_Is there any such thing--or can there ever be?_
So you want an essay about American National Literature, (tremendous
and fearful subject!) do you?[46] Well, if you will let me put down some
melanged cogitations regarding the matter, hap-hazard, and from my own
points of view, I will try. Horace Greeley wrote a book named "Hints
toward Reforms," and the title-line was consider'd the best part of all.
In the present case I will give a few thoughts and suggestions, of good
and ambitious intent enough anyhow--first reiterating the question right
out plainly: American National Literature--is there distinctively
any such thing, or can there ever be? First to me comes an almost
indescribably august form, the People, with varied typical shapes and
attitudes-then the divine mirror, Literature.
As things are, probably no more puzzling question ever offer'd itself
than (going back to old Nile for a trope,) What bread-seeds of printed
mentality shall we cast upon America's waters, to grow and return after
many days? Is there for the future authorship of the United States any
better way than submission to the teeming facts, events, activities, and
importations already vital through and beneath them all? I have often
ponder'd it, and felt myself disposed to let it go at that. Indeed, are
not those facts and activities and importations potent and certain to
fulfil themselves all through our Commonwealth, irrespective of any
attempt from individual guidance? But allowing all, and even at that,
a good part of the matter being honest discussion, examination, and
earnest personal presentation, we may even for sanitary exercise and
contact plunge boldly into the spread of the many waves and cross-tides,
as follows. Or, to change the figure, I will present my varied little
collation (what is our Country itself but an infinitely vast and varied
collation?) in the hope that the show itself indicates a duty getting
more and more incumbent every day.
In general, civilization's totality or real representative National
Literature formates itself (like language, or "the weather") not
from two or three influences, however important, nor from any learned
syllabus, or criticism, or what ought to be, nor from any minds
or advice of toploftical quarters--and indeed not at all from the
influences and ways ostensibly supposed (though they too are adopted,
after a sort)--but slowly, slowly, curiously, from many more and more,
deeper mixings and siftings (especially in America) and generations
and years and races, and what largely appears to be chance--but is not
chance at all. First of all, for future National Literature in America,
New England (the technically moral and schoolmaster region, as a cynical
fellow I know calls it) and the three or four great Atlantic-coast
cities, highly as they to-day suppose they dominate the whole, will
have to haul in their horns. _Ensemble_ is the tap-root of National
Literature. America is become already a huge world of peoples, rounded
and orbic climates, idiocrasies, and geographies--forty-four Nations
curiously and irresistibly blent and aggregated in ONE NATION, with one
imperial language, and one unitary set of social and legal standards
over all--and (I predict) a yet to be National Literature. (In my mind
this last, if it ever comes, is to prove grander and more important for
the Commonwealth than its politics and material wealth and trade, vast
and indispensable as those are.)
Think a moment what must, beyond peradventure, be the real permanent
sub-bases, or lack of them. Books profoundly considered show a great
nation more than anything else--more than laws or manners. (This is,
of course, probably the deep-down meaning of that well-buried but
ever-vital platitude, Let me sing the people's songs, and I don't care
who makes their laws.) Books too reflect humanity _en masse_, and surely
show them splendidly, or the reverse, and prove or celebrate their
prevalent traits (these last the main things.) Homer grew out of and
has held the ages, and holds to-day, by the universal admiration
for personal prowess, courage, rankness, _amour propre_, leadership,
inherent in the whole human race. Shakspere concentrates the brilliancy
of the centuries of feudalism on the proud personalities they produced,
and paints the amorous passion. The books of the Bible stand for the
final superiority of devout emotions over the rest, and of religious
adoration, and ultimate absolute justice, more powerful than haughtiest
kings or millionaires or majorities.
What the United States are working out and establishing needs
imperatively the connivance of something subtler than ballots and
legislators. The Goethean theory and lesson (if I may briefly state
it so) of the exclusive sufficiency of artistic, scientific, literary
equipment to the character, irrespective of any strong claims of the
political ties of nation, state, or city, could have answer'd under the
conventionality and pettiness of Weimar, or the Germany, or even Europe,
of those times; but it will not do for America to-day at all. We have
not only to exploit our own theory above any that has preceded us, but
we have entirely different, and deeper-rooted, and infinitely broader
themes.
