ABSTRACT
From a talk given to a joint meeting of the Hawthorne and Poe Societies comes the argument that, remarkably, moral historian Hawthorne shares with otherworldly esthete Poe a certain reverence for the esthetic. Never the author of a position paper like “The Poetic Principle,” which argues for the secondariness of truth and morality in a work of literature, or of a fiction like “Al Aaraaf,” which sends angels to earth to awaken humans from their anesthetic slumber, Hawthorne nevertheless ascribes to his Puritan ancestors, if not quite a distrust of pleasure, then certainly a fear of play—including the play of imagination, without which literary works are merely propositions on parade. Thus he joins Poe in lamenting, the absence, in the American heritage, of an appreciation of the esthetic as such. The fate of his “Artist of the Beautiful,” is of course famous, as is the hard-hearted utilitarianism of a certain Judge Pyncheon later; and critics have well noticed the subversive effect of “Hester at Her Needle.” But the prime evidence is much earlier: a certain would-be “Story-Teller” has to run away from his sober-minded guardian to realize his expressive wish; and the tale refers us to certain “Vagabonds,” begging to make a buck, somehow, on the outskirts of a world where religion sponsors the business of business but not the play of imagination. And doubtless the career of the Story Teller leads us to the tale of the Archetypal Killjoy, Endicott: “No fantastic foolery could look him in the face.” QED, as we used to say at school.
