From an article in The Weekly Standard titled Hawthorne's God:
His "Earth's Holocaust" tells the tale of a group of ardent reformers who commit most everything to flames in their desire to build a better world. At the end, only three are gathered at the great fire--"the hangman, the last thief and the last murderer." They decide to hang themselves as there is "no world left for us any longer." But a "dark-complexioned personage," whose "eyes glowed with a redder light than that of the bonfire," joins them and says no. "The wiseacres" have forgotten to throw the most crucial things into the flames. The last murderer inquires what that might be. "What but the human heart itself? . . . I have stood by this livelong night and sneered at the whole business. O take my word for it, it will be the old world yet."
I've never heard of the story. Is anybody else familiar with it?
Posted by Ben Brumfield at January 5, 2006 03:18 PMI've got it twice! Each of the Hawthorne collections that include it cost me 50p in charity shops. One is the Penguin Selected Tales and Sketches (published in the USA in 1987) and the other is an old (no date, but I'm guessing about 1900) English reprint of Mosses from an Old Manse.
Sorry about the tedious reminiscence , but it's always nice to recall what serendipity can achieve during a lunch break in south London.
The story relates fairly closely to other work of H's from the time (1844) such as The Birth Mark. He's probing the nihilism which can lie hidden within idealism, isn't he? It was timely then and it's probably timely now.
Posted by: Tom Deveson at January 5, 2006 11:23 PMThanks, Tom. I'll try to check it out.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at January 6, 2006 12:12 PM