Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

Before proceeding to the consideration of "The Blithedale Romance," it
is necessary to say a few words on the seeming separation of
Hawthorne's genius from his will. He has none of that ability which
enabled Scott and enables Dickens to force their powers into action,
and to make what was begun in drudgery soon assume the character of
inspiration. Hawthorne cannot thus use his genius; his genius always
uses him. This is so true, that he often succeeds better in what calls
forth his personal antipathies than in what calls forth his personal
sympathies. His life of General Pierce, for instance, is altogether
destitute of life; yet in writing it he must have exerted himself to
the utmost, as his object was to urge the claims of an old and dear
friend to the Presidency of the Republic. The style, of course, is
excellent, as it is impossible for Hawthorne to write bad English, but
the genius of the man has deserted him. General Pierce, whom he loves,
he draws so feebly, that one doubts, while reading the biography, if
such a man exists; Hollingsworth, whom he hates, is so vividly
characterized, that the doubt is, while we read the romance, whether
such a man can possibly be fictitious.

Midway between such a work as the "Life of General Pierce" and "The
Scarlet Letter" may be placed "The Wonder-Book" and "Tanglewood Tales."
In these Hawthorne's genius distinctly appears, and appears in its most
lovable, though not in its deepest form. These delicious stories,
founded on the mythology of Greece, were written for children, but they
delight men and women as well. Hawthorne never pleases grown people so
much as when he writes with an eye to the enjoyment of little people.

Now "The Blithedale Romance" is far from being so pleasing a
performance as "Tanglewood Tales," yet it very much better illustrates
the operation, indicates the quality, and expresses the power, of the
author's genius. His great books appear not so much created by him as
through him. They have the character of revelations,--he, the
instrument, being often troubled with the burden they impose on his
mind. His profoundest glances into individual souls are like the
marvels of clairvoyance. It would seem, that, in the production of such
a work as "The Blithedale Romance," his mind had hit accidentally, as
it were, on an idea or fact mysteriously related to some morbid
sentiment in the inmost core of his nature, and connecting itself with
numerous scattered observations of human life, lying unrelated in his
imagination. In a sort of meditative dream, his intellect drifts in the
direction to which the subject points, broods patiently over it, looks
at it, looks into it, and at last looks through it to the law by which
it is governed. Gradually, individual beings, definite in spiritual
quality, but shadowy in substantial form, group themselves around this
central conception, and by degrees assume an outward body and
expression corresponding to their internal nature. On the depth and
intensity of the mental mood, the force of the fascination it exerts
over him, and the length of time it holds him captive, depend the
solidity and substance of the individual characterizations. In this way
Miles Coverdale, Hollingsworth, Westervelt, Zenobia, and Priscilla
become real persons to the mind which has called them into being. He
knows every secret and watches every motion of their souls, yet is, in
a measure, independent of them, and pretends to no authority by which
he can alter the destiny which consigns them to misery or happiness.
They drift to their doom by the same law by which they drifted across
the path of his vision. Individually, he abhors Hollingsworth, and
would like to annihilate Westervelt, yet he allows the superb Zenobia
to be their victim; and if his readers object that the effect of the
whole representation is painful, he would doubtless agree with them,
but profess his incapacity honestly to alter a sentence. He professes
to tell the story as it was revealed to him; and the license in which a
romancer might indulge is denied to a biographer of spirits. Show him a
fallacy in his logic of passion and character, point out a false or
defective step in his analysis, and he will gladly alter the whole to
your satisfaction; but four human souls, such as he has described,
being given, their mutual attractions and repulsions will end, he feels
assured, in just such a catastrophe as he has stated.

