登陆注册
5422300000059

第59章 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE(3)

Mr. Hutton, from whose "Literary Essays" I borrow Poe's opinion, says: "Poe boldly asserted that the conspicuously ideal scaffoldings of Hawthorne's stories were but the monstrous fruits of the bad transcendental atmosphere which he breathed so long."But I hope this way of putting it is not Poe's. "Ideal scaffoldings," are odd enough, but when scaffoldings turn out to be "fruits" of an "atmosphere," and monstrous fruits of a "bad transcendental atmosphere," the brain reels in the fumes of mixed metaphors. "Let him mend his pen," cried Poe, "get a bottle of visible ink, come out from the Old Manse, cut Mr. Alcott," and, in fact, write about things less impalpable, as Mr. Mallock's heroine preferred to be loved, "in a more human sort of way."Hawthorne's way was never too ruddily and robustly human. Perhaps, even in "The Scarlet Letter," we feel too distinctly that certain characters are moral conceptions, not warmed and wakened out of the allegorical into the real. The persons in an allegory may be real enough, as Bunyan has proved by examples. But that culpable clergyman, Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, with his large, white brow, his melancholy eyes, his hand on his heart, and his general resemblance to the High Church Curate in Thackeray's "Our Street," is he real?

To me he seems very unworthy to be Hester's lover, for she is a beautiful woman of flesh and blood. Mr. Dimmesdale was not only immoral; he was unsportsmanlike. He had no more pluck than a church-mouse. His miserable passion was degraded by its brevity;how could he see this woman's disgrace for seven long years, and never pluck up heart either to share her shame or peccare forliter?

He is a lay figure, very cleverly, but somewhat conventionally made and painted. The vengeful husband of Hester, Roger Chillingworth, is a Mr. Casaubon stung into jealous anger. But his attitude, watching ever by Dimmesdale, tormenting him, and yet in his confidence, and ever unsuspected, reminds one of a conception dear to Dickens. He uses it in "David Copperfield," where Mr. Micawber (of all people!) plays this trick on Uriah Heep; he uses it in "Hunted Down"; he was about using it in "Edwin Drood"; he used it (old Martin and Pecksniff) in "Martin Chuzzlewit." The person of Roger Chillingworth and his conduct are a little too melodramatic for Hawthorne's genius.

In Dickens's manner, too, is Hawthorne's long sarcastic address to Judge Pyncheon (in "The House of the Seven Gables"), as the judge sits dead in his chair, with his watch ticking in his hand.

Occasionally a chance remark reminds one of Dickens; this for example: He is talking of large, black old books of divinity, and of their successors, tiny books, Elzevirs perhaps. "These little old volumes impressed me as if they had been intended for very large ones, but had been unfortunately blighted at an early stage of their growth." This might almost deceive the elect as a piece of the true Boz. Their widely different talents did really intersect each other where the perverse, the grotesque, and the terrible dwell.

To myself "The House of the Seven Gables" has always appeared the most beautiful and attractive of Hawthorne's novels. He actually gives us a love story, and condescends to a pretty heroine. The curse of "Maule's Blood" is a good old romantic idea, terribly handled. There is more of lightness, and of a cobwebby dusty humour in Hepzibah Pyncheon, the decayed lady shopkeeper, than Hawthorne commonly cares to display. Do you care for the "first lover," the Photographer's Young Man? It may be conventional prejudice, but I seem to see him going about on a tricycle, and Idon't think him the right person for Phoebe. Perhaps it is really the beautiful, gentle, oppressed Clifford who haunts one's memory most, a kind of tragic and thwarted Harold Skimpole. "How pleasant, how delightful," he murmured, but not as if addressing any one.

"Will it last? How balmy the atmosphere through that open window!

An open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine. Those flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl's face, how cheerful, how blooming. A flower with the dew on it, and sunbeams in the dewdrops . . . " This comparison with Skimpole may sound like an unkind criticism of Clifford's character and place in the story--it is only a chance note of a chance resemblance.

Indeed, it may be that Hawthorne himself was aware of the resemblance. "An individual of Clifford's character," he remarks, "can always be pricked more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart." And he suggests that, if Clifford had not been so long in prison, his aesthetic zeal "might have eaten out or filed away his affections." This was what befell Harold Skimpole--himself "in prisons often"--at Coavinses! The Judge Pyncheon of the tale is also a masterly study of swaggering black-hearted respectability, and then, in addition to all the poetry of his style, and the charm of his haunted air, Hawthorne favours us with a brave conclusion of the good sort, the old sort. They come into money, they marry, they are happy ever after. This is doing things handsomely, though some of our modern novelists think it coarse and degrading. Hawthorne did not think so, and they are not exactly better artists than Hawthorne.

Yet he, too, had his economies, which we resent. I do not mean his not telling us what it was that Roger Chillingworth saw on Arthur Dimmesdale's bare breast. To leave that vague is quite legitimate.

But what had Miriam and the spectre of the Catacombs done? Who was the spectre? What did he want? To have told all this would have been better than to fill the novel with padding about Rome, sculpture, and the Ethics of Art. As the silly saying runs: "the people has a right to know" about Miriam and her ghostly acquaintance. But the "Marble Faun" is not of Hawthorne's best period, beautiful as are a hundred passages in the tale.

