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THE SYMBOL OF COMPLEXITY: “I AND MY CHIMNEY” AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN THE CONTEXT OF MELVILLE’S LATER WRITINGS

Like most of Melville's works, "I and My Chimney" has received its share of attention. Too much for some for those, in particular, who like Ray B.Browne insist that it "is too long and rambling, and, perhaps more important, its meanings are difficult to fathom because they are imprecisely delineated". The first objection concems the story's scarcity of narrative incident in relation to its length, the second is directed against its symbolic complexity. For the modern reader, whose decoding ability is based on his knowledge of narrative texts, the lack of action makes Melville's ambiguities even more irritating than they are in his other works. And yet, the story's paradoxical self-reflecting aspects should make it appeal to a modern audience. A summary of the plot looks meager, indeed. In "I and My Chimney" an elderly narrator recounts his feelings of attachment to the central figure of his old farmhouse, an enormous, pyramidically shaped chimney. He describes at length the architectural details of the building and teils of the repeated attempts of his termagant wife and his two daughters to make him remove the chimney which they regard äs an obstacle to the ways of modernization. Their efForts culminate in a conspiracy with a local architect, Hiram Scribe, to convince the narrator of the existence of a secret closet in the chimney. But since the search for the closet and its presumed contents would end in the demolishment of the chimney, the narrator refuses to cooperate, bribes Scribe into silence and, at the end