Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse

[Extollager]

“Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent,” doesn’t work up to a pulp-style shock ending, since right from the title on we know that Roderick might have a ghastly snake inhabiting him. A fair bit of the story is not so much morality or narrative but, I suppose, a study of a variety of depression.

There are some suggestions of rather gross conditions, as when the narrator looks at himself in the mirror with his mouth open wide in hope of glimpsing the snake’s head down there. Ugh!

The association of the serpent with a fountain was interesting, fountains often suggesting purity and life, but I thought of Melusine, associated with water and, if I’m not imagining it, with a we’ll of some sort in some version(s) of the legend.

 

[Extollager]

"The Christmas Banquet" turned out to be -- what I never would have expected -- a sequel of sorts to "Egotism," being a somber story read by the recovered Roderick. It gradually becomes the portrait of Gervayse Hastings, a fortunate young man, whom we see at last as an old man who dies at one of these annual banquets for people who have suffered misfortune. His misfortunate was a lack of human sympathy, so he is a foreshadowing of Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter.

One of the banquet guests was "a man of nice conscience, who bore a blood-stain in his heart -- the death of a fellow-creature -- which, for his more exquisite torture, had chanced with such a peculiarity of circumstances, that he could not absolutely determine whether his will had entered into the deed, or not" (p. 857 my edition). This reminded me of the painful predicament of the young woman in Phyllis Paul's fine novel Twice Lost, a novel I have read four times.

 

[Extollager]

"Drowne's Wooden Image" is one of Hawthorne's pieces that consider the nature of artistic genius; here, the focus is on the possible temporariness of such as something indwelling the maker. Drowne is but once enabled to create a ship's figurehead of astonishing beauty and lifelikeness -- evidently inspired by the sight of a Portuguese woman. An artist whom I take to be portraitist John Singleton Copley is a supporting character.

That's Copley's Paul Revere.

"The Intelligence Office" is a sketch about wishes -- mostly the vanity of human wishes. There's a satirical edge to some bits of it but the feeling is far more sad than angry.

"Roger Malvin's Burial" is one of the great 19th-century short stories. Reuben Bourne feels guilty for having left his mortally wounded friend Roger to die in the wilderness, saving his own life as the older man implored him to do. Roger tries one method of persuasion after another -- there are about four of them, and you could base a freshman speech unit on persuasive speaking on them. At last Reuben agrees. But over the years he feels a guilt that alienates him from everyone else. Where he's actually guilty is not in having left his friend but in passively allowing the townspeople to make of him a their very own hero. The story climaxes when Roger accidentally shoots his son deep in the forest. Standing beneath a stricken oak, Reuben then feels that he has expiated his sin and now he can pray again. My own take is that a severe heaven has demanded no such "sacrifice," but that, rather, the story ends with a final confirmation of the tragic nature of Reuben's spiritual disease: that he would think thus.

 

[Bick]

I got hold of a copy of this collection recently - it will be read sometime in 2021.
I'm enjoying your monologue on the stories, Extollager, and look forward to reading them myself.

 

[Extollager]

"P.'s Correspondence" purports to be a letter written by a lunatic. He imagines himself (most of the time) to be living in the midst of London and reporting on the doings of various famous men, mostly poets -- all of whom are, actually, dead. Byron is a tubby conservative; Shelley is bound for the Church of England; Keats (writer of the famous odes) contemplates writing an epic; Coleridge has finished "Christabel" and ceased to be a philosophical monologuist. The piece is mildly amusing. It should be mostly intelligible without notes if the reader has had a traditional curriculum in English literature; of course that's a rarer thing every day, and consequently one imagines that notes to explain the ironies must proliferate if Hawthorne's piece is to be tolerable.

 

[Extollager]

"Earth's Holocaust" seemed to me more compelling than Hawthorne's allegorical sketches sometimes do.

It's a satire of the reforming zeal that would (literally or figuratively) burn up the productions of the "old world" so that humanity can start all over. In Hawthorne's story, the fire early on consumes military decorations and pedigrees of nobility; and we have the burning of the world's stock of liquors and wine; the literary works of the past are thrown into the fire, and the vestments and altar furniture of religion, and title deeds and marriage certificates and so on are tossed into the flames too, in this rather impressive fantasy. But at the end of the piece, a new figure arrives on the scene to say that the same old wrongs will return -- or worse ones will arise -- thanks to the wicked human heart.

Much the same point was made by the philosopher Leszek Kołakowski. See the third paragraph of a New York Review of Books article (24 Sept. 2009) by Tony Judt: ----"It was a defining feature of Leszek Kołakowski's intellectual trajectory that he took evil extremely seriously. Among Marx's false premises, in his view, was that all human shortcomings are rooted in social circumstances [and thus mendable by revolution]. Marx had 'entirely overlooked the possibility that some sources of conflict and aggression may be inherent in the permanent characteristics of the species.'"---

It's interesting to see Hawthorne writing an imaginative piece whose meaning is so close to that of Kołakowski, whose circumstances in time and space were so different from the American's. Interesting meeting of the minds.

