American version of romantism

3. Level of motives and semantic oppositions
In the course of our practical work, we have identified the main motives of the short stories "The Mole" and "The Oval Portrait": the motives of life, death, sleep, light, miracle, aspiration.
Hawthorne 's motive for a miracle arises from the very beginning, as soon as he introduces us to the origin of the heroine's mole, it is rather mystical, so the birthmark is perceived as a gift, as a symbol of life. And only Nature can give it. The world of science, the human world also wants to work miracles, but all its "wonderful" experiments end in defeat, that is, a person is not able to resist Nature. In the same way, the motif of the miracle is revealed in Poe, where the painter, with the help of his art, wants to capture the perfection of his beloved, he wants to perform a miracle, to reveal his gift to everyone. Here, as in Hawthorne , a miracle motif emerges. Aylmer and the painter both want to create a miracle, they think that they are omnipotent and stand above nature, but in reality this is not so. Such proud behavior ends in the death of their beloved women.
The theme of sleep plays an important role in both works. In The Mole, the hero's secret, subconscious thoughts are revealed through sleep. This motif arises in the plot and climax of the novel, helping to develop the plot. In The Oval Portrait, the hero-narrator is in a state of fever, sinking into oblivion: for him there is no difference between dreaming and studying pictures. Here, as in Hawthorne , the motive of sleep arises, since this hero-narrator is in a painfully sleepy state. Sleep as a borderline state for romantics, something that is in the middle of the real and unreal world, thanks to which you can get into one or the other world.
The motif of light pervades both works. In Hawthorne , it consists in artificial lighting. The laboratory where Georgiana was located did not receive natural light, there was only artificial lighting, which indicates the whole unnaturalness of the experiment. And Edgar Allan Poe immerses the reader in a mystical setting, pumps it up with the presence of only artificial light, closes all the shutters, leaves the hero in the twilight of a dilapidated room. Here the tie is directly connected with the light. The hero changes the position of the candle, thereby from a different lighting it becomes possible to see a picture that was previously in the shade.
The motive of aspiration in both short stories is clearly traced. In the first, this can be observed in the character of the hero: Aylmer strives for heights, for an unreal beauty that does not exist; confident in the success of his experiment, stubborn, serious, he studied the human body for a long time, tried to comprehend the secret process of creating a person, tried to get to the bottom of the truth, but to no avail. In the second story, the artist, obsessed, unbridled, gloomy, was completely absorbed in the process, therefore he did not notice the gradual fading of his wife. Aylmer and the painter sought to create perfection, their desire for it took power over them and led to the death of their beloved. Perfection is in the real, it does not need to be artificially created.
The motives of life and death can be combined into one, as they merge in these works. For Aylmer , a mole is a symbol of the fact that his wife is subject to death, a symbol of her imperfection, so he seeks to remove it. He conducts his experiment: at the same time, with equal proportion, the scientist achieves success, the perfection of his wife, who, in turn, gradually fades away. Edgar Allan Poe introduces the motifs of life and death when he says that the narrator could not see life in this girl. At first glance, life and death seem to be mutually exclusive concepts, but, as we see, they become interconnected, complementary. Georgiana slowly dies as Aylmer sees a clear recovery in her face. For Aylmer , perfection was embodied in death, as well as for the painter. The artist saw life itself in his beloved, but she turned out to be dead. Life and death are mixed, these are not two clearly delineated concepts, they flow from one to the other.
We analyzed the system of images of these romantic novels, revealing the following binary oppositions:

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  “Ideal – Real” or “Perfect – Imperfect”: the scientist and the painter wanted to make their “imperfect” lovers perfect, but Hawthorne and Poe make it clear that perfection exists in the real world, it does not need to be artificially created.
  
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  "Natural - Artificial": This basic opposition is concretely embodied in two short stories. In Hawthorne 's short story , it is concretized as follows: "Nature - Science": Georgiana personifies Nature, Aylmer - Science. Science encroaches on the natural principle, but even despite the great achievements of man in scientific activity, he (man) cannot work miracles, like nature. And in Poe's short story, the opposition "Natural - Artificial" is concretized in the opposition "Life - Art": Life is perceived as living beauty, transient, and Art is understood as eternal beauty. In the short story "The Oval Portrait" two types of love compete: for a woman and for Painting. In this short story, the hero-artist is intoxicated with his work, art is the work of his whole life, he is even ready to sacrifice the life of his beloved.
  
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  "Woman - Man": in both short stories this opposition exists, and the masculine principle suppresses the feminine.
  

These semantic oppositions are, as we found out, structure-forming in the short stories "The Mole" and "The Oval Portrait". Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Poe, using composition, artistic time, images of the main characters, motives, destroy the main opposition "real - ideal", which is the core of the romantic dual world: the real is no longer opposed to the ideal, but forms a unity with it. The ideal is within the real, not outside or above it. And here, in the middle of the 19th century, as we see, what happens is what scientists and critics in the 20th century will call the deconstruction of binary oppositions.
Conclusion

In our work, we examined the main provisions of the poetics and aesthetics of romanticism, distinguished between European and American romanticism, named the main representatives, as well as researchers who were engaged in this area.

In the course of the work, we solved the tasks set: we got acquainted with the research literature on European and American romanticism; came up with a working definition of romanticism; identified and established a common foundation - the poetics and aesthetics of romanticism, to which Nathaniel belongs Hawthorne and Edgar Poe; got acquainted with the biography of writers; determined that they belong to the mature stage of American romanticism and are at the junction of the eras of romanticism and realism; studied the specifics of their relationship with each other: the writers influenced each other (Poe used the idea of a closed psychological space, which Hawthorne had previously addressed in his work; E. Poe also built his theory of short stories mainly on short stories Hawthorne ; like Edgar Poe, Hawthorne attached great importance to the ideological and emotional impact of art ); determined the criteria, levels of the text, according to which the comparative analysis of the works was carried out: chronotope , the system of images of the main characters, the plot-compositional level, the level of motives; carried out a comparative analysis of the short stories "The Mole" and "The Oval Portrait", during which we identified the following binary oppositions: "Real - Ideal", "Natural - Artificial", "Woman - Man", "Life - Death"; determined what was Nathaniel 's innovation Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe: using composition, artistic time, images of the main characters, motives, writers destroy the main opposition "Real - Ideal", which is the core of the romantic dual world: the real is no longer opposed to the ideal, but forms a unity with it. The ideal is within the real , not outside or above it.
Having carried out a comparative analysis of "The Mole" and "The Oval Portrait", we revealed the similarities and differences in the themes, motives, plots and images of these literary texts. Based on the data obtained, it can be said that Nathaniel Hawthorne and Poe not only followed the romantic tradition, but also contributed to the development of romanticism and the literary process in general. Their innovation, first of all, consisted in the fact that they sharply criticized the concept of romantic duality , which largely determines the poetics and aesthetics of romanticism. Hawthorne and Poe deconstructed the binary opposition that underlies the concept of duality . Thus, the hypothesis put forward by us at the beginning of the work was confirmed: both authors managed to transform the romantic tradition, outlining new paths for the development of American literature in the second half of the 19th century and beyond.