May 29, 2025 • 15 mins
Ron Reed reads Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Haunted Mind," a hypnotic meditation on that strange moment between sleep and wakefulness when time seems suspended and our deepest thoughts rise to the surface.
• Exploration of that singular moment when we first awake from midnight slumber
• Description of the mind's unique state when neither fully asleep nor fully awake
• Reflection on how 2 AM represents an "intermediate space" free from yesterday's fatigue and tomorrow's concerns
• Examination of how our deepest regrets and sorrows visit us in these vulnerable midnight hours
• Contemplation on the parallel between drifting back to sleep and the soul's final journey
Please support this podcast by leaving a five-star review, subscribing, and donating through the link included in this podcast. Thank you so much.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, are you tired?
You will be.
This is Ron Reed's boring books.
This is the Haunted Mind byNathaniel Hawthorne.
(00:29):
What a singular moment is thefirst one when you have hardly
begun to recollect yourselfafter starting from midnight's
slumber by unclosing your eyes,so suddenly you seem to have
surprised the parsonages of yourdream in full convocation
around your bed, and catch onebroad glance at them before they
(00:53):
can flit into obscurity.
Find yourself for a singleinstant wide awake in that realm
of illusions where you witherSleep has been the passport, and
behold its ghostly inhabitantsand wondrous scenery with a
(01:14):
perception of their strangenessSuch as you never attain.
While the dream is undisturbed,the distant sound of a church
clock is borne faintly on thewind.
You question with yourself,half seriously, whether it was
(01:44):
stolen to your waking ear fromsome gray tower that stood
within the precincts of yourdream.
While yet in suspense, anotherclock flings its heavy clang
over this slumbering town, withso full and distinct a sound and
such a long murmur in theneighboring air that you are
certain it must proceed from thesteeple at the nearest corner.
At the nearest corner, youcount the strokes one, two and
(02:05):
there they cease with a boomingsound like the gathering of a
third stroke within the bell.
If you could choose an hour ofwakefulness out of the whole
night, it would be this.
Since you are sober, bedtime ateleven.
You have had rest enough totake off the pressure of
(02:25):
yesterday's fatigue.
And two in pleasant dreams, andtwo in that strangest of
(02:48):
enjoyments, the forgetfulnessalike of joy and woe.
The moment of rising belongs toanother period of time and
appears so distant that theplunge out of a warm bed into
the frosty air cannot yet beanticipated with dismay.
Yesterday has already vanishedamong the shadows of the past.
(03:10):
Tomorrow has not yet emergedfrom the future.
You have found an intermediatespace where the business of life
does not intrude, where thepassing moment lingers and
becomes truly the present.
A spot where father time thinksnobody is watching him, sits
(03:31):
down by the wayside to take abreath.
Oh that he would fall asleepand let mortals live on without
growing older.
Hitherto you have lainperfectly still, because the
slightest motion would dissipatethe fragments of your slumber.
Now, being irrevocably awake,you peep through the half-drawn
(03:51):
window curtain and observe thatglass is ornamented with
fanciful devices and frostworkand that each pane represents
something like a frozen dream.
There will be time enough totrace out the anthology while
waiting the summons to breakfast.
Seen through the clear portionof the glass where the silvery
(04:15):
mountain peaks of the frostscenery do not ascend, the most
conspicuous object is thesteeple, the white spire of
which directs you to the wintryluster of the firmament.
You may also distinguish thefigures on the clock that has
just told the hour.
Such a frosty sky and thesnow-covered roofs and the long
(04:37):
vista of the frozen street, allwhite and the distant water
hardened into rock, might makeyou shiver, even under four
blankets and a woollen comforter.
Yet at that, one glorious star.
Yet look at that one gloriousstar.
Its beams are distinguishablefrom all the rest and actually
(04:57):
cast the shadow of the casementon the bed with a radiance of
deeper hue than moonlight,though not so accurate an
outline.
You sink down and muffle yourhead in the clothes, shivering
all the while, but less frombodily chill than the bare idea
of a polar atmosphere.
(05:18):
It is too cold even for thethoughts you venture abroad.
