that-guy's Full Review: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Richard H. Brodhead - The ...
Though it proved to be Nathaniel Hawthorne's most popular book at the time of its publication, The Marble Faun or The Romance of Monte Beni's reputation has not fared so well since. This novel draws heavily from Hawthorne's experiences as an expatriate in Europe, where he traveled extensively through Italy. A very popular theme for the American writers of the time. Take for instance, Henry James whose later works were dominated by the expatriate theme, and James himself said The Marble Faun "deserve[s] to rank high among the imaginative productions of our day." So what happened, to this grand work by the author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables?
What happens when four friends find themselves caught up in a murder? What if one of the friends had committed the murder? What if that friend had committed the murder because he thought one of the other friends had wanted him to?
Donatello is a native Italian who falls in with three American friends, the innocent Hilda, the pragmatic Kenyon, and the mysterious Miriam. And for awhile the group lives in "the guiltless pleasures of Acadia." In fact, the friends so feel under the sway of this pre-Fall illusion that the Americans jokingly imagine Donatello to be the living duplicate of a marble faun they've been admiring (a faun, of course, is a mythical figure, often connected to sensual abandon). But this pagan revelry is shattered when a dark man returns from Miriam's secret past and begins to stalk her (at least it seems so). When Donatello confronts the man, he sees a silent command in Miriam's eyes (and Hawthorne never gives us any reason to doubt this), so Donatello murders the stranger.
The rest of the novel concentrates on the return to the reality of consequences as the Donatello and Miriam struggle with what they've done and how Kenyon and Hilda deal with the aftermath. I don't want to reveal too much more because the novel is short on plot as it is. Donatello disappears and Kenyon has to find him and help him reach for redemption. What happens to Miriam is as mysterious and beguiling as the character herself.
From the summary, I'd hope most readers would be intrigued, if only a little (I got excited just writing it). The problem arises in how Hawthorne carries off this seemingly suspenseful narrative. Much of the book (significantly longer than The Scarlet Letter) is more a travelogue than a novel. He incorporates vast parts of the Italian countryside and many of the customs, and he spends an almost irritating amount of attention to works of art. After reading the novel, I felt like I'd been dragged through every museum in Italy, having to stare at each artwork for what felt like an eternity. And some cultivated readers--which I am not--may find this engaging. Hawthorne, however, has another problem because he spent much of this guided tour referencing artists popular at the time, like John Gibson and Harriet Hosmer, sometimes merely alluding to them assured that the audience would recognize them. And though this may explain the book's popularity at the time, it hasn't allowed it to age well.
If that weren't enough, Hawthorne in his true old-school Puritan ancestor fashion layers the fall of the friends from a pagan purity into sin with complex moral symbolism and philosophical questing. He brings up ideas of felix culpa, the concept of a fortunate fall into experience and wisdom. Donatello tries to regain his connection to the mythic past while Hilda, a Protestant, unsuccessfully tries to take confession at a Catholic Church. I personally enjoyed some of these quasi-religious themes but often they got in the way of the force of the narrative.
Hawthorne's interest in these religious and philosophical questions combined with his obsession for art into something beautiful: "I am afraid that this final despair, and sense of shortcoming, must always be the reward and punishment of those who try to grapple with a great or beautiful idea. It only proves that you have been able to imagine things too high for mortal faculties to execute. The idea leaves you an imperfect image of itself, which you at first mistake for the ethereal reality, but soon find that the latter had escaped out of your closest embrace."
And that quote could easily sum up the plight of the four friends and Hawthorne's own art.
The Marble Faun, the last of the four major romances that Hawthorne wrote. It is the story of four main characters: Miriam, a beautiful painter; Hilda...More at Buy.com
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