He is best remembered, if he's known for anything at all, as one of the main architects of the modern Horror genre. This seems to have been the ultimate fate of the reputation of the early 19th century American writer known as Nathaniel Hawthorne. Arriving in this world in the year 1804, he was a natural born son of New England. Not only is that a relevant real-life plot detail, it also turned out to be the main shaping factor in the life and growth of the artist's mind. His birthplace was none other than Salem, Massachusetts, home of the infamous Witch Trials. To give an impression of just how much of a long shadow this event and its entire social milieu have managed to cast over American history, it is possible to argue that while there were other atrocities committed by the Puritans in their chequered and problematic history of settling on these Shores, there appears to have been something iconic about the Trials which has allowed it to standout as the guiding symbol of America's original sin. The historical image and notion of Puritans turning their own moral decay and bigotry at last against their own kind, like a snake eating its tail, seems to act as the best summation of what happens when a society begins to go wrong. It suggests that if the ideology of the original Plymouth Settlers can be spoken of as serving any kind of purposes, then its utility was of the most ironic kind. The purpose of Puritanism, it seems, is to cancel itself out.
As a result, what makes the very fact of the Witch Trials so natural as a symbol is that it is somehow able to encompass a multitude of ethical failures, both personal and social, that have since been recognized as a catalogue of all of the major faults and transgressions for which the early European settlers to America were guilty of. It includes the usual list of suspects, the chiefest of which is the allowance and legal sanctioning of slavery, prejudice, and persecution of others into the law of the land. The others, in this case, were and are, of course, Africans, Jamaicans, and Native Americans as the most prominent victims of Puritanism. It's this ironic accomplishment which has allowed the Plymouth colonizers and their immediate descendants the dubious honor of two further achievements, both of which have served to preserve and hold an awareness of their toxicity and depravity as a kind of memorial enshrined forever in our popular culture. On the one hand, it was the Puritans who have given to, and cemented for American history its first and longest lasting notion of national evil. The second, artistic correlate of this ironic accomplishment is that it wouldn't surprise me to learn that it was the legacy of fanatics like Cotton Mather and the Witch Trial persecutors who have been able to shape a lot of the contours and iconography of what we now know as Halloween. It's of course true enough that a lot of the trappings of our Nation's most popular Autumn Festival have their roots in Ancient Celtic Traditions. However, it seems as if the sins of the Puritans gave us an updated set of props and icons that have allowed this fundamentally antiquarian celebration to find its proper American voice.
This can best be demonstrated by recalling how everything that we know about Halloween always comes down to, or else includes the same set of images. These being the time honored picture of witches and black cats on broomsticks, along with the idea of the haunted house with plenty of skeletons in all the closets. These are all concepts that have come to define what the holiday means for us every time Autumn roles around. However, there's one other element to this shared iconography that I don't think most of us have given enough attention to. Part of that is down to the way familiarity makes the heart grow, not so much cold, as inattentive, and hence unobservant. We remember the witches and haunted houses well enough. Have you ever stopped to notice or pay attention to the kind of imaginative landscape in which all of these icons have their place, though? The answer, of course, is yes and no. Yeah, it's true, some of us might have spared a glance at the kind of topographic atmosphere in which the primary symbols of Halloween take place. However, I wonder how many of us have ever stopped to ponder just what the prototypical
setting of All Hallow's means, or amounts to. In terms of set dressing, the typical All Saint's Eve backdrop has remained more or less the same ever since the Holiday was cemented into a part of the Nation's identity. You've got these wide open, creepy looking fields that are either barren roads, or else its a stretch of rural farmland with either a hollowed out cornfield, or else a glowing pumpkin patch to provide a few background details. This is about as far as most of us can get when it comes to conjuring up the stage setting for a Halloween atmosphere.
