few surviving white sailors who are still on board the San Dominick after Cereno's escape climb up the rigging to escape the murderous attacks of the black slaves. On Captain Delano's orders, the San Dominick is pursued and under fire under the command of his head mate ; the black slaves who survived the ensuing battle and gunshot wounds were arrested and chained after the San Dominick was retaken .

During the pursuit and bombardment of the San Dominick , the canvas covering the fore ship also falls, revealing the hanging skeleton of Alexandro Aranda, the owner of the slaves, which casts a gigantic, ribbed shadow on the water in the falling moonlight. Don Aranda had not fallen victim to the fever, as claimed, but had been killed by the slaves just like the Spanish sailors and officers.

Babo, the leader of the rebellious slaves, is kept alive by Captain Delano and put in iron in the hold of his ship. After the two ships have safely entered Lima in Peru after repair work, Babo is handed over to the local court. The judicial investigation and clarification of the incidents on the ship of the Spanish captain Benito Cereno then provides, as the court files can be inferred, the definite proof and the clear confirmation that it was not storms or epidemics that caused the death of the white crew, but that they of the slave was murdered after a riot.

Babo, as their leader, is executed six months later after failing to utter a word in his defense in the trial against him. His body is then cremated with the exception of his head, which is displayed on a pole in the plaza in Lima - pointing in the direction of the Church of St. Bartholomew, where the bones of Alexandro Aranda, brought home, rest.

Narrative and meaning

The narrative consists of three different parts, which clearly differ in their style and narrative attitude. The first, longer part contains a broad, scenic-dramatic representation of the authorial narrator, which is closely tied to the perspective of the American ship's captain Amasa Delano. In its second part, the narrative is much more compact and essentially represents the testimony of the Spanish captain Benito Cereno before the Peruvian court in Lima. The events are presented here from the perspective of the title character; Through a targeted selection of descriptions from the perspective of the Spanish captain and through the depersonalized language of the court, Don Cereno's perspective appears to be objectified. The very short final section, which initially confronts Delano and Cereno in an open conversation, shows in these passages an equally large narrative distance to the two protagonists of the story. Finally, the consequences of the events on board the San Dominick are described from an even greater distance to the two main characters.

Already at the end of the first part of the story, a shift in the narrative perspective can be observed, which finally, with the conquest of the Spanish ship, gradually breaks away from the view of the American captain and passes to the narrator as authoritative chronicler. With the greatest reluctance, he only allows a few preliminary remarks and a connecting introduction to flow into the second part of the story.

In view of the repeatedly changing perspective, it is noticeable that the point of view of the black slaves is not directly expressed at any point, but can only be inferred indirectly by the reader from their actions and from Cereno's report.

At the end of the story, however, it is emphasized with a specific hint that it is particularly about the so far only implied view of blacks: Even after his execution, the head of the black leader of the slave mutiny, which the narrator metaphorically called " Beehive of ingenuity and cunning “describes fearlessly and challengingly the whites and their church in the eye. In Benito Cereno Melville uses that method of indirection in a virtuoso and extremely effective manner, which he demands in Billy Budd in a much more theoretical way, but only uses it hesitantly there.

One of the basic linguistic and structural design elements with which this silent, indirect point of reference is emphasized for the reader is the use of irony in the first part of the story . This is most evident in the plot itself: only because of his stubborn self-deception and frivolous, dull ignorance, Delano manages to keep out of the conflict and the confrontation with threatening reality and in this way to save his own life. Melville thus portrays Delano as a kind of " American Adam ", as described by RWB Lewis in his 1955 work The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the 19th Century , or as a Parzival-like tumber tor who in his innocent inexperience knows or understands nothing about the world, keeps asking the wrong questions until the end, nothing learns and ultimately cannot redeem anyone - regardless of the fact that he saves his own life and Cerenos, not least because of a happy coincidence.

This irony of the situation consists primarily in the tension-filled discrepancy between Delano's limited perception and his erroneous conclusions or assumptions on the one hand and the actual balance of power on board the Spanish ship on the other, which Babo and his followers disguise with a daring drama and a risky charade .

The mystification, which Melville, based on the practices of the English horror novel , possibly exploits excessively with pleasure or even strains it to the point of tearing, is also evident in his enrichment of the narrative with a series of symbolic , sometimes operatic scenes and episodes that are artfully interwoven - albeit sometimes on the verge of degenerating into an end in itself.

The main concern of this narrative tour de force is consistently the dramatic self-disclosure of the nature and mindset of the American Captain Delano from Massachusetts, who rejects any thinking or action that is not characterized by generous optimism in himself and everyone else as a moral weakness .

With this perspective narrative technique, used by Melville in Benito Cereno as a constitutive element, he also anticipates a narrative method that Henry James developed further in his works at the end of the 19th century and brought to perfection.

Melville unmistakably characterizes the American in this sense at the beginning of the story, but indicates with a sarcastic understatement how this attitude is to be assessed:

"To Captain Delano's surprise, the stranger, viewed through the glass, showed no colors; though to do so upon entering a haven, however uninhabited in its shores, where but a single other ship might be lying, which was the custom among peaceful seamen of all nations. Considering the lawlessness and loneliness of the spot, and the sort of stories, at that day, associated with those seas, Captain Delano's surprise might have deepened into some uneasiness had he not been a person of a singularly undistrustful good-nature, not liable, except on extraordinary and repeated incentives, and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms, any way involving the imputation of malign evil in man. Whether, in view of what humanity is capable, such a trait implies, along with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual perception, may be left to the wise to determine. "

(German translation: "In this godforsaken spot there was of course neither law nor order, and since, moreover, all sorts of gloomy stories were told about that area of ​​the ocean at the time, Captain Delano's surprise could easily have deepened into an uncomfortable feeling if he hadn't, as a naturally benign person who overthrows all mistrust, would have been completely incapable of allowing himself to be disturbed personally - except for unusually important and emphatic occasions, and even then only reluctantly - which always amounts to malice and malice in his fellow men If one thinks of what humanity is capable of, then one must of course ask oneself whether such a trait, coupled with kindness of heart, is at all compatible even with the most common agility and sharpness of the ponderous understanding - but others like one another break your head. " )

For the reader, it is hardly surprising at this point that Delano physically registers the impending danger with "an ominous twitch in the calves", but immediately suppresses it from his consciousness.

