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Horizons, v. 7, issue 4, whole 27, June 1946
Page 4
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Twice-Told but Seldom Read When I mentioned my interest in Nathaniel Hawthorne to several correspondents, I got the closest thing to a blank gaping look that can be transferred in the medium of correspondence. This was not to be wondered at. With some justification, his works have gained the reputation of being hopelessly outmoded, unpleasantly moral, and boresomely tedious. Yet the truth is that those same charges can be laid against almost any great fiction written before 1900: It's hard to find in the "classics" stories which are written like Stenbeck and Hemingway. If a person is not going to neglect the classic fantasies altogether, he should take a long and careful scrutiny of Hawthorne. One good thing about it is that Hawthorne's fiction is very easily obtainable. The Modern Library publishes, in volume G57, the five novels and three dosen of the more important short stories. Most of the latter are definitely fantasy; the novels contain only a certain strain of the unusual here and there. Not that the novels can be dismissed altogether. The first, "Fanshawe" can be left out of consideration as a literary curiosity- a sort of "before" sample of the "before" and "after" of a great writer's striving to attain his style. But "The House of the Seven Gables" is a tale replete with references to witchcraft and superstition; its influence is still discernible in modern times, in such things as the recent movie, "The Woman Who Came Back" and even in "The Burning Court". The story is famous enough that it isn't a crime to reveal here how it turns out: There is a mundane explanation. But Hawthorne succeeded remarkably well in his avowed purpose - that of creating an atmosphere of legend and dim things out of the past in a country that was brand new. No other writer of his day could have resisted the temptation to set "The House" in England; it was the logical thing to do, but Hawthorne was determined to help create a mythology for his own country. Of the other novels, "The Scarlet Letter" contains less of fantastic, though more of literary, merit, and "The Marble Faun" is also wholly mundane, unless one insists on believing that Donatello's ears really were extraordinary as some of the characters suspect until the end. "The Blithedale Romance", on the other hand, was something like a utopia novel for its day, and if Astounding had been publishing in the middle 19th century, could have appeared there as sociological fiction, presumably. It is the story of an experiment in a new sort of living - new to that day - a not too carefully disguised fictional version of the famous "transcendental socialism" of Brook Farm, where Hawthorne had spent some time discovering that shoveling manure is not conducive to a new way of life. The events in the story are not extraordinary, however, and the principal female character, Zenobia, doesn't seem to be as interesting today as she was in the straight-laced past. Yet in all these novels, a certain sense of unreality that has nothing to with lack of realism persists. Hawthorne himself once wrote what he was trying "to establish a theatre, a little removed from the highway of ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may play their phantasmagorical antics, without exposing them to too close a comparison with the actual events of real lives. . . . .Among ourselves . . . . . .there is as yet no such Faery Land, so like the real world, that is a suitable remoteness, one cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, beheld through which the inhabitants have a propriety of their own." Hawthorne achieves all this first of all through his settings - the past of the "The Scarlet Letter", the old "House of the Seven Gables", the experimental community of "The Blithedale Romance", and the remoteness of Italy for "The Marble Faun". More important, however, is the manner in which he mizes the fancy of his metaphors and symbolism throughout even the most realistic passages - and Hawthorne could be very "realistic" in the modern sense when he desired, very grimly so, almost revoltingly so. The best example of all this is the famous 13th chapter of "The House of the Seven Gables", whererin the villainous judge, sitting dead in a chair, is apostrophized at extreme length by the author. It is obvious to the reader that the Judge is
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Twice-Told but Seldom Read When I mentioned my interest in Nathaniel Hawthorne to several correspondents, I got the closest thing to a blank gaping look that can be transferred in the medium of correspondence. This was not to be wondered at. With some justification, his works have gained the reputation of being hopelessly outmoded, unpleasantly moral, and boresomely tedious. Yet the truth is that those same charges can be laid against almost any great fiction written before 1900: It's hard to find in the "classics" stories which are written like Stenbeck and Hemingway. If a person is not going to neglect the classic fantasies altogether, he should take a long and careful scrutiny of Hawthorne. One good thing about it is that Hawthorne's fiction is very easily obtainable. The Modern Library publishes, in volume G57, the five novels and three dosen of the more important short stories. Most of the latter are definitely fantasy; the novels contain only a certain strain of the unusual here and there. Not that the novels can be dismissed altogether. The first, "Fanshawe" can be left out of consideration as a literary curiosity- a sort of "before" sample of the "before" and "after" of a great writer's striving to attain his style. But "The House of the Seven Gables" is a tale replete with references to witchcraft and superstition; its influence is still discernible in modern times, in such things as the recent movie, "The Woman Who Came Back" and even in "The Burning Court". The story is famous enough that it isn't a crime to reveal here how it turns out: There is a mundane explanation. But Hawthorne succeeded remarkably well in his avowed purpose - that of creating an atmosphere of legend and dim things out of the past in a country that was brand new. No other writer of his day could have resisted the temptation to set "The House" in England; it was the logical thing to do, but Hawthorne was determined to help create a mythology for his own country. Of the other novels, "The Scarlet Letter" contains less of fantastic, though more of literary, merit, and "The Marble Faun" is also wholly mundane, unless one insists on believing that Donatello's ears really were extraordinary as some of the characters suspect until the end. "The Blithedale Romance", on the other hand, was something like a utopia novel for its day, and if Astounding had been publishing in the middle 19th century, could have appeared there as sociological fiction, presumably. It is the story of an experiment in a new sort of living - new to that day - a not too carefully disguised fictional version of the famous "transcendental socialism" of Brook Farm, where Hawthorne had spent some time discovering that shoveling manure is not conducive to a new way of life. The events in the story are not extraordinary, however, and the principal female character, Zenobia, doesn't seem to be as interesting today as she was in the straight-laced past. Yet in all these novels, a certain sense of unreality that has nothing to with lack of realism persists. Hawthorne himself once wrote what he was trying "to establish a theatre, a little removed from the highway of ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may play their phantasmagorical antics, without exposing them to too close a comparison with the actual events of real lives. . . . .Among ourselves . . . . . .there is as yet no such Faery Land, so like the real world, that is a suitable remoteness, one cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, beheld through which the inhabitants have a propriety of their own." Hawthorne achieves all this first of all through his settings - the past of the "The Scarlet Letter", the old "House of the Seven Gables", the experimental community of "The Blithedale Romance", and the remoteness of Italy for "The Marble Faun". More important, however, is the manner in which he mizes the fancy of his metaphors and symbolism throughout even the most realistic passages - and Hawthorne could be very "realistic" in the modern sense when he desired, very grimly so, almost revoltingly so. The best example of all this is the famous 13th chapter of "The House of the Seven Gables", whererin the villainous judge, sitting dead in a chair, is apostrophized at extreme length by the author. It is obvious to the reader that the Judge is
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