Hawthorne's Solid Time

As I read through Hawthorne's Marble Faun, I find myself humming that old Jim Croce song, "If I Could Have Time in a Bottle." NH's obsession with the past bothers me. I find him hard to place precisely on an ideological landscape. He conflates various things -- guilt and trauma; absolution and catharsis; time or Time and a kind of puritan eidos and memory -- yet he does so advisedly, and seems at best partially convinced of the veracity of his operations.

Let's take a moment in The Marble Faun. Here when Hilda breaks down and confesses to the priest (795 Notes and Tales NY: Modern Library 1937), we get a revealing passage:

"If she had heard her mother's voice from within the tabernacle, calling her, in her own mother-tongue, to come and lay her poor head in her lap, and sob out all her troubles, Helda could not have responded with a more inevitable obedience. She did nothting; she only felt. Within her heart was a great need. Close at hand, within the veil of the confessional, was the relief. She flung herself down in the penitent's place, and tremulouslyu, passionaltely, with sobs, tears, and the turbulent overflow of emotion too long represed, she poured out the dark story which had infused its poison in her innocent life.

   Hilda had not seen, nor could she now see the visage of the priest. But, at intervals, in the pauses of that strange confession, half choked by the struggle of her feelings toward an otlet, she heard a mild, calm voice, somewhat mellowed by age. It sppoke soothingly; it encouraged her; it led her on by apposite questions that seemed to be suggested by a great and tender interest, and acted like magnetism in attracting the girl's confidence to this unseen freind. The priest's share in the interview, indeed, resembled that of one who removes the stones, clustered branches, or whatever entanglements impede the current of a swollen stream. Hilda could ahve imagined -- so much to the purpose hwere his inquiries -- that he was already acquanted iwth some outline of what hse strove to tell him.
    Thus assisted, she revealed the whole of her terrible secret! The whole, except that no name escaped her lips.

This bears odd reflections. Hawthorne's describing what Freud might call an abreaction, catharsis, or (in a translation that I am told is unfortunate) hypercathexis. The incident bears examination in terms of symbol in the sense that the psychiatric profession uses that term; that is, the suggestion that she might confess Pro Anglica Lingua has released Hilda's defensiveness and allowed her to feel herself at home. That at home Hawthorne describes as "If she heard her mother's voice," so the image of parental support could hardly get more immediate. The priest, likewise, appears as transparently paternal: not only is he kindly and understanding; he's also quite conveniently from New England.

Perhaps notably, Hawthorne describes Hilda as pouring out "the dark story," which suggests that she may have narrated it. If so, this would not constitute a complete reliving of the event, since a narrator separates him or her self from the action, recounting what has happened instead of speaking, thinking, and feeling as though one were directly within the incident.

As another factor that must be active in this moment, Hawthorne has for the duration of the novel spent considerable time describing how each of his characters do or do not resemble one or another work of art. Miriam, Hilda, and Kenyon all produce objets d'art; Donatello is allied with the production of a wine called sunshine which has something approaching magical properties.