Power Of Blackness

Through a minute reconsideration of Hawthorne, Poe and Melville, Harry Levin traces the ever mysterious problem of good and evil. If this seems to be a hackneyed subject, Professor Levin does manage to pour a few drops of new wine into the old bottles. He has examined the works of these old masters lovingly and closely, almost too closely for the glaring fault of this text in its wordiness. His examination of Hawthorne is perhaps the most successful, it is delicate and perceptive. But perhaps Hawthorne of these three writers is the easiest to analyze, the most classical, the least paradoxical. In the end he made a successful adjustment to life and marriage...Poe remains the most enigmatic; no one, as yet, has had final insights into Poe's complex background and nature. He was doubtless doomed from the beginning, given his ill-fated childhood... And Melville's answers are so paradoxical and ambiguous, the very course of his greatness, since he had no easy answers, that any analysis of his works necessarily pursues a zig-zag course. This is a work of scholarship and perception but it has neither brilliance nor challenge, though he is almost alone in going against the general American optimism, pragmatism and utilitarianism. This belongs chiefly on university bookshelves, to be read by scholars and students of literature. (Kirkus Reviews)