Name: Sea-changes: Melville - Forster - Britten
ISBN: 3-86395-045-3

Hanna Rochlitz

Sea-changes: Melville - Forster - Britten

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E. M. Forster first encountered Billy Budd in 1926. Some twenty years later, he embarked on a collaboration with Benjamin Britten and Eric Crozier, adapting Melville’s novella for the opera stage. The libretto they produced poignantly reaffirmsthe Forsterian creed of salvation through personal relationships.This study presents an extensive exploration of Forster’s involvement in the interpretation, transformation and re-creation of Melville’s text. It situates the story of the Handsome Sailor in the wider context of Forster’s literary oeuvre, his life, and his lifewritings. In detailed readings, Billy Budd becomes a lens through which the themes, patterns and leitmotifs of Forsterian thought and creative imagination are brought into focus. A close re-examination of the libretto sketches serves to shed new light on the collaborative process in which Melville’s story was changed to fit an archetypal array of plot and character types that is central to Forster’s own storytelling.

Language

English

ISBN

3-86395-045-3

Rochlitz_Diss_book_121112.pdf

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Note on citations and editorial practice

Introduction

Part one: Billy Budd: novella and opera

I.1. Transforming prose works into opera:some key concerns

I.2. Melville’s Billy Budd: the text and its readers

I.2.1. Textual history and textual problems

I.2.2. Early critical reception and post-1950 criticism

I.2.3. E. M. Forster and Benjamin Britten in the tradition of British Melville reception

I.2.4. The editions used by Britten and his librettists

I.3. “To quarry a play out of [Melville]”:the three main characters as raw material

I.3.1. Methodological reflections and general observations

I.3.2. Billy

I.3.3. Claggart

I.3.4. Vere

I.4. Billy Budd transposed and transformed:the libretto

I.4.1. Adapting Melville’s plot

I.4.2. Original Melville Material in the Libretto

I.4.3. Billy

I.4.4. Claggart

I.4.5. Vere

I.4.6. Further observations and conclusion

I.5. Musical structures: yet another inside narrative

I.5.1. Leitmotifs, narrative voice, and narrative perspective

I.5.2. “A family of motivic shapes”: the Mutiny “cluster”

I.5.3. Musical presences of the main characters: a brief overview

I.5.3.1. Billy

I.5.3.2. Claggart

I.5.3.3. Vere

I.5.4. Tonal symbolism, the closeted interview, and salvation

I.6. Part One: summary and outlook

Part two: E. M. Forster and the story of Billy Budd

II.1. Forster reads Melville: the first encounter

II.1.1. Forster’s 1927 Billy Budd: good versus evil, a drama for two actors

II.1.2. “Other claimants to satanic intimacy”: Forster’s queer decodings

II.1.3. “Satanic intimacy”?Challenging the connection between homosexuality and evil

II.2. Forsterian themes and narrative patterns

II.2.1. “Only one novel to write”: recurring themes and character types

II.2.2. The ‘dark’/‘light’ character pairing in Forster’s fiction

II.2.2.1. Typology

II.2.2.2. Saving “the English character”: ‘dark’ redeemed by ‘light’

II.2.2.3. “It takes two to make a Hero”?The ‘light’ saviour character as Other

II.2.2.4. “Bring me a bath”: the homophobic ‘light’ character

II.2.2.5. Eternal pursuit: sexuality, violence and death in Forster’s fiction

II.2.3. The Forsterian salvation narrative

II.2.3.1. “From confusion to salvation”: “travelling light”

II.2.3.2. “The salvation that was latent in his own soul”:connection with the Other as a means to connection with the self

II.2.3.3. Seizing the symbolic moment:human failure, “odious” behaviour, and the possibility of redemption

II.2.3.4. “A land where she’ll anchor forever”:death, love and the salutary prophetic vision

II.2.3.5. “But he has saved me”:the strains and tensions of enforced salvation

II.2.3.6. Forster’s “Nunc Dimittis” – his final word on salvation?

II.2.4. An affinity of literary imagination:some aspects of Forster’s and Melville’s narrative strategies

II.2.4.1. Forster’s “inside narratives”

II.2.4.2. Forster and Melville hint at mystery: “scriptural reminiscence”, unsympathetic outsiders, and narratorial eloquence

II.3. Forster’s “little phrases”:pan-Forsterian textual leitmotifs

II.3.1. Introduction

II.3.2. “Muddle”

II.3.3. “Mist”

II.3.4. “Oh, what have I done?”

II.3.5. “I’d die for you”

II.3.6. Intimatopia: “helping”, “looking after”, “trusting”, and “feeling safe”

II.3.7. “Come”

II.3.8. “Lights in the darkness” and “far-shining sails”

II.3.9. “I’m done for” and “Fate”

II.3.10. “Only a boy”: paternalism and the pitfalls of desire

II.3.10.1. Forsterian “boys”

II.3.10.2. “The physical violence of the young”:the aggressive “boy” as object of erotic longing

II.3.10.3. Despotic fathers, obedient sons, and salutary “breaking”:Billy Budd and Howards End

II.3.10.4. The parallel case of “Arthur Snatchfold”

II.3.10.5. Man/boy: narrative trajectories in Billy Budd

II.3.10.6. “You […] spoke so fatherly to me”:paternal blandishments and boys’ betrayals

II.4. Textual relationships: four case studies

II.4.1. “Ralph and Tony” (1903)

II.4.2. The Longest Journey (1907)