Interpretative approach

Delano's superficial optimism, as indicated at the beginning of the story by the narrative technique used, shows itself as an integrative part of his personality as well as in his attitude towards the black slaves. Despite sometimes deviating observations or perceptions, in the stream of his feelings towards the blacks, the narrator's well-placed grazing lights appear again and again about the slaves, which not only illuminate his naive imagination, but also ironically underline his clichéd trivialization of the fundamentally different blacks. When Delano, for example, observes the ax-grinding Ashantis, he thinks he recognizes in their goings-on the special effort to combine “work and pastime”; in Babo's concern for his master he sees the attachment of a "shepherd dog".

Although he notices things in the general confusion that make him think, such as the “less generous features of the negroes”, he rashly explains these observations, which come very close to the truth, through the iniquity experienced by the blacks concerned and stylizes Babo a loyal companion. However, his ideas relate loyalty ( fidelity ) in terms of Babo and trust ( confidence ) in terms Cereno always on him as natural accepted subordination of master and slave. Delano's assumption is expressed as a matter of course elsewhere in his joking offer to buy Babo from his Spanish master for 50 doubloons.

In addition to his romantic transfiguration of the servant role of the black slave, his thinking is also shaped by the widespread cliché of the noble savage , for example when he sees some black women with their children lying on deck like deer. Delano's observations are at this point ironically with the underlying Bilderparadox of leopard and dove; the irony at the same time contains the premonition that Delano's cliché of Roussaue's noble savage as well as that of the devoted companion will very soon be blown from within.

Delano's thoughtlessly romanticizing view of blacks finds its downside in his disdain for the intelligence of slaves, which is presented in much more detail in the narrative. In several places he regards the black slaves as “too stupid” to invent bad intrigues or schemes; Due to their lack of intelligence, he even believes that they are not even able to make deals with suspicious Spaniards to carry out possible evil plans. Intelligence and a determined malevolence resulting from it appear to him, as it were, as the privilege of the white man; the black, on the other hand, is apostrophized by him as a born body servant with the characteristic gift of unshakable good humor and natural cheerfulness.

As Delano following the Rasierszene on deck the mistaken impression subject Cereno allegedly Babo inflicted injury after shaving, he notes to himself: "Ah, this slavery breeds ugly passions in man - Poor fellow!" (Dt. : "I'll tell you: slave-holding makes people bad and mean. The poor guy!" ). In this passage, too, the ironic underpinning and refraction of Delano's point of view is once again abundantly clear, since his statement in itself is completely correct, but here it is aimed at the wrong person, namely Don Cereno.

If Delano is characterized in the story on the one hand as a generous and democratic or liberal-thinking American, on the other hand he regards blacks with an ambivalent mixture of romanticization and disdain. As can be seen from his numerous comparisons with animals and especially with dogs, the black slaves are primarily good-natured pets for him, regardless of his open-minded attitude according to the good old slave-keeping style.

Only the sudden discovery of the slave revolt reveals Delano's deep-seated error; However, the actual factual background of the slave mutiny is throughout the first part of the story the constantly present narrative reference point for the thinking and the well-intentioned but erroneous conclusions of the naive American.

His completely flattened view of reality is not only shown in the complete misunderstanding of the situation of the black man, but also becomes clear in a less blatant form in his attitude towards the Spanish captain. If he continually invokes the suffering and privations of Cereno as a possible explanation for his appearance and behavior, he is not very far from the actual truth in this regard, but he is completely mistaken with regard to the specific, as he means treacherous , Cereno's motives.

In contrast, however, he is not completely wrong about human disposition. The repeated emergence of his fears about fundamentally conceivable malicious motifs in human behavior in general shows that Delano probably knows more about human nature than he himself wants to admit. Against this background, his unconditional optimism is clearly to be understood as an escape from acknowledging reality; he prefers the beautiful appearance to the knowledge of the actual reality.

Delano's ship isn't just named Bachelor's Delight by chance ; Melville's own cipher is hidden in it : Delano is the inexperienced “bachelor” who is unwilling to admit the dark side of the world, his “delight” , that is, his innocent pleasure and pleasure , would disavow.

His behavior at the end of the adventure on the San Dominick can also be seen in accordance with this : he no longer wants to admit the abyss that opens up in front of him the moment the danger is over. In the end, the only important thing for him is the physical survival of the threat; this is precisely where he finds his confidence again confirmed.

Behind his naive self-confidence, however, there is also a childlike, unreflective trust in divine providence , without the Protestant American captain being able to develop deeper religious feelings. When Don Cereno expresses such a deeper religious sentiment in the face of the miraculous salvation of the two, Delano immediately digresses. His confidence is not based on religious belief; it is self-sufficient, is based solely on worldly experiences and therefore remains limited to what is externally visible or tangible.

