The Minister's Black Veil

Illustration by Elenore Plaisted Abbott, 1900: Scene from The Minister's Black Veil in Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales

The Minister's Black Veil: A Parable is a short story by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne . There are several translations into German available: The black veil (translated as follows by Friedrich Minckwitz, 1970 and Lore Krüger , 1979) and The pastor's black veil (Hannelore Neves, 1977).

It initially appeared anonymously in the literary almanac The Token and Atlantic Souvenir in 1836, and in 1837 Hawthorne added it to his collection of short stories, Twice-Told Tales . The narrative has been interpreted differently in the literary discussion.

content

One day Pastor Hooper appears before his horrified parish with his face covered. Even when his fiancée leaves, he does not break with the self-imposed resolution not to take off the veil until his death. Although his disguise tends to frighten most of the villagers (and, if you look at himself in the mirror), his peculiar disguise also gives him power over “all souls who writhing in the consciousness of their sins” ( By the aid of his mysterious emblem — for there was no other apparent cause — he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin ).

Different interpretations

The symbol of the veil, which clearly dominates the short story, has been interpreted many times as a form of sin: "Hoopers' awareness of sin, symbolized by the veil, is given an ironic tension by the discrepancy between the clergy's self-image and his impact on the environment." The veil finally drives pastor Hooper in an induced Religion loneliness and alienation (the other in some form certainly in the short story Young Goodman Brown ( The young neighbor Brown ) is encountered):

“All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world: it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love, and kept him in that saddest of all prisons, his own heart; and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber, and shade him from the sunshine of eternity. " (German translation:" This patch of crepe had hung between him and the world all his life separated from cheerful brotherhood and feminine love, had held him in the saddest of all prisons; in his own heart; and still he lay on his face, as it were to plunge the dreary chamber into even deeper gloom, a screen from the sunlight of eternity ").

Many interpretations emphasize the negative assessment of the role of sin (and above all of original sin) in Puritan theology , which Hawthorne often addressed .

Already Edgar Allan Poe threw in his criticism of The Minister's Black Veil , which he described as masterful works ( "masterly composition" einschätzte), the question of implied statement ( insinuated meaning ) and the underlying dark crime ( "crime of dark dye" ) on.

The Hawthorne research then endeavored for a long time to fathom the traces of the clergyman's serious offense and his specific sin. In particular, Poe's idea was taken up and continued that Hooper's veil is related to the young woman who will be buried on the very day on which the clergyman wears his black veil for the first time. For example, Lang assumes in his interpretation that Hawthorne's allusions in this direction would “unequivocally” refer to the fact that Hooper's particular sin was to be sought in the sexual sphere. As in Henry James ' novella The Turn of the Screw (1898), the reader could fill the blank Hawthorne inserts with their own imagination, “from a passing sinful thought to seduction and Sex murder ”. The freedom of the recipients' imagination is restricted by what they would learn about the character of the clergyman, who, "if he was ever absent, then only out of a painful lack of self-confidence that even the mildest rebuke led him to to regard any act as a crime ”.

According to Lang, a striking reference in the text is the superstitious old woman's claim that the young woman's body trembled slightly with shudder at the sight of Hooper's face after the clergyman's veil hung down from his forehead as he fell over the deceased bowed. Lang believes that he can infer from this passage that it was at most “a revelation for the deceased; in other words, if he loved her, it was without her knowledge ”. Since the Reverend Hooper was engaged to another woman, a new love according to the Puritan understanding would be sinful, even if it remained unfulfilled; because of his more than delicate conscience, the clergyman shows his repentance in excessive form.

Against the background of the Calvinist image of man in early New England , which Hawthorne uses in his story, the American studies Franz H. Link considers the question of a specific nature of Hooper's sin to be irrelevant. The main interest of the poet is not in the clergy, but in the community: Hawthorne is not primarily about the question of why Reverend Hooper wears the veil, but about how the community behaves to it. According to Link, Hawthorne delivers in his story in a “pageant” -like form, ie in a playful manner, “a psychological consideration of the behavior of people towards sin”, from which morality only gets its real meaning. While one part of the community does not want to be reminded of its own sinfulness, the other part does not recognize it at all and therefore suspects the reason for the veil in a serious crime by Hooper. The question about the further entanglements or the particular sin of Hooper does not arise from the fable , but from the misdirected view of the community. Due to the narrative focus mainly from the congregation to the clergy, the reader is tempted to identify with the clergy. This incongruity in the narrative, already hinted at by Poe in his criticism, leads to the fact that the two processes, the behavior of the clergyman and the reaction of the community, lead to different meanings.

literature

expenditure

In the authoritative edition of the works, the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH 1962ff.), The Minister's Black Veil can be found in Volume IX ( Twice-Told Tales , edited by Fredson Bowers and J. Donald Crowley) 1974). Numerous edited volumes of Hawthorne's short stories contain the story; A popular reading edition based on the Centenary Edition is:

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches . Edited by Roy Harvey Pearce . Library of America , New York 1982. ISBN 1-883011-33-7

There are several translations into German:

The black veil . German by Friedrich Minckwitz. In: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Gray Protector and Other Tales . Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Weimar 1970.
The black veil . German by Lore Krüger . In: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Black Veil. Selected stories . Insel, Leipzig 1980. (= Insel-Bücherei 653)
The priest's black veil . German by Hannelore Neves:
- in: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Heavenly Railway. Stories, sketches, forewords, reviews . With an afterword and comments by Hans-Joachim Lang . Winkler, Munich 1977. ISBN 3-538-06068-1
- in: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Pastor's Black Veil: Eerie Tales . Winkler, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-538-06584-5
- in: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The great stone face . Edited and with a foreword by Jorge Luis Borges . Edition Büchergilde, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 3-940111-09-0 (= The Library of Babel , Vol. 9)
- in: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Pastor's Black Veil: Eerie Tales . Transferred from the American by Hannelore Neves and Siegfried Schmitz. Albatros Verlag, Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-491-96208-8 .

