Early American Literature discussion

Discussion thread for The Hall of Fantasy.

This one was just sooo good! There is so much wisdom, with a dash of humor too...Mr. Hawthorne never ceases to amaze!

True enough, I admit it! 😂

One man exhibited a sort of lens whereby he had succeeded in making sunshine out of a lady's smile; and it was his purpose wholly to irradiate the earth by means of this wonderful invention.
"It is nothing new," said I; "for most of our sunshine comes from woman's smile already."
"True," answered the inventor; "but my machine will secure a constant supply for domestic use; whereas hitherto it has been very precarious."

How true...imagination is a gift of God if used in moderation!

Some unfortunates make their whole abode and business here [in the Hall of Fantasy], and contract habits which unfit them for all the real employments of life. Others--but these are few--possess the faculty, in their occasional visits, of discovering a purer truth than the world call impart among the lights and shadows of these pictured windows.
And with all its dangerous influences, we have reason to thank God that there is such a place of refuge from the gloom and chillness of actual life. Hither may come the prisoner, escaping from his dark and narrow cell and cankerous chain, to breathe free air in this enchanted atmosphere. The sick man leaves his weary pillow, and finds strength to wander hither, though his wasted limbs might not support him even to the threshold of his chamber. The exile passes through the Hall of Fantasy to revisit his native soil. The burden of years rolls down from the old man's shoulders the moment that the door uncloses. Mourners leave their heavy sorrows at the entrance, and here rejoin the lost ones whose faces would else be seen no more, until thought shall have become the only fact. It may be said, in truth, that there is but half a life--the meaner and earthier half--for those who never find their way into the hall.
Nor must I fail to mention that in the observatory of the edifice is kept that wonderful perspective-glass, through which the shepherds of the Delectable Mountains showed Christian the far off gleam of the Celestial City. The eye of Faith still loves to gaze through it.

Hawthorne must have had Emerson, Thoreau, and the other Transcendentalists he knew in mind when he wrote this. I like his take on them.

It would be endless to describe the herd of real or self styled
reformers that peopled this place of refuge. They were the
representatives of an unquiet period, when mankind is seeking to
cast off the whole tissue of ancient custom like a tattered garment.
Many of then had got possession of some crystal fragment of truth,
the brightness of which so dazzled them that they could see nothing
else in the wide universe.

There were many great quotes from this story! I loved the paragraphs speaking of all the lost, hurting souls who found refuge in a little imagination. Nearer the end of the paragraph, Hawthorne states,

" It may be said, in truth, that there is but half a life - the meaner and earthlier half - for those who never find their way into the hall."

But (as you said) Hawthorne finds a good balance. At the end of his narrative (isn't "narrative" such a fun word to use?) he wrote - " But for those who waste all their days in the Hall of Fantasy good Father Miller's prophecy is already accomplished, and the solid earth has come to an untimely end. Let us be content, therefore, with merely an occasional visit, for the sake of spiritualizing the grossness of this actual life, and prefiguring to ourselves a state in which the Idea shall be all in all."