You speculate on the luxury ofwearing out a whole existence in
bed, like an oyster in itsshell, content with the sluggish
ecstasy of inaction anddrowsily conscious of nothing
but delicious warmth such as younow feel again.
(05:40):
Ah, that idea has brought ahideous one into its train.
Now you think how the dead arelying in their cold shrouds and
narrow coffins through the drearwinter of the grave and cannot
persuade your fancy that theyneither shrink nor shiver when
the snow is drifting over theirlittle hillocks and the bitter
(06:03):
blast howls against the door ofthe tomb.
Over their little hillocks andthe bitter blast howls against
the door of the tomb, thatgloomy thought will collect a
gloomy multitude and throw itscomplexion over your wakeful
hour.
In the depths of every heartthere is a tomb and a dungeon,
though the lights, the music,the revelry above may cause us
to forget their existence andthe buried ones or prisoners
(06:25):
whom they hide, but sometimesand oftenest at midnight, these
dark receptacles are flung wideopen.
In an hour like this, when themind has a passive sensibility
but no active strength, when theimagination is a mirror
imparting vividness to all ideaswithout the power of selecting
(06:47):
or controlling them, then praythat your griefs may slumber and
the brotherhood of remorse notbreak their chain.
It is too late.
The funeral train comes glidingby your bed, in which passion
and feeling assume bodily shapeand things of the mind become
dire specters to the eye.
(07:08):
This is your earliest sorrow.
A pale young mourner wearing asister's likeness to the first
love.
Sadly beautiful, with ahallowed sweetness in her
melancholy features and grace inthe flow of her sable robe and
(07:29):
grace in the flow of her sablerobe.
Next appears a shade of ruinedloveliness, with dust among her
golden hair and her brightgarments, all faded and defaced,
sealing from your glance withdrooping head as fearful of
reproach.
She was your fondest hope, buta delusive one, so call her
disappointment.
Now A sterner form succeeds,with a brow of wrinkles, a look
(07:53):
and gesture of iron authority.
There is no name for him, unlessit be fatality, an emblem of
the evil influence that rulesyour fortunes, a demon to whom
you subjected yourself by someerror at the outset of life and
were bound his slave forever byonce obeying him.
See those fiendish lineaments,lineaments, lineaments graven in
(08:23):
the darkness and with lip ofscorn, the mockery of that
living eye, the pointed fingertouching the sore place in your
heart.
Do you remember any acts ofenormous folly at which you
would blush even in the remotestcavern of earth?
Then recognize your shame inthe remotest cavern of earth.
(08:43):
Then recognize your shame, passwretched hand band.
Well, for the thankful, wakefulone, if riotously miserable, a
fiercer tribe.
Do not surround him the devilsof a guilty heart that holds its
hell within itself.
What if remorse should assumethe features of an injured
(09:05):
friend?
What if the friend should comein women's garments, with a pale
beauty amid sin and desolation,and lie down by your side?
What if he should stand at yourbed's foot in the likeness of a
corpse with a bloody stain uponthe shroud?
Sufficient, without such guilt?
(09:28):
Is this nightmare of the soul,this heavy sinking of the
spirits, this wintry gloom aboutthe heart, this distinct,
indistinct horror of the mindbending itself with the darkness
of the chamber?
By a desperate effort, you startupright breaking from a sort of
conscious sleep and gazingwildly round the bed as if the
(09:53):
fiends were anywhere but in yourhaunted mind.
At the same moment, theslumbering embers on the hearth
send forth a gleam which palelyilluminates the whole outer room
and flickers through the doorof the bedchamber, but cannot
quite dispel its obscurity.
Your eye searches for whatevermay remind you of the living
(10:15):
world.
With eager minuteness you takenote of the table near the
fireplace, the book with anivory knife between its leaves,
the unfolded letter, the hat,the fallen glove Soon, the flame
vanishes and with it the wholescene is gone, though its image
remains an instant in yourmind's eye.
(10:37):
When the darkness has swallowedthe reality Throughout the
chamber, there is the sameobscurity as before, but not the
same gloom within your breast.
As your head falls back uponthe pillow, you think in a
whisper, it shall be spoken.