The one final detail that's needed to complete this picture is just one, simple observation. Most of it tends to have this New England flavor to it. Have you ever noticed that? Think about it. The basic backdrop of the typical American Halloween just tends to have that specific, regional kind of
feel about the place. It's like something you can tell just by looking. It's a pervasive sense of atmosphere that you can't quite get anywhere else. It just doesn't have quite the same vibe if you were to try and translate it into a setting such as the Louisiana bayou territory. Places like that are more than capable of having an October atmosphere all its own,
and that's just the point. A sense of place that's steeped in, say, the carry-overs from old African, Creole, or Cajun traditions might have an appropriate flavor. It even forms an essential part of Halloween. It's just not the kind of vibe you get from that Autumn cornfield or Pumpkin patch which looks like it could be anywhere from the Midwest to the Nor-East. That's because out most typical image of the Hallows stage setting was born and raised in the old Yankee country. It was in the same New England territory that held the Witch Trials, and in which Hawthorne grew up that created the first initial iconography for America's Premier Autumn Festival. In that sense, it's almost possible to say that Hawthorne grew up amidst the symbols and imagery of Halloween.
It was always just a part of the natural atmosphere that he breathed, both as a man, and an artist. It explains why even his lightest stories tend to have this sense of soft, faded colors to them, like when the leaves start to turn into rich hues of red, yellow, and brown. It seems a more or less inescapable fact that Hawthorne is a natural, Autumnal writer. Born and raised in the Nation's pumpkin patch, he emerged as an Autumn voice. Someone who is in the way of being a spokesmen for that time of year, born and bred. It even makes a certain amount of sense when you stop and consider that with short stories like "Young Goodmen Brown", and "The Minister's Black Veil", or novels like House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne also has to stand as one of the key builders of the Holiday as we now celebrate it. Heck, he's even the first artist to make mention of, and put the image of the Jack O' Lantern to good use in his writings. So in that light, among other reasons, it makes sense to peg him one of the Nation's first great Horror writers. I don't think this is a reputation that can ever be challenged, nor do I think it should be. I just find it interesting that the same creative mind that helped pioneer the American Gothic (the kind of artist who could be described as Stephen King's metaphorical grandfather, in other words) was also capable of being something in the way of a writer for kids. Here's the part I'm sure most folks aren't aware of. Entertain conjecture that one of America' foremost tellers in Tales of Terror was also the author of collections with titles like A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls. It's not the kind of thing you might expect. It's like learning that someone like Lovecraft was fond of nursery rhymes.
Such a picture just creates too much cognitive dissonance to take seriously. Hawthorne presents a milder, and hopefully therefore graspable version of the same conundrum. How does someone with a reputation for telling scary stories come to write not just a children's story, but a whole book full of them? When you put it like that, I'll have to admit the very idea sounds like an anomaly. I can count the number of times its happened on the fingers of one hand. It's a list that includes the likes of Steve King, Edith Nesbit, Dean Koontz, and Hawthorne. Put that all together and you've got the a publishing phenomenon that still counts as enough of a rarity to be almost unheard of. I'm also not sure its fair to include authors like Alvin Schwartz, R.L. Stine, Bruce Coville, or the Brothers Grimm in that catalogue. That's because these are all examples of artists who went out of their way to write for a Young Adult market, in one case even before the market could be said to exist. Instead, what I'm focused on here is writers of certifiable adult Gothic fiction, who have then turned around and graced us with a family friendly offering for the kiddies. Like I've said, it's happen so few times in the past that there's still this air of novelty about, except in Hawthorne's case it's perhaps as weird as, say, discovering that a tome like
The Secret Garden was Lovecraft's favorite book (which it isn't, so far as I know).
Instead, it's more the sort of left field novelty that you might not expect, yet there's still enough of a sense of intriguing about such an enterprise that you're willing to offer a cautious "Go On?" sort of encouragement. I'll be the first to admit that I've never really looked into the children's entertainment side of Hawthorne's writings before. So in a sense I'm going in just as blind as the rest of you as we take a look at what appears to be a retelling of Classical Mythology known as "The Chimaera".
The Story.
