The Marble Faun. Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Marble Faun or The Romance of Monte Beni
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1860)
New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1983 (1860)

Why read it? The theme is the need for the experience of sin in order to become truly human. Complete innocence results in an inhuman intolerance. A meditation on guilt and the effects of sin. Repeats Hawthorne's theme of hidden and unpardonable sin.

Critics have said that this book is more of a travelogue than a novel, that the travelogue and the events of the novel are not interrelated as much as they should be. Still, the background of Rome and its historic architecture are interesting and vividly described. The author conveys the moods and personality of Rome. Although I called the book a novel, it is really a romance. Some of its characters are improbable (Donatello, Hilda and Miriam).

From The Oxford Companion to American Literature, Fourth Edition. James D. Hart, ed. New York: Oxford University Press. 1965.

Fiction. Kenyon, an American sculptor, Hilda, a New England girl, and the mysterious Miriam are friends among the art students in Rome. They become acquainted with Donatello, Count of Monte Beni, a handsome Italian who resembles the Faun of Praxiteles, not only physically, but also in his mingling of human and animal qualities, his amoral attitude, and his simple enjoyment of the life of the senses.

The dark, passionate Miriam is loved by Donatello, but she is haunted by an unrevealed sin and by the persecution of a mysterious man who dogs her footsteps after an accidental meeting in the Catacombs. Donatello is enraged by this man, and after an encouraging glance from Miriam, flings him to his death from the Tarpeian Rock. Thereafter, they are linked by their mutual guilt, which they keep secret.

Donatello becomes brooding and conscience-stricken, and, though humanized by his suffering, is a broken spirit when he finally gives himself up to justice. Hilda, who saw the crime committed, is also involved in the sin until she forsakes Puritan tradition and pours out her secret at a church confessional. The unhappy Miriam disappears into the shadowy world from which she came, and Hilda and Kenyon are married.

RayS. Like all of Hawthorne's works, this novel/romance needs to be read at a slow pace and savored.