What gives such an overwhelming power to this book is precisely the fact that it is the “real thing,” in all its mystery.
* * *
One last word, regarding the Christian king (and his subjects, all converted in one week and baptised en masse): the Western navigators had vested much hope in him, yet did not seem particularly surprised by his eventual betrayal — after all, Christian kings in Europe did not behave differently. There are still in Indonesia — precisely in the Moluccas area — some old Christian communities whose fidelity is all the more heroic that it is maintained against a tide of Islamist persecution. It is remarkable to learn that the Jesuits welcome more novices there than they do in their neighbouring Australian province. One can almost foresee the day when Indonesian missionaries might be sent to preach the Gospel in a largely de-Christianised Australia…
As the Portuguese say: God writes straight with crooked strokes.[1]
RICHARD HENRY DANA AND HIS
TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST
After all, most of what we write remains sterile. The small part of our writing which ought to survive is, without doubt, that part which was touched by an inspiration from our youth, one of those strong visions, nourished in secret, and unforgettably coloured by the first storms of virility.
— GEORGES BERNANOS
IT IS OFTEN said that Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast is the most beautiful of all books of the sea, but this seems to me a somewhat poisoned compliment, as if one were to praise Madame Bovary for being the best account of adultery in Normandy or to celebrate The Diary of A.O. Barnabooth as a masterpiece of hotel and railway sleeping-car literature.
Without doubt, Dana’s book successfully conveys the experience of rounding Cape Horn under sail, as well as countless other aspects of seamen’s life and work on the square-riggers of the nineteenth century, with a vividness and intensity that has few equals. Herman Melville vouched for it: “but if you want the best idea of Cape Horn, get my friend Dana’s unmatchable Two Years Before the Mast. But you can read, and so you must have read it. His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been written with an icicle.”
However, the reason it succeeds in suggesting these realities, better than any other book of the sea, is precisely the fact it is much more than a book of the sea. It is something different altogether: under the appearances of a sober autobiographical narrative it hides a singularly rich and complex work of art.
Of course, its significance was recognised long ago: it stands among the great classics of nineteenth-century American literature, yielding in importance only to Dana’s junior and admirer, Melville, whose beginnings were inspired by his example. Nevertheless, even though connoisseurs and scholars, literary historians, writers and critics have fully acknowledged Dana’s literary accomplishment, and though for more than 100 years studies have multiplied on his subject, one must forgive ordinary readers who simply love this book as a gripping sea adventure: after all, there are no bad reasons for loving a good book. And, anyhow, the author began to take the full measure of his achievement only fairly late in life — too late, in fact, for at that time he also realised that he had missed his true calling.
Dana was born in 1815 into an old patrician family of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a pure product of the Puritan society of New England, an elite that, armed with Protestant faith, British culture, American democracy and Yankee patriotism, was possessed with an unshakeable belief that it constituted the salt of the earth.
The members of this closed society had a haughty awareness of the privileges they had inherited at birth, but these in turn were matched by a demanding notion of their duties and responsibilities. Always under the eye of a stern God, they were permanently subject to the scrutiny of their individual conscience. This austere high bourgeoisie knew how to marry mysticism with realism and audacity with common sense. Their prosperity and their power, fruits of their courage and industry, were to them signs of God’s favour.
Soon after the start of his law studies at Harvard University, Dana was struck by a mysterious illness, the symptoms of which were migraines and failing eyesight (these were thought to be the sequels to measles; in fact they may well have had a nervous origin). As the doctors could suggest no remedy, he decided to cure himself by adopting a completely different way of life: he enlisted as an ordinary seaman on a ship bound for California — at that time still a remote and half-wild province of Mexico — for a voyage of at least two years around Cape Horn. He was nineteen.
The hard life of a seaman — and he took pride in mastering all its technical aspects as a thorough professional — soon achieved its original purpose: Dana’s health was restored. But, more important, it allowed him to discover not only new skies, but also an entirely new side of the human condition: to enter the sailor’s world, with its language, ways and customs that are utterly foreign to landlubbers. Ashore, he observed a Spanish and Catholic America with its exotic society of Mexicans, Native Americans and kanakas (as the indentured labourers from the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii, were called).
Two years later, on his return to Boston, he resumed his earlier university studies. Simultaneously he wrote in six months a first draft of his seafaring experiences.
The year 1840 marked for him a decisive turning point: after graduation, he opened a law office in Boston, married the daughter of a respected local family and finally found a publisher for Two Years Before the Mast. These three events were to determine the orientation of the rest of his life.
He was successful in his professional activity and in his personal life: his law office kept him intensely busy, his wife gave him six children (five daughters and one son) and rock-solid support until the end of his life. Thus he found himself permanently anchored in the position of respected citizen, pater familias, warden of the Episcopalian Church and patron of the arts and letters.
His father was himself a writer of some distinction; his uncle, Washington Allston, was a famous painter and poet who introduced him to the cultured circles of Boston; his own son was to marry the daughter of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; he patronised the same club as Ralph Waldo Emerson.
He became an influential scholar, specialised in international law and admiralty law. (Incidentally, it was he who formulated the still universally accepted principle that sailing vessels have right of way over those under power.)
Soon, also, he made himself quite famous by his political activity: with courage and eloquence, he joined the movement against slavery, and for a while it appeared as if even the highest office of the land might be within his reach.
Meanwhile, the publication of Two Years Before the Mast earned him at once, if not royalties (a disastrous contract deprived him of the fortune that was exclusively to enrich his publishers*), then at least extraordinary fame; at that time only a new novel by Charles Dickens, then at the high point of his immense popularity, could enjoy similar attention. The success of his book was immediate, universal (loved by the public and praised by the sophisticated critics) and long-lasting: since its first publication 170 years ago, it has never been out of print.