Lettera al dottor Hyde

by Robert Louis Stevenson, Athos Bigongiali (Editor), Orsola Nemi (Translator)

Capitava a Robert Louis Stevenson, uomo benevolo come pochi, di essere accusato da moralisti stupidi di mostrare troppo spesso nelle sue opere il male trionfante. In realtà, ciò che interessava alla letteratura - e alla filosofia - di Stevenson era qualcosa di più profondo del bene e del male, l'innocenza: ovvero l'intrinseco legame di appartenenza di un posto, di un tempo, di una persona, a un unico disegno, da cui naturalmente estrarre la leggenda, il romanzesco. Era un modo di consegnare ogni cosa al suo valore vero, in cui il male propriamente inteso era solo - da qui l'incantevole amabilità di Stevenson - l'uniformità, vale a dire la negazione dell'altro. Si capisce perché il non grande episodio occasione di questa invettiva, abbia acceso la generosità di Stevenson. Il dottor Hyde (che nulla ha a che fare col doppio di Jekyll), reverendo protestante delle Hawaii, aveva calunniato in un breve scritto la memoria di un santo missionario, Padre Damiano, morto condividendo la vita in lazzaretto degli isolani lebbrosi. Hyde, infangando un'anima grande, dava voce all'ipocrita superstizione dei bianchi più impegnati nella «modernizzazione» delle isole, che la piaga recente della lebbra fosse l'effetto di una vita selvatica e dissoluta, pigra nell'assimilarsi alla sana civiltà dell'uomo bianco. Stevenson è appena giunto nei Mari deI Sud, dove vivrà gli ultimi anni; ha già conosciuto, assieme alle fantastiche meraviglie, il morbo che accompagna, come una maledizione o una premonizione, la paziente sottomissione degli isolani. E sotto le righe del racconto di Padre Damiano, in difesa della sua memoria, vibra un pianto d'addio all'innocenza, alle isole, alla possibilità di vivere leggendariamente. Cioè, semplicemente, di vivere.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Essays, Catholic

65 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1890

About the author

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov.

Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the Western canon.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Father Damien, missionary to the lepers of Molokai—canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church in 2009—contracted leprosy and died of it in 1889, the Presbyterian Reverend C.M. Hyde of Honolulu—who lived in a comfortable house on the mainland and had not ministered to Molokai—issued the following response to an enquiry by the Reverend H.B. Gage concerning Damien’s character:

The simple truth is, he was a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted… He had no hand in the reforms and improvements inaugurated, which were the work of our Board of Health, as occasion required and means were provided. He was not a pure man in his relations with women, and the leprosy of which he died should be attributed to his vices and carelessness. Others have done much for the lepers, our own ministers, the government physicians, and so forth, but never with the Catholic idea of meriting eternal life.

Robert Louis Stevenson, a Presbyterian himself, and who had visited the island of Molokai not long after the saint’s death, was so offended by Hyde’s cold summation of his fellow missionary that he published this pamphlet Father Damien, perhaps the finest rhetorical example of moral outrage in the English language.

You should really read the whole thing for yourself, but here are two noteworthy passages to whet your appetite:

We are not all expected to be Damiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly, he may love his comforts better; and none will cast a stone at him for that.  But will a gentleman of your reverend profession allow me an example from the fields of gallantry?  When two gentlemen compete for the favour of a lady, and the one succeeds and the other is rejected, and (as will sometimes happen) matter damaging to the successful rival’s credit reaches the ear of the defeated, it is held by plain men of no pretensions that his mouth is, in the circumstance, almost necessarily closed.  Your Church and Damien’s were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to set divine examples.  You having (in one huge instance) failed, and Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that you were doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in that high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your well-being, in your pleasant room—and Damien, crowned with glories and horrors, toiled and rotted in that pigsty of his under the cliffs of Kalawao—you, the elect who would not, were the last man on earth to collect and propagate gossip on the volunteer who would and did.

