Hawthorne, Nathaniel

He graduated from Bowden College ( 1825 ). Already from childhood, Hawthorne had discovered extreme inactivity. He experienced, especially in his youth, remorse for his Puritan ancestors, one of whom convicted the Salem witches . From the earliest works, the theme of guilt for old sins, including the sins of ancestors, has occupied a prominent place in his prose.

The first novel was unsuccessful - "Fanshaw" ( "Fanshaw" , 1828 ) ^[4] . His first essays were published under the title Twice-Told Tales ( 1837 ); G.W. Longfellow and E.A. Poe enthusiastically responded to them. Forced, due to cramped financial circumstances, to take the place of customs overseer (he worked at the customs of Boston and Salem), Hawthorne continued to write and published in 1841 a collection of children's stories entitled "Grandfathers Chair" . In 1842 he collected his best short stories on historical and supernatural subjects in the collection "Tales of the Old Manor"

Having survived a brief fascination with transcendentalism , in 1841 he joined the Fourier commune Brookpharm , whose members sought to combine physical labor with spiritual culture. In 1850, he published his first novel, The Scarlet Letter , which brought the writer widespread recognition in Europe and became a bestseller , although he did not bring large incomes. The following year, Hawthorne released his second novel, The House of the Seven Gables , in the center of which is the story of the decline and degeneration of the Salem family. He told the story of his disappointment in Fourierism in the novel Blythe Dayl ( 1852 , Russian translation of 1913 ).

The perfection of the artistic form of Hawthorne’s novels and the depth of their moral issues were found by many admirers among young writers, such as Henry James . One of them - Herman Melville - settled next to him and dedicated to Hawthorne, "as a sign of admiration for his genius," his famous novel Moby Dick .

Between 1853 and 1857, Hawthorne lived in Europe, taking the place of the American Consul in Liverpool . He visited Italy , where he wrote “The Marble Faun” , traveled to Scotland and, returning to America, was in the midst of an interstate civil war . His friend, former president Franklin Pierce , was declared a traitor, and Hawthorne's new book, Our Old Home , dedicated to him was worth the last popularity he achieved. The last years of Hawthorne were full of physical suffering. He has only written the unfinished story “Septimius Felton” and the passage “The Dolliver Romance” . He began, but did not finish, work on four new novels.

• “The Burial of Roger Melvin” ( 1832 ) - the story begins in 1725 when, after the battle with the Indians, Roger Malvin and his future son-in-law Ryobin make their way through the thickets to their own. Since both are wounded, the eldest of the fugitives convinces the other to leave him in the forest, provided that later he will return with help and either save him or give his body to burial. To identify the place, Ryoben ties his scarf to the top of the young oak. Upon returning to the settlement, Ryoben hesitates to admit to the bride that he left her father to certain death, and neglects this promise. However, his soul has no peace. Many years later, Ryoben and his wife and son set off in search of a better share to the west. During the hunt, Ryoben accidentally kills his son. When he bends over his body, at the top an oak branch is bent, on which a shawl was attached (many years before).

• “My Kindred, Major Molyneux” ( 1831 ) is a historical account of the time leading up to the American Revolution . The narration is conducted on behalf of a young provincial who arrived in Boston to get a job under the patronage of a relative, Major Molyneu. Caught in the center of pre-revolutionary excitement, he cannot understand for a long time what is going on around until they carry out the humiliated and subjected to civil execution British Briton Molyneux, with whom he connected his career dreams.
• "Young Brown" ( 1835 ) - the action takes place in Puritan New England of the XVII century. A young Salem named Brown leaves his wife at night to meet with a mysterious demonic figure in the forest, who calls him to perform an unclean rite in the night. The young man hesitates whether to return to his young wife, but he meets the townspeople hurrying to the night sabbat, among whom is his lover. Awakening in the morning, he cannot determine whether everything that happened was a reality or a vision, becomes unsociable and until his death suspects others of black deeds.
• The Experience of Dr. Heidegger ( 1837 ) is an allegorical tale of an old scientist who discovered the source of eternal youth. His comrades try the elixir of youth - and temporarily return to the sinful mischief of the past. This experience convinces the old man that old age is better than constantly repeating the mistakes of youth.
• "Birthmark" ( 1843 ) tells of a young learned aristocrat who is plagued by a mole on the cheek of a beautiful wife - the only flaw on her body. He convinces her to remove her birthmark with the help of cosmetic surgery, however, as soon as the wife attains physical perfection, the soul leaves her body. The figure of Frankenstein-like assistant scientist is vividly written out. In the finale, the narrator concludes that the best is the enemy of the good.
• “Daughter of Rapacini” ( 1844 ) - a revision of an old story about a beauty who was fed poisons since childhood, so that during coitus with her husband she would poison his body. The plot of this story created the play Octavio Paz , opera and film.

Hawthorne's work deeply absorbed the Puritan tradition of New England - the historical center of the first settlers. Rejecting the blind fanaticism of official Puritan ideology (the short story “The Mild Boy”), Hawthorne idealized some features of the Puritan ethics, seeing in it the only guarantee of moral stability, purity and the condition of harmonious existence (the novel “The Great Carbuncle”).

