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Hawthorne and Oakeshott
Nathanial Hawthorne's hero of The Artist of the Beautiful is the sort of sensitive young man who is the tortured artist, not by any flaw of his own in my perspective, but by the environment surrounding him and his complicated nature. The artist is always looked down upon by the owners of practical, solidly good sense, who feel themselves capable people because they contribute something to public life and understand the econominal pressures of the daily grind. Poor Owen Warland, however, belongs to the extreme side of sensibility that finds itself either incapable of or unwilling to commit to the idea of "practical life" and insists on dogging the artistic and the ideals of beauty. To use the succint terms from Oakeshott's discussion on The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, Owen Warland finds himself representing the voice of artistic poetry in the conversation of life, valiantly vying to be heard over the voices of practical activity - a conflict that has become all too common since the advent of the Industrial age.
i. Vox
Firstly, let me identify the different voices that Oakeshott discusses with regards to the three main characters in The Artist of the Beautiful. While this should be quite straightforward in the order of Owen Warland being the voice of poetry, Peter Hovenden the voice of science and Robert Danforth the voice of practical activity, it is not quite so simple. Firstly, Owen Warland was the apprentice of Peter Hovenden to become a watchmaker and "seemed to aim at the hidden mysteries of mechanism" (Hawthorne 909). His grasp of mechanics and the physics of minutae point towards a penchant for the voice of science. His vox scientia can be understood as a kind of discouse in which he imagines and moves about images (Oaksshott 505), an inquiry that is typically for intellectual satisfaction but in Warland's case, artistic satisfaction. Owen Warland used the discourse of science towards the aims of poetry - to achieve an end that is not considered part of practical activity's discourse. I shall speak more of this in the next section.
This complex creature can be easily contrasted to Peter Hovenden, an obvious representative for the voice of science linked to the discourse of practical activity. Peter Hovenden is a man who keeps in mind the "grand object of a watchmaker's business" and focuses on the "measurement of time". His voice of science is important insofar as it serves a rational purpose, in this case, making watches that keep good track of time. Robert Danforth is the simplest of characters as the voice of practical activity, a voice expressed in Peter Hovenden's exclamation on Danforth's blacksmith profession: "how it takes the nonsense out of a man!" (908)
ii. Science and Its Relation to Poetry and Practicality
Science was considered to be a didactic voice, an activity in which we differentiate between what is rational and what is not rational (505)
i. Vox
Firstly, let me identify the different voices that Oakeshott discusses with regards to the three main characters in The Artist of the Beautiful. While this should be quite straightforward in the order of Owen Warland being the voice of poetry, Peter Hovenden the voice of science and Robert Danforth the voice of practical activity, it is not quite so simple. Firstly, Owen Warland was the apprentice of Peter Hovenden to become a watchmaker and "seemed to aim at the hidden mysteries of mechanism" (Hawthorne 909). His grasp of mechanics and the physics of minutae point towards a penchant for the voice of science. His vox scientia can be understood as a kind of discouse in which he imagines and moves about images (Oaksshott 505), an inquiry that is typically for intellectual satisfaction but in Warland's case, artistic satisfaction. Owen Warland used the discourse of science towards the aims of poetry - to achieve an end that is not considered part of practical activity's discourse. I shall speak more of this in the next section.
This complex creature can be easily contrasted to Peter Hovenden, an obvious representative for the voice of science linked to the discourse of practical activity. Peter Hovenden is a man who keeps in mind the "grand object of a watchmaker's business" and focuses on the "measurement of time". His voice of science is important insofar as it serves a rational purpose, in this case, making watches that keep good track of time. Robert Danforth is the simplest of characters as the voice of practical activity, a voice expressed in Peter Hovenden's exclamation on Danforth's blacksmith profession: "how it takes the nonsense out of a man!" (908)
ii. Science and Its Relation to Poetry and Practicality
Science was considered to be a didactic voice, an activity in which we differentiate between what is rational and what is not rational (505)