Eight years have passed since "The Blithedale Romance" was written, and
during nearly the whole of this period Hawthorne has resided abroad.
"The Marble Faun," which must, on the whole, be considered the greatest
of his works, proves that his genius has widened and deepened in this
interval, without any alteration or modification of its characteristic
merits and characteristic defects. The most obvious excellence of the
work is the vivid truthfulness of its descriptions of Italian life,
manners, and scenery; and, considered merely as a record of a tour in
Italy, it is of great interest and attractiveness. The opinions on Art,
and the special criticisms on the masterpieces of architecture,
sculpture, and painting, also possess a value of their own. The story
might have been told, and the characters fully represented, in
one-third of the space devoted to them, yet description and narration
are so artfully combined that each assists to give interest to the
other. Hawthorne is one of those true observers who concentrate in
observation every power of their minds. He has accurate sight and
piercing insight. When he modifies either the form or the spirit of the
objects he describes, he does it either by viewing them through the
medium of an imagined mind or by obeying associations which they
themselves suggest. We might quote from the descriptive portions of the
work a hundred pages, at least, which would demonstrate how closely
accurate observation is connected with the highest powers of the
intellect and imagination.

The style of the book is perfect of its kind, and, if Hawthorne had
written nothing else, would entitle him to rank among the great masters
of English composition. Walter Savage Landor is reported to have said
of an author whom he knew in his youth, "My friend wrote excellent
English, a language now obsolete." Had "The Marble Faun" appeared
before he uttered this sarcasm, the wit of the remark would have been
pointless. Hawthorne not only writes English, but the sweetest,
simplest, and clearest English that ever has been made the vehicle of
equal depth, variety, and subtilty of thought and emotion. His mind is
reflected in his style as a face is reflected in a mirror; and the
latter does not give back its image with less appearance of effort than
the former. His excellence consists not so much in using common words
as in making common words express uncommon things. Swift, Addison,
Goldsmith, not to mention others, wrote with as much simplicity; but
the style of neither embodies an individuality so complex, passions so
strange and intense, sentiments so fantastic and preternatural,
thoughts so profound and delicate, and imaginations so remote from the
recognized limits of the ideal, as find an orderly outlet in the pure
English of Hawthorne. He has hardly a word to which Mrs. Trimmer would
primly object, hardly a sentence which would call forth the frosty
anathema of Blair, Hurd, Kames, or Whately, and yet he contrives to
embody in his simple style qualities which would almost excuse the
verbal extravagances of Carlyle.

In regard to the characterization and plot of "The Marble Faun," there
is room for widely varying opinions. Hilda, Miriam, and Donatello will
be generally received as superior in power and depth to any of
Hawthorne's previous creations of character; Donatello, especially,
must be considered one of the most original and exquisite conceptions
in the whole range of romance; but the story in which they appear will
seem to many an unsolved puzzle, and even the tolerant and
interpretative "gentle reader" will be troubled with the unsatisfactory
conclusion. It is justifiable for a romancer to sting the curiosity of
his readers with a mystery, only on the implied obligation to explain
it at last; but this story begins in mystery only to end in mist. The
suggestive faculty is tormented rather than genially excited, and in
the end is left a prey to doubts. The central idea of the story, the
necessity of sin to convert such a creature as Donatello into a moral
being, is also not happily illustrated in the leading event. When
Donatello kills the wretch who malignantly dogs the steps of Miriam,
all readers think that Donatello committed no sin at all; and the
reason is, that Hawthorne has deprived the persecutor of Miriam of all
human attributes, made him an allegorical representation of one of the
most fiendish forms of unmixed evil, so that we welcome his destruction
with something of the same feeling with which, in following the
allegory of Spenser or Bunyan, we rejoice in the hero's victory over
the Blatant Beast or Giant Despair. Conceding, however, that
Donatello's act was murder, and not "justifiable homicide," we are
still not sure that the author's conception of his nature and of the
change caused in his nature by that act, are carried out with a
felicity corresponding to the original conception.

In the first volume, and in the early part of the second, the author's
hold on his design is comparatively firm, but it somewhat relaxes as he
proceeds, and in the end it seems almost to escape from his grasp. Few
can be satisfied with the concluding chapters, for the reason that
nothing is really concluded. We are willing to follow the ingenious
processes of Calhoun's deductive logic, because we are sure, that,
however severely they task the faculty of attention, they will lead to
some positive result; but Hawthorne's logic of events leaves us in the
end bewildered in a labyrinth of guesses. The book is, on the whole,
such a great book, that its defects are felt with all the more force.