Beautiful passages are as common in his prose as gold in the richest quartz. How excellent are his words on the first faint but certain breath of Autumn in the air, felt, perhaps, early in July.

"And then came Autumn, with his immense burthen of apples, dropping them continually from his overladen shoulders as he trudged along."Keats might have written so of Autumn in the orchards--if Keats had been writing prose.

There are geniuses more sunny, large, and glad than Hawthorne's, none more original, more surefooted, in his own realm of moonlight and twilight.

同类推荐
  • 火[合牛]供养仪轨

    火[合牛]供养仪轨

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • A Man of Business

    A Man of Business

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 介庵进禅师语录

    介庵进禅师语录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 钱塘遗事

    钱塘遗事

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 重修福建台湾府志

    重修福建台湾府志

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 无限武道传

    无限武道传

    江湖血、天下命、身中魂、肩上刀!萧沙意外来到一个陌生而熟悉的世界,熟悉的武功、不同的人物,还有更加神秘莫测的武神空间,一切都超出意料之外。未及准备,一切都已如历史巨轮滚滚前行,从此江湖、天下、无尽空间、传说四起!北冥神功的极致、长生决的终点、霹雳金光武学乱入……听过的、没听过的,纷纷化作切身体会的天下江湖!
  • The Christmas Books

    The Christmas Books

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 我家系统太佛系

    我家系统太佛系

    作为一个想装逼打脸走上人生巅峰的宿主,却遇到佛系咸鱼的系统,那怎么办?唐小九曰:硬肛啊!唐小九:“身为系统界王者,假装青铜太不要脸了。”系统:“我不要脸的啊!”……分割线……这是一个从和系统相爱相杀,变成相亲相爱一起征服世界的故事。(轻松逗比日常的故事,读者→君羊:807-563-634)
  • 女儿桥

    女儿桥

    这是一部很抓人的小说,女主人公月华下嫁到杏花村,跟吴家三兄弟发生了错综复杂的感情纠葛。一个是没领结婚证的丈夫,一个是她苦苦追求的大学生,一个憨憨傻傻,最终却成了她的丈夫。她外出打工被骗,后来又去省城当保姆,又跟两个男人有了亲密接触。哎哟哟,一个乡下女儿竟同五个男人有染,这也真够风流的!可她为吴家和杏花村作出的贡献却让村民感动:吴家摆脱了贫困,村民也走上致富路。老支书称赞她是一位救苦救难的当代圣母。故事曲折,情节生动,作者将笔触深入到人物内心深处,发掘出人物的真、善、美,表达了人们在新农村建设中的理想和追求。
  • 主播别皮,我家男神暗恋你!

    主播别皮,我家男神暗恋你!

    【外语系励志当声优迟婉Vs计算机系系草慕则】众粉丝知道自家主播皮,能皮上天的那种!但是什么情况?对面大兄弟怎么跟主播用了情头?!我去!情侣名都起好了???粉丝一:这个人是谁?拱了我家大白菜!!!粉丝二:我去!我的四十米大长刀呢!谁给我收起来了!我得宰了他!!啊啊啊,我老婆啊!粉丝三:我有句话想说!我都没下手呢,这男的怎敢下手!我纯情的仕林哥哥啊!粉丝四:这个皮皮虾似的主播有了野男人了???我不信我不信~粉丝五:嘤嘤嘤~仕林哥哥怎么这样子抛弃了我!!!……看着混乱的弹幕,迟婉表示:淡定同志们,这是对面玩王者的主播,你们男神,慕则。
  • 如何说员工才肯听 怎样管员工才肯干

    如何说员工才肯听 怎样管员工才肯干

    在本书中,作者依据多年的管理咨询和培训经验,围绕中层干部识人、选人、用人三大主题,提炼了必修的管理法则。这些法则的内容涵盖了中、基层管理活动的方方面面。在内容上,旨在指明管理实践中必须遵循的原则性纲领及其实践应用方法,全书言简意赅,对中、基层管理者的管理活动具有重要的启示意义和指导价值。
  • 洞真太上飞行羽经九真升玄上记

    洞真太上飞行羽经九真升玄上记

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 伅真陀罗所问宝如来三昧经

    伅真陀罗所问宝如来三昧经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 养在深闺人未识

    养在深闺人未识

    爱情也有味道:爱一个人,对方也爱你,甜的居多;爱一个人,对方不知道,酸的居多;爱一个人,对方不爱你,则苦的居多。酸甜苦,每一个滋味都暗藏一个故事,每一个滋味都代表一段感情……
  • 天降超级管家

    天降超级管家

    名门贵族学校来了个土包子大小姐!?她是大财团流落在外的千金大小姐,做事粗鲁、直率,毫无淑女风范。他是超级管家,舍弃校园超级名媛,转而侍奉粗野大小姐。却不想野蛮小姐要转正,不做大小姐做女友,一场贵族学校的爱情追逐战就此展开……