Audio recording of chapter 7 of Studies in Classic American Literature by D. H. Lawrence, "Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter." (46:06)
Then listen to the diabolic undertone of The Scarlet Letter.
Man ate of the tree of knowledge, and became ashamed of himself.
Do you imagine Adam had never lived with Eve before that apple episode? Yes, he had. As a wild animal with his mate.
It didn't become 'sin' till the knowledge-poison entered. That apple of Sodom.
We are divided in ourselves, against ourselves. And that is the meaning of the cross symbol.
In the first place, Adam knew Eve as a wild animal knows its mate, momentaneously, but vitally, in blood-knowledge. Blood-knowledge, not mind-knowledge. Blood-knowledge, that seems utterly to forget, but doesn't. Blood-knowledge, instinct, intuition, all the vast vital flux of knowing that goes on in the dark, antecedent to the mind.
Then came that beastly apple, and the other sort of know- ledge started.
Adam began to look at himself. 'My hat!' he said. 'What's this ? My Lord ! What the deuce ! - And Eve ! I wonder about Eve.'
Thus starts KNOWING. Which shortly runs to UNDERSTANDING, when the devil gets his own.
When Adam went and took Eve, after the apple, he didn't do any more than he had done many a time before, in act. But in consciousness he did something very different. So did Eve. Each of them kept an eye on what they were doing, they watched what was happening to them. They wanted to KNOW. And that was the birth of sin. Not doing it, but KNOWING about it. Before the apple, they had shut their eyes and their minds had gone dark. Now, they peeped and pried and imagined. They watched themselves. And they felt uncomfortable after. They felt self-conscious. So they said, 'The act is sin. Let's hide. We've sinned.'
No wonder the Lord kicked them out of the Garden. Dirty hypocrites.
The sin was the self-watching, self-consciousness. The sin, and the doom. Dirty understanding.
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Audio recording of chapter 8 of Studies in Classic American Literature by D. H. Lawrence, "Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance." (23:15)
Excerpt:
The new generation is having no ghosts or cobwebs. It is setting up in the photography line, and is just going to make a sound financial thing out of it. For this purpose all old hates and old glooms, that belong to the antique order of Haughty Fathers, all these are swept up in the vacuum cleaner, and the vendetta-born young couple effect a perfect understanding under the black cloth of a camera and prosperity. Vivat Industria!
Oh, Nathaniel, you savage ironist! Ugh, how you'd have hated it if you'd had nothing but the prosperous 'dear' young couple to write about! If you'd lived to the day when America was nothing but a Main Street.
The Dark Old Fathers.
The Beloved Wishy-Washy Sons.
The Photography Business.
? ? ?
Hawthorne came nearest to actuality in the Blithedale Romance. This novel is a sort of picture of the notorious Brook Farm experiment. There the famous idealists and transcen- dentalists of America met to till the soil and hew the timber in the sweat of their own brows, thinking high thoughts the while, and breathing an atmosphere of communal love, and tingling in tune with the Oversoul, like so many strings of a super-celestial harp. An old twang of the Crevecoeur instrument.
Of course they fell out like cats and dogs. Couldn't stand one another. And all the music they made was the music of their quarrelling.
You can't idealize hard work. Which is why America invents so many machines and contrivances of all sort: so that they need do no physical work.
And that's why the idealists left off brookfarming, and took to bookfarming.
You can't idealize the essential brute blood-activity, the brute blood desires, the basic, sardonic blood-knowledge.
That you can't idealize.
And you can't eliminate it.
So there's the end of ideal man.
Man is made up of a dual consciousness, of which the two halves are most of the time in opposition to one another - and will be so as long as time lasts.
You've got to learn to change from one consciousness to the other, turn and about. Not to try to make either absolute, or dominant. The Holy Ghost tells you the how and when.
Never did Nathaniel feel himself more spectral - of course he went brookfarming - than when he w as winding the horn in the morning to summon the transcendental labourers to their tasks, or than when marching off with a hoe ideally to hoe the turnips, 'Never did I feel more spectral,' says Nathaniel.
Never did I feel such a fool, would have been more to the point.
Farcical fools, trying to idealize labour. You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labour, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind. And the harder a man works, at mental labour, at idealism, at transcendental occupations, the thinner becomes his blood, and the more brittle his nerves.
Oh, the brittle-nerved brookfarmers!
You've got to be able to do both: the mental work, and the brute work. But be prepared to step from one pair of shoes into another. Don't try and make it all one pair of shoes.
The attempt to idealize the blood!
Nathaniel knew he was a fool, attempting it.
He went home to his amiable spouse and his sanctum sanctorum of a study.
Nathaniel!
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