I’ve been delving into nineteenth-century English-language
literature, in particular (at present) Hardy and Hawthorne; and in the latter’s story “Ethan Brand”
(original title: “The Unpardonable Sin”), happened upon this:
… Ethan Brand’s solitary and
meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable Sin.
That brought me up short. For I once published a novel -- generically, Detective
Fiction -- whose undercurrent is that very theme:
Hawthorne describes such putative sin to be such as is “beyond the scope of
Heaven’s else infinite mercy”. So far, so good.
He also states that “Ethan Brand … had conversed with
Satan”. Bad. But then, detective Michael Murphy has
(initially, unwittingly) several times had Satan (or one of that fallen angel’s
emissaries) as a client in a case.
But then, this:
Ethan Brand became a fiend … he had
produced the Unpardonable Sin!
“What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?” said Ethan Brand
to himself. “My task is done, and
well done!”
Pessimus!
At that, Ethan Brand (Nicht
gedacht soll seiner werden)
cast himself into the furnace (a perfect instance of how, in C.S.Lewis’ theory,
the obstinate do indeed wind up in the Pit).
So, a motivation quite different from that, of the Christian
sinner Murphy.
It is perhaps wise, not to inquire too nicely into the meaning of Hawthorne’s
tale. I shut the book, and sain
myself, and there’s an end to it.
~
Hawthorne’s American notebooks from the mid-1840s contain many brief notes for possible
future stories, most of which never got written. Here are the germs of the story at hand:
The search of an investigator for
the Unpardonable Sin -- he at last finds it in his own heart and practice.
The Unpardonable Sin might consist
in a want of love and reverence for the human Soul; in consequence of which the investigator pried into its dark depths, not with a hope
or purpose of making it better, but from a cold philosophical curiosity --
content that it should be wicked in whatever kind or degree, and only desiring
to study it out. Would not this,
in other words, be the separation of the intellect from the heart?
~
[Personal footnote]
I once studied under a professor of linguistics -- CJF, or informally “Chuck” -- a
gentle man, in all ways inoffensive,
who, as an adult, to signal a conclusive break with his fundamentalist
upbringing, did one day “curse the Holy Ghost”, by way of committing the
Unpardonable Sin.
So he confided to me, in his office. I mention it now, for the first
time, only because he has by now slipped off the mortal coil, awaiting his
reward. The which, I pray, and indeed believe, shall be that of those, who
never did blaspheme. It is not so easy as all that, Professor, to baffle God’s
infinite mercy (and sense of proportion)!
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