Nathaniel Hawthorne honors Dante in 'Young Goodman Brown' Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) wrote Young Goodman Brown in 1835 some 514 years after Dante Alighieri passing in 1321. It is a short story of only 10 pages of prose; yet, it captures the essence of the first three verses of La Divina Commedia. In fact I can say that his little story throw great light on the interpretation of these verses. Over the past seven centuries many great scholars have honed their talents to the text of La Divina Commedia but none seem so original as that of Nathaniel Hawthorne's. This does not negate those previous or subsequent commentator's insights for Dante work has many layers of interpretation. See Mark Musa translation below:"Midway along the journey of our lifeI woke to find myself in a dark wood,for I had wandered off from the straight path.Hawthorne's work came to me serendipitously. I actually had no idea that he was in anyway associated with Dante's work. It is said that 'Hawthorne's neighbor and friend Herman Melville once said,' "Young Goodman Brown is a tale as deep as Dante". It is also known that Hawthorne was a friend of Henry Wadworth Longfellow one of the founders and the first president of the Dante Society of America. Longerfeller would become president of the newly formed society some seventeen years after his friend's death. I wonder if there was an earlier collaboration. I mentioned this, in passing, merely to point out that there must have been a deeper following of Dante's works in America, then the first roster of the society's membership would indicate, during the 19th century. I did find it interesting that Rev. Henry Francis Cary's translation in 1814 uses the word "gloomy" in the second verse of La Divina Commedia: "I woke to find myself in a gloomy wood." Hawthorne's last sentence in this short story is, "for his dying hour was gloom." Many of La Divina Commedia's translations up to the middle of the 20th...
