Hawthorne made three collections of his short stories and sketches: "Twice-Told Tales," "Mosses from an Old Manse," and "The Snow Image and Other Tales." The prefaces to these volumes express, with characteristic charm, the author's dissatisfaction with his handiwork. No critic has pointed out so clearly as Hawthorne himself the ineffectiveness of some of the "Twice-Told Tales"; he thinks that the "Mosses from an Old Manse" afford no solid basis for a literary reputation; and his comment upon the earlier and later work gathered indiscriminately into his final volume is that "the ripened autumnal fruit tastes but little better than the early windfalls."호손은 세 개의 단편 소설과 스케치 모음집을 만들었습니다: "Twice-Told Tales," "Mosses from a Old Manse," 그리고 "The Snow Image and Other Tales." 이 책의 서문은 저자의 수작업에 대한 불만을 특유의 매력으로 표현하고 있습니다. 호손 스스로 몇몇 "두 개의 인형 이야기"의 비효율성을 지적한 비평가는 없습니다; 그는 "노인으로부터 온 모스"가 문학적인 평판을 위한 확실한 근거를 제공하지 않는다고 생각합니다; 그리고 그의 초기 및 후기 작품에 대한 그의 논평은 그의 마지막 책으로 무분별하게 모아진 가을 과일 맛입니다. 초기의 풍랑보다 조금 더 낫습니다."It must be remembered that the collections were made in desultory fashion. They included some work that Hawthorne had outgrown even when the first volume was published, such as elaborate exercises in description and fanciful allegories, excellently composed but without substance. Yet side by side with these proofs of his long, weary apprenticeship are stories that reveal the consummate artist, mature in mind and heart, and with the sure hand of the master. The qualities of imagination and style that place Hawthorne easily first among American writers of fiction are as readily discernible in his best brief tales as in his romances.컬렉션이 난잡하게 만들어졌다는 것을 기억해야 합니다. 이 책에는 묘사에서의 정교한 연습과 허황된 우화 등 제1권이 출판되었을 때에도 호손이 성장하지 못한 작품들이 포함되어 있는데, 훌륭하게 구성되었지만 실체가 없는 작품들이 포함되어 있습니다. 하지만 그의 길고 지친 견습 생활에 대한 이러한 증거들과 함께, 마음과 마음이 성숙하고 스승의 확실한 손길로 완벽한 예술가를 드러내는 이야기들이 있습니다. 미국 소설 작가들 사이에서 호손이 쉽게 1위를 차지하는 상상력과 문체의 자질은 그의 로맨스 소설만큼이나 그의 최고의 짧은 이야기에서도 쉽게 알아볼 수 있습니다."Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," with which the present volume opens, is Hawthorne's earliest treatment of the elixir of immortality theme, which haunted him throughout his life and was the subject of the unfinished romance which rested upon his coffin. He handles it daintily, poetically here, with an irony at once exquisite and profound. "The Birthmark" represents another favorite theme: the rivalry between scientific passion and human affection. It is not wholly free from the morbid fancy which Hawthorne occasionally betrays, and which allies him, on one side of his many-gifted mind, with Edgar Allan Poe; but the essential sanity of Hawthorne's moral, and the perfection of the workmanship, render "The Birthmark" worthy of its high place among modern short stories. "Ethan Brand" dates obviously from the sojourn at North Adams, Massachusetts, described in the "American Note-Book." Fragmentary as it is, it is one of Hawthorne's most powerful pieces of writing, the Unpardonable Sin which it portrays—the development of the intellect at the expense of the heart—being one which the lonely romancer himself had had cause to dread. The motive of the humorous character sketch entitled "Wakefield" is somewhat similar: the danger of stepping aside, even for a moment, from one's allotted place. "Drowne's Wooden Image" is a charming old Boston version of the artistic miracles made possible by love. In "The Ambitious Guest," the familiar story of the Willey House, in the Notch of the White Hills, is told with singular delicacy and imaginativeness, while "The Great Stone Face," a parable after Hawthorne's own heart, is suggested by a well-known phenomenon of the same mountainous region. Hawthorne's numerous tales based upon New England history are represented by...