{"id":"01KG8AKWWKV2HEFVPYWJFV681V","cid":"bafkreihpvkde6lpsitecarzhw6tm7hfsvesw5cdtsmdezsz5e5xvfcdo5i","type":"section","properties":{"description":"# III.\n\n## Overview\nThis document is the third section of Chapter XXII of Herman Melville's novel *Pierre*. It is a textual segment extracted from the file `pierre.txt`.\n\n## Context\nThis section is part of [BOOK XXII.](arke:01KG8AJTE6GRQZD9J8Z7DXSWWC), which is contained within the larger collection [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW). The text was extracted from the file `pierre.txt` and is preceded by section II. and followed by section IV.\n\n## Contents\nSection III. presents a passage where the character Pierre is writing. The text includes a lengthy soliloquy attributed to a character named Vivia, who expresses profound despair and disillusionment with philosophy and the universe. Vivia's monologue critiques figures like Spinoza, Plato, and Goethe, rejecting their philosophies and expressing hatred for the world. The section also includes several \"random slips\" of text, seemingly fragments of Pierre's writing, that further emphasize his internal turmoil and awareness of his own difficult circumstances. The narrative concludes by stating that despite Pierre's consciousness of his \"fatal condition,\" he possesses no power to change it, likening his soul's state to that of drowning men.","description_generated_at":"2026-01-30T20:50:20.842Z","description_model":"gemini-2.5-flash-lite","description_title":"III.","end_line":13424,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:07.471Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"III.","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":13359,"text":"III.\r\n\r\nSome hours pass. Let us peep over the shoulder of Pierre, and see what\r\nit is he is writing there, in that most melancholy closet. Here, topping\r\nthe reeking pile by his side, is the last sheet from his hand, the\r\nfrenzied ink not yet entirely dry. It is much to our purpose; for in\r\nthis sheet, he seems to have directly plagiarized from his own\r\nexperiences, to fill out the mood of his apparent author-hero, Vivia,\r\nwho thus soliloquizes: \"A deep-down, unutterable mournfulness is in me.\r\nNow I drop all humorous or indifferent disguises, and all philosophical\r\npretensions. I own myself a brother of the clod, a child of the Primeval\r\nGloom. Hopelessness and despair are over me, as pall on pall. Away, ye\r\nchattering apes of a sophomorean Spinoza and Plato, who once didst all\r\nbut delude me that the night was day, and pain only a tickle. Explain\r\nthis darkness, exorcise this devil, ye can not. Tell me not, thou\r\ninconceivable coxcomb of a Goethe, that the universe can not spare thee\r\nand thy immortality, so long as--like a hired waiter--thou makest\r\nthyself 'generally useful.' Already the universe gets on without thee,\r\nand could still spare a million more of the same identical kidney.\r\nCorporations have no souls, and thy Pantheism, what was that? Thou wert\r\nbut the pretensious, heartless part of a man. Lo! I hold thee in this\r\nhand, and thou art crushed in it like an egg from which the meat hath\r\nbeen sucked.\"\r\n\r\nHere is a slip from the floor.\r\n\r\n\"Whence flow the panegyrical melodies that precede the march of these\r\nheroes? From what but from a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal!\"\r\n\r\nAnd here is a second.\r\n\r\n\"Cast thy eye in there on Vivia; tell me why those four limbs should be\r\nclapt in a dismal jail--day out, day in--week out, week in--month out,\r\nmonth in--and himself the voluntary jailer! Is this the end of\r\nphilosophy? This the larger, and spiritual life? This your boasted\r\nempyrean? Is it for this that a man should grow wise, and leave off his\r\nmost excellent and calumniated folly?\"\r\n\r\nAnd here is a third.\r\n\r\n\"Cast thy eye in there on Vivia; he, who in the pursuit of the highest\r\nhealth of virtue and truth, shows but a pallid cheek! Weigh his heart in\r\nthy hand, oh, thou gold-laced, virtuoso Goethe! and tell me whether it\r\ndoes not exceed thy standard weight!\"\r\n\r\nAnd here is a fourth.\r\n\r\n\"Oh God, that man should spoil and rust on the stalk, and be wilted and\r\nthreshed ere the harvest hath come! And oh God, that men that call\r\nthemselves men should still insist on a laugh! I hate the world, and\r\ncould trample all lungs of mankind as grapes, and heel them out of their\r\nbreath, to think of the woe and the cant,--to think of the Truth and the\r\nLie! Oh! blessed be the twenty-first day of December, and cursed be the\r\ntwenty-first day of June!\"\r\n\r\nFrom these random slips, it would seem, that Pierre is quite conscious\r\nof much that is so anomalously hard and bitter in his lot, of much that\r\nis so black and terrific in his soul. Yet that knowing his fatal\r\ncondition does not one whit enable him to change or better his\r\ncondition. Conclusive proof that he has no power over his condition. For\r\nin tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough\r\nthey know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that\r\nperil;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do\r\ndrown.\r\n\r\n\r","title":"III."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJTE6GRQZD9J8Z7DXSWWC","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKWWKQBHRN6M68YR1NW4A","peer_type":"section","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKHN66PNAP0Q5E7XR8NG2","peer_type":"section","predicate":"next"}],"ver":3,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:19.347Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:50:21.039Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF5C36SQEVDHC9CBNZZJH9K"}}