"Best Done by Indirection": Fiction, Reality, and the Romantic Irony of Depravity in Herman Melville's Billy Budd

Abstract: This essay explores the role of Romantic irony, as theorized by Friedrich Schlegel, in Melville's "portrait" of Claggart in Billy Budd . Previous scholarship has largely focused on the novella's rhetorical irony, leaving criticism on Romantic irony underdeveloped. Schlegel envisioned irony as an act of infinite self-reflection recognizing the bounds of perception and understanding. This negative knowledge, in turn, perpetually gestures towards the "Incomprehensible"—that which transcends human apprehension—developing an understanding of transcendent truths "by indirection." In literature, Romantic irony is most frequently associated with the parabasis: when a work examines its own creation and inevitable limitations in a moment of self-reflection. I argue that Chapter 11 exemplifies Schlegel's notion of parabasis, interrupting the narrative to take the incomprehensible source and seemingly paradoxical manifestations of Claggart's depravity as its "object of contemplation." Assessing its treatment as "insufficient," the novella acknowledges the inability of the narrative and language to adequately represent absolute depravity, an act of self-reflexive criticism that obscures discernment between "inside" and "outside" narrative—fiction and reality. But through indeterminacy and by examining the limits of perception, representation, and understanding, Billy Budd's Romantic irony generates knowledge about the incomprehensible "mystery of iniquity" at the heart of Melville's final work.