1 Billy Budd: from H. Melville to E. M. Forster, or Plutarch’s way to Plato 1 Pau Gilabert Barberà 2 Universitat de Barcelona (University of Barcelona) To Montserrat Reig & Jesús Carruesco As classical philologists and contemporary citizens who are much used to going to the cinemas, theatres, auditoriums and opera houses of our cities, we have already seen on both the screen and the stage –whether well performed or not is another question- many mythological or historical characters of Ancient Greece and Rome such as Medea, Orpheus and Euridice, Ariadne, Oedipus, Julius Caesar, etcetera. On the other hand, the case of a play with a contemporary theme and contemporary characters, which after having become an opera libretto – such as Billy Budd- shows classical references not belonging to the original text is rather unusual. E. M. Forster, the author of well-known novels such as A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India, etcetera, had already analyzed Herman Melville’s Billy Budd in his essay Aspects of the Novel 3 , and in 1947 had reviewed it for the BBC on the occasion of William Plomer’s edition. It is not surprising, then, that when he was asked to write –in association with Eric Crozier- the libretto of an opera whose music would be composed by Benjamin Britten, he thought of the last novel of the great American writer 4 . And yet –keeping in mind the title of my communication-, Melville, at least explicitly, never quotes Plutarch in Billy Budd while Forster does, so that this brief reflection of mine aims at discovering both the etiology and the meaning of such an addition or, perhaps better, it aims at proposing a reasonable hypothesis. Melville makes his readers face the disagreeable circumstance of Evil hindering Goodness, and he presents a world, the human one, where the fight for men and women’s dignity should never cease 5 . The unfortunate personal story of Billy Budd, a sailor who is pressed into service on an English war ship whose mission is to prevent the spirit of the French Revolution from reaching England, turns to be the best proof of this. In spite of being young, good and handsome, Billy will be the victim of Evil’s envy which becomes incarnate in certain men of devious mind such as Claggart, and he will be the victim as well of the rigorous Articles of War according to which someone accused of insubordination and disaffection must be hung regardless of a good deal of reasonable doubt about the existence of a real fault. The story deals with men in wartime who are expected to show courage and loyalty. Therefore, the presence of Plutarch and the wide range of virtues in his Lives becomes absolutely logical, thus paying furthermore a fair homage to one of the greatest classics. Melville, however, writes only that Billy, a foretopman, the handsome sailor, all strength and beauty, was always outstanding and “… in a gale, there he was, astride the weather yardarm-end, foot in the Flemish horse as stirrup, both hands tugging at the earing as at a bridle, in very much the attitude of young Alexander curbing the fiery 1 This article was published in the Actas del VIII Simposio Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Plutarquistas. Málaga: 2005, pp. 737-746. 2 Ordinary teacher in the Classical Greek Department at the University of Barcelona. Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes 585, 08007 Barcelona. Telephone: 934035996; fax: 934039092; e-mail: pgilabert@ub.edu; personal web page: www.paugilabertbarbera.com 3 Chapter 7. 4 Regarding all this, see e.g.: Lago, M. E. M. Forster. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan, 1995. 5 As an introduction to the author and his work, see e.g.: Hardwick, E. Melville. Barcelona: Mondadori, 2002 (first ed. New York: Viking Penguin, 2000), and on Billy Budd: Yanella, D. New Essays on Billy Budd. Cambridge: C. U. P., 2002.