Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne :: essays research papers

In the summer of 1850 Melville purchased an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the community of Pittsfield in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Berkshire was then home to a number of prominent literary figures such as Fanny Kemble, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and, in Lenox, less than six miles from Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne.The both authors met for the number one time in Stockbridge on August 5, 1850, on a picnic excursion hosted by David Dudley Field. Hawthorne was forty-six and was familiar with at least(prenominal) a portion of Melvilles work, having favorably reviewed Typee in the Salem Advertiser (March 25, 1846) Melville was cardinal and had just written or was about to write an exceedingly fervent and enthusiastic piece on Hawthornes Mosses From an Old Manse, a copy of which had been stipulation to him by an aunt a few weeks before.Early in the line of achievement of the excursion, a sudden thunderstorm forced the party to take shelter, loose Melvill e and Hawthorne an opportunity to become better acquainted. The two men took to each opposite at once, and as their conversation continued were delighted to discover a growing bond of mutual sympathy and comprehension. Two days posterior Hawthorne wrote to a friend "I liked Melville so much that I have asked him to spend a few days with me." This would be the first of a series of visits, supplemented by written correspondence, that would continue until the gradual chilling off of the friendship late in 1852.In the beginning the race was a great source of comfort and intellectual stimulation to Melville, who believed he had finally found the soul mate for whom he had been yearning. As Sophia Hawthorne observed, "Mr. Melville, broadly silent and uncommunicative, pours out the rich floods of his mind and experience to Nathaniel Hawthorne, so true of apprehension, so sure of a large and generous interpretation, and of the most huffy and fine judgment." Hawthornes influence, in fact, is credited as the prime catalyst idler Melvilles decision to transform what originally seems to have been a light-hearted whaling adventure into the spectacular masterpiece that is arguably the greatest American novel of all time.In August of 1852 Melville wrote to Hawthorne about the true story of a New England charwoman who had taken in and married a shipwrecked sailor only to be abandoned by him. "The Story of Agatha", Melville thought, would be a perfect pass on for the application of Hawthornes talents the older man, however, felt little enthusiasm for the project and after a few desultory attempts suggested that Melville write the story himself.