|
|
 II. "Hawthorne"  Nathaniel Hawthorne Source: Peabody Essex Museum  |
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864) The fundamental part of Hawthorne is not attempted in our music which is but an extended fragment trying to suggest some of his wilder, fantastical adventures into the half-childlike, half-fairytale phantasmal realms. 3 Nathaniel Hawthorne was primarily a writer of short stories and another key figure of the Transcendental movement. In 1842 he moved to Concord, but eventually returned to his hometown, Salem. He is the author of such works as The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. The “Hawthorne” movement of the Concord is a contrast to that of “Emerson.” Ives begins his essay on Hawthorne from the Essays Before a Sonata with a comparison to Emerson and Thoreau: The substance of Hawthorne is so dripping wet with the supernatural, the phantasmal, the mystical, so surcharged with adventures, from the deeper picturesque to the illusive fantastic, that one unconsciously finds oneself thinking of him as a poet of greater imaginative impulse than Emerson or Thoreau. He was not a greater poet, possibly, than they- but a greater artist. 3While Hawthorne may be the greater artist, it is Emerson who is of greater spiritual substance. Hawthorne feels the mysteries, and tries to paint them rather then explain them- and here, some may say that he is wiser in a more practical way, and, so, more artistic than Emerson. Perhaps so, but no greater in the deeper ranges and profound mysteries of the interrelated worlds of human and spiritual life. 3  The
Wayside, Concord Massachusetts
Photograph courtesy Philip Greenspun |
|||||||||||||||
|
323 West 108th Street · New York, NY 10025 · (212) 663–6021 · Contact Us |
||||||||||||||||