 

[Extollager]

"Passages from a Relinquished Work" was appealing. I have often thought about how much more free, it seems, men at least were to just set out walking to see new (to them) places, to try different occupations (in a society less credential-ridden than ours), to sleep under the stars if need or inclination indicated, and so on. Hawthorne's protagonist hits the road, determined not to come home till, having left from the west, he shall return from the east. The piece might have been taken from a proposed longer work or it might be that that device was a convenient way to present a few sketches. In any event, in reading Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse (except for some stories I already new well), I found this to be among the things I liked most.

I know I posted this passage elsewhere here at Chrons recently, but it seems appropriate to share it again:

"Humans are not made to sit at computer terminals or travel by aeroplane; destiny intended something different for us. For too long now we have been estranged from the essential, which is the nomadic life: travelling on foot. A distinction must be made between hiking and travelling on foot. In today’s society – though it would be ridiculous to advocate travelling on foot for everyone to every possible destination – I personally would rather do the existentially essential things in my life on foot. If you live in England and your girlfriend is in Sicily, and it is clear that you want to marry her, then you should walk to Sicily to propose. For these things travel by car or aeroplane is not the right thing. The volume and depth and intensity of the world is something that only those on foot will ever experience."

Werner Herzog

I attach an essay that some people might like to read.

 

[Extollager]

"Sketches from Memory" must be based on Hawthorne's American notebooks. They convey his "discovery" of the Maine-Vermont-New Hampshire region, basically, and so might invite comparison with Thoreau's Maine Woods, a good book. I like this observant side of Hawthorne very much and think it deserves to be better known. His capacity as an examiner of the soul is well-known, but that he could write so well about the external world might surprise some people, also his enjoyment of pretty girls, such as a smiling Swiss immigrant with “a beautiful pair of naked white arms” on a boat that passes his on the Grand Canal — the Erie Canal, I take it. One likes him for recording how he disturbed the 19 other sleepers when he fell out of his bunk, between Utica and Syracuse. But then he goes on deck of this horse drawn boar and describes the dead trees to be seen by lanternlight, trees that died when the swampy ground was drained into “the great ditch of the canal.” He gets out to look at phosphorescent decaying wood etc. when the tow-rope has to be disentangled and the boat leaves before he realizes it, leaving him in the night to walk to Syracuse, where he trusts his luggage will be left.

 

[Extollager]

"The Old Apple-Dealer" is a sketch surely based on actual observation of a quiet, unassertive fellow who sells apples, cakes, and candy at the railroad station, apparently making just enough money to get by. It's an example of that great expansion of literature that occurred when writers wrote not only about notable, noble folk, but "commonplace" people who had been more or less invisible except in, to be sure, oral literature -- folktales, etc. Hawthorne is, no doubt, exercising his craft -- a writer must have some subject -- but he seems genuinely appreciative of the apple-seller too, and would like his readers to be.

I thought briefly of Melville's Bartleby, but a better literary parallel would be Isaac Bashevis Singer's gentile washerwoman from In My Father's Court.

I looked for an illustration for this posting and stumbled across this ridiculous image...:

This picture is closer to Hawthorne:

 

[Extollager]

"The Artist of the Beautiful" -- I'm interrupting my reading of it to jot a note here -- seems "old-fashioned," that is to say, it strikes one as different from what we are all about now in the various arts.

Here's the new Princeton Art Museum:

I have avoided examples of overtly political art in deference to Chrons policy, but there's no lack thereof; serving woke sensibility is what art is about, in the minds of many professing artists in various fields.

It seems to me that our time is the strange one. The view of art that's implied in the early pages of the story would, I think, have made sense to people of many different places and times. But the piece below by Damien Hirst -- ?

...I've finished "Artist," and that brings me to the end of Mosses from an Old Manse, since I read the final piece, "A Virtuoso's Collection," and commented on it here, earlier.

I enjoyed reading "Artist" again, but it's not one of my favorite Hawthorne stories; through no fault of its own, we have since had more works about the suffering of the underappreciated artist over against the utilitarian world than, I suppose, were required. But Hawthorne was writing almost 200 years ago.

 

[dask]

Here's my copy which I decided read to help relieve sections of unending horror in my current main read, The Brothers Of Auschwitz.

 

[Bick]

That's the edition I have too, Dask.

That Damien Hirst makes me shudder; not from the image, which is actually rather mundane; but by the vacuous 'modern' sensibilities that ascribe quality to it. "It's art because it's shocking" - no, its not, it's rubbish.

 

[Bick]

I've made a start on Mosses from an Old Manse, and will contribute some thoughts as I make my way slowly through it.