When I have had a chance to see and observe a sufficient crowd of
American boys or maturer youths or well-grown men, all the States, as in
my experiences in the secession war among the soldiers, or west,
east, north, or south, or my wanderings and loiterings through cities
(especially New York and in Washington,) I have invariably found coming
to the front three prevailing personal traits, to be named here for
brevity's sake under the heads Good-Nature, Decorum, and Intelligence.
(I make Good-Nature first, as it deserves to be--it is a splendid
resultant of all the rest, like health or fine weather.) Essentially
these lead the inherent list of the high average personal born and bred
qualities of the young fellows everywhere through the United States,
as any sharp observer can find out for himself. Surely these make the
vertebral stock of superbest and noblest nations! May the destinies show
it so forthcoming. I mainly confide the whole future of our Commonwealth
to the fact of these three bases. Need I say I demand the same in the
elements and spirit and fruitage of National Literature?
Another, perhaps a born root or branch, comes under the words _Noblesse
Oblige_, even for a national rule or motto. My opinion is that this
foregoing phrase, and its spirit, should influence and permeate official
America and its representatives in Congress, the Executive Departments,
the Presidency, and the individual States--should be one of their
chiefest mottoes, and be carried out practically. (I got the idea from
my dear friend the democratic Englishwoman, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, now
dead. "The beautiful words _Noblesse Oblige_," said she to me once,
"are not best for some develop'd gentleman or lord, but some rich and
develop'd nation--and especially for your America.")
Then another and very grave point (for this discussion is deep,
deep--not for trifles, or pretty seemings.) I am not sure but the
establish'd and old (and superb and profound, and, one may say, needed
as old) conception of Deity as mainly of moral constituency (goodness,
purity, sinlessness, &c.) has been undermined by nineteenth-century
ideas and science. What does this immense and almost abnormal
development of Philanthropy mean among the moderns? One doubts if there
ever will come a day when the moral laws and moral standards will be
supplanted as over all: while time proceeds (I find it so myself) they
will probably be intrench'd deeper and expanded wider. Then the expanded
scientific and democratic and truly philosophic and poetic quality
of modernism demands a Deific identity and scope superior to all
limitations, and essentially including just as well the so-call'd
evil and crime and criminals--all the malformations, the defective and
abortions of the universe.
Sometimes the bulk of the common people (who are far more 'cute than the
critics suppose) relish a well-hidden allusion or hint carelessly dropt,
faintly indicated, and left to be disinterr'd or not. Some of the very
old ballads have delicious morsels of this kind. Greek Aristophanes and
Pindar abounded in them. (I sometimes fancy the old Hellenic audiences
must have been as generally keen and knowing as any of their poets.)
Shakspere is full of them. Tennyson has them. It is always a capital
compliment from author to reader, and worthy the peering brains of
America. The mere smartness of the common folks, however, does not need
encouraging, but qualities more solid and opportune.
What are now deepest wanted in the States as roots for their literature
are Patriotism, Nationality, Ensemble, or the ideas of these, and the
uncompromising genesis and saturation of these. Not the mere bawling
and braggadocio of them, but the radical emotion-facts, the fervor and
perennial fructifying spirit at fountain-head. And at the risk of being
misunderstood I should dwell on and repeat that a great imaginative
_literatus_ for America can never be merely good and moral in the
conventional method. Puritanism and what radiates from it must always
be mention'd by me with respect; then I should say, for this vast and
varied Commonwealth, geographically and artistically, the puritanical
standards are constipated, narrow, and non-philosophic.