"Once in the old, old times (for all the strange things which I tell you about happened long before anybody can remember), a fountain gushed out of a hill-side in the marvellous land of Greece; and, for aught I know, after so many thousand years, it is still gushing out of the very self-same spot. At any rate, there was the pleasant fountain welling freshly forth and sparkling adown the hillside, in the golden sunset, when a handsome young man named Bellerophon drew near its margin. In his hand he held a bridle, studded with brilliant gems, and adorned with a golden bit. Seeing an old man, and another of middle age, and a little boy, near the fountain, and like wise a maiden, who was dipping up some of the water in a pitcher, he paused, and begged that he might refresh himself with a draught.“This is very delicious water,” he said to the maiden, as he rinsed and filled her pitcher, after drinking out of it. “Will you be kind enough to tell me whether the fountain has any name?”
“Yes; it is called the Fountain of Pirene,” answered the maiden; and then she added, “My grandmother has told me that this clear fountain was once a beautiful woman, and when her son was killed by the arrows of the huntress Diana, she melted all away into tears. And so the water, which you find so cool and sweet, is the sorrow of that poor mother’s heart!”
“I should not have dreamed,” observed the young stranger, “that so clear a well-spring, with its gush and gurgle, and its cheery dance out of the shade into the sunlight, had so much as one tear-drop in its bosom! And this, then, is Pirene? I thank you, pretty maiden, for telling me its name. I have come from a far-away country to find this very spot.”
"A middle-aged country fellow (he had driven his cow to drink out of the spring) stared hard at young Bellerophon, and at the handsome bridle which he carried in his hand.
“The water-courses must be getting low, friend, in your part of the world,” remarked he, “if you come so far only to find the Fountain of Pirene. But, pray, have you lost a horse? I see you carry the bridle in your hand; and a very pretty one it is, with that double row of bright stones upon it. If the horse was as fine as the bridle, you are much to be pitied for losing him.”
“I have lost no horse,” said Bellerophon, with a smile. “But I happen to be seeking a very famous one, which, as wise people have informed me, must be found hereabouts, if anywhere. Do you know whether the winged horse Pegasus still haunts the Fountain of Pirene, as he used to do, in your forefathers’ days?”"But then the country fellow laughed.
"Some of you, my little friends, have probably heard that this Pegasus was a snow-white steed, with beautiful silvery wings, who spent most of his time on the summit of Mount Helicon. He was as wild, and as swift, and as buoyant, in his flight through the air, as any eagle that ever soared into the clouds. There was nothing else like him in the world. He had no mate; he had never been backed or bridled by a master; and, for many a long year, he led a solitary and a happy life...
"In the summer time, and in the beautifullest of weather, Pegasus often alighted on the solid earth, and, closing his silvery wings, would gallop over hill and dale for pastime, as fleetly as the wind. Oftener than in any other place, he had been seen near the Fountain of Pirene, drinking the delicious water, or rolling himself upon the soft grass of the margin. Sometimes, too (but Pegasus was very dainty in his food), he would crop a few of the clover-blossoms that happened to be the sweetest.
"To the Fountain of Pirene, therefore, people’s great-grandfathers had been in the habit of going (as long as they were youthful, and retained their faith in winged horses), in hopes of getting a glimpse at the beautiful Pegasus. But, of late years, he had been very seldom seen. Indeed, there were many of the country folks, dwelling within half an hour’s walk of the fountain, who had never beheld Pegasus, and did not believe that there was any such creature in existence. The country fellow to whom Bellerophon was speaking chanced to be one of those incredulous persons.
"And that was the reason why he laughed.“Pegasus, indeed!” cried he, turning up his nose as high as such a flat nose could be turned up, “Pegasus, indeed! A winged horse, truly! Why, friend, are you in your senses? Of what use would wings be to a horse? Could he drag the plough so well, think you? To be sure, there might be a little saving in the expense of shoes; but then, how would a man like to see his horse flying out of the stable window?–yes; or whisking him up above the clouds, when he only wanted to ride to mill! No, no! I don’t believe in Pegasus. There never was such a ridiculous kind of a horse-fowl made!”
“I have some reason to think otherwise,” said Bellerophon, quietly.
...