Delano's worldview is also reflected in his relationship to nature: he misses all the gray, ominous hues on the morning the story begins; He does not realize the inner connection between the atmosphere described by the narrator and the subsequent drama of the day, which the reader can feel.

Only the peaceful mood in the evening shortly before the outbreak of the human inferno affects him; At the end of the day, of course, he cannot counter the religious feeling that Don Cereno feels in himself in view of the previous experiences and experiences but the image of a soothed nature, whose deceptive character Delano as a sailor should actually know.

Through the ironic breaking through of the naive mentality of the American Delano, as it mainly comes to bear in the first part of the story, it also becomes clear that his sancta simplicitas (“holy simplicity”) is by no means the recipe for overcoming evil in the world. Delano's wandering about on the seemingly enchanted Spanish ship, which almost breaks his neck when the balustrade falls apart and brings it into the labyrinth of a hopeless, impenetrable mess, can very well be a general symbol of the restless , detached from the specific context of the episode on the San Dominick People are interpreted, who is in an inexplicable and threatening universe. Such a symbolic interpretation does not, however, meet the central message of the narrative and cannot be understood as its main theme, since the ironic breaking of Delano's perspective would not be taken into account in such an interpretation approach.

If in the first part of the story, with regard to the title character, the horrific fate and the deeply injured humanity of the disempowered Don Cerenos come to the fore, then in the abruptly beginning court record of the second part, from an impartial point of view, additional revealing details of the mutiny are given added. Depending on the situation, the tone of the narrative is rather colorless and sober; At first glance, the court document presented in the text does not contain any further interpretation or commentary on the events other than the bare facts.

However, the second part shows a clear a priori perspective that a paradoxical involves explaining and highlighting the inner motives of the accused slaves: The blacks are before the Court in Lima, the power of the whites of their church and the world of Spain represents, from the beginning on found guilty. Since they cannot claim any rights before this court, their statements serve only to assess the extent of their respective individual guilt; this is already established as collective guilt . In this regard, it is a mere sham dish.

The particular expressiveness of the presentation in the second part lies in the fact that the evidence cited against the blacks also allows a different reading: The law of Lima is ironically subject to the higher authority of a universal human and at the same time poetic justice . The reader always comes across the same statements: The uprising of the blacks was a spontaneous rebellion, which was directed against the whites in their striving for freedom and was not carried out with the same determination by all blacks, but was welcomed and shared in the same way by all slaves. The motive for the violent uprising was the spontaneous hatred of the white oppressors and at the same time served their intention to return to Africa.

After the murders during the mutiny itself, the black slaves only allowed themselves to be carried away by short-circuit actions to kill for fear of the failure of their plan. Accordingly, black women, for example, were deterred from venting their hatred through torture or arbitrary killing. If other white sailors were killed out of fear reactions, this was based on the thoroughly valid assessment that the white crew were only to be dissuaded from regaining control of the slaves out of fear for their own lives. In this respect, Babo's plan to capture Delano's ship was ultimately just a desperate attempt to make the return to Africa possible with a maneuverable ship. The killing of Don Alexandro Aranda also only took place after lengthy consultations with the black slaves, because otherwise they would not believe their freedom was secure and wanted to set a warning example for the other whites. The use of Aranda's skeleton as a figurehead should therefore be understood less as a revolt against an individual slave owner, but rather as a counter-symbol to the rule of the whites in general - together with the motto “Follow your leader”, a sarcastic reference to the Christian idea can be found here see of the equality of all people before and after death.

This detail is a clear shorthand symbol for the intention or direction of the black uprising and at least reveals Babo's clear idea of ​​the type of struggle he was willing to wage.

An interpretation that focuses solely on the cruelty of Babo and his followers is based, consciously or unconsciously, on a sentimentalization of the situation of the whites and their captain Cereno. The inferno of revolt was preceded by the inferno of slavery created by the whites. Significantly, the blacks in Melville's narrative show less insidious lust for revenge than the whites after the retaking of the San Dominick . Even the plan that brings Cereno into his painful role as the disempowered captain is not due to the joy of torture, but rather arose out of a practical necessity. Accordingly, Babo's silence during the trial can, with good reason, be understood as an expression of trust in the inner justification of his actions as well as the hopelessness to be able to expect understanding or an overarching justice from a white court.

In this sense, Babo's silence should be understood as a judgment on his judges. Like a motto , the Castilian coat of arms shows that it is about oppression - the ambivalence of the masks indicates the buried humanity in such a relationship. Against this background, Babo's charade can also be understood as a sarcastic illustration of the role of the oppressor, which is otherwise reserved for whites.

In addition to the court in Lima, Cereno's reaction to the rebellious blacks in the revolt also contributed significantly to indirectly depicting the slaves' legitimate desire for freedom. As a Spanish commander, Don Cereno is confronted both psychologically and as a representative of the Old World with the American Delano. Delano's unshakable optimism and his, as it were, youthful joy in expressing and proving his strength, countered the expectation of unchangeable power relationships that Cereno had in his historical consciousness, which is based on longstanding traditions and makes individual or personal proving superfluous.

For this reason Don Cereno is completely paralyzed from the beginning of the sudden coup after his disempowerment; for him the worldly and spiritual authority of an entire world order has wavered, whereas Delano perceives only a limited threat. As a Spaniard and a staunch Catholic, Don Cereno is the typical representative of a decadent world in which the ruling aristocratic class is extremely sensitive and pessimistic due to its constitutional weakness. His Christian awareness of sin also helps to reinforce this skepticism towards people, which has historically been acquired over a long period of time.