In his short stories, Hawthorne depicts the peculiar life of the first Puritan aliens of America, their all-consuming piety, the severity and inexorability of their moral concepts and the tragic struggle between the straightforward demands of abstract morality and the natural, irresistible aspirations of human nature. In Hawthorne's stories, living natures are especially vivid, which Puritan piety did not dry out and which therefore become victims of social conditions. Hawthorne surrounds them with a poetic halo, without, however, making them Protestants against the views of their environment; they act instinctively and therefore deeply repent and try to atone for their “guilt” by repentance.

Hawthorne combines the realism of the narrative and psychological part of his stories with the mystical phantom of some individual figures. So, for example, if Esther Prien in “Scarlet Letter” is a living person, her illegitimate daughter, graceful and half-wild, is just a poetic symbol of her mother’s sin, a completely intangible creature that fuses her life with the life of fields and forests .

The interconnection of the past and the present, the interpenetration of reality and science fiction, romantic pathos and detailed biography, satirical grotesque form the ideological and artistic originality of Hawthorne’s short stories and novels - “The Scarlet Letter” ( 1850 , Russian translation of 1856 ), “The House of the Seven Spiers” (“House of seven gables ”; 1851 , Russian translation 1852 ; 1975 ). By the ability to arouse ideas about objects without naming them by name, Hawthorne can be compared with Edgar Allan Poe , with whom he generally has much in common in his artistic techniques.

The elements of symbolism give additional depth to Hawthorne’s stories and novels: individual objects in his interpretation acquire a meaning incomparable with their everyday function, and illuminate the narrative with a new light. If in the “Scarlet Letter” the sign that the heroine was forced to wear on her chest became the visible seal of sin, then in the second novel there are several such symbols, the main among them is the house of the Pincheon family decaying among the surrounding stormy vegetation. In Roger Melvin’s Burial, a symbolic burden is borne by an oak branch bent in youth by the protagonist.

The writer is characterized by a tragic attitude. In the work of Hawthorne expressed romantic criticism of modern civilization and reflected the search for a positive moral ideal and a full-fledged human personality.

The work of Hawthorne was highly appreciated by such representatives of Russian literature as I. S. Turgenev and N. A. Dobrolyubov . N. G. Chernyshevsky called Hawthorne "a writer of great talent," although he did not agree with his worldview. The journal Sovremennik (No. 9 for 1852) published Russia's first translation of Hawthorne’s short story “The House of the Seven Spiers”, in the preface to which it said: “Hawthorne’s stories, generally speaking, are interesting not only because they show original talent and bold: they provide wonderful evidence of the efforts that modern American literature makes to free itself from its overwhelming commercialism; in this society, which is occupied solely with the development of its material welfare, there are already thinkers and poets, known both inside and abroad ” ^[5] . The magazine "Contemporary" and in subsequent years published the works of Hawthorne.

• Storybooks:
  • “Twice-Told Tales” (Twice-Told Tales, 1837 , 1842 ),
  • “Mosses of the old manor” (Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846 ),
  • “The Snow Maiden and Other Twice-Told Stories” (The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales, 1851 ).
• Books for children:
  • Grandfather's Chair (Grandfather's Chair, 1841 ),
  • “Famous Old People” (Famous Old People, 1841),
  • The Freedom Tree (Liberty Tree, 1841),
  • "Biographical Stories for Children" (Biographical Stories for Children, 1842 ),
  • The Book of Wonders for Girls and Boys (A Wonder Book For Girls and Boys, 1851 ),
  • The Tanglewood Tales (Tanglewood Tales, 1853 ).
• Novels:
  • The Scarlet Letter (The Scarlet Letter, 1850 , Russian translation, 1856 , 1957 ),
  • “The House of the Seven Gables” (The House of the Seven Gables, 1851 , Russian translation, 1852 , 1975 ),
  • Blitdale (The Blithedale Romance, 1852 ; Russian translation, 1912 ; Happy Valley, 1982 ).
  • “The Marble Faun” (The Marble Fawn, 1860 , Russian translation, “The Coup”, 1860).
• “Our Old Homeland” (Our Old Home, 1863 ) - essays about England.
• Collection "The General History of Peter Parley" (Peter Parley's Universal History, 1837 )

• Collected works in 2 volumes. M., 1912-13.
• Short stories. M. - L., 1965.
• Nathaniel Hawthorne. House of seven gables. Novel. Short stories. - L .: Fiction. Leningrad branch, 1975 .-- 504 p.
• The history of American literature. T. 1.M. - L., 1947.
• Brooks, V.V. Writer and American Life. T. 1.M., 1967.
• Vengerova Z. A. Hawthorne, Nathaniel // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Cowley, M. Hawthorne in seclusion // House with many windows. M., 1973.
• Literary History of the United States of America. T. 1. M., 1977.
• Hawthorne. The critical heritage. L., [1970].
• Browne NE A bibliography of N. Hawthorne. NY, 1968.

• American literature

• Hawthorne, Nathaniel in the library of Maxim Moshkov
• GOTHORN, NATANIEL
• Zakharov N.V. Hawthorne (Hawthorne) Nathaniel // Electronic Encyclopedia "The World of Shakespeare".
• Nathaniel GOTHORN
• Hawthorne, Hawthorne Nathaniel