The Great Stone Face > IDEAS & IDEALS

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Among many American short stories known to us Koreans "The Great Stone Face" by Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864) would be the most-widely read and remembered one, simply because we had to read it when we were in the middle school. It was translated into Korean and included in the Korean language textbook. Recently I was quite surprised and delighted to discover by chance that it was still in it for more than fifty years, like the stone face in the story, steadfast and unshaken, enduring all the vicissitudes of life. The textbook must have undergone countless changes and revisions during the time, but the story survived. I marveled at its longevity.

      The secret of its longevity lies, I think, in the work itself. It is a great story to begin with. Good, interesting, and very educational. Like any good and outstanding works of art, it teaches us through pleasure.

     And then, what is the Great Stone Face? Let Nathaniel Hawthorne, the writer of the story, tell it: "The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human countenance....If the spectator approached too near, he lost the outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another."
And the author leads the readers into the story by introducing an ancient legend or a prophecy about the Great Stone Face. The gist of the prophecy is that, at some future day, a child should be born in the valley from which people can see the stone face, who is destined to become the greatest and noblest personage of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear an exact resemblance to it.

      In the story several famous and great persons of the time, natives of the valley come and go by turns with big money first (Mr. Gathergold), with military glory (Old Blood-and-Thunder), with political power (Old Stony Phiz), and finally with literary fame (a poet), but all fail to fulfil the prophecy and disappoint Ernest, who has been born and grown up and lived his life as a husbandman in the valley awaiting the destined person. The story ends when the inhabitants of the valley realize belatedly that Ernest, their humble neighbor and friend, is the very man of the prophecy.
  
      Since I had read this story for the first time in Korean when I was a middle school student, I came across it again in English from Dixon's English Series at high school. I liked it so much that I read it over and over again. At college, as an English major, I read some of Hawthorne's novels, such as The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, and several of his more famous short stories, but very unfortunately I couldn't find

      it anywhere again in the books I had, and I forgot about it.
Then, one day, last year, it came to me quite unexpectedly. A book was delivered to me by mail from an unknown person. The title of the book was Great American & British Short Stories, and it was edited by a Mr. Kim In-myong. I could not recognize this man instantly. Later, after making some inquiry, I came to learn that the editor of the book was one of my highschool alumni, an auto-insurance salesman by profession, not a professor of English literature in a college, as I had presumed. I have not met him after graduation until now.

      To my great delight and gratitude, however, I could find in it the original (unabridged) text of "The Great Stone Face," along with 8 other familar short stories such as O. Henry's "The Last Leaf," Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," and "The Purloined Letter" by Edgar Alan Poe - all that we had read and studied in English class from the Dixon's Series at highschool. Momentarily I fell into reminiscence of highschool days before this book, wondering what had driven this busy man to do this apparently unlucrative work.

      Mr. Kim has kindly put the original English texts and his own Korean translations side by side for the readers, and meticulously and painfully proof-read, annotated, and footnoted each of the stories and the authors. No scholarly works by any English professors in the universities could be more accurately and conscientiously done than this humble and modest book. In the conversation with him over the phone, he said he just wanted to retain the pleasure of reading those good stories in English and share it with so many Koreans around who were eager to learn English.

      Until I was led to the Franconia Notch State Park in New Hampshire last summer during my tour of the north-eastern part of the United States, and saw the real Great Stone Face with my naked eyes, I thought it was a pure fiction created by the writer's imagination. But it was not. Yes, it was there, far up upon the top of a mountain, exactly like the one described by Hawthorne in his story. The stone face itself was not that spectacular, nor so majestic or noble as it appeared in the story at first view, but it was far more interesting and thrilling for me than the Niagara Falls I had seen the day before. I felt as if I were the first person who had discovered it in the world. No doubt it must have enabled or occasioned Nathaniel Hawthorne to make a story out of it. How could it be, I just wondered, that no one had ever told me about the real existence of the Great Stone Face before?

      The Great Stone Face followed me to Seoul. Last week. When I dropped in on Pi Chyun-Deuk, a famous poet and essayist, and my mentor, the topic of our conversation wandered into my recent trip to the United States, and I told him about the real Great Stone Face I saw in New Hampshire, and showed him a picture postcard of it. This ninety-three-year old former professor of English expressed as much interest and curiosity in it as I had expected and said that "The Great Stone Face" was a good story indeed. He added that truly great and noble men in the world come and go, like Ernest in the story, unseen and unnoticed, and smiled a wistful smile.

      By the time I said good-bye to him, he asked me casually, "Did you know the Korean translation in the middle school textbook was mine?" I did not know. "When I was a professor of English at Seoul National University, the Ministry of Education asked me to translate a good English short story into Korean for the middle school Korean language textbook, and I chose it and translated it. I am so glad that it is still there."  
      (October 23, 2002)