Spirit Unbound in Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” and “Drowne’s Wooden Image” (Part 2)

What’s the difference between collaborating with Nature and mining her secrets? Where is the line between imitation and interpretation? And can love only work its magic through the creative, rather than the critical, faculty? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of two short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne: “The Birth-Mark” and “Drowne’s Wooden Image.” Upcoming Episodes: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Julius Caesar.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Welcome to part two of our discussion of two short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. We're still talking about the birthmark. I think we're just about ready to wrap up. Wes. What have we missed? What more do we need to talk about here? 0:45 Wes: In line with the birthmark representing the instinctual or something about her affective life, is the fact that it's kind of like a mood ring, right? So it reflected every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart. And so again, I think the Hawthorne is more vague about this in it representing human frailty. But I want to highlight the sense in which it represents affective life. Emotions, feelings, the instinctual side of life. Because this is a theme that I think shows up repeatedly, right? So even in Medea with Jason and his kind of cold, he could have had acid stains on his hands, too. Been a pale scientist, Mr. Rational Jason versus Medea, who I thought was more representative of the instinctual. And I thought in a way the play was a warning about, in the Athenian classical period, the dangers of the rejection of the instinctual as well as the traditional, arguably, and rejection of a part of life that was less rational. It comes back to bite you in the ass and maybe it will cut up your brother and throw him in the ocean. But in any case. So here again, I think the rejection of what is instinctual in women, what is sexual in women, what is physical and women, this is psychologically quite common. And in this case, it shows up as a. It becomes a scientific project, right? What if I can turn her into a Madonna and completely spiritualize her by using science? It's like. It's almost like it's a very. Of course, it's a variation Frankenstein, which I guess was written 48 years before, right. Where he's not creating a monster out of graveyard parts. He's given up on trying to breathe life into matter and create life, but he's going to take imperfect life and create perfect spirit out of it, right? 2:50 Erin: Yeah. I think this mood ring quality that you're pointing to is what hinted to me that Aylmer is likely impotent. We have the explanation of this quality. It says in the usual state of her complexion, a healthy, though delicate bloom, the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed, it gradually became more indistinct and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused her to turn pale, there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. So its appearance seems relative to the extent to which she blushes. Right. So if she's reddening because of anger, which she already has by the time we read this paragraph, then it disappears. But also a blush which is obviously sexually suggestive would cause it to disappear as well. So it seems to me that the fact that it stands out so strongly because she's always pale, because she's. Because he, you know, is always examining her rather than really being in any kind of relationship to her. You know, a marital relationship, a sexual relationship, Playing. 4:05 Wes: He's playing doctor with her. 4:08 Erin: Well, but. But. But not in such a way that. That she. 4:12 Wes: Not in the fun way that kids. 4:13 Erin: Not in the fun way. That's right. That's right. 4:16 Wes: In the asexual, adult way. 4:19 Erin: Right. I mean. I mean, not to make this a little too spicy or whatever, but, you know, the idea is that if she were blushing all the time, you would never see it. You know, if he was. If he was actually paying her, shall we say, the proper attentions, then it would become less distinct. But because of his relationship to her, which is one of, like a. Like a diagnostic or critical relation causing her pallor, it stands out all the more. Not that he could just be having sex with her all the time. 4:49 Wes: That's right. 4:50 Erin: But I'm just saying that it would, 4:52 Wes: you know, the hand is glowing again. All right. Time for sex. Yeah, that's really interesting. This is. I like this. And it's like this glaring reminder he hasn't. Pleasing his woman. 5:04 Erin: Exactly. Exactly. Yes. 5:08 Wes: It's an accusation. Yeah. Why the shape of a hand? What is that about? Other than. I mean, Hawthorne does give us some ideas, but did you have any ideas? Like, ultimately, it's something that's grasping her heart. Right. But there's this infantile, creepy quality to it. Like it's a little baby hand or fetus hand or something. 