Another critic, acting on a conventional idea as to Hawthorne's "cold,
self-removed observation," quotes to his disadvantage this paragraph in
a letter from Brook Farm: "Nothing here is settled.... My mind will not
be abstracted. I must observe and think and feel, and content myself
with catching glimpses of things which may be wrought out hereafter.
Perhaps it will be quite as well that I find myself unable to set
seriously about literary occupation for the present." This is offered as
showing that Hawthorne went to the community--unconsciously, admits our
critic, but still in obedience to some curious, chilly "dictate of his
nature"--for the simple purpose of getting fresh impressions, to work up
into fiction. But no one joined the society expecting to give up his
entire individuality, and it was a special part of the design that each
should take such share of the labor as was for his own and the general
good, and follow his own tastes entirely as to ideal pursuits. A
singular prerogative this, which every one who writes about Hawthorne
lays claim to, that he may be construed as a man who, at bottom, had no
other motive in life than to make himself uneasy by withdrawing from
hearty communion with people, in order to pry upon them intellectually!
He speaks of "that quality of the intellect and the heart which impelled
me (often against my own will, and to the detriment of my own comfort)
to live in other lives, and to endeavor--_by generous sympathies, by
delicate intuitions_, by taking note of things too slight for record,
and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accordance with the
companions God had assigned me--to learn the secret which was hidden
even from themselves"; and this is cited as evidence of "his cold
inquisitiveness, his incredulity, his determination to worm out the
inmost secrets of all associated with him.
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