Sincerely yours,
NATH. HAWTHORNE.
And to another friend, in October:--
"For my part, I don't hope (nor, indeed, wish) to see the Union restored
as it was; amputation seems to me much the better plan.... I would fight
to the death for the Northern slave States, and let the rest go.... I
have not found it possible to occupy my mind with its usual trash and
nonsense during these anxious times; but as the autumn advances, I find
myself sitting down at my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper
as of yore."
He had now begun, I suppose, the "Romance of Immortality," or "Septimius
Felton," which has been posthumously printed, but had been abandoned by
him for another treatment of the same theme, called "The Dolliver
Romance." This last, of which two chapters appeared, was left unfinished
at his death. Of "Septimius" I shall not attempt an analysis: it
contains several related and concentric circles of meaning, to survey
which would require too much space. The subject had been one of the
earliest themes of meditation with Hawthorne, and he wrote as with a
fountain-pen in which was locked the fluid thought of a lifetime.
One of the less obvious aspects of the book is the typification
in Septimius's case of that endless struggle which is the lot of
every man inspired by an ideal aim. The poet and the painter are,
equally with Septimius, seekers after immortality, though of a more
ethereal kind; and his morbidness and exaggeration serve to excite in us
a tenderness and pity over him, assisting the reception of truth.
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