The Daemon Knows by Harold Bloom

Author:Harold Bloom [Bloom, Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

There is power in this pathos, but Priscilla is possessed in a mode that discomforts me; yet that is Hawthorne’s deliberate artistry. Her clinging weakness provokes eros in Hollingsworth and perhaps even in Coverdale, as he finally confesses. It brings revulsion toward her in Zenobia, whom Priscilla desires far more than she wishes attachment to any man. A somehow still-virginal former prostitute, she seems almost to be Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s creation.

We never do get to know Priscilla. Hawthorne gives her almost nothing memorable to say. This is daemonic design: An inarticulate muse who lacks a will of her own, Priscilla with her animated power drives out Zenobia and flees within Hollingsworth. More vitally, she stimulates readers into a better grasp of Hawthorne’s deep allegiance to his genre of romance. Take away awareness of romance conventions and you arrive at the strong misreadings of Hawthorne by Henry James, who owed his precursor rather too much and chided him for lack of realism.

Hawthorne’s downward path to wisdom diminished his art. The greater tales and The Scarlet Letter are absolute achievements, while The House of the Seven Gables is a lesser one. Alas, The Blithedale Romance charms and fails. In a final attempt, Hawthorne went on to the flawed greatness of The Marble Faun, thus ending his art.

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