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Nathaniel Hawthorne

Tie SCARLE LELIGKk Chapter One

THE GREAT SIONE FACE read by

BASIL RATHBONE directed by Howard Sackler

The extraordinary gift of Nathaniel Hawthorne was much

like that. of the native American portrait-painters of his gen-

eration in the mid-nineteenth century. Like them, he looked

gravely and unsparingly at people, declined to idealize them,

painted them with decisive angularity but with insight, com-

passion and rich colors, and immortalized an American way of

life which others saw but failed to probe. Hawthorne probed.

The Scarlet Letter begins with as gripping a scene as can be

found in literary annals. The woman Hester Prynne stands

alone upon the village scaffold, the child in her arms not hiding

the scarlet symbol of adultery upon her breast. Around her is

the Puritan throng, meting out to the woman her just punish-

ment, the pitiless stares which are the prelude to her new role

as outcast of the town. In that first richly embroidered scene,

the entire theme and plot are developed with masterly control.

We feel the burning sun above, the burning shame within, the

mystery of human passions, the profound sense of life in this

raw land where conformism was the great talisman against

primeval nature, both beyond the settlement and within the

heart. In the course of later chapters, Hawthorne records every

wild flutter of the hearts of Hester Prynne, her unknown lover

the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and her corroded, avenging

husband Roger Chillingworth. And he whose pen so subtly

conveys the interaction between nature and humankind con-

veys the beauty and mystery of both as no writer had done

before him, and few so well since.

In Hawthorne’s best-known short story, “The Great Stone

Face,” again there is the haunting sense of natural forces act-

ing upon the lives of men. The tale is more poetic parable than

story, a dream of man perfectable so long as he remains cog-

nizant of the beauty of nature, but lost once the magic of

communion is lost. It is a strange mixture of Transcendental

philosophy with Rousseau, perhaps, but a dream worth the

dreaming. Again the painting of America comes to mind, but

this time the type of Cole’s “Course of Empire” series. The

awesome mystery of the natural universe is implicit in these

artists of the ancient, settled Coast, who understood all too

well the dangers of hewing down the soul with the forest

primeval; of turning the back upon the mountain and facing

mediocrity. But be receptive and the message is not far to seek.

Heed only the beauty, elusive and strange as the morning

mists upon the Great Stone Face.

Note: this high-fidelity recording can be played on both monaural and stereophonic equipment.

© 1965, CAEDMON RECORDS, INC. Performance and reproduction rights information avail-

able from Caedmon Records, Inc., 461 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10001. Made in U.S.A.

Other Caedmon Records

of Interest

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Volume 1

Basil Rathbone reads The Minister’s Black Veil and Young

Goodman Brown

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Edgar Allan Poe

Volume I

Basil Rathbone reads The Raven, Annabel Lee, Eldorado,

To —, The Masque of the Red Death, Alone, The City in

the Sea, The Black Cat

TC i026 Coles $5.95

Volume 2

Basil Rathbone reads The Cask of Amontillado, The Pit

and the Pendulum, The Facts of the Case of M. Valdemar

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Volume 3

Basil Rathbone reads The Telltale Heart, The Fall of the

House of Usher, The Bells, The Haunted Palace

TE A1o5 112 $5.95

Sherlock Holmes

Basil Rathbone, almost synonymous with the famous

sleuth, reads two of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most popular

Sherlock Holmes stories, The Adventure of the Speckled

Band and The Final Problem

TO 172 1-12 $5.95

Stories of Mark Twain

Brandon de Wilde and Walter Brennan read two episodes

from Huckleberry Finn and The Jumping Frog of Cala-

veras County and Jim Baker’s Bluejay Yarn

TC 1027 Tor 2 $5.95

The Red Badge of Courage

Edmond O’Brien reads Stephen Crane’s moving novel of

human frailty; a powerful, shortened version

TC. 1040 T-12 $5.95

TC 1197 STORIES OF HAWTHORNE, VOL. 2: RATHBONE

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