"Therefore he haunted about the Fountain of Pirene for a great many days afterwards. He kept continually on the watch, looking upward at the sky, or else down into the water, hoping for ever that he should see either the reflected image of the winged horse, or the marvellous reality. He held the bridle, with its bright gems and golden bit, always ready in his hand. The rustic people, who dwelt in the neighbourhood, and drove their cattle to the fountain to drink, would often laugh at poor Bellerophon, and sometimes take him pretty severely to task. They told him that an able-bodied young man, like himself, ought to have better business than to be wasting his time in such an idle pursuit. They offered to sell him a horse, if he wanted one; and when Bellerophon declined the purchase they tried to drive a bargain with him for his fine bridle."Even the country boys thought him so very foolish, that they used to have a great deal of sport about him; and were rude enough not to care a fig, although Bellerophon saw and heard it. One little urchin, for example, would play Pegasus, and cut the oddest imaginable capers, by way of flying, while one of his schoolfellows would scamper after him, holding forth a twist of bulrushes, which was intended to represent Bellerophon’s ornamented bridle. But the gentle child, who had seen the picture of Pegasus in the water, comforted the young stranger more than all the naughty boys could torment him. The dear little fellow, in his play-hours, often sat down beside him, and, without speaking a word, would look down into the fountain and up towards the sky, with so innocent a faith that Bellerophon could not help feeling encouraged.
"Now you will, perhaps, wish to be told why it was that Bellerophon had undertaken to catch the winged horse. And we shall find no better opportunity to speak about this matter than while he is waiting for Pegasus to appear.
"With its flaming breath, it could set a forest on fire, or burn up a field of grain, or, for that matter, a village, with all its fences and houses. It laid waste the whole country round about, and used to eat up people and animals alive, and cook them afterwards in the burning oven of its stomach. Mercy on us, little children, I hope neither you nor I will ever happen to meet a Chimaera!
"While the hateful beast (if a beast we can anywise call it) was doing all these horrible things, it so chanced that Bellerophon came to that part of the world, on a visit to the king. The king’s name was Iobates, and Lycia was the country which he ruled over. Bellerophon was one of the bravest youths in the world, and desired nothing so much as to do some valiant and beneficent deed, such as would make all mankind admire and love him. In those days, the only way for a young man to distinguish himself was by fighting battles, either with the enemies of his country, or with wicked giants, or with troublesome dragons, or with wild beasts, when he could find nothing more dangerous to encounter. King Iobates, perceiving the courage of his youthful visitor, proposed to him to go and fight the Chimaera, which everybody else was afraid of, and which, unless it should be soon killed, was likely to convert Lycia into a desert. Bellerophon hesitated not a moment, but assured the king that he would either slay this dreaded Chimaera, or perish in the attempt.
"But, in the first place, as the monster was so prodigiously swift, he bethought himself that he should never win the victory by fighting on foot. The wisest thing he could do, therefore, was to get the very best and fleetest horse that could anywhere be found. And what other horse, in all the world, was half so fleet as the marvellous horse Pegasus, who had wings as well as legs, and was even more active in the air than on the earth? To be sure, a great many people denied that there was any such horse with wings, and said that the stories about him were all poetry and nonsense. But, wonderful as it appeared, Bellerophon believed that Pegasus was a real steed, and hoped that he himself might be fortunate enough to find him; and, once fairly mounted on his back, he would be able to fight the Chimaera at better advantage.
Conclusion: A Flawed, Yet Interesting Re-telling of a Myth.
He did it by penning The Scarlet Letter, or by giving America its first famous Haunted House. Which more or less means that one of America's first real examples of artistic self-expression came in the form of the Gothic, or Horror genre. Hey, who am I to complain. When you've got a good idea, and it ain't broke, just run with it. The only caveat I'd have to attach when it comes to the works of older authors like Hawthorne would go as follows. Beware of having to learn old American as a foreign language. Because that's really what a lot of old writing amounts to, no matter how strange that may sound. The way we write sentences now was never always a natural given in previous ages. It's something we've had to work our way up to throughout the development of human languages. What that means in practice is the further back you go in time, the stranger our way of speaking thoughts in words starts to sound to a modern ear. The way Hawthorne's style operates in what is otherwise a simple retelling of one of the oldest Greek Myths is a pretty fair case in point. It's clear, for instances, that Hawthorne's own style is closely modeled not just as the convention of proper grammar in his era, but also by the dictates of British taste. It's something you can tell by the way he spells words like marvelous or color. His use of the extra L and the letter U are all still part of the way in which British writing tends to consider as the correct punctuation. Our word choices don't denote anything better, just different.