And on the subject of Damien and women:

But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear to your fellow-men; and to bring it home to you, I will suppose your story to be true.  I will suppose—and God forgive me for supposing it—that Damien faltered and stumbled in his narrow path of duty; I will suppose that, in the horror of his isolation, perhaps in the fever of incipient disease, he, who was doing so much more than he had sworn, failed in the letter of his priestly oath—he, who was so much a better man than either you or me, who did what we have never dreamed of daring—he too tasted of our common frailty.  “O, Iago, the pity of it!”  The least tender should be moved to tears; the most incredulous to prayer.  And all that you could do was to pen your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage!

[The Nutmeg · Rating 5 out of 5]

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, I LOVE YOU.

I mean, I've always liked you. I enjoyed Kidnapped as a child and Treasure Island has become a reliable old favorite. A Child's Garden of Verses is sheer beauty. But it wasn't until flipping through the bibliography at the end of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that I realized you had any connection at all with St. Damien of Molokai. You wrote a thing about a Catholic priest? What'd you think of him, I wonder?--I mean, I don't think I'd ever heard of the man before he was canonized in 2009. I couldn't have told you when he lived, even. Apparently he was more or less contemporary with you? Well this is interesting. And it IS All Hallow's Eve. If I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in honor of Halloween I should definitely read your letter on Fr. Damien in honor of All Saint's Day. Such were my thoughts as I typed "fr. damien: an open letter to the reverend dr. hyde of honolulu" into the search engine.

I'M SO GLAD I READ THE BLASTED LETTER. Not "blasted." It's a beautiful letter. It's so ANGRY and REVERENT and WELL-ARGUED and DISGUSTED.

(Basically, the background is this: Fr. Damien was a Catholic priest who served the leper colony in Molokai, Hawaii. After he died [of leprosy], a certain Dr. Hyde [ironic name, eh what?], who also worked in Hawaii, wrote a letter, which was subsequently published, claiming that Fr. Damien wasn't so holy after all. R. L. Stevenson read the letter, was outraged, and wrote an open letter in response.)

There's something fun about seeing a more-than-capable writer tear into anything/anyone, I think, just cuz it's amazing that white-hot emotions can come across so clearly on the written page--that they can still be ALIVE a hundred or two hundred or a thousand years later.

But Robert Louis Stevenson isn't just arguing with a passion.

He's arguing with a passion in defense of Fr. Damien. A Catholic priest. A Catholic saint. And it's all the more endearing because Stevenson doesn't LIKE Catholicism, as a general rule. He knows a good deal about it, but he doesn't like it. He seems suspicious of religion in general, really. But he has great reverence for human decency, for courage and uprightness and honesty, and he can't stand idly by while an acquaintance (or friend, even) of his makes unjust accusations against one of the heroes of their time.

I love how he refers to Fr. Damien as simply "Damien" most of the time. It's at once so reverent and so familiar. Like Chesterton writing about "Francis." Stevenson didn't actually meet Damien, but he visited Molokai and talked to people who knew him.

Also the fact that Stevenson traveled to Molokai. This letter is travel literature, on a certain level. He's BEEN to this place and he knows what it's like, and he's gonna bring that to bear against some untoward remarks of Dr. Hyde's in full force.

I also love how Dr. Hyde is like "Y'know, Damien was gross and dirty" and RLS is like, "Um. Yes. He worked with lepers. SAINTS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE GROSS AND DIRTY."

Just....I'm so proud of Stevenson right now I can't even. I love him. I am legitimately fond of him. I will be forever glad to know he wrote this. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MAN.

Ahem.

I promise I'm calm.

Also I have a better appreciation for St. Damien of Molokai now. All because of Robert Louis Stevenson. A Protestant British writer from my beloved 19th century literary canon.

Last place in the world I was expecting to get to know Fr. Damien better.

....Stevenson i love you.

*wriggles with delight and hurries off to, like, squeal to her family, probably*

[John Yelverton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every once in a while, it's a great privilege to hear someone "tell it like it is". That's exactly what Robert Louis Stevenson does in this letter. A pastor attempts to besmirch the name and work of a Roman Catholic priest named Damien who helped the lepers in Hawaii, and Stevenson unloads both barrels as he pronounces that this pastor wasn't fit to tie the sandal straps of Damien.