In the main I adhere to my positions in "Democratic Vistas," and
especially to my summing-up of American literature as far as to-day is
concern'd. In Scientism, the Medical Profession, Practical Inventions,
and Journalism, the United States have press'd forward to the glorious
front rank of advanced civilized lands, as also in the popular
dissemination of printed matter (of a superficial nature perhaps, but
that is an indispensable preparatory stage,) and have gone in common
education, so-call'd, far beyond any other land or age. Yet the
high-pitch'd taunt of Margaret Fuller, forty years ago, still sounds in
the air: "It does not follow, because the United States print and read
more books, magazines, and newspapers than all the rest of the world,
that they really have therefore a literature." For perhaps it is not
alone the free schools and newspapers, nor railroads and factories,
nor all the iron, cotton, wheat, pork, and petroleum, nor the gold and
silver, nor the surplus of a hundred or several hundred millions, nor
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, nor the last national census,
that can put this Commonweal high or highest on the cosmical scale of
history. Something else is indispensable. All that record is lofty, but
there is a loftier.
The great current points are perhaps simple, after all: first, that the
highest developments of the New World and Democracy, and probably the
best society of the civilized world all over, are to be only reach'd
and spinally nourish'd (in my notion) by a new evolutionary sense and
treatment; and, secondly, that the evolution-principle, which is the
greatest law through nature, and of course in these States, has now
reach'd us markedly for and in our literature.
In other writings I have tried to show how vital to any aspiring
Nationality must ever be its autochthonic song, and how for a really
great people there can be no complete and glorious Name, short of
emerging out of and even rais'd on such born poetic expression, coming
from its own soil and soul, its area, spread, idiosyncrasies, and (like
showers of rain, originally rising impalpably, distill'd from land and
sea,) duly returning there again. Nor do I forget what we all owe to
our ancestry; though perhaps we are apt to forgive and bear too much for
that alone.
One part of the national American literatus's task is (and it is not an
easy one) to treat the old hereditaments, legends, poems, theologies,
and even customs, with fitting respect and toleration, and at the same
time clearly understand and justify, and be devoted to and exploit our
own day, its diffused light, freedom, responsibilities, with all
it necessitates, and that our New-World circumstances and stages of
development demand and make proper. For American literature we want
mighty authors, _not_ even Carlyle- and Heine-like, born and brought
up in (and more or less essentially partaking and giving out) that vast
abnormal ward or hysterical sick-chamber which in many respects Europe,
with all its glories, would seem to be. The greatest feature in current
poetry (perhaps in literature anyhow) is the almost total lack of
first-class power, and simple, natural health, flourishing and produced
at first hand, typifying our own era. Modern verse generally lacks quite
altogether the modern, and is oftener possess'd in spirit with the past
and feudal, dressed may-be in late fashions. For novels and plays often
the plots and surfaces are contemporary--but the spirit, even the fun,
is morbid and effete.
There is an essential difference between the Old and New. The poems of
Asia and Europe are rooted in the long past. They celebrate man and his
intellections and relativenesses as they have been. But America, in as
high a strain as ever, is to sing them all as they are and are to be. (I
know, of course, that the past is probably a main factor in what we are
and know and must be.) At present the States are absorb'd in business,
money-making, politics, agriculture, the development of mines,
intercommunications, and other material attents--which all shove forward
and appear at their height--as, consistently with modern civilization,
they must be and should be. Then even these are but the inevitable
precedents and providers for home-born, transcendent, democratic
literature--to be shown in superior, more heroic, more spiritual, more
emotional, personalities and songs. A national literature is, of
course, in one sense, a great mirror or reflector. There must however
be something before--something to reflect. I should say now, since the
secession war, there has been, and to-day unquestionably exists, that
something.
Certainly, anyhow, the United States do not so far utter poetry,
first-rate literature, or any of the so-call'd arts, to any lofty
admiration or advantage--are not dominated or penetrated from actual
inherence or plain bent to the said poetry and arts. Other work, other
needs, current inventions, productions, have occupied and to-day mainly
occupy them. They are very 'cute and imitative and proud--can't
bear being left too glaringly away far behind the other high-class
nations--and so we set up some home "poets," "artists," painters,
musicians, _literati_, and so forth, all our own (thus claim'd.) The
whole matter has gone on, and exists to-day, probably as it should have
been, and should be; as, for the present, it must be. To all which
we conclude, and repeat the terrible query: American National
Literature--is there distinctively any such thing, or can there ever be?
Note:
[46] The essay was for the _North American Review_, in answer to the
formal request of the editor. It appear'd in March, 1891.