The Artist of the Beautiful

[Dave Monroe]

.... from Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Artist of the Beautiful," Twice
Told Tales (1844):

He produced, as he spoke, what seemed a jewel box. It was carved
richly out of ebony by his own hand, and inlaid with a fanciful
tracery of pearl, representing a boy in pursuit of a butterfly, which,
elsewhere, had become a winged spirit, and was flying heavenward;
while the boy, or youth, had found such efficacy in his strong desire
that he ascended from earth to cloud, and from cloud to celestial
atmosphere, to win the beautiful. This case of ebony the artist
opened, and bade Annie place her fingers on its edge. She did so, but
almost screamed as a butterfly fluttered forth, and, alighting on her
finger's tip, sat waving the ample magnificence of its purple and
gold-speckled wings, as if in prelude to a flight. It is impossible to
express by words the glory, the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness
which were softened into the beauty of this object. Nature's ideal
butterfly was here realized in all its perfection; not in the pattern
of such faded insects as flit among earthly flowers, but of those
which hover across the meads of paradise for child-angels and the
spirits of departed infants to disport themselves with. The rich down
was visible upon its wings; the lustre of its eyes seemed instinct
with spirit. The firelight glimmered around this wonder--the candles
gleamed upon it; but it glistened apparently by its own radiance, and
illuminated the finger and outstretched hand on which it rested with a
white gleam like that of precious stones. In its perfect beauty, the
consideration of size was entirely lost. Had its wings overreached the
firmament, the mind could not have been more filled or satisfied.

"Beautiful! beautiful!" exclaimed Annie. "Is it alive? Is it alive?"

"Alive? To be sure it is," answered her husband. "Do you suppose any
mortal has skill enough to make a butterfly, or would put himself to
the trouble of making one, when any child may catch a score of them in
a summer's afternoon? Alive? Certainly! But this pretty box is
undoubtedly of our friend Owen's manufacture; and really it does him
credit."

At this moment the butterfly waved its wings anew, with a motion so
absolutely lifelike that Annie was startled, and even awestricken;
for, in spite of her husband's opinion, she could not satisfy herself
whether it was indeed a living creature or a piece of wondrous
mechanism.

"Is it alive?" she repeated, more earnestly than before.

"Judge for yourself," said Owen Warland, who stood gazing in her face
with fixed attention.

The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, fluttered round Annie's
head, and soared into a distant region of the parlor, still making
itself perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in which the motion of
its wings enveloped it. The infant on the floor followed its course
with his sagacious little eyes. After flying about the room, it
returned in a spiral curve and settled again on Annie's finger.

"But is it alive?" exclaimed she again; and the finger on which the
gorgeous mystery had alighted was so tremulous that the butterfly was
forced to balance himself with his wings. "Tell me if it be alive, or
whether you created it."

"Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful?" replied Owen
Warland. "Alive? Yes, Annie; it may well be said to possess life, for
it has absorbed my own being into itself; and in the secret of that
butterfly, and in its beauty,--which is not merely outward, but deep
as its whole system,--is represented the intellect, the imagination,
the sensibility, the soul of an Artist of the Beautiful! Yes; I
created it. But"--and here his countenance somewhat changed--"this
butterfly is not now to me what it was when I beheld it afar off in
the daydreams of my youth."

[...]

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Artist_of_the_Beautiful

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/HawArti.html

Victor Frankenstein and Owen Warland: The Artist as Satan and as God

http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/lewis.html

The Transcendentalist Experience of Beauty in "The Artist of the Beautiful"

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/criticism/artist.html