- description
- # PREFACE
## Overview
This document is the preface to the literary work "BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN". It is a section extracted from the file `billy_budd.txt` and is part of the larger collection "[Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW)".
## Context
The preface was written in the year 1797, a period described as a "crisis for Christendom." It reflects on the French Revolution and its impact, noting how the revolution, initially aimed at rectifying wrongs, became oppressive under Napoleon. The text also draws parallels between the revolution's outcomes and the British naval mutinies at Spithead and the Nore, suggesting that these events, though tumultuous, ultimately led to reforms within the British Navy.
## Contents
The preface discusses the historical context of 1797, framing it as a pivotal year marked by significant political and social upheaval in Europe. It specifically mentions the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as the naval mutinies in Britain. The text also includes a footnote referencing the "Spirit of that Age" and a crossed-out passage that mentions Wordsworth. The preface is situated between the "DEDICATED" section and the beginning of the main text, marked by the chapter heading "I".
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- PREFACE
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- PREFACE
The year 1797, the year of this narrative, belongs to a period which, as
every thinker now feels, involved a crisis for Christendom, not exceeded
in its undetermined momentousness at the time by any other era whereof
there is record. The opening proposition made by the Spirit of that
Age,[1] involved a rectification of the Old World’s hereditary wrongs.
In France, to some extent, this was bloodily effected. But what then?
Straightway the Revolution itself became a wrongdoer, one more
oppressive than the kings. Under Napoleon it enthroned upstart kings,
and initiated that prolonged agony of continual war whose final throe
was Waterloo. During those years not the wisest could have foreseen that
the outcome of all would be what to some thinkers apparently it has
since turned out to be, a political advance along nearly the whole line
for Europeans.
Now, as elsewhere hinted, it was something caught from the Revolutionary
Spirit that at Spithead emboldened the man-of-war’s men to rise against
real abuses, long-standing ones, and afterwards at the Nore to make
inordinate and aggressive demands, successful resistance to which was
confirmed only when the ringleaders were hung for an admonitory
spectacle to the anchored fleet. Yet in a way analogous to the operation
of the Revolution at large, the Great Mutiny, though by Englishmen
naturally deemed monstrous at the time, doubtless gave the first latent
prompting to most important reforms in the British Navy.
-----
Footnote 1:
Crossed out:
Was one hailed by the noblest men of it.
Even the dry tinder of Wordsworth took fire.
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BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN
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- PREFACE