5:30 Erin: A doll hand. And the sleeves of Kristen Wiig. 5:33 Wes: Yes. I sent you the. Yeah. Because I couldn't help but be reminded of that Kristen Wiig skit in. Which is it? Dooneese. And I did some research. I probably did more research on that than I did on the birthmark. But trying to figure out how did she get the idea for that skit. Because she kind of has these deformities like this huge forehead and she's in a musical group with a bunch of. 6:00 Erin: Was I looking at her through a bubble or does she attractive or is her forehead really big? 6:08 Wes: In contrast all these other attractive, well formed, let's just say women. And then she has the little, tiny, tiny hands, which are. Kristen Wiig uses these obviously fake doll hands for the tiny hands. And it is just. I remember when I first saw that skit and I just thought, I don't have any idea why this is so funny. It's just so random. But there is just something. I think the little doll hand extended all the way down into my heart and grabbed it. 6:38 Erin: There you go. 6:39 Wes: But there is a creepy quality. I wonder if that's readers reaction or if other readers have this reaction in general, whether during Hawthorne's time or contemporary readers, whether they get that same creeped out reaction to the fact that it's this little tiny hand that's on her cheek. 6:59 Erin: Yeah, well, the hand is also called pretty. We're told had she been less beautiful if Envy's self could have found aught else to sneer at he meaning Aylmer might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart. 7:19 Wes: He does kiss it at one point, right? Gross. 7:21 Erin: He does once. He does once. 7:23 Wes: Shudders he tries to overcome his repulsion 7:25 Erin: but well, it's right as it's going to be leaving her that he sort of kisses it goodbye. In a way there's an element of fantasy, you know, it's imagined to be a fairy hand. And I think the flitting, you know, now you see it, now you don't kind of quality to it also has that sort of fantastical or magical or magical. Yeah, it's sort of toying with people. The idea that I had, I had a couple of them. But you know, one of them, of course, as I said, was this idea of the hand as sort of Aylmer's fancy or has been imprinted upon her cheek because of his desire to push her away. So it is in a way him pushing her away. And it's. And I think in the dream too we get this idea that, you know, as he's in the dream, as he's cutting into her with a knife and the hand is then grasping around her heart, the hand is responding to his, to the movements of the knife. So it does seem to be a kind of embodiment of something in him, responsive to him. But it's almost as though he's idealized her, then married her, had sex with her, and he himself has been the one who has stained her with this birthmark. Was another idea that I had. 8:37 Wes: Right, yeah, absolutely. He took her virginity. Yeah. 8:41 Erin: The other thing, though, that I thought was, I love the descriptions of the fairy hand, as I said, but also of the men who find this to be very charming. In other words, healthy men. Yeah. 8:54 Wes: Let me just read a little bit of this, what you're referring to here. So its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that some fairy, at her birth hour, had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly. I love that fairy sign manual varied exceedingly according to the difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons, but they were exclusively of her own sex, affirm that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty and rendered her countenance even hideous. And then he goes on to say that for some masculine observers, it heightened their admiration, as we mentioned before, and I think you were just about to speak to that. 10:01 Erin: I love the use of the word swain in that sentence. Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. 10:10 Wes: What is a swain? Like a pirate or. 10:12 Erin: No, it's a male. It's a young attendant on a knight, I think, and also a male suitor. So there's something quite knightly and courtly about that word. And then, of course, the sentiment or the action that the narrator imagines them wishing to do, pressing their lips to this mysterious hand is itself quite gentlemanly and courtly. Right to kiss a woman's hand, only this one is on her cheek. So that's what I think. I also was interested in with the fact that it is a hand. There's a sort of, you know, mise en abyme quality where we have this image of the hand nested within the cheek. So the gentlemanly or the courtly thing to do would be to kiss a lady's hand so that you stay. You express reverence for her and affection for her, but at arm's length, quite literally. Right. And that is then moved up close onto the face. So it seems to give permission to get closer or to think about her in more sexual terms, more intimate terms, whatever that may mean. And their fantasy of kissing it the way that they would a hand is only a fantasy because they couldn't dream of getting that close to her. They couldn't dream of kissing her on the