II.4.2.1. Introduction and synopsis

II.4.2.2. ‘Light’ characters

II.4.2.2.1. Stephen Wonham: a pagan deity in Edwardian guise

A desirable “coarse” man

Illegitimates and foundlings: social anomalies and disruptive forces

“But Jemmy Legs likes me”: assumptions and interpretations

“One nips or is nipped”: the Forsterian ‘light’ character as fatalist

II.4.2.2.2. The petty athlete: Gerald Dawes as homophobic ‘light’ character

II.4.2.3. ‘Dark’ characters

II.4.2.3.1. “Too weak”: Rickie Elliot, a protagonist who fails

“Rickety Elliot”: queer encodings

“Lost on the infinite sea”: salvation and ruin

“Hate and envy”: Rickie Elliot as flawed ‘dark’ protagonist

II.4.2.3.2. Desperate villains: John Claggart and Agnes Elliot, née Pembroke

II.4.3. “He would not save his saviour”: “Arthur Snatchfold” (1928)

II.4.4. “The Other Boat” (1957/58)

II.5. Character relationships: protagonist, villain, saviour

II.5.1. “A man who despite his education, understands”:Forsterian readings of Captain Vere

II.5.1.1. Representation and transformation:the Vere of the 1947 BBC Book Talk

Interlude: the “closeted interview” as moment of connection

II.5.1.2. Reading matter(s): E. M. Forster and E. F. Vere

II.5.1.3. “Natures constituted like Captain Vere’s” among the Forsterian ‘dark’ characters

II.5.1.4. “Was he unhinged?”: Melville, Forster and the voice of Science

II.5.1.5. “I who am king of this fragment of earth”:the problem of authority

II.5.2. Sympathy for the Devil:the Forsterian ‘dark’ character as villain, victim and lover of violence

II.5.2.1. Goats or sheep?Homosexual panic, repression, homoerotic longing and salvation

II.5.2.2. Ideal bachelors and “a certain devil” known as asceticism:the dark side of respectability

Stupidity

Asceticism

“Pale ire, envy and despair”: Mr Beebe and the ‘dark’ characters of Billy Budd

“Nothing of the sordid or sensual”:respectability, asceticism and Forsterian concepts of evil

II.5.2.3. “On the surface they were at war”: the erotics of antagonism

II.5.3. Billy Budd: a man “in the precise meaning of the word”

II.5.3.1. “Alloyed by H. M.’s suppressed homosex:”:Forster’s earliest encounter with Billy Budd

II.5.3.2. “Belted Billy” as the desirable Forsterian ‘light’ character

II.5.3.3. “The light […] that irritates and explodes” – and inspires desire

II.5.3.4. “He’s a-stammer”: (mis-)representation, inarticulacy and violence

II.5.3.5. Beautiful males, icons of desire:Billy Budd and other Forsterian ‘light’ characters

II.5.3.6. “To make Billy, rather than Vere, the hero”:an exercise in communicative ambiguity

II.5.3.7. “The strength of Antigone”: acceptance, fortitude and forgiveness

II.6. Mutiny and homosexuality in Billy Budd:queer reading(s)

II.6.1. Introductory: “Naval report U. S. A.”

II.6.2. “Aught amiss”:discourses about mutiny and homosexuality in Melville’s novella

II.6.3. “Death is the penalty”:mutiny and homosexuality in naval law and Imperialist ideology

II.6.4. Subverting “civilisation as we have made it”:Forster and queer desire

II.6.5. “I’ll not discuss”: the unspeakable in Forster’s work

II.6.6. “Never could I do those foul things”:negotiating the borders between homoerotic longing and homophobia (I)

II.6.7. “We are both in sore trouble, him and me”:negotiating the borders between homoerotic longing and homophobia (II)

II.6.8. The Mutiny motif:negotiating the borders between homoerotic longing and homophobia (III)

Part Three: genesis of an opera: the sources’ tale

III.1. Let’s make an opera (I):the genesis of Billy Budd

III.1.1. Introduction

III.1.2. “Our most musical novelist”: Forster’s operatic affinities

III.1.3. Setting to work

III.1.4. “A positive challenge”: all-male opera and relations between men

III.1.5. “We did steep ourselves in this story”:researching the historical background

III.1.6. From draft to opera stage: a brief timeline

III.2. Let’s make an opera (II):evolution of the libretto

III.2.1. “How odiously Vere comes out in the trial scene”:readings, responses, re-imaginings

III.2.2. The source material: overview and general observations

III.2.3. “I am an old man”: the metamorphoses of Captain Vere

III.2.3.1. “Vere […] had better live on”:changed functions of a changed figure

III.2.3.2. “Really the worst of our problems”: rewriting the trial scene

March 1949

August 1949

“I accept their verdict”: Forster’s and Britten’s manuscript revisions

III.2.3.3. From hubris to “the straits of Hell”:Vere’s shorter Act II monologues

III.2.3.4. “Lost on the infinite sea”:from “confusion” to transcendent vision

III.2.4. “This is the trap concealed in the daisies”:the evolution of the Billy/Vere relationship

III.2.5. “A sanitised Billy Budd”? Concerning the flogging of the Novice

III.2.6. “We’ll take no quarter”:the Captain’s Muster and the 1960 revisions

III.2.7. Editing tendencies: from historical realism towards ‘the universal’

III.3. Coda: the Claggart monologue:resisting and rewriting

III.3.1. “It is my most important piece of writing”:Forster’s “big monologue for Claggart”

III.3.2. “Not soggy depression or growling remorse”:composer and librettist at odds over the opera’s villain

Chronology

III.3.3. “I seemed turning from one musical discomfort to another”:Claggart’s aria, first version

III.3.4. Haunting fourths:Britten, Forster and the musical convergence of Claggart and Vere

Conclusion and outlook

Appendix A: Musical examples

Appendix B: E. M. Forster and Billy Budd : timeline

Works Cited

Index

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