Inventing Americas: 1800–1865 183to his publisher, when he was asked for some stories, “that Mr. Hawthorne’s brain is
addled at last ... and that you consider him finally shelved.” It was a sad ending for a
great writer. But, of course, it in no way diminishes his achievement. Even the later,
unfinished work is far more intriguing than Hawthorne, in his dejection, supposed:
the American claimant manuscripts, for example, explore the old theme of past
connections to the present in new ways – as the protagonist considers whether to
accept his rightful inheritance or reject it. And the earlier work, above all the major
stories and The Scarlet Letter, forms an indispensable contribution to American
literature, as well as to the history of the short story and the novel. Hawthorne was an
intensely solitary, introspective man, but he put that solitude and introspection to
powerful creative use. He was a man tortured by doubt, but, more often than not, he
managed to turn that doubt to his advantage, making an art out of uncertainty. At his
finest, which was very often, Hawthorne searched honestly and fiercely for the truth,
the sources of the moral life, even though he was not often sure his search would be
successful. He compelled his readers to share in that search too, and still does. As a
result, to read him is to be reminded of his fundamental belief, shared with many of
his contemporaries and subsequent American writers, that reading is a moral activity.
“He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief,” Hawthorne once
observed of Herman Melville (1819–1891), “and he is too honest and courageous
not to try to do one or the other.” For Melville, human experience was ruled by
contraries. “There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by
contraries,” Ishmael declares in Moby-Dick (1851). “Nothing exists in itself.” And
those contraries were no more evident, he felt, than within each human being, as he
or she struggled to find a basis for truth and faith, something that would really make
life worth living. Melville could not resign himself to doubt, or a placid acceptance
of the surfaces of things. “I am intent upon the essence of things,” he has one of his
characters, Babbalanja the philosopher, announce in his third novel, Mardi (1849),
“the mystery that lies beyond ... ; that which is beneath the seeming.” That speaks for
Melville’s own artistic project. What also speaks for that project, however, is an
intimation offered by the narrator of Melville’s penultimate novel, Pierre (1852).
“Far as any geologist has yet gone down in the world,” he tells the reader,it is found to consist of nothing but surface stratified on surface. To its axis, the world
being nothing but extended superficies. By vast pains we mine into the pyramid ... with
joy we espy the sarcophagus; but we lift the lid – and no body is there! – appallingly
vacant as vast is the soul of man!Melville wanted to probe the visible objects of the world, to discover their animating
structure, their significance. But he also sensed that the visible might be all there was –
and that that, too, was a masquerade, a trick of the light and human vision. He wanted
to read what he called “the cunning alphabet” of nature so as to interpret its grounds,
its meanings. But he also feared that all men could see there was a mirror of their
own needs and feelings. He wanted to attend carefully to the phenomenal world, as
a possible emanation of the noumenal, the spiritual, to listen for its messages. But heGGray_c02.indd 183ray_c 02 .indd 183 8 8/1/2011 7:54:42 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 42 AM