Now, people who are interested in psychological insight into Melville and his works should check out Dr. Edward F. Edinger's Jungian commentary Melville's Moby-Dick : An American Nekyia, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1995) and Dr. Henry A. Murray's lengthy, occasionally Jungian, "Introduction" to the 1949 Hendricks House edition of Melville's 1852 novel Pierre (pages xiii-ciii).
For Dr. Murray's Freudian commentary on Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, see his essay written on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the novel's publication, "In Nomine Diaboli" in the New England Quarterly, volume 24, number 4 (December 1951): pages 435-452.
For a biography of Dr. Murray in which his extensive work on Melville is discussed extensively, see Forrest G. Robinson's book Love's Story Told: A Life of Henry A. Murray (Harvard University Press, 1992; see the "Index" for specific page references to Melville [page 455]).
Now, in the 1971 authoritative edition of Melville's 1852 novel Pierre, or, The Ambiguities, edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (Northwestern University Press), Leon Howard and Hershel Parker supplied the "Historical Note" (pages 365-379 and 379-410, respectively). Both Howard (page 369) and Parker (pages 400, 404, 405, 406, and 407) discuss Dr. Murray's lengthy 1949 "Introduction" to Melville's 1852 novel.
In Parker's footnote 15, on page 400, he says that Dr. Murray "actually created some new controversies by making debatable identifications between characters in the book and real people, particularly between [Plotinus] Plinlimmon and Hawthorne." For the record, Dr. Murray puts the Plinlimmon and Hawthorne identification in his classification of "Somewhat less convincing" correspondences (page xxii). In any event, Parker says nothing further about any other "new controversies" allegedly stirred up by Dr. Murray.
Now, in my estimate, the far more important point that Dr. Murray makes repeatedly is that Melville resembles Hollingsworth in Hawthorne's then-new 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance (pages lxxvi, lxxvii, lxxviii-lxxix, lxxxiii-lxxxiv, and lxxxviii) - an important theme in Dr. Murray's lengthy essay that Parker does not even mention. Let's look at each of Dr. Murray's five comments in turn about Hollingsworth and Melville.
(1) On page lxxvi, Dr. Murray says that "Hawthorne emphasizes [certain points that are also applicable to Melville] in his analysis of Hollingsworth, the inflexible enthusiast in The Blithedale Romance [1852]" - namely, "the injuries he does to others, the self-deceptions which blind him to essential truths, the hidden egotism which cancerously invades his heart, the progressive estrangement which brings him to misanthropy." But those are characteristics that Melville gives the Melville-character Pierre in his 1852 novel Pierre.
(2) On page lxxvii, Dr. Murray says that "the moral of Blithedale Romance insofar as it concerns Hollingsworth" is stated in this fashion by Hawthorne: "'I see in Hollingsworth [Melville?] an exemplification of the most awful truth in Bunyan's book of such - from the very gate of heaven there is a by-way to the pit.'" But is Hawthorne here referring in a veiled way to Melville circa 1850-1852? If he is, then Melville himself portrays Pierre in much the same way in his own 1852 novel.
(3) On pages lxxviii-lxxix, Dr. Murray says, "Hawthorne said openly that 'after Hollingsworth [Melville?] failed me, there was no longer man alive with whom I could think of sharing all.'" But does Hawthorne's comment about Hollingsworth apply to his relationship with Melville circa 1850-1852? For example, was Melville for a time a man with whom Hawthorne could share all? Or is Hawthorne here exaggerating about Hollingsworth to make a point?
(4) On page lxxxiii-lxxxiv, Dr. Murray says, "In The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne concedes that Hollingsworth [Melville?] had a 'noble nature' with a 'great spirit of benevolence,' but, unhappily, 'he had taught his benevolence to pour its warm tide exclusively through one channel; so that there was nothing to spare for other great manifestations of love to man, nor scarcely for the nutriment of individual attachments, unless they would minister, in some way, to the terrible egotism which he mistook for an angel of God.'" But is Hawthorne here also characterizing Melville circa 1850-1852?
(5) On page lxxxvii, Dr. Murray says, "Hawthorne portrays Hollingsworth's last condition in these words: 'the powerfully built man showed a self-distrustful weakness, and childlike or childish tendency to press close, and closer still, to the side of the slender woman whose arm was within his.'" But is Hawthorne here describing Melville circa 1850-1852?
Now, regardless of how we adjudicate the possible connection of Plinlimmon with Hawthorne, the connection of Vine in Melville's 1876 centennial poem Clarel with the then-deceased Hawthorne is widely attested by Melville scholars, including Dr. Murray (page lxxviii).
In conclusion, it seems to me that Hawthorne and Melville felt close to one another for a short time in the early 1850s. But then something happened that ended their sense of affinity with one another. Perhaps Hawthorne's critique of Hollingsworth in his 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance was, in effect, also his critique of Melville. But Melville's portrayal of the Melville character Pierre in his 1852 novel Pierre appears to make the character Pierre open to Hawthorne's critique of the character Hollingsworth in his 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance.
However, if Melville's portrayal of Plotinus Plinlimmon in his 1852 novel Pierre is his counter-critique of Hawthorne, as Dr. Murray has tentatively suggested in his 1949 "Introduction" to Pierre, then that portrayal of Plinlimmon may account for why the two men were never able to restore their previous relationship with one another. In any event, Melville's portrayal of Vine in his long 1876 poem Clarel does not strike me as a sharp critique of his former friend Hawthorne - or at least not as sharp as the possible critique implied in his portrayal of Plinlimmon in his 1852 novel Pierre.
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