The Haunted Mind (from "twice Told Tales")
The threshold between sleep and wakefulness has never been more terrifying. In this brief, piercing work, Hawthorne strips away the comfortable illusions of daylight consciousness and reveals what truly haunts the mind in those vulnerable moments before full awareness returns. The prose moves like a fever dream, oscillating between ethereal beauty and chilling introspection, as memories of joy collide with darker reflections on regret, guilt, and sorrow. This is Hawthorne at his most psychologically acute: not the moral allegorist of his famous tales, but a writer obsessed with the architecture of the haunted soul. "The Haunted Mind" invites readers to confront the specters they carry within, the ones that emerge precisely when the rational self lets down its guard. For readers who crave psychological depth and Gothic atmosphere, this is American literature at its most unsettling.
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“Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Thus from beneath the black veil there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him.””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth;””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these feelings into words?””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a black veil!””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world; it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love and kept him in that saddest of all prisons his own heart;””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself." "Men sometimes are so," said her husband.””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The subject had reference to secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them.””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Yet perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister as his black veil to them.””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
