10th entry for 4th Dec

Mr. Hawthorne, at last, is talking about the novel's origin itself, so I guess I'm near the end of the introductory part.

This elongated introduction was the first thing to remind me I'm dealing with a classic romanticist novel, and here's the second one, the origin of the story. Mór Jókai once told someone he's a novelist, and the man inquired about the meaning of that. Then he told him, it's the one who guesses the whole of the story out of its ending. And that is an important feature of all romanticist novels I read, I'm wondering if there is any original fiction amongst these. Notre-Dame de Paris, as far as I know – I must apologize for not investigating that this time – was born out of a male and a female skeleton found embraced together, one of them being twisted, thus it got connected with the long deceased hunchback of Notre Dame.

Az arany ember (The Golden Man) from Jókai included the above mentioned conversation about a novelist’s job, in a “real-life” epilogue, which unveiled the source of the story. The whole novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra was stoutly stated to be totally authentic by its author, referring to a notable amount of detailed documents and confessions. The Scarlet Letter is midway between them, since Mr. Hawthorne possessed a semi-official, yet “reasonably complete” record about the life of the heroine, and even the remnants of the scarlet letter itself. Only the missing remainder is fiction, as he stated.

He – and most novelists of this movement – assured the reader, that the novels follow the known facts strictly, however, even if they do, the authors wouldn't mind if the fiction part is something most improbable to have happened; since it's the essence of romanticism. Apart from satisfying the demands of its age (being an alternative stream for the Enlightenment which didn't really succeed), I can't see much advantage of it. Many wrong historical preconceptions can be traced back to romanticist novels, thus they nourish illiteracy. On the other hand, it's about obscuring cruel reality, often with mere tales. However, we live in an age in which everything is faked, and the result is funny, to say it politely. Thus – though I'm still interested – I would consider romanticism less actual than ever.