Metaphorically, these features are very carefully expressed in the narrative in a series of chains of motifs , which in their various peculiarities are reminiscent of the tried and tested means of the gothic novel . As soon as the Spanish ship becomes visible, the initial comparison with a monastery is followed by an abundance of decay metaphors such as memories of outdated gold ships, unsuitable war frigates, abandoned palaces, magnificent balconies or state cabins that evoke a memorable image of the faded size of the coat of arms of Castile and Leon. On board the San Dominick , Delano recognizes the signs and codes of moribund decay and all-encompassing neglect everywhere . Right at the beginning he realizes that the once proud warship has become a mere transporter; symbolically this stands for the decline of the Spanish world power. The ostentatious, but theatrically hollow insignia of power in Benito Cereno also ironically underline the impotence of the previous world empire: his emphatically lavish robe, his empty, richly decorated saber scabbard and the key for the chains of the royal black Atufal only appear to pay tribute to the kings of Spain their toll.

The hollowness of the old symbols of power is emphasized all the more directly in the shaving scene: As if by chance, the Spanish flag is used to shave; moreover, Don Cereno hesitates in the face of any incident that ought to call the unqualified authority of his office to the scene. In contrast, the real rulers, the ax-grinding Ashantis, hide their power and control function under the guise of a service; Spain's historical impotence is thus closely linked to Don Cereno's personal disempowerment. His fainting spell at this point is again taken from the narrative repertoire of the horror novel and aims here at the failure of Don Cereno's consciousness in relation to the previously repressed, but now gaining in importance knowledge of a reality that cannot be integrated into his previous worldview.

This motive of powerlessness is reinforced even more profoundly by the religious images and metaphors. The plot of the story, which begins in front of the port of Santa Maria in Chile, already links the first sight of the Spanish ship with an ambivalent religious metaphor in which the “matin light” (= the cabin light flashing over) and the “sinister intriguante” (= the cunning beauty from Lima) keep the scales. This pictorial metaphorical approach is further developed in the following narrative passages with impressions of a whitewashed monastery (“ white-washed monastery ”), a ship full of monks ( “ship-load of monks” ) and several figures in dark robes, similar to the Dominican monks through cloisters pacing ( "Black Friars pacing the cloisters" ). The story ends with the retreat of Cerenos into the monastery on Mount Agonia , the meaning of the name according to the mountain of agony , and therefore of agony and agony.

The monk motif persistently pervades the entire story; At one point, Babo's clothing is even compared with that of a Franciscan mendicant ( "begging friar of St. Francis" ). Equally significant is Delano's comparison of Cerenus with Charles V of Spain , who, after the failure of his efforts to restore a Christian unified empire , withdrew resignedly from the world. With these metaphorical analogies , the close interlinking of secular and ecclesiastical power is emphasized in a special way. This entanglement of power is further expressed in the description of the court in Lima, which is described as belonging to the “ Holy Crusade of the Bishoprick ”.

The clearly highlighted name references allow the prudent reader in the shaving scene to recognize the unequivocal props of a Spanish inquisition , ranging from the missal to the crucifix and baptismal font to the instruments of torture. In addition, the Dominicans , who are symbolically echoed in the name of the Spanish ship, the San Dominick , historically had a close relationship with the Inquisition. In a similar way, the other Christian images scattered throughout history evoke the memory of the Inquisition and the sadism of this infamous instrument of the Christian world for the express conquest of the globe and securing world domination. Against this background, the bitter narrative commentary that can be heard in the equation of the Inquisition with the desperate stratagem of the insurgent blacks is unmistakable.

In a similar way, the other Christian motifs also contain mostly ironic undertones: The name of the title character Benito Cereno already contains a sarcastic comment: “benito” (equal to “blessed”), together with the echo of “sereno” (equal to “cheerful”) ) a conceivably unsuitable name for the Spanish captain, who is mercifully received in the monastery on the mountain "Agonia" and cared for by the monk Infelez ("infeliz" means "unhappy"), but still finds no consolation here and three months dies after the trial at the age of only 29.

The Christian religion obviously could neither strengthen nor heal Cereno; Nor has it saved blacks from degradation or shaped them into Christian brotherhood and mercy, as the example of the mulatto Francesco shows, who is one of the most unscrupulous rebels, although he has previously sung in the church choir. From this point of view, too, the inscription “Sequid vuestro jefe” (“Follow your leader”) on the San Dominick instead of a figurehead appears as a deliberately intended sarcastic allusion to the missionary sense of mission of the whites. This inscription plays with the Christian idea of ​​death as redemption , which the black slaves oppose with their liberation in life.

With these numerous images and motifs, as well as the diverse power metaphors, Melville's narrative has a systematically dosed ironic function. Attempts at interpretation in secondary literature, which counter the ambiguities and ironies of the text with the Christian motifs as a positive foil, completely ignore the accusatory intention of the irony of these images and motifs. If, for example, the figure of Don Aranda is interpreted apotheotically as a character in the true imitation of Christ or Don Cereno is understood as an imposing figure of Christ, in order to understand the narrative in its center as a redemption myth, which culminates in the crowning of the mountain Agonia overlooked or misunderstood the ironic meaning of these motifs. The meaning of the Christian allusions is thus pressed into a scheme that they annexed as a mere accompanying motif for the supposed main theme of the narrative.

The story unmistakably questions Christianity in the context of the story, not only historically but also existentially. Don Cereno is depicted accordingly by Melville as a Christian in the traditional sense; from his few hints about his inner motives as well as from his succinct answer to Delano's question, what had thrown such a lasting shadow on his soul ( "The Negro" - in the narrower and broader sense), it can be concluded that he was sinful is very well aware of human nature - but not of the circumstances that basically produced it.

