Thanksgiving piece, including Hawthorne, Emerson and 'when American liberty also meant an obligation to the common good'

[alice wellintown]

Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I don't think so at all.....P felt the Calvinist distinction no matter how much
> it existed in reality
> And, I think his vision of America--of life-- contains notions of active
> liberty, of working against the death of America's ideals
> as we all discussed in Vineland and passive politics.................

Actually, Hawthorne's argument was not with the past, though he
certainly, not unlike Fausto and Dimsdale, was quite fascinated with
the Puritan Legacy and the Children it gave birth to. What kind of
monster is Pearl? Her mother's A (art, altruism, and yes, adultary
with a BAd Priest) may never pay for the original sin, but it does,
through some magic, make Pearl, if never a real girl, a free woman, if
not a woman free from sin. Though Catholics, as the narrator reminds
us, may see the Pearl as the Child of the Madonna. Hwathonre was, as
were Irving, Melville, Whitman, and the leader of the whole parade,
Emerson, not so backward looking, but also looking to the Future.
Imitation is Suicide.
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the
conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he
must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the
wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come
to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is
given to him to till.