How pleasant in these nightsolitudes would be the rise and
(10:59):
fall of a softer breathing thanyour own, the slight pressure of
a tenderer bosom, the quietthrob of a purer heart imparting
its peacefulness into yourtroubled one, as if the fonder
sleeper were involving you inher dream.
Her influences over you, thoughshe have no existence.
(11:22):
But in that momentary image yousink down into a flowery spot
on the borders of sleep andwakefulness, while your thoughts
rise before you in pictures alldisconnected yet all
assimilated by a pervadinggladsomeness and beauty.
(11:43):
The wheeling of gorgeoussquadrons that glitter in the
sun is succeeded by themerriment of children round the
door of a schoolhouse, beneaththe glimmering shadow of old
trees.
At the corner of a rustic lane,you stand in the sunny rain of
a summer shower and wander amongthe sunny trees of an autumnal
(12:07):
wood and look upward, at thebrightness of all rainbows
over-arching the unbroken sheet,radiance round the hearth of a
young man and his recent bride,and the twittering flight of
birds in spring About theirnew-made nest.
(12:34):
You feel the merry bounding ofa ship before the breeze and
watch the tuneful fleet of rosygirls as they twine their last
and merriest dance in a splendidballroom and find yourself in
the brilliant circle of acrowded theater as the curtain
(12:55):
falls over a light and airyscene.
With an involuntary start, youseize hold on consciousness and
prove yourself but half awake,by running a doubtful parallel
between human life and the hourwhich now has now elapsed In
both.
You emerge from mystery, passthrough a vicissitude that you
(13:22):
can but imperfectly control, andare born onward to another
mystery.
Now comes the peel of thedistant clock, with fainter and
fainter strokes as you plungefurther into the wilderness of
sleep.
It is the nail of a temporarydeath.
Your spirit has departed andstrays like a free citizen among
(13:46):
the people of a shadowy world,holding, beholding strange sites
, yet without wonder or dismay.
So calm, perhaps it will.
So calm, perhaps, will be thefinal change, so undisturbed, as
if among familiar things, theentrance of the soul to its
(14:07):
eternal home.
This has been the Haunted Mindby Nathaniel Hawthorne.
You've been listening to RonReed's Boring Books.
If you will, please somebody,leave me a five-star review and
(14:34):
leave me a five-star rating andwrite a review and subscribe.
You can also support thispodcast by donating on the link
included in this podcast.
(14:56):
Thank you so much.
Hello, are you tired?
You will be.
This is Ron Reed's boring books.
This is the Haunted Mind byNathaniel Hawthorne.
(00:29):
What a singular moment is thefirst one when you have hardly
begun to recollect yourselfafter starting from midnight's
slumber by unclosing your eyes,so suddenly you seem to have
surprised the parsonages of yourdream in full convocation
around your bed, and catch onebroad glance at them before they
(00:53):
can flit into obscurity.
Find yourself for a singleinstant wide awake in that realm
of illusions where you witherSleep has been the passport, and
behold its ghostly inhabitantsand wondrous scenery with a
(01:14):
perception of their strangenessSuch as you never attain.
While the dream is undisturbed,the distant sound of a church
clock is borne faintly on thewind.
You question with yourself,half seriously, whether it was
(01:44):
stolen to your waking ear fromsome gray tower that stood
within the precincts of yourdream.
While yet in suspense, anotherclock flings its heavy clang
over this slumbering town, withso full and distinct a sound and
such a long murmur in theneighboring air that you are
certain it must proceed from thesteeple at the nearest corner.
At the nearest corner, youcount the strokes one, two and
(02:05):
there they cease with a boomingsound like the gathering of a
third stroke within the bell.
If you could choose an hour ofwakefulness out of the whole
night, it would be this.
Since you are sober, bedtime ateleven.
You have had rest enough totake off the pressure of
(02:25):
yesterday's fatigue.
And two in pleasant dreams, andtwo in that strangest of
(02:48):
enjoyments, the forgetfulnessalike of joy and woe.
The moment of rising belongs toanother period of time and
appears so distant that theplunge out of a warm bed into
the frosty air cannot yet beanticipated with dismay.
