Details
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Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876) is one of the longest poems in American literature: four parts, 150 cantos, and stretching to almost 18,000 lines. It has been called a contender for "The Great American Poem," a precursor of The Waste Land, and Melville's "obsessive, psycho-religious quest."
It tells the story of Clarel, an American divinity student experiencing a crisis of faith, as he follows a Biblical itinerary through the Holy Land. As he meets ancient landmarks and new acquaintances, he is haunted by theological questions and existential doubts.
One of the more enigmatic figures that Clarel encounters is Celio: a handsome but deformed young Italian, borne of his home's political climate, whose own crisis of faith has left him embittered and defiant. Without so much as speaking to one another, Clarel senses that Celio is "a second self" whose fate is somehow mysteriously related to his own.
According to Walter Bezanson, Celio represents "the cost of rebellion, the killing pain, and loneliness of dissent." Stan Goldman argues that Celio's "heretical outcries actually reflect a deep faith of the kind found in Old Testament types such as Job, whose questioning of God's ways, in particular the Deus absconditus, constitutes a kind of faith."
For this meetup, we will read selections from Clarel, Part 1:
- Cantos 11-16
- Cantos 18-20
- Canto 40
Important context: Canto 11 opens with Clarel (aka, "the student," "the pilgrim") and his earliest companion (Nehemiah, aka "the guide," "the meek one") when they first stumble upon Celio (aka, "the unknown one," "the stranger").
Note: This meetup will be recorded for private use.
Clarel:
This meetup is part of the series The Risorgimento.