I'd almost have to describe it as a mixture of the precarious, yet secure. It's not helped by the fact that he never uses what has to be considered his regular style of prose when composing his Young Adult material. When writing in his own idiom, Hawthorne proves that he's no real slouch. I almost want to say that his normal narrative voice is almost like a version of Austen's prose. It's just a bit more elaborate, yet also possessing this rough hewn quality that always prevents it from getting too near the cliff's edge. Hawthorne likes to wield his words like an architect building one of those classic, Gothic cathedrals. It's a style the writer seems taken with and naturally drawn to. There's just something about the more ornate form of literary composition that the author drew or inherited from that particular strand of English letters. It comes from growing up versing himself in retellings of myths and legends from England and Greece. He picked up his stye from the contents of the bookshelves in the family library. It's pretty clear that a preponderance of the Gothic Ornate is what made up the content of the young artist's reading material, because it is what Hawthorne learned from such books that's he's refitted and translated into an American idiom for his own works. In this regard, his efforts have to be considered more or less a success. That's because his prose is almost a variation to that of Charles Dickens.
J.R.R. Tolkien and Edith Nesbit, for instance, are two of the best known authors who have tackled this particular challenge head on. The writer of The Hobbit was always vehement about how much of a struggle it was for someone of even his talent to find a way of talking to and for kids, without talking down to them. The fact he succeeded as well as he did is a testament to the kind of skill set needed to pull such a feat off with anything like genuine artistic finesse. Edith, meanwhile, spent a lot of trial and error time having to find the best possible words that would make the world of Ancient Greece, or else the characters and settings of Shakespeare come alive for a modern world which had almost forgotten about them. She discovered that the best way to do this was to use the simplest of plain prose to describe the most Fantastic and Miraculous events that the Imagination can conjure up. There's just something about the ability to describe a meeting between a human and a faun, or an elf in the simplest of sentences that can somehow generate its own unique and enduring sense of Enchantment. It's one of the strangest yet most glorious achievements in the history of the popular genres, and writers like Nesbit were the ones who helped pioneer it, so that others like Tolkien would later be able to build off of it. This is what has since become known as the de facto way to write a Fantasy story for all ages. The punchline of course being that Hawthorne was writing in a time before the style had solidified itself.
"It was held by many that if the Chimaera was in fact a product of Olympus, then it might very well prove the same thing, in the end. That to be a god meant that sooner or later one was destined to drink blood, whether it be someone else's, or sometimes, even their own". My goal with all that hypothetical narration is just to give the reader an idea of what a serviceable example of narrative description for this old Grecian fairy tale can be like. I've had to rely on accounts from Homer, and a brief study of the geography of a region which now belongs to modern day Turkey. Yet the point of all that work was to demonstrate just one thing. While it ain't Shakespeare, it's still a hopefully useable enough example of how most of us feel that a Myth like this should be narrated. It's (hopefully) something with a sense of dignity and excitement. The kind of prose that's able to capture a fragment of the quality that the Greek Epics used to have, while also being sure to pack in just the right notes of menace and suspense. It's not much, yet it's the best I can do to give a suggestion of what the Myth of Bellerophon and the Chimaera is like as a story. It's a potent mixed brew, one made up of equal parts terror, wonder, and triumph. It's the kind of story that any adaptor must be able to rise to the challenge if they want to tell it well. Which begs the question of how well a writer of Hawthorne's caliber is able to do on a job like this?
Hawthorne's choice of descriptions count as both simple and fast- paced, while also trying for a type of mirth in the effort to hold the child reader's interest. This may count as the first hint of an off note to some, while others won't see it as any much of a problem. On the whole, while it's maybe not great, the first paragraph of the story may still be counted as something that gets the job done. It might not be poetry in prose, yet it still basically works. It's when we reach the second paragraph that the real headaches begin. What up till now might have been a mere occasional bit of clunkiness in the narrative's diction suddenly morphs into a catalogue of all the worn out and tired cliches of Victorian Era children's literature. The build-up of tension is deflated. Any good sentence is robbed of its potential by the use of phrases such as "Oh, the mischief" which is then subject to needless repetition. And the worst part is that Hawthorne (of all people) seems unable to avoid the tell-tale note of condescension which gives the impression that the narrator doesn't respect his young listeners, and instead of telling the tale, he's just talking down to kids, rather than doing his proper job as a writer.