Yesterday has already vanishedamong the shadows of the past.
(03:10):
Tomorrow has not yet emergedfrom the future.
You have found an intermediatespace where the business of life
does not intrude, where thepassing moment lingers and
becomes truly the present.
A spot where father time thinksnobody is watching him, sits
(03:31):
down by the wayside to take abreath.
Oh that he would fall asleepand let mortals live on without
growing older.
Hitherto you have lainperfectly still, because the
slightest motion would dissipatethe fragments of your slumber.
Now, being irrevocably awake,you peep through the half-drawn
(03:51):
window curtain and observe thatglass is ornamented with
fanciful devices and frostworkand that each pane represents
something like a frozen dream.
There will be time enough totrace out the anthology while
waiting the summons to breakfast.
Seen through the clear portionof the glass where the silvery
(04:15):
mountain peaks of the frostscenery do not ascend, the most
conspicuous object is thesteeple, the white spire of
which directs you to the wintryluster of the firmament.
You may also distinguish thefigures on the clock that has
just told the hour.
Such a frosty sky and thesnow-covered roofs and the long
(04:37):
vista of the frozen street, allwhite and the distant water
hardened into rock, might makeyou shiver, even under four
blankets and a woollen comforter.
Yet at that, one glorious star.
Yet look at that one gloriousstar.
Its beams are distinguishablefrom all the rest and actually
(04:57):
cast the shadow of the casementon the bed with a radiance of
deeper hue than moonlight,though not so accurate an
outline.
You sink down and muffle yourhead in the clothes, shivering
all the while, but less frombodily chill than the bare idea
of a polar atmosphere.
(05:18):
It is too cold even for thethoughts you venture abroad.
You speculate on the luxury ofwearing out a whole existence in
bed, like an oyster in itsshell, content with the sluggish
ecstasy of inaction anddrowsily conscious of nothing
but delicious warmth such as younow feel again.
(05:40):
Ah, that idea has brought ahideous one into its train.
Now you think how the dead arelying in their cold shrouds and
narrow coffins through the drearwinter of the grave and cannot
persuade your fancy that theyneither shrink nor shiver when
the snow is drifting over theirlittle hillocks and the bitter
(06:03):
blast howls against the door ofthe tomb.
Over their little hillocks andthe bitter blast howls against
the door of the tomb, thatgloomy thought will collect a
gloomy multitude and throw itscomplexion over your wakeful
hour.
In the depths of every heartthere is a tomb and a dungeon,
though the lights, the music,the revelry above may cause us
to forget their existence andthe buried ones or prisoners
(06:25):
whom they hide, but sometimesand oftenest at midnight, these
dark receptacles are flung wideopen.
In an hour like this, when themind has a passive sensibility
but no active strength, when theimagination is a mirror
imparting vividness to all ideaswithout the power of selecting
(06:47):
or controlling them, then praythat your griefs may slumber and
the brotherhood of remorse notbreak their chain.
It is too late.
The funeral train comes glidingby your bed, in which passion
and feeling assume bodily shapeand things of the mind become
dire specters to the eye.
(07:08):
This is your earliest sorrow.
A pale young mourner wearing asister's likeness to the first
love.
Sadly beautiful, with ahallowed sweetness in her
melancholy features and grace inthe flow of her sable robe and
(07:29):
grace in the flow of her sablerobe.
Next appears a shade of ruinedloveliness, with dust among her
golden hair and her brightgarments, all faded and defaced,
sealing from your glance withdrooping head as fearful of
reproach.
She was your fondest hope, buta delusive one, so call her
disappointment.
Now A sterner form succeeds,with a brow of wrinkles, a look
(07:53):
and gesture of iron authority.
There is no name for him, unlessit be fatality, an emblem of
the evil influence that rulesyour fortunes, a demon to whom
you subjected yourself by someerror at the outset of life and
were bound his slave forever byonce obeying him.
See those fiendish lineaments,lineaments, lineaments graven in
(08:23):
the darkness and with lip ofscorn, the mockery of that
living eye, the pointed fingertouching the sore place in your
heart.
Do you remember any acts ofenormous folly at which you
would blush even in the remotestcavern of earth?