cheek in this day and age, they would only be able to kiss the hand. So there's a duality there that seems to unite courtly, idealized love with sexual passion or intimacy, which doesn't have to be sexual intimacy, but a real closeness. And so it seems to me to be like this perfect symbol of a wonderful, respectful, intimate and yet respectful kind of relationship to her, which only. Only certain men can appreciate. But that. That sort of duality, I think, is involved in this idea. It's. It's a hand, but it's your face. You know, a knight would only ever kiss a hand. 12:02 Wes: It's really interesting, this idea that her magical endowments have come from. Some fairy has touched her cheek when she's an infant and given her these magical endowments, one of which the ones that sway hearts. So we assume her beauty at least, which is interesting because in that sense, there's an irony in the fact that she's got this birthmark which bothers some people and. But that her beauty, the rest of her beauty, which is very pure, comes from that. And then the other endowments would be personality. And the things that I've called character before, certain quirks, certain charms, certain things that are very, very specific to her and her character. Things that are endearing, things that someone might react to the feeling of endearment in the same way that she reacts to his scientific journal thinking. It's adorable. In that sense, the hand is almost like a belly button for character in a way. It's like as the umbilical cord is severed and we're left with that kind of aperture, that's the necessary mark of our having been created in that way, being a product of reproduction, but is also sort of like an incompleteness. Right? We haven't been fully sewed up somehow, you know. And so it gives us some sense of the cost of her beauty and character and other charms of character. And that includes, it turns out, as the paragraph proceeds, Envy. Right. From other women. And then they can point to the. You know, they can enviously be satisfied with this idea that the hand has ruined her beauty. 13:47 Erin: Yes. And in fact, we're told explicitly that had she been less beautiful, this birthmark would not be a problem. Right. So that too seems to be about the effect of the birthmark on the beauty and either as a particularly distinguishing mark or as something which is said to mar. And the fact of her being so beautiful also seems to have that kind of double edged sword quality to it. So that the mark is the response to it, is the same in a way as the response to beauty. I like what you're pointing out about the magical quality of it in this fairy origin. And I just wanted to point out too that Aylmer's science is repeatedly characterized as magic. Right. There's a connection between the fairy hand and what Aylmer seems to do for a living. Seems like the wrong. Seems like the wrong terminology. I don't know how he's making any money or what he's doing, but, you know, he calls himself a sorcerer. He says not to look in a sorcerer's books. When he shows Georgiana the time lapse flower, she cries out, it is magical. I dare not touch it. It seems like a lot of what he does is in fact Gob Bluth. Like party tricks. 14:58 Wes: Yeah. 14:59 Erin: So it's funny that he, you know, it's funny that this thing, which has the local reputation for being a kind of a result of magic, is one which the local magician wants to eradicate. Maybe he doesn't want competition from a fairy, I don't know. But it's funny that for all of this scientific advancement, the effects and it seems the purpose of a lot of this have a very distinct connection to the magical or the fantastical. 15:25 Wes: Yeah, well, it certainly is. It's magical thinking. And there's an element of desire for omnipotence in that. Right. To just have complete control of the world with one's mind without having to do anything but cast a spell, let's say, or to imagine what you want to happen and have it happen, or to have this fancy poison that can kill tyrants at a distance. And so that's where the magical gets this crossover into the technological into the scientific. They become hard to distinguish if the technology is powerful enough. But he makes a scientific project of getting rid of the hand on her cheek. And I think, however we interpret the hand, whether as character or as humanity and materiality, or sexuality or instinctuality, which all these Things. This type of project is actually quite common in relationships. In a more subtle way, people are trying to do this to each other. To iron out the quirks of the other person's character. For instance, to get them to behave in a different way. Or to regulate the sexuality of the other person. Especially men with women to basically exercise some degree of control over the love object. So that it conforms to their wishes. So that it does what the love object should do for them. And there's a whole discussion there which we don't have time to have. That discussion is around, well, what do we want from the love object? What are they doing for