May 28, 2023

“Earth’s Holocaust” is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) that delivers enough déjà vu to make one say loudly “what else is new”? This is not another “I told you so” tale but a deep look into the heart of human life. Reading like a catalog of everything that’s wrong with the world, it shows (in an allegorical way) how deadly the attempt to correct the negatives of life may be when passion overtakes wisdom.

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Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind contains a synopsis of “Earth’s Holocaust” that beats anything I may offer here, but I thought it would be a good idea to “dust off” this revealing story and summarize it by threading highlights together, using Hawthorne’s own words (within quotation marks):

It was agreed among the smartest of the smart that since the world had become overwhelmed by an accumulation of rubbish from the past it was necessary to toss everything no longer needed into a huge bonfire, a decisive step in straightening out the crooked world. For “the truth was that the human race had now reached a stage of progress so far beyond what the wisest and wittiest men of former ages had ever dreamed of, that it would have been a manifest absurdity to allow the earth to be any longer encumbered with their poor achievements.” And so tons of worthless items were tossed into the great bonfire, fueling it to a whelming blaze.

An onlooker cried out: “ ‘People, what have you done? This fire is consuming all that marked your advance from barbarism, or that could have prevented your relapse thither. We, the men of the privileged orders, were those who kept alive from age to age the old chivalrous spirit; the gentle and generous thought; the higher, the purer, the more refined and delicate life. With the nobles, too, you cast off the poet, the painter, the sculptor – all the beautiful arts; for we were their patrons, and created the atmosphere in which they flourish.’…”

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“ ‘Let him thank his stars that we have not flung him into the same fire!’ shouted a rude figure….  ‘If he have strength of arm, well and good; it is one species of superiority. If he have wit, wisdom, courage, force of character, let these attributes do for him what they may; but from this day forward no mortal must hope for place and consideration by reckoning up the mouldy bones of his ancestors. That nonsense is done away.’…”

“ ‘Wines, liquors, and brews were tossed into the bonfire, all the tea and coffee and tobacco; one witness lamented: ‘What is this world coming to?…  All the spice of life is to be condemned as useless…If these nonsensical reformers would fling themselves into it, all would be well enough!’  ”

“ ‘Be patient,’ responded a conservative; ‘it will come to that in the end. They will first fling us in, and finally themselves.’…”

“A little boy of five years old…threw in his playthings; a college graduate, his diploma; an apothecary…his whole stock of drugs and medicines; a physician, his library; a parson, his old sermons; and a fine gentleman of the old school, his code of manners, which he had formerly written down for the benefit of the next generation…”

It was startling “to overhear a number of ladies, highly respectable in appearance, proposing to fling their gowns and petticoats into the flames, and assume the garb, together with the manners, duties, offices, and responsibilities, of the opposite sex…”

“A poor, deceived, and half-delirious girl, who, exclaiming that she was the most worthless thing alive or dead, attempted to cast herself into the fire amid all that wrecked and broken trumpery of the world. A good man, however, ran to her rescue. ‘Patience, my poor girl!’ said he, as he drew her back from the fierce embrace of the destroying angel. ‘Be patient, and abide Heaven’s will. So long as you possess a living soul, all may be restored to its first freshness.’…”