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Completamente differente rispetto alle aspettative.
È stato comunque interessante approfondire la figura di Stevenson come uomo forte, che lotta per difendere i propri ideali, ciò in cui crede.

[Alexander Rolfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

R.L.S. delivers a withering corrective in how to judge someone to Father Damien's detractor and moral inferior. Later, he regretted sending it, just like we do our angry e-mails. He may have been wrong in that, though; his righteous wrath probably did more good un-redacted. Even though it was written in haste and fury, it's a good meditation on what makes a saint.

It's funny that the man he's attacking has the same name as the evil personality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[Scassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nel vedere di questi luoghi la miseria infinita, / Le mutilate membra, i volti devastati, / Le vittime innocenti che sorridono sotto la sferza, / Lo stolto sarebbe tentato di negare il suo Dio. // Egli vede e si ritrae; ma se torna a guardare, / La bellezza ecco sorge dal grembo del dolore! / Vede le suore sulle sponde dolenti,/ E per quanto sia stolto tace e adora.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

You might never read a literary beat-down the likes of this again. Stevenson absolutely unloads on a hypocritical, officious bloke who took it upon himself to slander a Catholic priest who had given his life to serve a leper colony in Hawaii. Fantastic letter.

[Andrea Engle · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incensed Robert Louis Stevenson chastises the Reverend Doctor Hyde, a Protestant of Honolulu, for his gossipy slander of Father Damien, a Catholic priest who ministered to the local leper colony … Beloved author Stevenson nails the Rev. Dr. Hyde to the hen-house door (if only he’d done that literally) … a sterling example of controlled invective for a good cause …

Similar Works:
The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

🖍️ This is an eye-opening letter where Robert Louis Stevenson (a Presbyterian) rightly and strongly defends Father Damien (Saint Damien of Molokai).

📙Published in 1880.

*˚˚*•̩̩͙How I happened upon this book: While watching a 1970 episode of “Hawaii Five O,” I remembered learning about Father Damien from the nuns. I looked up what I could find on Father Damien, and viola!, here was this letter I discovered on Project Gutenberg.

🟢The e-book version can be found at Project Gutenberg.
＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩*˚＊˚*•̩̩*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

[Brian Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scathing and enjoyable - this letter & the irony of 'Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde's' publication prior to this causes me to smile.

Favorite line: "...and he was your father too, if God had given you grace to see it."

[Jordie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, RLS is angry. Probably rightly so.

Open letters were the Twitter of the 19th century.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some people are just plain stupid. They don't take into accounts the realities of situations, judging them from the rarified seat they have established for themselves. Thus was Dr. Hyde's perspective as he criticized Father Damien, priest at the famed Leper Colony on the island of Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands.

Robert Louis Stevenson, enraged at Dr. Hyde's high-handed judgements wrote a public and scathing letter to Dr. Hyde praising Father Damien, explaining the realities of his life on Molokai and his service among the lepers in the colony.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Father Damien was a Catholic priest who devoted his life to serving the lepers of Hawaii until he contracted it himselp and ultimately succumbed to it. After his death, his charcter and work was attacked by protestant clery which prompted Stevenson to write in defense of him. This is a good, short piece about Father Damien and transcends religious boundries.

[Galicius · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second account of the leper colony in Molokai that I came across and it is very serious and engaging. The other I read is Paul Theroux and his visit in "Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings".

[Luahiwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most acidic bitch-slap ever written in 5,000 words, that inspired both a classic novel and a canonized saint.

[Chiara (Catullina) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il titolo trae in inganno. Furbatona per attirare lettori.
Ma il libro è interessante, illustra una vicenda reale vissuta da Stevenson e ce ne mostra il suo lato più battagliero e pietoso.

[James Biser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Louis Stevenson is a master of words. He shows that the Reverend Doctor Hyde, who is looked down upon, is more than a hero. He is a Saint.

[Earle H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just from the standpoint of great writing irrespective of the content, this book is worth reading. Stevenson actually self-published this book.