It turns out that's no idle claim. There really were a set of standards, both unspoken and otherwise, that dictated what adults thought was supposed to be the "best words" to use when telling tales to children. It's one of those long controversies that remains a going concern now as much as it did back then. The major difference is that the situation for the Young Adult market was a whole lot worse than it is today. To start with, the YA field couldn't even be said to exist. The age demographic was there, yet so was the shared consensus that unless they were put to their chores, then minors, tweens, and teens should be seldom seen, and heard from even less. This was the maxim that guided the thought of the Ruling and Middle classes during the Early Modern Period. The idea of childhood as special age in which kids are permitted to just be themselves was nowhere to be found until the middle of the 19th century, when the Romantic Movement and the various English and Continental writers associated with it more or less became the first slate of advocates for the rights of children. Before that happened, kids were viewed as mere cogs in the grand scheme of things by the powers that be. It's true that the peasantry still held on to various folk traditions and customs, and they might have included a more permissible space for pre-teens. However, we're also talking about an economic class that were little more than serfs at the time.
This then was the situation that any child would have found themselves confronted with if they were looking for something to read. There were no real books aimed at young readers, and those that were, as both Green hints at, and as fellow critic F.J. Harvey Darton catalogues in detail, were of a highly moralistic, dry-as-dust nature. To give an idea of what I'm talking about, imagine (if you dare) a bad version of Sesame Street. One where all the charm and joys of meeting all of those wonderful character and befriending them is replaced by something that reads like an olde fashioned school primer. One where the basic gist of almost every sentence is of the "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" variety. However effective it might be as a plea, the very notion of an entire book made of almost nothing else except such moral maxims squeezed in between a bare-bones recital of historical fact, with nothing in the text to stimulate the Imagination in such a way that awaken that special type of desire which leads human beings to take up the quest for knowledge, means you've got the kind of book that will set most modern readers' teeth on edge, present company included. The real sad part is that, yes, this was the kind of book you were expected to write if you wrote for children.
He writes of how "Criticism has generally taken it for granted that the tales from Greek mythology which Hawthorne told for
his 'dear auditors' at Tanglewood are so simple that there
could be no point in comparing his versions with the accounts
in Hesiod, Ovid, Homer, or other classical writers. As a
result, A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys and Tanglewood
Tales have usually been ignored altogether, or dismissed with
a genial nod towards such homely anachronisms as King
Midas's New England breakfast: 'Hot cakes, some nice little
brook trout, roasted potatoes, fresh boiled eggs, and coffee. But if Hawthorne was serious when he advised readers to
'look through the whole range of his fictitious characters,
good and evil, in order to detect any of his essential traits'
(Ill, 386), then the twelve mythological tales deserve close
attention...It is clear, however, that Hawthorne understood from the
beginning that his apparently simple plots ( even as moral
exempla) were not purely ingenuous. In the Pandora story,
for example, he could not resist adding awkward interpretive
comments which are neither childlike nor classical in spirit.
He was, in fact, changing the entire emphasis of the myth (37-9)". That last part in particular sounds kind of damning. It the author guilty of co-opting the stories?
"Hawthorne himself, although he polished what he thought of as blunt language into what strikes
us as elegant variation, was neither scandalized nor repelled
by the crudities of life; when Una fell down, she fell on her
'bum' according to his journal. For Sophia, however, who
believed ecstatically that 'to do the highest, wisest, loveliest
thing is not the least effort to him, any more than it is to a
baby to be innocent,' purity of word was a romantic obsession. It was an obsession which Hawthorne, despite his apparent candour, seems to have shared in part at least. Hence
the thorough scouring of the 'moral stains' of mythology.
