Dr. Bullivant

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Dr. Bullivant is a literary-biographical sketch published in 1831 by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne . It portrays Benjamin Bullivant , an English pharmacist who made it to high positions in New England under the reign of the hated Governor Edmund Andros (1687–1689).

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The sketch begins with a historical-theoretical introduction that explains the reason for the sketch. She is therefore taking Bullivant, a long-forgotten marginal figure in history, as her subject in order to correct the current image of colonial New England, which is perhaps too much shaped by the severity of the god-fearing Puritans. On the other hand, she is highlighting how Bullivant, the "cheerful pharmacist," enraged the Puritans of Boston with his witty and derisive manner. The main concern of the story is the portrayal of his character .

This is followed by two more static than dramatic scenes from Bullivant's life, which, however, are repeatedly interspersed with general considerations on historiography and literature. In the first he paints a day in 1670 when Bullivant was still practicing in London, more precisely in Cornhill. Strange smells emanate from his apothecary's kitchen, people are amazed at the strange names on the many vials , but buy eagerly, and Bullivant adds a mocking remark to each preparation as a bonus. In the second scene we see Bullivant in his Boston prison cell (he was arrested in 1689 after the Boston uprising against Andros), his wig slipped, his clothes dirty; again and again passers-by stop in front of his lattice window and shout abuse at him. At the end, Bullivant's brief, peaceful retirement is described when he practiced as a pharmacist again in Boston.

Work context

Dr. Bullivant first appeared in the Salem Gazette on January 31 and, like all of Hawthorne's works, anonymously until 1837. Along with Sir William Phips , Sir William Pepperell and Mrs. Hutchinson, it is part of a group of four historical-biographical sketches that Hawthorne published between 1830 and 1833. They are closely related to the historical narratives of the Provincial Tales (written around 1828–1830) and, in a certain sense, represent their theoretical basis (even if they did not emerge until later). Hawthorne deals here with the question of the relationship between historiography and literature and thus with the conditions and possibilities of historical fiction ( romance ). Dr. Bullivant is particularly closely related to the story The Gray Champion (published 1835), in which Bullivant also appears, here as one of the wine-blessed advisers in Edmund Andros' entourage, who ridicule the citizens of Boston from their high horse.

In particular, Hawthorne's ambivalent relationship to his Puritan ancestors becomes clear in this early sketch:

We are perhaps accustomed to employ too sombre a pencil in picturing the earlier times among the Puritans, because at our cold distance, we form our ideas almost wholly from their severest features […] Still, however, a prevailing characteristic of the age was gloom , or something which cannot be more accurately expressed than by that term, and its long shadow, falling over all the intervening years, is visible, though not too distinctly, upon ourselves. Without material detriment to a deep and solid happiness, the frolic of the mind was so habitually chastened, that persons have gained a nook in history by the mere possession of animal spirits, too exuberant to be confined within the established bounds. Every vain jest and unprofitable word was deemed an item in the account of criminality, and whatever wit, or semblance thereof, came into existence, its birthplace was generally the pulpit, and its parent some sour old Genevan divine.

He makes the Puritans so responsible for suppressing the development of the arts, especially literature ( unprofitable word ), in America, and that this joyless attitude continues to have an effect today ( visible ... upon ourselves ). The newcomer Bullivant, who exudes the satirical spirit of the dawning “Augustan” age of English literature, is representative of a new type of immigrant who came to New England not for religious reasons, for the erosion of puritanical dominance and finally for a creeping change in mentality in New England:

When therefore the old original stock, the men who looked heavenward without a wandering glance to earth, had lost a part of their domestic and public influence, yielding to infirmity or death, a relaxation naturally ensued in their theory and practice of morals and religion, and became more evident with the daily decay of its most strict opponents. This gradual but sure operation was assisted by the increasing commercial importance of the colonies, while a new set of emigrants followed unworthily in the track of the pure-hearted Pilgrims […] nor are the desperate and dissolute visitants of the country to be forgotten among the agents of a moral revolution. Freebooters from the West Indies and the Spanish Main, —state criminals, implicated in the numerous plots and conspiracies of the period, —felons, loaded with private guilt, —numbers of these took refuge in the provinces, where the authority of the English king was obstructed by a zealous spirit of independence, and where a boundless wilderness enabled them to defy pursuit. Thus the new population, temporary and permanent, was exceedingly unlike the old, and far more apt to disseminate their own principles than to imbibe those of the Puritans.

Hawthorne is thus directed against the notion, often propagated in historiography at the time, that the American will for independence and freedom, that is, the principles of the revolution, represent a puritanical legacy; rather, they only became possible through the decline of Puritanism. The “ degeneration ” of the Puritans is symbolized in the second scene, in which it is now they who, contrary to their nature, turn themselves into profane mockery of Bullivant.

literature

expenditure

In the authoritative work edition, the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (edited by Roy Harvey Pearce, William Charvat et al., Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH 1962ff.), The Seven Vagabonds can be found in volume XXIII: Miscellaneous Prose and Verse , 1994, pp. 75-83. Only a few of the numerous anthologies with Hawthorne's short stories contain the sketch; an exception is the widespread reading edition based on the Centenary Edition :

A German translation is still pending.

Secondary literature

  • Michael J. Colacurcio : The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1984. Reprint: Duke University Press, Durham NC 1996. ISBN 0822315726
  • Alfred Weber : The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthorne. "The Story Teller" and other early works . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1973. ISBN 3-5030-0714-8