In this rapid glance at some of the peculiarities of Hawthorne's
genius, we have not, of course, been able to do full justice to the
special merits of the works we have passed in review; but we trust that
we have said nothing which would convey the impression that we do not
place them among the most remarkable romances produced in an age in
which romance-writing has called forth some of the highest powers of
the human mind. In intellect and imagination, in the faculty of
discerning spirits and detecting laws, we doubt if any living novelist
is his equal; but his genius, in its creative action, has been
heretofore attracted to the dark rather than the bright side of the
interior life of humanity, and the geniality which evidently is in him
has rarely found adequate expression. In the many works which he may
still be expected to write, it is to be hoped that his mind will lose
some of its sadness of tone without losing any of its subtilty and
depth; but, in any event, it would be unjust to deny that he has
already done enough to insure him a commanding position in American
literature as long as American literature has an existence.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Le Prime Quattro Edizioni della Divina Commedia Letteralmente
Ristampate per Cura di_ G.G. WARREN LORD VERNON. Londra: Presso Tommaso
e Guglielmo Boone. MDCCCLVIII. 4to. pp. xxvi., 748.

The zeal with which the study of Dante has been followed by students in
every country of Europe, during the last forty years, is one of the
most illustrative facts of the moral as well as of the intellectual
character of the period. The interest which has attracted men of the
most different tempers and persuasions to this study is not due alone
to the poetic or historic value of his works, however high we may place
them in these respects, but also and especially to the circumstance
that they present a complete and distinct view of the internal life and
spiritual disposition of an age in which the questions which still
chiefly concern men were for the first time positively stated, and
which exhibited in its achievements and its efforts some of the highest
qualities of human nature in a condition of vigor such as they have
never since shown. Dante himself combined a power of imagination beyond
that of any other poet with an intensity and directness of individual
character not less extraordinary. The tendency of modern civilization
is to diminish rather than to strengthen the originality and
independence of individuals. Autocracy and democracy seem to have a
like effect in reducing men to a uniform level of thought and effort.
And thus during a time when these two principles have been brought into
sharp conflict, it is not surprising that the most thoughtful students
should turn to the works of a man who by actual experience, or by force
of imagination, comprehended all the conditions of his own age, and
exhibited in his life and in his writings an individualism of the
noblest sort. The conservative and the reformer, the king and the
radical, the priest and the heretic, the man of affairs and the man of
letters, have taken their seats, side by side, on the scholars'
benches, before the same teacher, and, after listening to his large
discourse, have discussed among themselves the questions in religion,
in philosophy, in morals, politics, or history, which his words
suggested or explained.

The success which has attended these studies has been in some degree
proportioned to the zeal with which they have been pursued. Dante is
now better understood and more intelligently commented than ever
before. Much remains to be done as regards the clearing up of some
difficult points and the explanation of some dark passages,--and the
obscurity in which Dante intentionally involved some portions of his
writings is such as to leave little hope that their absolute meaning
will ever be satisfactorily established. The history of the study of
the poet, of the comments on his meaning or his text, of the formation
of the commonly received text, and of the translations of the "Divina
Commedia," affords much curious and entertaining matter to the lover of
purely literary and bibliographic narrative, and incidentally
illustrates the general character of each century since his death. As
regards the settlement of the text, no single publication has ever
appeared of equal value to that of the magnificent volume the title of
which stands at the head of this notice. Lord Vernon has been known for
many years as the most munificent fosterer of Dantesque publications.
One after another, precious and costly books upon Dante have appeared,
edited and printed at his expense, showing both a taste and a
liberality as honorable as unusual.

The first four editions of the "Divina Commedia," of which this volume
is a reprint, are all of excessive rarity. Although each is a document
of the highest importance in determining the text, few of the editors
of the poem have had the means of consulting more than one or two of
them. The volumes are to be found united only in the Library of the
British Museum, and it is but a few years that even that great
collection has included them all. They were printed originally between
1470 and 1480 at Foligno, Jesi, Mantua, and Naples; and their chief
value arises from the fact that they present the various readings of
three, if not four, early and selected manuscripts. The doubt whether
four manuscripts are represented by them is occasioned by the
similarity between the editions of Foligno and Naples, which are of
such a sort (for instance, correspondence in the most unlikely and odd
misprints) as to prove that one must have served as the basis of the
other. But at the same time there are such differences between them as
indicate a separate revision of each, and possibly the consultation by
their editors of different codices.

