The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

by Frank Preston Stearns

As previously noticed, the portrait of Beatrice Cenci excited a deeply penetrating interest in Hawthorne, and his reflections on it day after day would naturally lead him to a similar design in regard to the romance which he was contemplating. The attribution of a catastrophe like Beatrice’s to either of the two Jewesses, would of course be adventitious, and should be considered in the light of an artistic privilege.

The “Faun” of Praxiteles in the museum of the Capitol next attracted his attention. This is but a poor copy of the original; but he penetrated the motive of the sculptor with those deep-seeing eyes of his, and there is no analysis of an ancient statue by Brunn or Furtwängler that equals Hawthorne’s description of this one. It seems as if he must have looked backward across the centuries into the very mind of Praxiteles, and he was, in fact, the first critic to appreciate its high value. The perfect ease and simple beauty of the figure belong to a higher grade of art than the Apollo Belvedere, and Hawthorne discovered what Winckelmann had overlooked. He immediately conceived the idea of bringing the faun to life, and seeing how he would behave and comport himself in the modern world—in brief, to use the design of Praxiteles as the mainspring of a romance. In the evening of April 22, 1858, he wrote in his journal:

{Illustration: STATUE OF PRAXITELES’ RESTING FAUN, WHICH HAWTHORNE HAS DESCRIBED AND BROUGHT TO LIFE IN THE CHARACTER OF DONATELLO}

“I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at once. It seems to me that a story, with all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived on the idea of their species having become intermingled with the human race; a family with the faun blood in them, having prolonged itself from the classic era till our own days. The tail might have disappeared, by dint of constant intermarriages with ordinary mortals; but the pretty hairy ears should occasionally reappear in members of the family; and the moral instincts and intellectual characteristics of the faun might be most picturesquely brought out, without detriment to the human interest of the story.”

This statue served to concentrate the various speculative objects which had been hovering before Hawthorne’s imagination during the past winter, and when he reached Florence six weeks later, the chief details of the plot were already developed in his mind.

Hilda and Kenyon are, of course, subordinate characters, like the first walking lady and the first walking gentleman on the stage. They are the sympathetic friends who watch the progress of the drama, continually hoping to be of service, but still finding themselves powerless to prevent the catastrophe. It was perhaps their unselfish interest in their mutual friends that at length taught them to know each other’s worth, so that they finally became more than friends to one another. True love, to be firmly based, requires such a mutual interest or common ground on which the parties can meet,—something in addition to the usual attraction of the sexes. Mrs. Hawthorne has been supposed by some to have been the original of Hilda; and by others her daughter Una.

Conway holds an exceptional opinion, that Hilda was the feminine counterpart of Hawthorne himself; but Hilda is only too transparent a character, while Hawthorne always was, and still remains, impenetrable; and there was enough of her father in Miss Una, to render the same objection applicable in her case. Hilda seems to me very much like Mrs. Hawthorne, as one may imagine her in her younger days; like her in her mental purity, her conscientiousness, her devotion to her art,—which we trust afterwards was transformed into a devotion to her husband,—her tendency to self-seclusion, her sensitiveness and her lack of decisive resolution. She is essentially what they call on the stage an ingenue character; that is, one that remains inexperienced in the midst of experience; and it is in this character that she contributes to the catastrophe of the drama.

If Hawthorne appears anywhere in his own fiction, it is not in “The Blithedale Romance,” but in the rôle of Kenyon. Although Kenyon’s profession is that of a sculptor, he is not to be confounded with the gay and versatile Story. Neither is he statuesque, as the English reviewer criticised him. He is rather a shadowy character, as Hawthorne himself was shadowy, and as an author always must be shadowy to his readers; but Kenyon is to Hawthorne what Prospero is to Shakespeare, and if he does not make use of magic arts, it is because they no longer serve their purpose in human affairs. He is a wise, all-seeing, sympathetic mind, and his active influence in the play is less conspicuous because it is always so quiet, and so correct.

It will be noticed that the first chapter and the last chapter of this romance have the same title: “Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello.” This is according to their respective ages and sexes; but it is also the terms of a proportion,—as Miriam is to Hilda, so is Kenyon to Donatello. As the experienced woman is to the inexperienced woman, so is the experienced man to the inexperienced man. This seems simple enough, but it has momentous consequences in the story. Donatello, who is a type of natural but untried virtue, falls in love with Miriam, not only for her beauty, but because she has acquired that worldly experience which he lacks. Hilda, suddenly aroused to a sense of her danger in the isolated life she is leading, accepts Kenyon as a protector. The means in this proportion come together and unite, because they are the mean terms, and pursue a medium course. The extremes fly apart and are separated, simply because they are extremes. But there is a spiritual bond between them, invisible, but stronger than steel, which will bring them together again—at the Day of Judgment, if not sooner.

All tragedy is an investigation or exemplification of that form of human error which we call sin; a catastrophe of nature or a simple error of judgment may be tragical, but will not constitute a tragedy without the moral or poetic element.