SOURCE: “From ‘Amor, Threatening,’” in Critical Essays on Herman Melville's Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker, G. K. Hall & Co., 1983, pp. 135-49.

In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1929, Mumford links the themes of Pierre with events in Melville's life while he was writing the novel, concluding that “Pierre disclosed a lesion that never entirely healed.”

Moby-Dick was done. In the fall of 1851 it appeared, first in England, then, a few weeks later, in America. Melville was exhausted, exhausted and overwrought. In the prodigious orchestration of Moby-Dick, Melville had drained his energies, and, participating in Ahab's own pursuit and defiance, he had reached a point of spiritual exasperation which, like Ahab's illness after Moby-Dick had amputated him, was increased by his lowered physical tone, by his weak eyes. Books like this are written out of health and energy, but they...