us? Because some of it is about intimacy. And not in the sexual sense, but in the sense of confiding and seeing and being seen. And being seen. Which significantly involves sharing one's affective life. Sharing these irrational elements of the self. And showing these non generic particular characterological parts of oneself to the other person. And then seeing oneself through the way they see you. So that your self knowledge, your knowledge of yourself and your sense of your own existence in a way are predicated on that intimacy. You're getting some of awareness of yourself through the reflection of the awareness of the other person. So that's the ideal way to do this. And it involves a certain amount of respect for the particularity of the person and for their character. But one might want to kind of enslave the other person, right? This is what Hegel's getting at with the master slave dynamic and the phenomenology of spirit. Not just to have the reciprocity of intimacy, but to be able to say, I need you to be the mirror for me that I want you to be. So instead of me being the mirror for your particular character, I'm actually going to perfect you in the way that I need to perfect you. So you can reflect back to me the kind of image that I need for myself. This story very much speaks to that larger reality. It's a science fiction story where he's doing something very crazy. But in a sense, it's what people will are often actually trying to do to each other. To kind of wipe out some aspect of the other person that is imperfect, you might want to say, but imperfect in the sense that it doesn't perform this mirror function adequately. 18:46 Erin: I think that might lead us in nicely to Drowne's wooden image. You know, I was thinking about the magical process through which Drowne seems to create his carving of this woman. And also the deep knowledge that comes from the love that inspires the work. Right so that he's able to so perfectly reproduce this woman who we can presume he's seen and interacted with and then sort of fallen in love with that. It gives him this special kind of knowledge of her, this insight, this new. How does he characterize it? He says, there has come a light into my mind. That's how he describes it. And this light which distinguishes this carving from all of his previous work, which he calls worthless abortions. 19:35 Wes: A little harsh. 19:37 Erin: Yeah. This light has given him the ability to produce a sculpture in wood which looks like it is a real woman. And it turns out that the woman who inspired this is real. And Drowne must have come in contact with her at some point and fallen in love with her, or else he wouldn't have been able to reproduce this so well. So that kind of the magical process, both with which the work is undertaken, where we don't really see him working at it and people are really. You know, there's a lot of gossip over what he's doing. He seems to be only working at night or at odd hours. Nobody really sees the chisel in his hand, so to speak. So the sort of magic with which this sculpture comes together and also the magical power that his love for this woman, which seems connected to this insight and this real knowledge, this real intimacy with her, seems to inform the greatness of the sculpture as well. But there's a big empty space at the center of this story when it comes to his actual interactions with her. 20:40 Wes: Right. How are you inferring love? 20:43 Erin: Copley says it. This is Copley. He looked earnestly at Drowne and again saw that expression of human love, which, in a spiritual sense, as the artist could not help imagining, was the secret of the life that had been breathed into this block of wood. So love is the secret ingredient. It's love. It's love, you know, which is ultimately quite pat, maybe. You know, we get the explicit connection to Pygmalion, just as we do in Birthmark. As a matter of fact, we get a rumor that he has been seen kneeling at the feet of the oaken lady and gazing with a lover's passionate ardor into the face that his own hands had created. 21:19 Wes: Well, that's pretty obvious. Pretty clear. 21:22 Erin: Yeah. And then we get him called Pygmalion, explicitly. And then once it's done, once he's created it and it's been presumably mounted on the front of the ship and the ship takes off, he says that he wrought the sculpture in a kind of a dream. And now that he's Broad awake, he's going to go about his regular business, and he returns to his mechanical style, from which he was never known afterwards, to deviate. So it's as though a magical spell overtook him, and that spell turns out to be love. Here we go. The narrator tells us explicitly. We know not how to account for the inferiority of this quaint old figure, the one he's working on after the fact, as compared with the recorded excellence of the Oaken lady. Unless on the supposition that in every human spirit there is imagination, sensibility, creative power, genius, which, according to circumstances, may either be developed in this world or shrouded in a mask of dullness until another state of being to our friend Drowne, there came a brief season of excitement kindled by love. It rendered him a genius for that one occasion, but, quenched in disappointment, left him again, the mechanical carver in wood, without the power even of appreciating the work that his own hand had wrought. So love has produced this magical ability in him and the magical effect of this woman. Which seems to be alive. Who seems to be alive. 