Bartleby's dead-wall revery

I saw something new in “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853).  New to me, of course; old news to previous re-readers.  Maybe not even new to me.  Maybe I had read about it somewhere.  Who knows.

With a story like “Bartleby” – with a reader like me – I am unsure of the point of seeing new things.  In theory, I need as complete a picture of a work as possible to develop an interpretation, and thus any new observation should lead to a new interpretation.

But I have already concluded that “Bartleby the Scrivener” is a radically ambiguous work that supports multiple interpretations, not all of them exclusive.  In a more puzzle-like text, I can use clues to limit interpretation.  Everything in “Bartleby” just leads to more.  Bartleby, the clerk who would prefer not to work, is an example of white collar Marxist alienation.  Bartleby, the man who would prefer not to eat, move, or, eventually, live, symbolizes a crisis of purpose or meaning.  Or perhaps his fate is positive, if, say, he is abandoning material things and embracing the Schopenhauerian Will.  Or perhaps I am supposed to be wondering about Bartleby’s employer, the lawyer who narrates the story, more than Bartleby.  His sympathy for his clerk may be more mysterious than Bartleby’s refusals.

All of the above, I guess.

What did I see?  The wall.  It was right there in the title, which, in full, is “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street.”  Before introducing Bartleby, the narrator describes his office, including the view from a particular window:

In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes.  Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern.

The jokey tone deflects any meaning from the wall at this point.  It’s just part of a cramped Manhattan office.

When Bartleby joins the form as a clerk – he is strange but not completely passive from the beginning – he is put in a cubicle by this window.  Or is it the same window?  No, “[w]ithin three feet of the panes was a wall,” so worse, but not in everlasting shade – “the light came down from far above, between two lofty buildings, as from a very small opening in a dome.”  When not working Bartleby “would stand looking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall.”

Eventually the narrator decides he “must get rid of a demented man,” but he is stymied by his sympathy combined with an error:

The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery.   Upon asking him why he did not write, he said that he had decided upon doing no more writing.

"Why, how now? what next?" exclaimed I, "do no more writing?"

"No more."

"And what is the reason?"

"Do you not see the reason for yourself," he indifferently replied.

I looked steadfastly at him, and perceived that his eyes looked dull and glazed.

The error is that the lawyer concludes that Bartleby’s vision has been harmed by his work.  But the visionary Bartleby is not referring to his eyes, but to the wall.  The reason is in the wall.  He can see it, whatever it is, even if the lawyer cannot.

I won’t take trace the idea all the way through, except to note that at the end of the story we see Bartleby with his “his face towards a high wall,” and he dies “[s]trangely huddled at the base of the wall.”  The narrator is the one telling me all of this, but he does not seem to grasp the significance, which is fair enough, since neither do I.  I am turning “Bartleby” into a puzzle despite my certainty that it is no such thing, with no solution, just clues.