In contrast to Delano, Cereno shows his horror at the monstrous ability of humans, but with that at an ability that he also has to account for himself and that makes him despair of human nature. For him, blacks are not the embodiment of the devil ; nevertheless he sees in them the coming into effect of the demonic power of the devilish, which destroys him just like the other whites. Melville thus counteracts the American Delano's childlike trust in God with the Spanish Cereno's lack of will to live. In contrast to the fun- loving "bachelor" , Cereno's attitude predicts what he will actually become at the end of the story: the monk in Melville's counter-cipher.

As the title figure, Cereno can just as little endure the contradictions of human nature as the tensions in this world and breaks down when his institutions can no longer protect him. His Christian faith does not allow a confrontation with the complex reality, but rather results in its abolition, which, as with Delano, expresses itself as a simplification and flight from reality, albeit in a less naive form.

In various classic interpretations of the story, Cereno's image of the black, although it only represents a partial perspective that is biased and emotionally charged, has repeatedly been used as the basis for interpreting an overarching symbolic structure of the narrative. According to this, the black person allegorically embodies the forces of darkness, simply because of its color, which suddenly break out of the ship's hull on the arena of the sea in order to question Delano's and Cereno's soothing, falsely harmonizing image of reality through a direct confrontation with the power of evil put. This story also shows Melville's predilection for the threatening and unfathomable in human nature. In such an orientation, the overall interpretation of Benito Cereno remains unnoticed, however, that Melville's aim with Babo is far more than a variant of the Byronian hero, whose hysteria and pathos Babo is completely absent. Babo's supposed Satanism is based on a perspective misunderstanding of his sometimes sarcastically exaggerated irony and his clear consciousness.

Melville may have misjudged the psychological effects of slavery in his narrative and romantically projected it onto a heroic will for freedom, as some critics and interpreters of the story claim; But by no means did he unhesitatingly equate the black race with the metaphysically dark and evil, as this is criticized in some interpretations of the story. Such an interpretation of the story is based on an arbitrary introduction of commonplaces alien to the work or on conclusions by analogy from other works that do not do justice to the unmistakable peculiarity of Melville's story. The animal images used as evidence in relation to the blacks also have little evidential value, since they are not only ambivalent in themselves, but are also determined by Delano's limited perspective. Even the striking image that compares the blacks with wolves and the whites with pale vengeance angels during the reconquest of the San Dominick is still contaminated by Delano's point of view, who moreover only follows the events from a distance. In addition, this comparison is previously undermined metaphorically and also by the course of the action. Immediately in front of the wolf picture there is a comparison of the whites with swordfish, which cause a bloodbath in a school of defenseless fish. In addition, the white sailors fight so bravely, not least because they were promised a rich wage for fixing the slaves. Accordingly, in this passage of text the black is equated with a commodity, but not with a principle.

From the changes that Melville makes to his original, the travel report of the real Captain Delano, there is no clear strengthening of the black and white contrast. Random character traits in Cereno such as his cruelty, insidiousness or ingratitude give way in Melville's story to an exemplary condensation so that what he sees as an author in slavery does not have to be traced back to a personal peculiarity. Similarly, he transforms Delano, who is portrayed as greedy and quarrelsome in the source, into a benevolent, refined character. Melville chooses the name Babo from a series of broadened slave names, which obviously contains a double ironic allusion to the figure of Iago in Shakespeare's Othello on the one hand and to a baboon (German: baboon), and makes him a dramatic hero, his inner one Consistency is underlined by the invented jump into the whaling boat.

If one considers the linguistic emphasis, the ironically undermined metaphor and the self-unmasking perspective, a center of the narrative is outlined that, despite omitted self-portrayals or justifications in the narrative comments, lies not least in the claim and the challenge of the revolting blacks.

History of works

First published in Putnam's Monthly Magazine in 1855 , Benito Cereno was created during a creative phase in which Melville was trying to overcome his disappointment at the failure of the criticized novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities from 1852 and the lack of lasting recognition of his masterpiece Moby Dick from 1851 to process through attempts with shorter prose forms . In the period between 1853 and 1856 he published only short stories or prose pieces in literary magazines, with the exception of the largely documentary life story of Israel Potter (1855). Several of these stories, including Benito Cereno , Billy Budd and Bartleby the Scrivener , were summarized in book form in 1855 in the anthology The Piazza Tales .

From today's perspective, it can no longer be clarified whether Melville was primarily concerned with a literary-artistic concern or whether it was his intention to address a different reading audience. No direct statements by Melville about his intentions or well-founded assumptions in this regard have survived. If, of course, one takes Melville's admiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories into consideration and proceeds from the characteristic inner features of these prose works, then there is some evidence for the assumption of a serious artistic effort by Melville in the creation of his shorter stories.

Although these shorter prose forms of Melville were largely neglected in literary criticism and secondary literature for a long time, they are characterized by a wide range and willingness to experiment on the part of the author. There are more fleeting character or situation sketches such as Jimmy Rose, The Fiddler, alongside compact, historically stylized parables such as The Bell Tower .

In The Encantadas , Melville creates a philosophical and scenic natural theater, while in various mixed forms of essay and short story he wrote works that are sometimes ironic-playful, sometimes pathetic-sentimental, such as I and My Chimney, Cock-a-Doodle-Dool, The Two Temples , The Piazza . The story Bartleby the Scrivener , written two years earlier, can be understood as a metropolitan parable with almost Kafkaesque features.

