Books and Ideas (26)

I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.

Tales and Sketches. Parts One, Two, Three and Four. Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Continued)

“The Snow-Image.” “The Snow-image seemed, in fact, not so much to be made by the children, as to grow up under their hands, while they were playing and prattling about it. ‘Mama will see how very beautiful she is, but Papa will say, ‘Tush—Nonsense! Come in out of the cold.’ ”

“Feathertop: A Moralized Legend.” “The good woman [Mother Rigby] had risen thus early, (for as yet, it was scarcely sunrise) in order to set about making a scarecrow, which she intended to put in the middle of her corn patch…was determined…to contrive as lifelike a scarecrow as ever was seen. …settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the scarecrow should represent a fine gentleman of the period…. And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin-head as well as my scarecrow. What if I should let him take his chance among the other men of straw and empty fellows who go bustling about the world? Thou shalt say a thousand things, and saying them a thousand times over, thou shalt still have said nothing! My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of worn-out, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash, as he was; yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are; and why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it.”

Preface to The Old Manse. “It was awful to reflect how many sermons must have been written there [the study]. Their [Indian arrowheads’] great charm consists in this rudeness, and in the individuality of each article, so different from the productions of civilized machinery, which shapes everything on one pattern. There is so much individuality of character, too, among apple trees…the variety of grotesque shapes, into which apple-trees contort themselves…. A dissertation on the Book of Job—which only Job himself could had patience to read. How early in the summer, too, the prophecy of autumn comes! …earlier in some years than in others…sometimes, even in the first weeks of July. New truth being as heady as new wine. For myself, the book will always retain one charm, as reminding me of the river, with its delightful solitudes, and of the avenue, the garden and the orchard, and especially the dear old Manse, with the little study on its western side, and the sunshine glimmering through the willow-branches while I wrote.”

Preface to Twice-Told Tales. “He [the author] had no incitement to literary effort in a reasonable prospect of reputation or profit; nothing but the pleasure itself of composition. The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages. They are the memorials of very tranquil and not unhappy years…failed, it is true…in winning an extensive popularity.”

Preface to “The Snow-Image.” “In youth, men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.”

“Egotism, or, the Bosom-Serpent.” A man feels as if a serpent is eating at his entrails. “ ‘It gnaws me! It gnaws me!’ Thus, making his own actual serpent—if a serpent there actually was in his bosom—the type of each man’s fatal error, or hoarded sin, or unquiet conscience, and striking his sting so unremorsefuly into the sorest spot; we may well imagine that Roderick became the pest of the city. Could I, for one instant, forget myself, the serpent might not abide within me; it is my diseased self-contemplation that has engendered and nourished him.”