22:43 Wes: Well, we assume she's not the first beautiful woman he's run into. 22:48 Erin: That's a good point. 22:49 Wes: But he's supposed to be the most. I don't know. Is boring the right word? 22:54 Erin: And dull. 22:55 Wes: Dull and creative, but not particularly talented or inspired or passionate about what he's doing, which is a. I'd say he's a craftsman. 23:06 Erin: Craftsman, as opposed to an artist. 23:08 Wes: Yeah, right, right. I wouldn't characterize the average craftsperson as necessarily dull. He seems to be going through the motions. Right. 23:17 Erin: I just mean. Yeah, yeah. 23:19 Wes: No, I wasn't saying. You were saying that. But he's going through the motions. So when a person like this gets animated by something or inspired by something passionate about something, it's quite a contrast. There's almost like a comedy to it, when a person like this kind of comes to life, so to speak. Right. And of course, there's a direct parallel to the idea that this carved figure in the wood has come to life, as it seems to the townspeople that it may have done, or to the life that he's breathing into the wood. But it's a peculiar form of inspiration is all I'm pointing out, because it seems to be predicated on the specular. Right. It's love at first sight. He just sees her. Or at least that's what we're left to infer. It's not like he was hanging out with her. 24:12 Erin: Yes, exactly. 24:13 Wes: Watching Netflix, getting to know her, going out to coffee. She. She turns out to be a Portuguese lady of rank. So they're definitely of different classes. And so then naturally the question is, okay, well, he's seen plenty of ladies of rank. And what was it about this in particular? Not that I think the story necessarily answers this, but what about this woman in particular was so inspiring? 24:40 Erin: This is one of the mysteries for me, because, in fact, when we get descriptions of this woman, I mean, what in these descriptions stood out to you? There's the expression on her face, but then also I feel that the narrator is mostly describing her dress, her hat, the flowers in her hat, and her, you know, in other words, all of her accessories and her clothing rather than her, you know, we actually get very little of a physical description of this statue. And then when we see her real life counterpart, there's a sort of catalog of all of the items of clothing and the jewels and all the things that she's wearing that correspond to the statues. And that's sort of how we know that she is who she is. And then we say, you know, she also wore this expression, but an expression, too, is something you wear. We do get, I think, dark eyes and something about the mouth, but we don't. I don't think we even know what color hair she has. You know, she's sort of a blank in the middle of the descriptions of her finery. 25:46 Wes: You know, he does say there's a light vivacity and sportive mischief written in her countenance. This is the loving, the living version. She was observed to flutter her fan with such vehement rapidity that the elaborate delicacy of its workmanship gave way and it remained broken in her hand. Wait, is this the statue or the woman? Well, both. 26:11 Erin: Both, because that's another thing that. 26:13 Wes: Yeah. 26:13 Erin: That lines up where the fan breaks in the real woman's hand and then soon drown, is seen to be fixing the fan in the hand of the statue, which has somehow also become broken. So it's like they share the life force or something. Or there's a voodoo doll quality, only in the reverse direction. 26:35 Wes: Interesting. Yeah. And here's another. I'm just trying to get at some of the character of her character that comes out on this. The face, with its brilliant depth of complexion, had the same piquancy of mirthful mischief that was fixed upon the countenance of the image, but which was here varied and continually shifting, yet always essentially the same, like the sunny gleam upon a bubbling fountain. On the whole, there was something so airy and yet so real. In the figure and withal, so perfectly did it represent Drowne's image that people knew not whether to suppose the magic wood etherealized into a spirit or warmed and softened into an actual woman. So I think this. Yeah, this idea of a kind of mischief is repeated several times, and I think it comes up in the description of the. Earlier on in the description of the sculpture. Is the wrong word. Right. What's the right word? 27:29 Erin: Carving. 