More than thirty years later, Melville attempted to form the last link in the complex series of his shorter narrative works in his celistically strict late work with the sea novel Billy Budd , which was only rediscovered in 1924 . Although Billy Budd tends to be part of the genre of the novel , the same literary pursuit of artistic condensation and pronounced contour that is characteristic of Melville's prose work between 1853 and 1856 is evident here. The first approaches can also be found in “ The Town-Ho's Story ” in Moby Dick or in the Enceladus dream in Pierre ; Eclipses are also contained in unauthorized stories such as Indian Hater and the episodic structure of the compilation The Confidence-Man from 1857, into which these short stories are woven.

Benito Cereno is the longest in this series of Melville's shorter stories; a similar thematically and narrative complex form as Benito Cereno with very contradictory interpretations can only be found by Bartleby and Billy Budd . These three stories by Melville certainly stand up to a comparison with Moby Dick in terms of poetic linguistic power and thematic universality or cosmopolitanism and can be counted among the exemplary works as well as classic highlights of American storytelling, not only of the 19th century.

Developmental background

In the 1850s, riots or mutinies on a slave-carrying ship were not a far-fetched subject for literary works. For example, the Spanish schooner La Amistad with 50 slaves on board was the scene of a slave revolt in 1839 while sailing between two Cuban ports, in which two members of the crew were killed. An American naval ship captured the Amistad , which had deviated from its course off Long Island . This was followed by a lengthy legal dispute up to the Supreme Court , the highest American court, in which John Quincy Adams succeeded in the case of the United States against the Amistad in 1841 , with a supreme court decision to obtain the release of the slaves.

In the same year, the American Creole was carrying slaves from Virginia to New Orleans when 19 black slaves killed a white sailor and took control of the ship before heading for the Bahamas . In this case, too, the slaves were released on the basis of the British Act of Emancipation of 1833. The leader of this slave revolt, Madison Washington, became the hero of the novella The Heroic Slave by Frederick Douglass, published in the North Star , around a decade later in March 1853 . an anti-slavery journal.

Portrait by Amasa Delano, 1817

Melville's main source and model for his narrative were the memories of the real Captain Amasa Delano, which was published in 1817 as a travel report under the title A Narrative of Voyages and Travels, in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres: Comprising Three Voyages Round the World; Together with a Voyage of Survey and Discovery, in the Pacific Ocean and Oriental Islands .

The core of the action in Melville's narrative can already be found in Delano's travelogue, in which he reports how the ship Perseverance, under his command, stumbled upon the Spanish slave ship Tryal on February 20, 1805 in the deserted bay of the island of St. Maria , and its slaves after a mutiny had overpowered the Spanish sailors.

Melville adopted various parts of the events reported by Delano almost unchanged in his narrative, but decorated the events and changed the presentation of the events in various places. So he dates the events to the year 1799 and inserts a detailed description of the dilapidated Spanish ship, which is missing in Delano's original report. He also replaces the names of the real ships Perseverance and Tryal with his own poetic inventions Bachelor's Delight and San Dominick .

While the real Delano visited the Spanish ship accompanied by his ensign Luther, Melville's narrative character, the captain Delano, went alone on board the slave ship. Melville also added fictional scenes he had invented to the travelogue of the actual Captain Delano, such as Babo's shaving of Cereno, the appearance of the gigantic figure of the royal black Atufal with an iron collar around his neck, the sparkle of the gem under the smock of the Spanish one Sailors or the common meal with Cereno on board the San Dominick .

Melville also changed the name of the black valet from Muri to Delano's travelogue to Babo in his narrative. The attack of the two black slaves on the young Spanish sailor and the tying of a Gordian knot by the older Spanish sailor were added by Melville as further fictional scenes in his narrative.

In addition, Melville transformed the end of the encounter between the two captains on the San Dominick : Cereno's jump into the whaling boat Delanos, Babo's attempt to stab Don Cereno and the skeleton of the murdered slave owner Don Arandas, which was hung as a figurehead on the fore ship Moonlight casts gigantic ribbed shadows on the water are poetic additions to Melville's story Benito Cereno . The disempowerment of Cereno as captain before the meeting with Delano and his later stay and death in a monastery at the end of the story are among the literary embellishments of Melville.

Despite the unmistakable references in the course of the plot of the core events of Benito Cereno to the travelogue of the real Captain Delano, Melville's poetic achievement is not limited to the addition of individual scenes and episodes or the embellishment of various details, but represents an independent literary achievement that is one of his narrative give special expressiveness and a completely new meaning.

Above all, the character of his title character and the black valet Babo are completely redesigned; Melville also creates a tightly interwoven network of metaphors, graphic comparisons and analogies as well as symbols that transcend the real travelogue in his story.

reception

In contemporary reviews of the Piazza Tales , Benito Cereno, along with Bartleby, the Scrivener, and The Encantadas, was one of the most acclaimed stories in this Melville collection, with critics generally praising the anthology as a whole without going into detail about the individual stories.

The Springfield Republican magazine in its July 9, 1856 review counted the collection among the best of Melville's works, highlighting the ingenuity, the colorful and productive imagination and the clear and transparent style of the author. In the review in The Athenaeum on July 26th of that year, the author's impetuous and almost ghostly imagination was positively emphasized. The United States Democratic Review also praised the linguistic richness, the liveliness of the descriptions and the brilliantly dark imagination of Melville in these narratives in its criticism in the September 1856 edition. The New Bedford Daily Mercury , in its June 4, 1856 review, judged Benito Cereno to be a narrative that had been designed with the necessary depth and seriousness.

The New York Tribune , on the other hand, saw in Benito Cereno as in The Encantadas again successful examples of Melville's sea romance, which, however, would not differ significantly from other popular works of this kind. The New York Times described Benito Cereno in its June 27, 1856 issue as a melodramatic , but not very effective work.

