“Donatello, what can I do for you, my beloved friend? You are shaking as with the cold fit of the Roman fever.”
The origin story of The Marble Faun has much to do with a visit to Italy the author himself with his family. While there, his 14-year-old contracted a serious case of “Roman Fever” which, though it may sound like fake disease having to do with a desire to remain in Italy and never return home, is actually just another name for malaria. Not surprisingly, perhaps, malaria also shows up in his fictional visit to Italy.
The Faun is the marble image of a young man, leaning his right arm on the trunk or stump of a tree; one hand hangs carelessly by his side; in the other he holds the fragment of a pipe, or some such sylvan instrument of music. His only garment — a lion’s skin, with the claws upon his shoulder — falls halfway down his back, leaving the limbs and entire front of the figure nude.
If there is any confusion about what the title refers to, this quote should clear it up. Note that it is not literally a marble statue of a young deer. That would make the title “The Marble Faun.” For the sake of further clarity, understand that a faun is a mythological hybrid…Mr. Tumnus. Just think Mr. Tumnus from the movie about the witch and lion.
When we have once known Rome, and left her where she lies — left her, disgusted with the pretense of holiness and the reality of nastiness, each equally omnipresent, — left her, half lifeless from the languid atmosphere, the vital principle of which has been used up long ago, or corrupted by myriads of slaughters — left her, in short, hating her with all our might.
Remember that Hawthorne is the guy who wrote the novel about the unwed mother sentenced to wear a scarlet “A” around her neck as punishment for moral transgressions. Hawthorne is profoundly interest in matters of morality and the perspective of his strictest characters is often unfairly enforced upon him. He was descended form Puritans, true, but he was hardly one himself. His stories are steeped in the moral framework at work in the foundation and structure of the narrative. That bit about holiness and nastiness is worth concentrating on while reading the text.
At the present day, however, like most other Roman possessions, it belongs less to the native inhabitants than to the barbarians from Gaul, Great Britain, anti beyond the sea, who have established a peaceful usurpation over whatever is enjoyable or memorable in the Eternal City. These foreign guests are indeed ungrateful.
Hawthorne mentions or alludes to foreigners throughout the text and these “foreigners” tend to be clustered not just around particular nations, but Europeans as a whole, though most especially Catholics. But his concept of foreignness to an American visitor also extends to over displays of carnality by women. And within them all arises Hawthorne’s obsession with the concept of morality as a fundamental state of humanity. The foreign quality that is observed is mostly noted by the narrator who is naturally assumed to be an extension of the author. But that connection becomes less certain and more tenuous when also added into the mixture of those things to which is applied “foreignness” the entire concept of art. Artists are, after all, a class to which the author unquestionably belongs.