27:29 Wes: So, you know, as you pointed out. Yeah, most of it is about what she's wearing and the kind of an illustration of the skill that goes into it. Because he captures all these subtleties. I'm trying to look for the place where he. If I can find another place where this mischievousness is mentioned. 27:49 Erin: Yeah, this is when they're describing how people, when they entered, felt impelled to remove their hats and pay such reverence as was due to the richly dressed and beautiful young lady who seemed to stand in a corner of the room with oaken chips and shavings scattered at her feet. I love that at the end of that paragraph, we get. And then her face in the dark eyes and around the voluptuous mouth. Okay, the voluptuous mouth. That's the descriptor. The mouth gets. There played a look made up of pride, coquetry, and a gleam of mirthfulness, which impressed Copley with the idea that the image was secretly enjoying the perplexing admiration of himself and other beholders. 28:24 Wes: Right. So pride, coquetry, and a gleam of mirthfulness. So, yeah, who wouldn't fall in love 28:30 Erin: at first sight, I suppose, though. And, you know, we do get that this is a beautiful woman, but. Yeah, it just. It just occurs to me that we get so much description of. Yeah. The expression she wears, the clothing she wears, the hat she wears with the flowers in the hat. And maybe. Maybe a lot of that is supposed to express how masterfully the carving is done in that in wood. He's been able to recreate all of these different textures. And, you know, because then the real woman is wearing fabric and a diamond on her finger and gold around her neck and a hat with flowers, you know, and so the fact that Drowne has been able to capture all of these different materials of vastly different quality is part of the magic of the image, it seems. But maybe this speaks to what you're talking about when it comes to character. So we. So rather than telling us that she was, you know, she was 5, 7, and she weighed. She weighed 135 pounds and 36. 29:32 Wes: 24, 36 measurements. 29:35 Erin: Exactly. And she had an oval shaped face and almond eyes and whatever the case may be. 29:41 Wes: And she was into horseback riding, walking on the beach and. Yeah. 29:45 Erin: Pina coladas. Yeah. So she. So instead we get actually this sort of satellite description or things which are suggestive of her taste in this sort of roundabout way, rather than her vital statistics, shall we say. And that ultimately produces this image of singular realism, transcendent realism. And I think this is why I was thinking of Drowne in the middle of our conversation about Birthmark when you brought up this idea of character. Because it seems that Hawthorne is getting at something here about negative capability. Right. Because we have Drowne's other wooden carvings all having that family resemblance, as he calls it, where they all look like they're part of the same wooden family, and that they all were created by sort of like Drowne is the father and Wood is the mother. And they look, you know, like a combination of the two. Not that they look like Drowne, but they look like something created by him. So they bear almost like too much of him as a paternal influence and also too much of the material. Somehow they haven't been transformed enough that it requires one more touch to take them from being, as Copley puts it, to take them from being wooden figures to being lifelike. We're also told that he chooses subjects which are often symbolic or allegorical in some way. He chooses, say, the female figure of Britannia. This is colonial Boston, we're made to understand. So he chooses an admiral. And on entering the shop, Copley looks around and it says he glanced at the inflexible image of king, commander, dame, and allegory that stood around on the best of which might have been bestowed the questionable praise that it looked as if a living man had here been changed to wood, and that not only the physical, but the intellectual and spiritual part partook of the stolid transformation. So he has all of these wooden images, literally wooden and figuratively wooden images of types and allegories and generic figures. And somehow, through expressing the character of this woman in particular, which has largely come out in her dress and in her expression, which are things which are maybe not essential to her. Right. He really captures, like, a real life woman, so divorced from his kind of parental influence and just herself, without, almost. Without any kind of. Or the appearance of any kind of intervention on his part at all. Do you see where I'm drawing the connection to negative capability? 