There are only a few books of literary criticism that I am ever tempted to reread. Harry Levin’s The Power of Blackness is one of them. It captures better than any book I have read the yin-yang interplay in the American soul of the dour Puritan’s perception of a howling spiritual wilderness with our illusory sunny romantic optimism. His first chapter is titled “The American Nightmare,” which may be what becomes of the American Dream. Levin notes that love stories are rare in Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. They often have a dark, ironic twist: Hester Prynne’s deadly affair with Dimmesdale, Poe’s morbid fascination with dead girls, and outcast Ishmael, first in bed with Queequeg and then afloat on his lifesaving coffin. Levin is an eclectic critic, using all the tools of formalism (especially image study), biographical criticism, and the emerging fields of comparative literature and culture criticism. His prose is clear and without pretension. 5 stars. ( )

(Original Review, 1981-02-01)

Harry Levin wrote a book called “The Power of Blackness” about Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, the classic trio of Dark Romance, and there is no doubt Blackness and Night haunt the human imagination and generate oneiric phantasms to boot. In the French cultural scene although surrealism was losing steam, it was still a powerful force and it did emphasize the oneiric, and Borde and Chaumeton were very interested in the grotesque, bizarre, and oneiric per se. I tend to agree with them in one sense, especially if we take Noir to be the latest incarnation of a long, long dark tradition of literature (and film, etc.) and apply it backwards. I am not aware offhand of any such overarching grouping of literature but I think it is a possible overarching category that would include a vast variety of literature from the Iliad, through Greek tragedy, lots of folk literature or things like Beowulf and on through Gothic and Dark Romance and up to our present noir.

Hammett makes it hardboiled and realistic, but I think that it has a hidden 'oneiric' psychological dimension in that those 5 days I think Sam was in a virtual state of altered consciousness. Which I’ve written about elsewhere. Perhaps such extreme states, including dreams are also the sublime. I had not really thought of that, but it is worth thinking more about, in the context of “The Maltese Falcon,” just how much of an (ironically) 'oneiric' novel this hardboiled novel really is. For me the psychologically extremism of “The Maltese Falcon” actually manifests itself in the intensity and unity of the prose made possible by it being hidden. I mean that Sam's altered state of consciousness is hidden from the reader but it works to intensify he events and with Hammett’s absolute mastery of rhythmic prose it has enormous impact on the reader, or this reader anyway. It is a pressure cooker. Poe gets a similar intensity of effect with Roderick Usher, but there it is not hidden and is compressed into a short story, where Hammett succeeds in stretching it out over a whole novel. Hammett counterpoints the hidden quality by constantly giving it away with Sam's facial expressions, gestures, and especially his eyes, and he certainly brings up dreaminess there. I would have to think some more about this 'sublime' of dream and extreme psychic states but it certainly dovetails with NIGHTmares.
That fake scene was great, but I don't think I could call it sublime. Huston was absolutely right to use the 'such stuff as dreams are made of' line, but Hammett was even more right to not point out this kind of moral to the story. Reminded me a bit of the finale of Vathek, now THAT was sublime. ( )

A very readable analysis of the darker side of the Romantic era, this book is a very broad overview of the work of Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville. The author touches upon most of each writers' works, major and minor, and links them all together in how they approach the negative side of human nature. Though it certainly helps to be familiar with these works, I found it very understandable (I'm particularly lacking in my knowledge on Melville, but found that chapter quite interesting). ( )

Tolstoy wondered why we paid such heed to millionaires and generals and not our poets and moralists - Herman Melville not least among the latter. ( )