I quite liked how the book starts, with a prelude of sorts (though it's not named as such): an essay on The Old Manse. This is a fairly long description of, and philosophical discussion on the value of, the Old Manse - the house Hawthorne resided at between 1842 and 1846 in Concord, Massachusetts, where he wrote the majority of these tales. It's very nicely described, and the orchards, Concord River and House itself are rendered tangible and delightful*. I was quietly amused by the undertaking to start a short story collection this way. It's a very pastoral, relaxed way to introduce a story collection. I can imagine the response if David Weber rang up his publisher and said, "I've got a selection of short stories I'd like collected into a new book. The thing is, I want to spend the first 30 pages of the book languidly describing the house and grounds where I wrote the stories. Is that okay?". Time's have changed. Not necessarily for the better.

The first story proper, The Birthmark, is a cracker. A man of science has grown to intensely dislike the birthmark on his wife's cheek. They agree that he will use his knowledge of scie3nce and elixirs to remove the mark. Of course, it doesn't end well. This is beautifully told, and explores the themes of obsession, science versus nature, and the futility and irresponsibity of seeking perfection in an imperfect world. I suspect this gets on a lot of reading lists for students.

More later - but so far, I'm enjoying it very much.

[* I especially enjoyed the reflection that the river was so slow at this stage of its course, that it took Hawthorne a few weeks residence at The Old Manse to work out which way it was flowing!]

Image: looking back toward the old Manse, from the other side of the Concord. You can see how still the river seems, just as Hawthorne describes:

 

[dask]

I tried to write my impression of The Old Manse earlier but couldn’t quite organize it the way I kept rough drafting it in my mind. You echoed pretty much everything I wanted to say though.

 

[Bick]

The next tale, A Select Party, is a fantastical allegory piece, in which a party, hosted by a Man of Fancy in his cloud castle, attracts imagined stereotypes and famous caricatures. It's certainly of its time, and would not reward skimming through. Careful reading shows that it is quite comedic and well observed. The Oldest Inhabitant, the Dream, the Master Genius, and so on, are caricatures drawn from the popular notion that such people exist and are sought after, when in fact they are human delusions. This seems to me to be Hawthorne gently mocking the establishment with it's salon parties that are given more importance than is justified. The final conclusion to the party in the castle reveals the ephemeral nature of delusion. At least, that's how I read it. The sort of story you'd need to be in the right mood for, as it's aged undoubtedly, but quite enjoyable even now.

Next up are two very famous tales... I'm looking forward to those.

 

[Extollager]

From whatever source, I loved the photo of the Old Manse above the Concord River, Bick.

 

[Bick]

From whatever source, I loved the photo of the Old Manse above the Concord River, Bick.

Snipped from a zoomed shot taken off google maps, believe it or not.

Continuing my slow read of the short stories...
Young Goodman Brown is a powerful tale, as one would expect from its reputation. Apparently Stephen King considers it one of the best American short stories and it was inspiration for one of his tales (I forget which one). I guess the take home message from the tale is that you should have courage in your own convictions; if you are too swayed by those around you, you may lose your moral compass - Goodman Brown loses his own faith once he sees the hypocrisy of his fellow villagers. Some of the imagery in the forest is terrific.

 

[Extollager]

"Young Goodman Brown" is devastating. I have come to take it that the key to the story is the first paragraph. Brown might be thinking that he could face a test when he goes into the forest. But the poor schmuck, the test already came and he failed it when he put off his wife despite her anxiety. Dude, you don't do that. But he did. Everything else follows from that failure of love and compassion. The test came and he didn't recognize it.

There are almost no other stories that scare me the way this one does, because of this. We so readily think we probably could pass the great test of our character, or we hope we would -- with the idea that when it comes it will look like The Big Test. But we have no guarantee that it will. God help us, maybe it already came and we never knew.

Then you start seeing this sort of thing in other great literature. For example, Frodo passed a test when he offered the Ring to Galadriel: he showed that he was humble and that the Ring had not clutched his heart. Galadriel faced a Big Test then that looked like a Big Test -- take the Ring and use it, and become a terrible Queen? She passed the test too. But look, the thing is that she then gives Frodo the Phial that will be crucial in his coming through the ordeal with Shelob that he has to survive in order that the Ring can be taken to the Fire. When Frodo talked to Galadriel he had no notion that this was the Big Test -- I'm not even certain Tolkien had that notion, not quite, consciously. But the fate of the world was decided at that moment in that supposedly safe place, Lothlorien.

 

[Bick]

"Young Goodman Brown" is devastating. I have come to take it that the key to the story is the first paragraph. Brown might be thinking that he could face a test when he goes into the forest. But... the test already came and he failed it when he put off his wife despite her anxiety...

That's an interesting and insightful reading of the story, Extollager, thanks.

 

[Extollager]

I don't know if that's how Hawthorne saw it, but that's the irresistible reading for me now.