32:20 Wes: Yeah, this is really. This is really great. Yeah. So negative capability, right. As Keats put it, it's this ability to live with the unknown. With uncertainty, with doubt, without irritably reaching after facts and reasons. And that's the kind of capability that artists need. I mean, in Drowne's case, he's too wooden and too literal, let's say. And this again reminds me of the part in the. In the birthmark where pictures aren't just about verisimilitude. They have something that, you know, like a little hand imprint on them. They have a little characterological mark that makes them something special that allows them, let's say, maybe to communicate the affective part of our existence, to communicate feeling as opposed to just. To communicate fact. So science is very different. Right. So for Aylmer and the birthmark, science is about the generic rather than the particular. And I'm sure this might be. Someone might argue with this. But science is all about reaching after fact and reaching after reasons as opposed to art. So in a way, Drowne is very much like. Or there's some similarities to Aylmer, but he's trying to do wood carvings as if he were a kind of scientist. Or he's like one of these artists you see online that try to show you how they can get picture perfect quality using pencils or whatever. 33:50 Erin: I'm sure you've seen videos online. 33:52 Wes: Yeah. There's this confusion that the height of artistic ability is about complete verisimilitude to fact, when in fact one is trying to get at something underneath. I called it affective life, or maybe you could call it spiritual as well. So the very thing that. That Aylmer is trying to do with science, which is to squeeze spirit out of matter. Right. Art, in a way, does that. It takes its medium and squeezes something spiritual out of it in a way that science can't. 34:26 Erin: Yeah. And Drowne's different relationship with this particular subject matter, which the narrator is calling love, is about letting things be exactly what they are. That is something, of course, that Aylmer is incapable of. And therefore he doesn't really love his wife. I mean, I think that's. I hope that was something we. We could take away from. From that conversation. Right. He doesn't actually love her. Right. He loves. He loves himself. He loves his idea of what she should be in his mind, which has nothing to do with her. 34:58 Wes: He loves her as the subject of a scientific experiment. 35:02 Erin: Yes. But I think he loves her insofar as. As she corresponds with what he thinks she should be, which is to say he's in love with himself. Right. That's sort of, at bottom, what idealization is. It's not about the other person at all. It's about your idea of him. 35:16 Wes: Yeah. The idealization is about creating, like I said, creating the mirror. That will help you with your own idealization of yourself, or at least help you with the kind of identity that you need for yourself to avoid feeling like you're going to fall apart. 35:30 Erin: Right. 35:31 Wes: Whether that identity is, you know, obviously idealized or not, it's always tainted with that for various reasons. But, yeah, so, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. Getting so you could say, you know, I said he, as a scientific specimen, to the extent that he can make an experiment out of her, he loves her, which is the same thing. Right. The scientific project just is to create the ideal. 35:53 Erin: And Drowne is taken up with this woman in a way that seems to suggest real love. He sees her for what she really is and is able to reproduce that. Or he's captured something fundamental about her and is able to reproduce who she is as she is to the extent that people can't tell the difference between this carving in her. And so that part of that seems to involve letting her be what she is without him changing anything about her to suit the carving. Right. Which is why this is a sort of anti. Mirror image of the birthmark. That seems to be the thing that Aylmer is unable to do is accept Georgiana as she is with the birthmark. You know, so there's a. There's a creativity that seems to imply this perfect collaboration with nature rather than Aylmer's criticism or, say, edit of Nature. You know, I think he has a critical stance towards Georgiana rather than a creative one. And what's interesting about that for Drowne is that he's working in a natural. I mean, this would be the case if he were working with stone, too, but he's working in a living. A natural and living property for his sculpture. It's not marble, it's wood. So it was formerly, at least alive. And so one would say, well, what's the difference between. Is there a significant difference in, say, trying to edit the birthmark off of Georgiana's face and trying to edit the piece of lumber into a statue? You know, what. What would be the. The substantive difference between those two things and what we're told? Made me think of that apocryphal quote of Michelangelo's where he says something like, I saw the angel in the marble and set him free. Something along those lines. He almost certainly didn't say that, but he said something else which is related to that, which is just about how every block of stone has a statue in it, and he just has to let the statue out or cut away all that is not statue. Right, Right. Something along those lines. A similar sentiment is ascribed to Drowne. The narrator says it seemed as if the Hamadryad of the oak had sheltered herself from the unimaginative world within the heart of her native tree, and that it was only necessary to remove the strange shapelessness that had encrusted her and reveal the grace and loveliness of a divinity. 