PARTISAN REVIEW
his time) is a piece with Cowley's observation that Hawthorne's early
seclusion in Salem and Melville's whaling voyage correspond to, among
other things, the years during which the modem young writer works
for the Luce organization.
Another cliche perpetuated by Mr. Cowley is the idea that all great
writers are "obsessed" with sin and theology. There is no doubt that
Hawthorne can be meaningfully described as a Christian writer (see
Paul Elmer More's brilliant essay). But it won't do to say that this
worldly, large-minded, bitterly clear-eyed ante-bellum American gen–
tleman-a spiritual realist, skeptic, and astringent Promethean-"be–
lieved" (just like that) in original sin, predestination, and providence
and that "he had a faith in the value of confession and absolution that
sometimes brought him close to Roman Catholicism."
If
you do not
understand the great writer, or discern the possible range of liberal
intelligence, or see how he makes darksome moral and cultural realities
out of theology and everything else, you assume that he must be a pro–
digious expert in Evil and Roman Catholicism. (Thus progressive critics
always say that Melville's white whale represents Evil.)
When he is trying to save Hawthorne from earlier modes of under–
estimation, Mr. Cowley is half way between Parrington and truth. We
must now see, as he very well says, that Hawthorne was not a delicate
plant, that he had, in fact, a "robust talent," that his mind was not
meager, cold, and timorous. Fine. Having gone so far, the next thing
is to cease this pusillanimous skirmishing with one of the few cultural
fathers we have and come home to Nathaniel, who is not an ideology, a
religion, or a white whale, but only an old American who was an artist
and who knew a great deal about men, women, and society. But Mr.
Cowley skirmishes.
And in this connection, consider the enormous and so American
error of his interpretation of "My Kinsman, Major Molineux." Mr.
Cowley says that this story is "the legend of a youth who achieves man–
hood through searching for a spiritual father." Correct. The tarred–
and-feathered old man at the end of the story is Hawthorne's most
moving image of fully tragic humanity-one of the few figures in
American literature who approach the dignity of a Shakespearean or
Sophoclean hero. But he is too terrible in this day and age, too knowing,
too real. And so Mr. Cowley decides that the youth achieves manhood
by "finding that the object of his search is an impostor." An impostor!
Does not Mr. Cowley sense Hawthorne's pity for Major Molineux,
his reverence for him, or the anguish with which he makes the populace
laugh at him-with that terrible American ridicule of tragic man?
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