Unfortunately, there is no edition of the "Divina Commedia" which can
claim any special authority,--none which has even in a small degree
such authority as belongs to the first folio of Shakspeare's plays. The
text, as now received, rests upon a comparison of manuscripts and early
printed editions; and as affording to scholars the means of an
independent critical judgment upon it, a knowledge of the readings of
these earliest editions is indispensable. But reprints of old books are
proverbially open to error. The reprint of the first folio Shakspeare
is so full of mistakes as to be of comparatively little use. The
character of the Italian language is such that inaccuracies are both
easier and more dangerous than in English. Unless the reprint of the
first four editions were literally correct, it would be of little
value. To secure this correctness, so far as was possible, Lord Vernon
engaged Mr. Panizzi, the chief librarian of the British Museum, to edit
the volume. A more competent editor never lived. Mr. Panizzi is
distinguished not more for his thorough and appreciative acquaintance
with the poetic literature of his country than for the extent and
accuracy of his bibliographical knowledge and the refinement of his
bibliographic skill. There can be no doubt that the reprint is as exact
as the most rigid critic could desire. It is a monument of patience and
of unpretending labor, as well as of typographic beauty,--the work of
the editor having been well seconded by that well-known disciple of
Aldus, Mr. Charles Whittingham.

Nor is it only in essential variations that these four texts are
important, but also in the illustration which their different spelling
and their varying grammatical forms afford in regard to the language
used by Dante. At the time when these editions appeared, the
orthography of the Italian tongue was not yet established, and its
grammatical inflections not in all cases definitely settled. Printing
had not yet been long enough in use to fix a permanent form upon words.
Moreover, the misprints themselves, which in these early editions are
very numerous, often give hints as to the changes which they may have
induced, or as to the misplacing of letters most likely to occur, and
consequently most likely to lead to unobserved errors of the text.

The style of the printing in these first editions, and the aid it may
give, or the difficulty it may occasion, are hardly to be understood
without an extract. We open at _Paradiso_, xv. 70. Cacciaguida has just
spoken to his descendant, and then follows, according to the Foligno,
the following passage:--

Io mi uolfi abeatrice et quella udio
pria chio parlaffi et arofemi un cenno
che fece crefcer lali aluoler mio

Poi cominciai con leefftto elfenno
come laprima equalita napparfe
dun pefo per ciafchun di noi fi fenno

Pero chel fole che nallumo et arfe
colcaldo et conlaluce et fi iguali
che tutte fimiglianze fono fcarfe.

This looks different enough from the common text, that, for example, of
the Florentine edition of 1844.

I' mi volsi a Beatrice, e quella udio
Pria ch' io parlassi, ed arrisemi un cenno
Che fece crescer l' ale al voler mio.

Poi cominciai cosi: L' affetto e il senno,
Come la prima egualita v' apparse,
D' un peso per ciascun di voi si fenno;

Perocche al Sol, che v' allumo ed arse
Col caldo e con la luce, en si iguali,
Che tutte simiglianze sono scarse.

"I turned to Beatrice, and she heard before I spoke, and smiled on me a
sign which added wings to my desire. Then I began thus: Love and
wisdom, as soon as the primal Equality has appeared to you, become of
one weight in each one of you; since in that Sun, which illuminates and
warms you with heat and light, they are so equal, that every comparison
falls short."

