Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man: (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") — John Shaqi
Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man: (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches")Hawthorne, Nathaniel
General
Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man: (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches")
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Diary fiction
space should be completed, the world would have one butterfly the less,
by my far flight.
“O, how fond I was of life, even while allotting, as my proper destiny,
an early death! I loved the world, its cities, its villages, its grassy
roadsides, its wild forests, its quiet scenes, its gay, warm, enlivening
bustle; in every aspect, I loved the world so long as I could behold it
with young eyes and dance through it with a young heart. The earth had
been made so beautiful, that I longed for no brighter sphere, but only
an ever-youthful eternity in this. I clung to earth as if my beginning
and ending were to be there, unable to imagine any but an earthly
happiness, and choosing such, with all its imperfections, rather than
perfect bliss which might be alien from it. Alas! I had not wet known
that weariness by which the soul proves itself ethereal.”
Turning over the old journal, I open, by chance, upon a passage which
affords a signal instance of the morbid fancies to which Oberon
frequently yielded himself. Dreams like the following were probably
engendered by the deep gloom sometimes thrown over his mind by his
reflections on death.
“I dreamed that one bright forenoon I was walking through Broadway, and
seeking to cheer myself with the warm and busy life of that far-famed
promenade. Here a coach thundered over the pavement, and there an
unwieldy omnibus, with spruce gigs rattling past, and horsemen prancing
through all the bustle. On the sidewalk people were looking at the rich
display of goods, the plate and jewelry, or the latest caricature ill
the bookseller’s windows; while fair ladies and whiskered gentlemen
tripped gayly along, nodding mutual recognitions, or shrinking from some
rough countryman or sturdy laborer whose contact might have ruffled
their finery. I found myself in this animated scene, with a dim and
misty idea that it was not my proper place, or that I had ventured into
the crowd with some singularity of dress or aspect which made me
ridiculous. Walking in the sunshine, I was yet cold as death. By
degrees, too, I perceived myself the object of universal attention, and,
as it seemed, of horror and affright. Every face grew pale; the laugh
was hushed, and the voices died away in broken syllables; the people in
the shops crowded to the doors with a ghastly stare, and the passengers
oil all sides fled as from an embodied pestilence. The horses reared
and snorted. An old beggar-woman sat before St. Paul’s Church, with her
withered palm stretched out to all, but drew it back from me, and
pointed to the graves and monuments in that populous churchyard. Three
lovely girls whom I had formerly known, ran shrieking across the street.
A personage in black, whom I was about to overtake, suddenly turned his
head and showed the features of a long-lost friend. He gave me a look
of horror and was gone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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