It is endlessly
suggestive, this way that historic cities have of expressing themselves
for all time in the persons of one or two men. Silently and with
mysterious precision, the genius comes to birth and ripens--sometimes
despite all sorts of discouragement--into a full bloom which we afterward
see could not have reached its maturity at any other time, and would
surely have missed its most peculiar and cherished qualities if reared
in any other place. The Ionian intellect of Athens culminates in Plato;
Florence runs into the mould of Dante's verse, like fluid bronze; Paris
secures remembrance of her wide curiosity in Voltaire's settled
expression; and Samuel Johnson holds fast for us that London of the
eighteenth century which has passed out of sight, in giving place to the
capital of the Anglo-Saxon race today. In like manner the sober little
New England town which has played a so much more obscure, though in its
way hardly less significant part, sits quietly enshrined and preserved
in Hawthorne's singularly imperishable prose.
Of course, Salem is not to be compared with Florence otherwise than
remotely or partially. Florence was naturally the City of Flowers, in a
figurative sense as well as in the common meaning. Its splendid,
various, and full-pulsed life found spontaneous issue in magnificent
works of art, in architecture, painting, poetry, and sculpture,--things
in which New England was quite sterile. Salem evolved the artistic
spirit indirectly, and embodied itself in Hawthorne by the force of
contrast: the weariness of unadorned life which must have oppressed many
a silent soul before him at last gathered force for a revolt in his
person, and the very dearth which had previously reigned was made to
contribute to the beauty of his achievement.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25