38:16 Wes: She's like a dryad. Is that the right spirit freeing from the tree? 38:20 Erin: So that seems to me. I mean, so the difference there would be. I mean, of course, there are many differences other than the one that I'm pointing to. It's not like Georgiana is just some block of wood that he's just taking a little piece of bark off of or something. But it seems to imply a desire, the desire of this wood to be a statue in a strange kind of way. But another way of saying that is just a collaboration with nature. So he's working in tandem with his materials to create something new out of them, which is imitative of nature in a way that is respectful and admiring and which is not destructive or claiming ownership or something along those lines. 39:08 Wes: Yeah, you're reminding me of Aristotle, actually, believe it or not, who famously creates this analogy between the artist and nature because they both involve form and they both involve reproduction. So in nature, the form, it's in the. And he's thinking of biological creatures, it's in the. In the animal and the functioning of the animal, the form of the animal and all of its metabolic activities and so on. But it's also something that can be transferred from one generation to another, and we now know it as DNA. So the DNA in the animal corresponds to the artist's conception, or he's thinking especially of craftsman. What replaces the DNA in art is the conception or the plan in the mind of the artist, and then that's transferred into matter. In both cases, the form has to be put into matter. And in nature, what makes it nature is just this ability to provide itself with its own form and do it spontaneously. Right. The acorn, you don't need drowned to come along and turn the acorn into a tree. It does it by itself. And it's very suggestive of. The teleology of. It is very suggestive. Right. So for the ancients and medievals, right. It was a slam dunk case for the existence of God. There were other cases to be made as well, but this type of self Generating activity lent itself to an intelligent design theory where God had to be the ultimate artist. But the reason why I'm thinking of this is that I think you're. This idea that you had of the medium or the matter sort of calling out to have form put into it. Yeah. It made me think of the spontaneous ways in which, in nature, matter can just take on form without the intervention of an artist. But it also made me think that the artist must somehow respect the wishes of the matter or the medium and not do violent to it, let's say. Which I think fits with negative capability. Where the violence would be to. Part of the point of negative capability is you don't put messages into your art, for instance, or you're not moralizing, let's say. Which is kind of funny because Hawthorne was famously an allegorist, in a way, or he's accused of that. But you're trying to respect the truth of things, but not the literal truth of things, like I said, the psychological or affective or spiritual truth of things, and communicate that without doing the violence that the artist can do. And the violence just. Yeah, it comes from the more manic quality that Aylmer represents, in a way. I think it comes from the impulse to idealize too strongly. I think there's some of that there for the artist. But it has to be somehow tempered. Otherwise you get whatever the result is of the person, the manic person who thinks that they're a great artist and they hand you their manuscript, which is absolutely terrible. Doesn't reflect the. You know, it's not as good as they. As they think it is. So it. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm connecting negative capability to the resistance to this impulse to idealize and. Right. Hawthorne says science can mend or mar, but cannot create. But art can create under the right circumstances. 42:42 Erin: Right. The removal of the birthmark seems to me to be the editing of the DNA. Right. So the birthmark, we might say, is an expression. It is literally and figuratively a symbol for the expression of one's genetic code or all the properties that make you you. And the idea is to capture those properties rather than to edit out the ones that we don't like and only portray the idealized person. Because I think the result of that would be pure allegory. So maybe we can say that Hawthorne does allegory one better or something like that. He's not quite there. 43:23 Wes: These stories worked very well together in a way that I hadn't actually anticipated, but. Yeah. 43:28 Erin: All right. 43:29 Wes: Thanks for recommending them. 43:30 Erin: I love Hawthorne. I could do 40 more. Not really. 43:35 Wes: So I think next time we're going to do One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and then Julius Caesar and then I don't think we have a plan after that yet, but yeah. All right. 43:45 Erin: Thank you, thank you and thanks to everyone who listened. 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