[ book tip by סיגל אדלר ] This novel – a favorite of mine – can be summarized in one sentence (though I’m not going to spoil the pleasure, nor the surprise, for those first encountering it), for not much happens in the book. So what makes it an everlasting classic? I was fortunate to translate this masterpiece. Word after word, it unveiled before my eyes like a lace fabric being ever gently embroidered stitch by stitch. 

First, the preface: ‘The Custom House’. It describes – in an amusing tone – the author's three years in Salem's custom house and how, there, he came across the story on which he based his novel. And though the preface does not directly contribute to the story, it's a literary jewel in itself, displaying the author's talent in creating whole characters in just a few measured words. So don't skip it! 

The novel's heroine, Hester Prynne, is married (her husband is missing and assumed dead) but gives birth to a daughter out of wedlock. For this she is stigmatized, sentenced to wear a scarlet letter on her garments (which, gifted as she is, she turns into a work of art). With quiet pride she bears her punishment, refusing outright to disclose the name of the girl's father. She's trying to protect her child, the child's father, and, above all, her love for him from the viciously narrow-minded people around her, as well as from her husband, who reappears and wishes to harm her lover.  

Though the novel deals with America’s Puritan past and with more feminist issues, it is about people, their weaknesses, and secretive and therefore most sacred of loves - penned by an artist who sketches his characters so finely that it almost becomes possible to touch them and feel the beating of their hearts - and makes it impossible not to fall for them. 

Here is one such glorious moment:
"The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit… By another impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her features… Her sex, her youth and the whole richness of her beauty came back from… the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour…" 

Pure magic!

[ book info ] Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter. (Book language: English) CreateSpace, 2008 (1850). ISBN: 978-1438241579.