{"id":"01KG6YGZGHZGZ9DBM6NJTTWHKW","cid":"bafkreiceibz4c46hk4r3nqy2jzfb6rnao4fss7apmumjjiavvn65lfq7zm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1374,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 6","source_file":"01KG6YDD8GKW0DRD5H2MY1NRZ7","start_line":1314,"text":"Nathaniel Hawthorne. He himself must often have smiled at its absurd\r\nmisconception of him. He is immeasurably deeper than the plummet of\r\nthe mere critic. For it is not the brain that can test such a man; it\r\nis only the heart. You cannot come to know greatness by inspecting it;\r\nthere is no glimpse to be caught of it, except by intuition; you need\r\nnot ring it, you but touch it, and you find it is gold.\r\n\r\nNow, it is that blackness in Hawthorne, of which I have spoken that\r\nso fixes and fascinates me. It may be, nevertheless, that it is too\r\nlargely developed in him. Perhaps he does not give us a ray of light\r\nfor every shade of his dark. But however this may be, this blackness\r\nit is that furnishes the infinite obscure of his background,--that\r\nbackground, against which Shakspeare plays his grandest conceits,\r\nthe things that have made for Shakspeare his loftiest but most\r\ncircumscribed renown, as the profoundest of thinkers. For by\r\nphilosophers Shakspeare is not adored, as the great man of tragedy\r\nand comedy:--\"Off with his head; so much for Buckingham!\" This sort\r\nof rant interlined by another hand, brings down the house,--those\r\nmistaken souls, who dream of Shakespeare as a mere man of Richard the\r\nThird humps and Macbeth daggers. But it is those deep far-away things\r\nin him; those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in\r\nhim; those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality;--these\r\nare the things that make Shakspeare, Shakspeare. Through the mouths of\r\nthe dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago, he craftily says,\r\nor sometimes insinuates the things which we feel to be so terrifically\r\ntrue, that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper\r\ncharacter, to utter, or even hint of them. Tormented into desperation,\r\nLear, the frantic king, tears off the mask, and speaks the same\r\nmadness of vital truth. But, as I before said, it is the least part of\r\ngenius that attracts admiration. And so, much of the blind, unbridled\r\nadmiration that has been heaped upon Shakspeare, has been lavished\r\nupon the least part of him. And few of his endless commentators and\r\ncritics seem to have remembered, or even perceived, that the immediate\r\nproducts of a great mind are not so great as that undeveloped and\r\nsometimes undevelopable yet dimly-discernible greatness, to which those\r\nimmediate products are but the infallible indices. In Shakspeare's\r\ntomb lies infinitely more than Shakspeare ever wrote. And if I magnify\r\nShakspeare, it is not so much for what he did do as for what he did\r\nnot do, or refrained from doing. For in this world of lies, Truth is\r\nforced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by\r\ncunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakspeare and other\r\nmasters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,--even though it be\r\ncovertly and by snatches.\r\n\r\nBut if this view of the all-popular Shakspeare be seldom taken by his\r\nreaders, and if very few who extol him have ever read him deeply, or\r\nperhaps, only have seen him on the tricky stage (which alone made, and\r\nis still making him his mere mob renown)--if few men have time, or\r\npatience, or palate, for the spiritual truth as it is in that great\r\ngenius--it is then no matter of surprise, that in a contemporaneous\r\nage, Nathaniel Hawthorne is a man as yet almost utterly mistaken among\r\nmen. Here and there, in some quiet armchair in the noisy town, or\r\nsome deep nook among the noiseless mountains, he may be appreciated\r\nfor something of what he is. But unlike Shakspeare, who was forced\r\nto the contrary course by circumstances, Hawthorne (either from\r\nsimple disinclination, or else from inaptitude) refrains from all\r\nthe popularizing noise and show of broad farce and blood-besmeared\r\ntragedy; content with the still, rich utterance of a great intellect in\r\nrepose, and which sends few thoughts into circulation, except they be\r\narterialized at his large warm lungs, and expanded in his honest heart.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 6"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6YGBGJFFWM00TFQS297SSV","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6YDD8GKW0DRD5H2MY1NRZ7","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6YGZGHBRCP8F45RSNCR8G8","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6YGZGHN7984YMGR6KY82MR","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:46.385Z","ts":"2026-01-30T07:57:53.102Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}