In contrast, the story was described as extremely interesting in The Knickerbocker magazine ; While reading, the reader waits with great anticipation for the puzzling events to be resolved.

After the initially mostly positive reception of Benito Cereno, including the other stories, which were summarized in the anthology The Piazza Tales , Melville's short prose forms fell into oblivion for a long time. It was not until the early 1920s that Melville's short prose returned to the focus of literary criticism and, above all, of academic literary studies.

In the following decades up to the 1970s, the number of literary criticism and literary studies publications on the shorter stories of Melville and especially on Benito Cereno rose continuously. The interpretations of Benito Cereno are quite contradictory and fluctuate between moral-metaphysical interpretations on the one hand and socio-economic, political-historical interpretations on the other.

Thus Babo is seen in one reading as the incarnation of evil and Delano as the embodiment of the limited in his perception and therefore frivolous but benevolent human friend; in the other reading, however, Melville's sympathy for slavery and his ambivalent portrayal of the situation of black slaves in the story are critically assessed.

For Cesare Pavese , the sea is “far more than a scene [...] It is the visible face of the hidden reality of things, rich in analogies.” His representation is not the artist's imagination, not something that is at his discretion, but “ the only sensually tangible form [...] in which, in Melville's view, the dark, ironic and demonic center of the universe can be embodied ”, so not just an allegory , but a universal myth .

Selected English text editions

• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno . In: Herman Melville: The Piazza Tales . Dix, Edwards, New York 1856 (first book edition).
• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno . In: Herman Melville: The Piazza Tales . Edited by ES Oliver. New York 1948.
• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno . A Text for Guided Research . Text-critical edition, ed. from JO all around. Boston 1965.
• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno . Benito Cereno . In: Melville, The Critical Heritage. Edited by Watson G Branch. Routledge & K. Paul, London and Boston 1974.
• Hermann Melville's Billy Budd, "Benito Cereno", "Bartleby the scrivener", and Other Tales . Edited by Harold Bloom . Chelsea House, New York u. a. 1987.
• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno . Palgrave, Basingstoke 2010.
• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno . Enhanced Books, 2014.

Selected German translations

• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno: short story . German by Richard Kraushaar. Hergig Verlag, Berlin 1938. (German first translation)
• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno With the novella of the lightning rod man . Transferred from Hans Ehrenzeller and Verena Niedermann. Publishing house Die Arche, Zurich 1945.
• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno . German by Richard Kraushaar. Hamburgische Bücherei, Hamburg 1947.
• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno: The Figurehead of the San Dominick . German adaptation by Heinz Weissenberg. Michael-Verlag, Niederbieber b. Neuwied 1949.
• Hermann Melville: Benito Cereno . Translated by WE Süskind. Auerländer Verlag, Aarau 1950.
• Hermann Melville: Benito Cereno . Edited by Marianne Kestin. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 978-3-458-32344-0 .
• Hermann Melville: Benito Cereno . Transferred from the American by Günther Steinig. Martus Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 978-3-928606-03-5 .
• Hermann Melville: Two stories . Billy Budd . Transferred by Richard Möring. Benito Cereno . Transferred from Hans Ehrenzeller. Edition Maritim, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 978-3-89225-464-5 .

Selected German audio editions

• Hermann Melville: Benito Cereno (German). Unabridged reading by Christian Brückner. Directed by Waltraut Brückner. Translated from the American by Michael Walter. Parlando Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-941004-16-0 .
• Hermann Melville: Benito Cereno . Translated by Richard Mummendey. Read by Rolf Boysen. Foreword read by Achim Gertz. Grosser & Stein Verlag u. a., Pforzheim 2007, ISBN 978-3-86735-243-7 .

Adaptations

A stage version of Melville's story was created in 1964 by Robert Lowell as part of his trilogy The Old Glory . Lowell's trilogy was first performed in the same year at the off-Broadway theater American Place Theater in New York and returned to the stage in 1976. In 2011, Benito Cereno was played as a single piece from Lowell's trilogy in another off-Broadway theater.

A poem based on the narrative was written in 1996 by Yusef Komunyakaa under the title Captain Amasa Delano's Dilemma and published in the American Poetry Review that same year .

Another poem by Gary J. Whitehead based on Melville's Benito Cereno first appeared in Leviathan in 2003 ; A Journal of Melville Studies . This poem was reprinted in 2013 in the anthology A Glossary of Chickens, published by Princeton University Press .

Film adaptations

An 80-minute film adaptation of Melville's story was produced in French in 1969 under the same title under the direction of Serge Roullet with Ruy Guerra in the role of Benito Cereno and Georges Selmark in the role of Captain Delano. This version of the film was released in theaters in 1971.

As early as 1967, a 90-minute American TV version was made as the 25th episode of a Net Playhouse TV series with Roscoe Lee Browne and Frank Langella in the leading roles.

Selected literature

• Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103-117, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 .
• Robert E. Burkholder (Ed.): Critical essays on Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno" . Maxwell Macmillan International, New York 1992, ISBN 0816173176 .
• Daniel Göske: Herman Melville in German: Studies on the translation reception of his most important stories . New Studies in English and American Studies, Vol. 47, Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York 1990, ISBN 978-3-631-42394-3 .
• Charles E. Nnolim: Melville's "Benito Cereno": A Study in Meaning of Name Symbolism . New Voices Pub. Co., New York 1974, ISBN 0911024131 .
• William D. Richardson: Melville's "Benito Cereno": An Interpretation, with Annotated Text and Concordance . Carolina Academic Press. Durham, NC, 1987, ISBN 0890892741 .
• MM Vanderhaar: A Re-Examination of Benito Cereno . In: AL 40 (1968), pp. 179-191.
• K. Widmer: The Perplexity of Melville's Benito Cereno . In: SSF, 5, (1968), pp. 225-238.
• Johannes D. Bergmann: Melville's Tales. A Companion to Melville Studies . Edited by John Bryant. Greenwood Press, New York, Westport, Connecticut, London 1986, ISBN 0-313-23874-X .