Had he needed any ulterior incentive to conformity in this
respect, he might have found it immediately at hand in the
preface to Peter Parley's Tales About the Mythology of
Greece and Rome: 'Much that is in Mythology requires
judicious modification before it can, with propriety, be presented to youth. I have scrupulously avoided the unchaste
allusions which are introduced into almost every book on
this subject, thinking it better to be silent than to give my
young friends information likely to do them an injury.'
"Hawthorne invoked all of these devices in support of the
principle of relevance. But how could the fundamental import
or inner meaning of the myths be made apparent through the
welter of incident, detail, allusion, and reflection presented
on the surface? His solution to this key problem involves two
familiar terms: he will aim, he says, at 'a tone in some degree
Gothic or romantic' ( my italics)....In effect, the
Gothic 'humanizes' the classic form by infusing it with feeling
or emotional colour. At the same time...the Gothic mode exaggerates. The Atlas of antiquity has
become, in Eustace's hands, an enormous figure of pain and
endurance, at once exciting the feelings and arresting the eye.
He is, to use the third term which Hawthorne joins to 'Gothic'
and 'romantic,' picturesque. Like Burke's 'sublime,' the
Gothic inspires with awe; it is mysterious, even supernatural;
and it is related to the tender sentiments of nostalgia, affection, and pity (41-44)". If all this documentation of planning and theorizing on the part of the author means anything, then it rests in three results. 1. It soon becomes clear that Hawthorne was never going in blind. He never meant these stories to be treated as anything slap-dash, or "phoned in". Instead, all the evidence suggests that he made a great deal of preparation in the approach to the Myths of Ancient Greece. Hawthorne seems to have done this in a manner that sounds surprisingly similar as that of Tolkien in gearing up to set Middle Earth down on the page for the very first time.
With this in mind, is it any wonder that a story as naturally gripping as the legend of Pegasus and the Chimaera is forced to struggle with a number of forces working against it? Hell, the reason I've talked so much about the style of Hawthorne's adaptation is because it was so difficult to look past the problems with the way he wrote the damn thing. It was like being unable to catch a clear glimpse of a rich and varied forest, because there was this one single tree getting in the way of it all. That's how difficult it's been to talk about this short story. In and of itself, the nature of the particular Myth Hawthorne is dealing with is laid out well enough by McPherson. "Knowing, perhaps, that this was his best
story, Hawthorne placed it at the end of A Wonder-Book.
Although he treats his source material with great independence, it is clear that...any classical
source...for...his tale...is scattered
through Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Apollodorus, and Pausanias". Hawthorne's retelling pieces together elements "of the classical fragments in an awkward jigsaw. Since a
summary of this material would be both tedious and irrelevant, it may be enough to cite those details which appear in
Hawthorne's story.
Again, this is all down to Hawthorne trying to find a way to break out of the mold that typified whatever Children's Writing was in an era before the advent of E. Nesbit and Mark Twain. It means the author is left to fend for himself, and it's clear that without a better guide to go on, Hawthorne's efforts have little choice except to come off as odd sounding. This is apparently what happens when you want to pioneer a new way of writing for kids, yet you don't have all the stylistic materials and requirements, and hence no solid idea of which direction to strike out for. McPherson continues: "During the long watch with his young companion, Bellerophon reflects impatiently that 'If he could only succeed in
putting the golden bit into the mouth of Pegasus, the winged
horse would be submissive, and would own Bellerophon for
his master.' (Anthon's account says: 'Pegasus at once yielded
his mouth to the magic bit, and the hero, mounting him,
achieved his adventures.') The child's faith keeps Bellerophon from returning to Lycia to fight the Chimaera single
handed. 'Nobody,' Hawthorne asserts, 'should ever try to fight an earth-born Chimaera, unless he can first get upon the
back of an aerial steed.'