The three other ancient texts are each quite as different from the
modern one as that which we have given, nor is the passage one that
affords example of unusual variations. It would have been easy to
select many others varying much more than this, but our object is to
show the general character of these first editions. The second line of
the quotation offers a various reading which is supported by the
_arrossemi_ of the Jesi edition, and the _arossemi_ of that of Naples,
as well as by the text of the comment of Benvenuto da Imola, and some
other early authorities. But even were the weight of evidence in its
favor far greater than it is, it could never be received in place of
the thoroughly Dantesque and exquisite expression, _arrisemi un cenno_,
which is found in the Mantua edition. The _napparse_ and the _noi_ of
the fifth and sixth lines and the _nallumo_ of the seventh are plainly
mistakes of the scribe, puzzled by the somewhat obscure meaning of the
passage. Not one of the four editions before us gives us the right
pronouns, but they are found in the Bartolinian codex, (as well as many
others,) and they are established in the rare Aldine edition of 1502,
the chief source of the modern text. In the eighth line, where we now
read _en si iguali_, the four give us _et_ or _e si iguali_, a reading
from which it is difficult to extract a meaning, unless, with the
Bartolinian, we omit the _che_ in the preceding line, and suppose the
_pero chel_ to stand, not for _perocche al_, but for _perocche
il_,--or, retaining the _che_, read the first words _perocch' e il
Sol_, and take the clause as a parenthesis. The meaning, according to
the first supposition, would be, "Love and wisdom are of one measure in
you, (since the Sun [_sc._ the primal Equality] warmed and enlightened
you,) and so equal that," etc. According to the second supposition, we
should translate, "Since it [the primal Equality] is the sun which,"
etc. Benvenuto da Imola gives still a third reading, making the _e si
iguali_ into _ee si iguale_, or, in modern orthography, _e si iguale_;
but, as this spoils the rhyme, it may be left out of account. There
seems to us to be some ground for believing the second reading
suggested above,

Perocch' e il Sol che v' allumo ed arse
Con caldo e con la luce, e si iguali.

to be the true one, not only from its correspondence with most of the
early copies, but from the rarity of the use of _en_ by Dante. There is
but one other passage in the poem where it is found (_Purgatory_, xvi.
121).

Such is an example, taken at random, of the doubts suggested and the
illustration afforded by these editions in the study of the text. Of
course such minute criticism is of interest only to those few who
reckon Dante's words at their true worth. The common reader may be
content with the text as he finds it in common editions, But Dante,
more than any other author, stimulates his student to research as to
his exact words; for no other author has been so choice in his
selection of them. He is not only the greatest modern master of
condensation in style, but he has the deepest insight into the value
and force of separate words, the most delicate sense of appropriateness
in position, and in the highest degree the poetic faculty of selecting
the word most fitting for the thought and most characteristic in
expression. It rarely happens that the place of a word of any
importance is a matter of indifference in his verse, no regard being
had to the rhythm; and every one sufficiently familiar with the
language in which he wrote to be conscious of its indefinable powers
will feel, though he may be unable to point out specifically, a marked
distinction in the quality and combinations of the words in the
different parts of the poem. The description of the entrance to Hell,
in the third canto of the _Inferno_ is, for instance, hardly more
different from the description of the Terrestrial Paradise,
(_Purgatory_, xxviii.,) in scenery and imagery, than it is in the vague
but absolute qualities of language, in its rhythmical and verbal
essence.

But, leaving these subtilties, let us look at some of the disputed
passages of the poem, upon which the texts before us may give their
evidence.

In the episode of Francesca da Rimini, Mr. Barlow has recently
attempted to give currency to a various reading long known, but never
accepted, in the line (_Inferno_, v. 102) in which Francesca expresses
her horror at the manner of her death. She says, _il modo ancor m'
offende_, "the manner still offends me." But for _il modo_ Mr. Barlow
would substitute _il mondo_, "the world still offends me,"--that is, as
we suppose, by holding a false opinion of her conduct. Mr. Barlow's
suggestions are always to be received with respect, but we cannot but
think him wrong in proposing this change. The spirits in Hell are not
supposed to be aware of what is passing upon earth; they are
self-convicted, (_Purgatory_, xxvi. 85, 86,) and Francesca being doomed
to eternal woe, the world could not do her wrong by taxing her with
sin; while, further, the shudder at the method of her death, lasting
even in torment, seems to us a far more imaginative conception than the
one proposed in its stead. Our four texts read _elmodo_.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20