Web links

Wikisource: Benito Cereno  - Sources and full texts (English)

• The Piazza Tales, by Herman Melville: Benito Cereno - English text edition of the version from the Piazza Tales on Project Gutenberg
• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno - German text edition on Project Gutenberg-DE
• Benito Cereno - Herman MELVILLE (1819-1891 ) - audio output on LibriVox
• Sparknotes: Herman Melville - Benito Cereno (Part I and II) - English-language summary and interpretation
• Cliffs Notes: Benito Cereno - Herman Melville - English language summary and interpretation

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the history of publications, cf. for example that of Harrison Hayford, Alma a. MacDougall and G. Thomas Tanselle eds. Edition of Herman Melville: The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces . The Writings of Hermann Melville . North Western University Press and The Newberry Library, Evanston and Chicago 1987, 3rd edition 1995, ISBN 0-8101-0550-0 , pp. 572f. See also Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103-117, here p. 103. Likewise, Browse Making of America - Putnam's Monthly from 1855 at Cornell University Library . Retrieved June 8, 2017.
2. ↑ See Andrew Delbanco, Andrew: Melville: His World and Work . Knopf Verlag, New York 2005, ISBN 0-375-40314-0 , p. 230. See also Hershel Parker: Herman Melville: A Biography . Volume 2, 1851-1891 . The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 2002, ISBN 0801868920 , p. 242
3. ↑ See Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103-117, here pp. 103f.
4. ↑ See Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story. August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 103-117, here pp. 104 f.
5. ↑ Cf. the corresponding text passages in the sources given in the web links section on Wikisource and Projekt Gutenberg-DE .
6. ↑ ^{a b} cf. Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story. August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 103-117, here pp. 105 f.
7. ↑ See also Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103-117, here pp. 106f.
8. ↑ See Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103-117, here pp. 107f.
9. ↑ See Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103–117, here pp. 108–110.
10. ↑ ^{a b} cf. Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103–117, here pp. 108–112.
11. ↑ See Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103–117, here pp. 113–115.
12. ↑ See Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103–117, here pp. 113–117.
13. ^ Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103–117, here p. 103.
14. ^ Klaus Ensslen: Benito Cereno . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American Short Story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3 513 022123 , pp. 103-117, here pp. 103f.
15. ↑ See in detail Andrew Delbanco, Andrew: Melville: His World and Work . Knopf Verlag, New York 2005, ISBN 0-375-40314-0 , p. 230. See also Hershel Parker: Herman Melville: A Biography . Volume 2, 1851-1891 . The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 2002, ISBN 0801868920 , pp. 232f.
16. ↑ See Harold H. Scudder: Melville's Benito Cereno and Captain Delano's Voyages . In: PMLA 43 , June 1928, pp. 502-32.
17. ↑ See Harold H. Scudder: Melville's Benito Cereno and Captain Delano's Voyages . In: PMLA 43 , June 1928, p. 531.
18. ↑ See also the analysis of Rosalie Feltenstein: Melville's' Benito Cereno on the redesign of Captain Delano's real travel report in Melville's story . In: American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography , March 19, 1947, pp. 245–255, especially pp. 246–249. See also Harrison Hayford: (1984). “Notes”. Herman Melville, Pierre. Israel Potter. The Piazza Tales. The Confidence-Man. Billy Budd, Sailor . Edited by G. Thomas Tanselle. Library of America , New York 1984, p. 1457, and Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall and G. Thomas Tanselle: (1987). Notes on Individual Prose Pieces . In: Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall and G. Thomas Tanselle (eds.): Hermann Melville: The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces 1839-1860 , Northwestern University Press, Everstan and Chicago 1987 (new edition 2017), ISBN 0-8101 -0550-0 . See also Hershel Parker: Herman Melville: A Biography. Volume 2, 1851-1891 . The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 2002, ISBN 0-8018-6892-0 , p. 240, and Sterling Stuckey: (1998). The Tambourine in Glory: African Culture and Melville's Art . In: The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville . Edited by Robert S. Levine. Cambridge Companions to Literature . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 1998, pp. 12 and 14.
19. ↑ See Johannes D. Bergmann: (1986). Melville's Tales . In: A Companion to Melville Studies . Edited by John Bryant. Greenwood Press, New York, Westport, Connecticut, London 1986. ISBN 0-313-23874-X , p. 247.
20. ↑ Cf. the reprint of the various contemporary reviews cited here in Watson C. Branch (Ed.): Herman Melville - The Critical Heritage . Routledge. New York 1974 (new edition 1997), ISBN 0415-15931-8 , pp. 358, 359, 360, 355, 357, 356 and 359. The original reviews are available online at [1] . Retrieved June 12, 2017.
21. ↑ On the reception of history since the beginning of the 20th century, cf. the presentation by Nathalia Wright: Herman Melville . In: Eight American Authors: A Review of Research and Criticism . Edited by James Woodress. WW Norton & Company Inc., New York 1972, ISBN 0-393-00651-4 , pp. 211f.
22. ^ Cesare Pavese: Writings on literature. Hamburg 1967, p. 133.