Then recognize your shame inthe remotest cavern of earth.
(08:43):
Then recognize your shame, passwretched hand band.
Well, for the thankful, wakefulone, if riotously miserable, a
fiercer tribe.
Do not surround him the devilsof a guilty heart that holds its
hell within itself.
What if remorse should assumethe features of an injured
(09:05):
friend?
What if the friend should comein women's garments, with a pale
beauty amid sin and desolation,and lie down by your side?
What if he should stand at yourbed's foot in the likeness of a
corpse with a bloody stain uponthe shroud?
Sufficient, without such guilt?
(09:28):
Is this nightmare of the soul,this heavy sinking of the
spirits, this wintry gloom aboutthe heart, this distinct,
indistinct horror of the mindbending itself with the darkness
of the chamber?
By a desperate effort, you startupright breaking from a sort of
conscious sleep and gazingwildly round the bed as if the
(09:53):
fiends were anywhere but in yourhaunted mind.
At the same moment, theslumbering embers on the hearth
send forth a gleam which palelyilluminates the whole outer room
and flickers through the doorof the bedchamber, but cannot
quite dispel its obscurity.
Your eye searches for whatevermay remind you of the living
(10:15):
world.
With eager minuteness you takenote of the table near the
fireplace, the book with anivory knife between its leaves,
the unfolded letter, the hat,the fallen glove Soon, the flame
vanishes and with it the wholescene is gone, though its image
remains an instant in yourmind's eye.
(10:37):
When the darkness has swallowedthe reality Throughout the
chamber, there is the sameobscurity as before, but not the
same gloom within your breast.
As your head falls back uponthe pillow, you think in a
whisper, it shall be spoken.
How pleasant in these nightsolitudes would be the rise and
(10:59):
fall of a softer breathing thanyour own, the slight pressure of
a tenderer bosom, the quietthrob of a purer heart imparting
its peacefulness into yourtroubled one, as if the fonder
sleeper were involving you inher dream.
Her influences over you, thoughshe have no existence.
(11:22):
But in that momentary image yousink down into a flowery spot
on the borders of sleep andwakefulness, while your thoughts
rise before you in pictures alldisconnected yet all
assimilated by a pervadinggladsomeness and beauty.
(11:43):
The wheeling of gorgeoussquadrons that glitter in the
sun is succeeded by themerriment of children round the
door of a schoolhouse, beneaththe glimmering shadow of old
trees.
At the corner of a rustic lane,you stand in the sunny rain of
a summer shower and wander amongthe sunny trees of an autumnal
(12:07):
wood and look upward, at thebrightness of all rainbows
over-arching the unbroken sheet,radiance round the hearth of a
young man and his recent bride,and the twittering flight of
birds in spring About theirnew-made nest.
(12:34):
You feel the merry bounding ofa ship before the breeze and
watch the tuneful fleet of rosygirls as they twine their last
and merriest dance in a splendidballroom and find yourself in
the brilliant circle of acrowded theater as the curtain
(12:55):
falls over a light and airyscene.
With an involuntary start, youseize hold on consciousness and
prove yourself but half awake,by running a doubtful parallel
between human life and the hourwhich now has now elapsed In
both.
You emerge from mystery, passthrough a vicissitude that you
(13:22):
can but imperfectly control, andare born onward to another
mystery.
Now comes the peel of thedistant clock, with fainter and
fainter strokes as you plungefurther into the wilderness of
sleep.
It is the nail of a temporarydeath.
Your spirit has departed andstrays like a free citizen among
(13:46):
the people of a shadowy world,holding, beholding strange sites
, yet without wonder or dismay.
So calm, perhaps it will.
So calm, perhaps, will be thefinal change, so undisturbed, as
if among familiar things, theentrance of the soul to its
(14:07):
eternal home.
This has been the Haunted Mindby Nathaniel Hawthorne.
You've been listening to RonReed's Boring Books.
If you will, please somebody,leave me a five-star review and
(14:34):
leave me a five-star rating andwrite a review and subscribe.
You can also support thispodcast by donating on the link
included in this podcast.
(14:56):
Thank you so much.
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