Nathaniel Hawthorne And Herman Melville

Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne

A folio from The Life and Works of Herman Melville

In the summer of 1850 Melville purchased an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the community of Pittsfield in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Berkshire was and then home to a number of prominent literary figures such every bit Fanny Kemble, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and, in Lenox, less than six miles from Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The two authors met for the starting time time in Stockbridge on August 5, 1850, on a picnic excursion hosted by David Dudley Field. Hawthorne was twoscore-six and was familiar with at least a portion of Melville's piece of work, having favorably reviewed Typee in the Salem Advertiser (March 25, 1846); Melville was thirty-1 and had just written or was about to write an exceedingly warm and enthusiastic piece on Hawthorne's Mosses From an Old Manse, a copy of which had been given to him by an aunt a few weeks before.

Early in the course of the excursion, a sudden thunderstorm forced the party to take shelter, giving Melville and Hawthorne an opportunity to become improve acquainted. The two men took to each other at one time, and as their conversation continued were delighted to detect a growing bond of mutual sympathy and comprehension. Ii days later Hawthorne wrote to a friend "I liked Melville so much that I have asked him to spend a few days with me." This would exist the outset of a serial of visits, supplemented by written correspondence, that would continue until the gradual cooling off of the friendship late in 1852.

In the starting time the human relationship was a great source of condolement and intellectual stimulation to Melville, who believed he had finally found the soul mate for whom he had been yearning. Equally Sophia Hawthorne observed, "Mr. Melville, by and large silent and uncommunicative, pours out the rich floods of his mind and experience to [Nathaniel Hawthorne], so sure of apprehension, so certain of a big and generous interpretation, and of the well-nigh frail and fine judgment." Hawthorne'southward influence, in fact, is credited as the prime number goad backside Melville's decision to transform what originally seems to have been a light-hearted whaling adventure into the dramatic masterpiece that is arguably the greatest American novel of all time.

In August of 1852 Melville wrote to Hawthorne about the true story of a New England woman who had taken in and married a shipwrecked crewman only to be abandoned by him. "The Story of Agatha", Melville thought, would exist a perfect subject area for the application of Hawthorne'southward talents; the older man, withal, felt little enthusiasm for the project and later a few desultory attempts suggested that Melville write the story himself. Melville agreed, only information technology is uncertain at present whether he ever really did anything with the material; at any rate, no published version of the story by him has been discovered.

The "Agatha" correspondence marks well-nigh the end of the Melville - Hawthorne human relationship, which had lasted only a little over two years. The initial affluence of warmth and fellowship had faded for reasons which can simply be conjectured. Melville may have come up to feel that Hawthorne was non as greatly sympathetic and responsive as he had at first seemed; for his office, Hawthorne was unsuccesful in using his long-established connections with Franklin Pierce to secure a regime post for the impoverished Melville, a failure that left him "embarrassed and chagrined" and probably made him reluctant to pursue further encounters. The two men met for the last fourth dimension in November 1856: en route to the Mediterranean Melville stopped in Liverpool, where Hawthorne had been appointed American Consul; the 2 spent several days together, which Hawthorne recorded in his journal as follows:

"Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside glaze, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of way.... [Westward]e soon institute ourselves on pretty much our quondam terms of sociability and confidence. Melville has not been well, of late; ... and no doubt has suffered from too abiding literary occupation, pursued without much success, latterly; and his writings, for a long while past, have indicated a morbid state of mind.... Melville, every bit he always does, began to reason of Providence and time to come, and of everything that lies beyond man ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much fabricated up his mind to exist annihilated"; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never residual until he gets agree of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists -- and has persisted e'er since I knew him, and probably long earlier -- in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills among which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is likewise honest and courageous not to try to do i or the other. If he were a religious human, he would be one of the virtually truly religious and reverential; he has a very loftier and noble nature, and amend worth immortality than about of u.s.a.."

Although Melville never corresponded with Hawthorne again, he did non forget him. He continued to read and annotate Hawthorne's works after the latter's death in 1864 (Melville's copies of Hawthorne texts are preserved in Harvard's Houghton Library); the reserved and finally unresponsive traveler Vine in Clarel is widely considered to have been based on Hawthorne; and the verse form "Monody" from Timoleon is almost certainly most him.

A number of Melville's letters to Hawthorne accept survived
Melville's essay Hawthorne and His Mosses is available from Eric Eldred's Hawthorne site

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