Secondary literature

Michael J. Colacurcio : Parson Hooper's Power of Blackness: Sin and Self in The Minister's Black Veil . In: Prospects 5, 1980. pp. 331-411. Revised version in: Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1984. ISBN 0674719573
Clark Davis: Facing the Veil: Hawthorne, Hooper, and Ethics . In: Arizona Quarterly 55: 4, 1999, pp. 1-19.
Edgar A. Dryden: Through a Glass Darkly: "The Minister's Black Veil" as Parable . In: Millicent Bell (Ed.): New Essays on Hawthorne's Major Tales . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 1993, pp. 133-148.
William Freedman: The Artist's Symbol and Hawthorne's Veil: The Minister's Black Veil Resartus . In: Studies in Short Fiction 29: 3, 1992, pp. 353-62.
Frederick Newberry : The Biblical Veil: Sources and Typology in Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil . In: Texas Studies in Literature and Language 31: 2, 1989. pp. 169-195.
Lea Bertani Vozar Newman : One-hundred-and-fifty years of Looking at, into, through, behind, beyond, and around The Minister's Black Veil . In: Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 13: 2, 1987, pp. 5-12.
William Bysshe Stein: The Parable of the Antichrist in 'The Minister's Black Veil' . In: American Literature 27, 1955, pp. 386-92.

Web links

Wikisource: The Minister's Black Veil - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

↑ Gert Woerner, Rolf Geisler (ed.): "The Minister's Black Veil" , Kindlers Literature Lexicon. Weinheim 1984, p. 6323.
↑ Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Pastor's Black Veil: Eerie Tales . Transferred from the American by Hannelore Neves and Siegfried Schmitz. Albatros Verlag, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 260.
↑ Cf. Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe , ed. By James A. Harrison, New York 1902, Virginia Edition, Vol. XI, p. 111. See also the post-doctoral thesis by Franz H. Link: Die Erzählkunst Nathaniel Hawthornes · An interpretation of his sketches, short stories, and novels . Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1962, without ISBN, p. 32.
↑ See e.g. B. William B. Stein: The Parable of the Antichrist in "The Minister's Black Veil" . In: American Literature XXVII, 1955, pp. 386-392, or W. Gordon Cunliffe and John V. Hapogian: The Minister's Black Veil . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I - Analyzes of American Literature . Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 78-81.
↑ Quoted from the translation by Neves and Schmitz, Albatros Verlag 2007, p. 253. On this interpretation, see Hans-Joachim Lang : Poeten und Pointen. On the American narrative of the 19th century . Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1985 (= Erlanger Studies 63), p. 129.
↑ See the text passage in the translation by Neves and Schmitz, Albatros Verlag 2007, p. 253.
↑ See Hans-Joachim Lang: Poets and punchlines. On the American narrative of the 19th century . Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1985 (= Erlanger Studies 63), p. 129 f.
↑ See the habilitation thesis by Franz H. Link: The narrative art of Nathaniel Hawthorne · An interpretation of his sketches, stories and novels . Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1962, without ISBN, pp. 31–33.

[1] Gert Woerner, Rolf Geisler (ed.): "The Minister's Black Veil" , Kindlers Literature Lexicon. Weinheim 1984, p. 6323.

[2] Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Pastor's Black Veil: Eerie Tales . Transferred from the American by Hannelore Neves and Siegfried Schmitz. Albatros Verlag, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 260.

[3] Cf. Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe , ed. By James A. Harrison, New York 1902, Virginia Edition, Vol. XI, p. 111. See also the post-doctoral thesis by Franz H. Link: Die Erzählkunst Nathaniel Hawthornes · An interpretation of his sketches, short stories, and novels . Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1962, without ISBN, p. 32.

[4] See e.g. B. William B. Stein: The Parable of the Antichrist in "The Minister's Black Veil" . In: American Literature XXVII, 1955, pp. 386-392, or W. Gordon Cunliffe and John V. Hapogian: The Minister's Black Veil . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I - Analyzes of American Literature . Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 78-81.

[5] Quoted from the translation by Neves and Schmitz, Albatros Verlag 2007, p. 253. On this interpretation, see Hans-Joachim Lang : Poeten und Pointen. On the American narrative of the 19th century . Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1985 (= Erlanger Studies 63), p. 129.

[6] See the text passage in the translation by Neves and Schmitz, Albatros Verlag 2007, p. 253.

[7] See Hans-Joachim Lang: Poets and punchlines. On the American narrative of the 19th century . Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1985 (= Erlanger Studies 63), p. 129 f.

[8] See the habilitation thesis by Franz H. Link: The narrative art of Nathaniel Hawthorne · An interpretation of his sketches, stories and novels . Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1962, without ISBN, pp. 31–33.