La lettre écarlate

Nathaniel Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth.With THE SCARLET LETTER, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride.

La lettre écarlete

La Lettre écarlate, c'est la marque au fer rouge qui désigne la femme adultère dans l'Amérique du puritanisme obsessionnel de l'époque coloniale. Trois personnages : Hester qui vit avec une dignité admirable sa faute et sa solitude. Arthur Dimmesdale, le jeune pasteur dont les élans mystiques soulèvent à Boston l'enthousiasme des fidèles mais qui, ensorcelé par Hester, ne parvient ni à dominer ni à vivre sa sensualité. Chillingworth, le mari, qui pendant des années tourmentera en silence le pasteur jusqu'à la folie et la mort. Le premier des grands romans américains, la clef d'une sensibilité nationale toujours partagée entre la tentation du scandale et le démon de la culpabilité.

La Lettre écarlate

Le Livre des merveilles (A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls), est un recueil de nouvelles pour enfants de Nathaniel Hawthorne publié en 1852. Il y réécrit plusieurs récits de la mythologie grecque. Les histoires racontées sont les suivantes : The Gorgon's Head (la tête de la Gorgone, Persée), The Golden Touch (le toucher d'or, Midas), The Paradise of Children (le paradis des enfants, Pandore), The Three Golden Apples (les trois pommes d'or, un des douze Travaux d'Héraclès), The Miraculous Pitcher (Philémon et Baucis), The Chimæra (la chimère, Bellérophon). Extrait : «~Il serait bien fâcheux, dit-il, qu'un homme de mon érudition (pour ne pas parler de l'originalité de son imaginative) ne fût pas capable d'offrir chaque jour une histoire différente à des enfants comme vous. Écoutez bien~; je vais vous dire un de ces contes de nourrice, inventés pour amuser la Terre, notre vieille, vieille grand-mère, quand elle était petite fille en jupon et en sarrau. Il y en a une centaine, et je n'en reviens pas de ce qu'ils n'ont point été recueillis dans des livres d'images destinés aux petites filles et aux petits garçons. Au lieu de cela, les barbes grises se creusent la tête à les étudier dans de gros bouquins grecs couverts de poussière, et cherchent à savoir comment et pourquoi ils ont été inventés.

Le livre des merveilles

Parti un soir de chez lui en prétextant un voyage, monsieur Wakefi eld ne revint que vingt ans plus tard. comme s'il était parti la veille. À partir de ce fait divers véridique, Nathaniel Hawthorne tente de décrypter ce qui a bien pu pousser Wakefi eld, homme des plus ordinaires, à ainsi disparaître volontairement, à l'insu de sa femme. Durant ces vingt ans, Wakefi eld a pris un logement dans une rue voisine de sa propre maison. De forme inhabituelle, ce texte se situe entre le récit et l'essai.
L'auteur ne s'e° ace pas dans cette tentative d'élucidation mais invite au contraire le lecteur à émettre lui-même des hypothèses. Avec une grande intensité dramatique, il analyse ce qui peut infl uer, sans que l'on en ait le contrôle, sur le cours d'une vie.

Wakefield

On July 28, 1851, Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife Sophia and daughters Una and Rose left their house in Western Massachusetts to visit relatives near Boston. Hawthorne and his five-year-old son Julian stayed behind. How father and son got along over the next three weeks is the subject of this tender and funny extract from Hawthorne's notebooks."At about six o'clock I looked over the edge of my bed and saw that Julian was awake, peeping sideways at me." Each day starts early and is mostly given over to swimming and skipping stones, berry-picking and subduing armies of thistles. There are lots of questions ("It really does seem as if he has baited me with more questions, references, and observations, than mortal father ought to be expected to endure"), a visit to a Shaker community, domestic crises concerning a pet rabbit, and some poignant moments of loneliness ("I went to bed at about nine and longed for Phoebe"). And one evening Mr. Herman Melville comes by to enjoy a late-night discussion of eternity over cigars.With an introduction by Paul Auster that paints a beautifully observed, intimate picture of the Hawthornes at home, this little-known, true-life story by a great American writer emerges from obscurity to shine a delightful light upon family life--then and now.

Vingt jours avec Julian et Petit Lapin, selon papa

WHEN a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former-while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart-has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the Marvelous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime even if he disregard this caution.

In the present work, the author has proposed to himself-but with what success, fortunately, it is not for him to judge-to keep undeviatingly within his immunities. The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. It is a legend prolonging itself, from an epoch now gray in the distance, down into our own broad daylight, and bringing along with it some of its legendary mist, which the reader, according to his pleasure, may either disregard, or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about the characters and events for the sake of a picturesque effect.

The House of the Seven Gables

« Vous a-t-on jamais parlé des pommes d'or qui mûrissaient au jardin des Hespérides ? Aj, quelles pommes, le boisseau se vendrait à un bon prix si l'on en trouvait dans nos vergers d'aujourd'hui. Mais leur greffe est perdue.

Les trois pommes d'or

A superb depiction of a utopian community that cannot survive the individual passions of its members. In language that is suggestive and often erotic, Nathaniel Hawthorne tells a tale of failed possibilities and multiple personal betrayals as he explores the contrasts between what his characters espouse and what they actually experience in an 'ideal' community. A theme of unrealized sexual possibilities serves as a counterpoint to the other failures at Blithedale: class and sex distinctions are not eradicated, and communal work on the farm proves personally unrewarding and economically disastrous. Based in part on Hawthorne's own experiences at Brook Farm, an experimental socialist community, The Blithedale Romance is especially timely in light of renewed interest in self-sufficient and other cooperative societies.

La lettre écarlate

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