An earlier blog post addressed where writers find their inspiration. As a college student, my inspiration usually comes from a specific prompt, rather than an open-ended opportunity to seek out new inspiration. The idea of writer inspiration drew me to one writer in particular, nineteenth century author Herman Melville.
Melville idolized Nathanial Hawthorne and did not hide that fact. When the two met, Melville discovered his literary ideal in Hawthorne and proceeded to write “Hawthorne and his Mosses,” an essay that reveals Melville’s view of Hawthorne’s exceptional literary skill. Hawthorne, several years Melville’s elder, had yet to write The House of the Seven Gables, which he completed in January 1851, but Melville had already been struck by the author, only contributing to his utter adoration when The House of the Seven Gables surfaced. Melville remarks in “Hawthorne and his Mosses,” “It is curious, how a man may travel along a country road, and yet miss the grandest, or sweetest of prospects, by reason of an intervening hedge, so like all other hedges, as in no way to hint of the wide landscape beyond.” In dissecting the very nature “concerning the enchanting landscape in the soul of this Hawthorne,” Melville is brutally aware of the “intervening hedge” present throughout Hawthorne’s works in the form of emotional awareness and sensitivity. Melville’s appreciation for Hawthorne’s work appears in his story “Bartleby, The Scrivener,” which appeared in Putnam’s monthly magazine in 1853, giving the author plenty of time to consider Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. In his essay, “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” Melville reveals “you will almost always find that the author himself has somewhere furnished you with his own picture (31).” Melville withholds vitality in Bartleby, a literary technique that responds unquestionably to his adoration of Hawthorne’s emotional animation. Melville seeks to entice and fuel a certain thirst for emotion, one that he quenched through reading Hawthorn’s work. Therefore, the stagnancy in Melville’s work directly relates to his response to Hawthorne’s work. Melville’s attraction speaks to the theme of writer inspiration and may account for much of his literary technique.