Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864; Novelists, American -- 19th century -- Biography
alive; but the drawing that reproduces the model as the demon's face,
the sketches of Miriam portraying a woman's revengeful mischief, the
sights that Donatello and Kenyon shape out of the sunset, the
benediction of the statue of the pontiff, the evasive eyes of Beatrice
felt in Hilda, Donatello, and Miriam, are instances of borrowed or
attributed life, which illustrate how constantly and effectively
Hawthorne uses this means of expression, and it is the chief means by
which he has integrated and harmonized the various material into a whole
artistically felt. It is an error, however, to force his interpretation
too far, as in the attempt to see in the Beatrice portrait a shadow of
Miriam's mystery; if such a thought crossed his mind, it left no record
of itself, and he was as ignorant as others of Miriam's actual past, one
may be sure. That unwillingness to be gazed upon, of which he makes so
much, recurring to it again and again and most pointedly in Donatello,
was the simplest and primary symbol to him, apparently, of the shock of
sin, whether it were in the victim like Beatrice or the participant like
Donatello or the spectator like Hilda. In Miriam it is less felt,
because to her the knowledge of evil had come in her earlier career.
It is in rendering this spiritual shock, disturbing the very seat of
life, that Hawthorne best succeeds in the moral part of his subject; and
it is by awakening some answering vibration in his readers that he
imparts to the romance that universal interest which makes it rank so
high as it does in the literature of the soul's life. He was not,
however, very apt in the mechanics of his art, and in lieu of structure
such as a man of far less faculty might be an adept in, he finds in his
imagined tale a principle of life itself; his work is seldom well
reasoned, but it has vital germs of thought, emotion, and action, and
these are loosed into activity and grow of themselves, and he fosters
and develops them in his richly brooding mind. So, here, the spiritual
shock, which is the central spring of the romance, is allowed to
transmit itself in every direction, and he lays bare its workings. It is
saddest in Donatello in the moment when he heard the cry of the falling
wretch, when he turned cold at Miriam's touch, when he lost his kinship
with the wild creatures he loved; and it is fixed in his unquiet,
evasive eyes. One loves Donatello, and of no other character of
Hawthorne can it be said that it wins affection; and one wishes that, if
he must have a soul, he might have come into it in some way of natural
kindness dissociated from a moral theory. This theory--and here is the
one discord--is, after all, felt to be an exotic in the Italian air.
Donatello has been puritanized, and though the character may be a
perfect symbolic type, it has nothing racial in it; and to be racial was
Donatello's charm. It is the same wherever the story is taken up; it is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account