An old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the open sunshine, and among pure and princely maidens, and thus the nude statues of antiquity are as modest as violets, and sufficiently draped in their own beauty. The marble inevitably loses its chastity under such circumstances. An artist, therefore, as you must candidly confess, cannot sculpture nudity with a pure heart, if only because he is compelled to steal guilty glimpses at hired models. Nowadays people are as good as born in their clothes, and there is practically not a nude human being in existence. I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such things. The nature writing is wonderful and I have read a believe that Hawthorne's sensitivity to the meaning within nature and beautiful way of conveying it influenced Lawrence and other writers.“Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing. his essays and letter about Italy and the lighter and more living way of having a spiritual and emotional life that he found in the Italians and in himself in Italy) The tension from Hilda's and Hawthorne's Protestant attraction to the comforts and beauty of the Catholic Church also resonated with me and I was surprised to read in a review of a bio of Hawthorne that his daughter converted and started a Catholic religious order since he felt guilty that one of his ancestors prosecuted women accused of being witches and the prejudice of the Puritans against any beauty in religion and life even wearing colors and then the constant need in the Mediterranean people to create beauty even out of barbed wire in a POW camp in Britain was turned into a decoration for a chapel by an Italian prisoner during WWII.
Though the second half of the book with the constant guilt ridden faun and Miriam are too much, I think that Hawthorne like many writers and other people found a kind of spiritual and emotional freedom in Italy.
After feeling oppressed by the The Scarlet Letter though the names of the Protagonists are brilliant, I saw a short film on the Fountain of Trevi on an Art Station that showed a few minutes only of ballet, songs, videos and the over-voice in this particular short art piece was Hawthorne's wonderful descriptions of this Fountain and of water.
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