"I cannot tell you half that he did. He skimmed straightforward, and sideways, and backward. He reared himself erect, with his fore-legs on a wreath of mist, and his hind-legs on nothing at all. He flung out his heels behind, and put down his head between his legs, with his wings pointing right upward. At about two miles’ height above the earth, he turned a somersault, so that Bellerophon’s heels were where his head should have been, and he seemed to look down into the sky, instead of up. He twisted his head about, and, looking Bellerophon in the face, with fire flashing from his eyes, made a terrible attempt to bite him. He fluttered his pinions so wildly that one of the silver feathers was shaken out, and floating earthward, was picked up by the child, who kept it as long as he lived, in memory of Pegasus and Bellerophon (web)". Here is where the author has to be given some credit, as these two paragraphs are an example of what the the entire book should have been like. It's an instance where the prose is able or allowed to realize its full dramatic potential, and for just a moment, the reader is (however brief) transported somewhere into the realm of the Classical Epic. "Upon Pegasus' submission, Hawthorne comments: 'He was glad at heart, after so
many lonely centuries, to have found a companion and a
master. Thus it always is with winged horses, and with all
such wild and solitary creatures. If you can catch and over
come them, it is the surest way to win their love.' (IV, 182)"Bellerophon, inspired by the...spirit of Pegasus,
offers the horse its freedom, but Pegasus returns of his own
accord, and they live, sleep, and adventure together until,
finally, they are ready to face 'the terrible Chimaera.' Hawthorne's picture of the battle owes nothing" to any of his source material. Instead, "its
debt, in imaginative terms, is to Spenser. Nowhere in Hawthorne is there such a rousing spectacle. At one point, after
having lost two heads, the Chimaera opens 'its snake-jaws to
such an abominable width, that Pegasus might almost, I was
going to say, have flown right down its throat, rider and all!
At their approach it shot out a tremendous blast of its fiery
breath, and enveloped Bellerophon and his steed in a perfect
atmosphere of flame.' (IV, 191) Then the 'earth-born monster' grapples Pegasus and is 'borne upward, along with the
creature of light and air.' Bellerophon, now understanding
that 'the best way to fight a Chimaera is by getting as close
to it as you can,' stabs it through the heart.
What we've got on our hands here is a nothing less than a patchwork crazy quilt effort. An exercise in latter day mythologizing that's made up of equal parts Epic Inspiration that's been thrown into the same blender with all too occasional moments of clunky invention. The power of the original Myth is still there, even when it suffers at the hands of the author. It's clear in retrospect that what Hawthorne should have done most of all was to not be afraid of using his own narrative voice. The one that allowed stories like The Scarlet Letter and House of Seven Gables to have so much Gothic power. It's the same kind of narration he should have supplied when it came to the contents of the Wonder Book and the legend of Bellerophon and the Chimaera. If he'd done that, then I'd probably have a lot more positive things to say about this short story. Hell, in such an alternate timeline, I'd probably bypass all discussion of good and bad writing styles, and instead would concentrate all time and effort on the ways in which its clear that Hawthorne was trying to bring the world of Greek Myth up to date for modern audiences, and how in doing so, he also lends his characteristic Gothic air to the proceedings, thus granting the World of Myth and Legend a pioneering American idiom which is, at the same time, the first hint that there can be retellings of Ancient Myth which bring out the original notes of the macabre.
I'd like to write an entire article on that version of "The Chimaera". What I have to work with instead is just this one. It's a version in which Hawthorne struggles to reconcile what his own Inspiration is probably telling him to do in contrast to both the demands of the early 19th century literary market, and the constrictions of what public taste deems to be the appropriate style of words for young hearts and minds. In the end, it seems as if Hawthorne caved to all of these societal pressures when probably shouldn't have. He was faced with an issue he never encountered with his novels for adults, and as a result, we're left with what Ray Bradbury might describe as "A masterpiece of bits and pieces". It's a story with real Imaginative power, yet it never quite realizes its full potential due to a number of factors. In this case, it seems to have been the limitations placed upon the author, combined with a clear lack of focus on what new direction this story needed in order to take off the right way. The most logical answer remains that Hawthorne shouldn't have been afraid to use his own voice. As that would have retained not just the Epic dignity of the story of Bellerophon and the Three-Headed Monster. It would also have been a pioneering leap forward, one that would have given Ancient Greece its own voice for American readers. Such an event would have been one of Hawthorne's greatest achievements.
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