Complete Prose Works
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.
GATHERING THE CORN
_Last of October_.--Now mellow, crisp, Autumn days, bright moonlight
nights, and gathering the corn--"cutting up," as the farmers call it.
Now, or of late, all over the country, a certain green and brown-drab
eloquence seeming to call out, "You that pretend to give the news, and
all that's going, why not give us a notice?" Truly, O fields, as for the
notice,
"Take, we give it willingly."
Only we must do it our own way. Leaving the domestic, dietary, and
commercial parts of the question (which are enormous, in fact, hardly
second to those of any other of our great soil-products), we will just
saunter down a lane we know, on an average West Jersey farm, and let the
fancy of the hour itemize America's most typical agricultural show and
specialty.
Gathering the Corn--the British call it Maize, the old Yankee farmer
Indian Corn. The great plumes, the ears well-envelop'd in their husks,
the long and pointed leaves, in summer, like green or purple ribands,
with a yellow stem line in the middle, all now turn'd dingy; the sturdy
stalks, and the rustling in the breeze--the breeze itself well tempering
the sunny noon--The varied reminiscences recall'd--the ploughing and
planting in spring--(the whole family in the field, even the little
girls and boys dropping seed in the hill)--the gorgeous sight through
July and August--the walk and observation early in the day--the cheery
call of the robin, and the low whirr of insects in the grass--the
Western husking party, when ripe--the November moonlight gathering, and
the calls, songs, laughter of the young fellows.
Not to forget, hereabouts, in the Middle States, the old worm fences,
with the gray rails and their scabs of moss and lichen--those old rails,
weather beaten, but strong yet. Why not come down from literary dignity,
and confess we are sitting on one now, under the shade of a great walnut
tree? Why not confide that these lines are pencill'd on the edge of
a woody bank, with a glistening pond and creek seen through the trees
south, and the corn we are writing about close at hand on the north?
Why not put in the delicious scent of the "life everlasting" that yet
lingers so profusely in every direction--the chromatic song of the one
persevering locust (the insect is scarcer this fall and the past summer
than for many years) beginning slowly, rising and swelling to much
emphasis, and then abruptly falling--so appropriate to the scene, so
quaint, so racy and suggestive in the warm sunbeams, we could sit here
and look and listen for an hour? Why not even the tiny, turtle-shaped,
yellow-back'd, black-spotted lady-bug that has lit on the shirt-sleeve
of the arm inditing this? Ending our list with the fall-drying grass,
the Autumn days themselves,
Sweet days; so cool, so calm, so bright,
(yet not so cool either, about noon)--the horse-mint, the wild carrot,
the mullein, and the bumble-bee.
How the half-mad vision of William Blake--how the far freer, far firmer
fantasy that wrote "Midsummer Night's Dream"--would have revell'd night
or day, and beyond stint, in one of our American corn fields! Truly, in
color, outline, material and spiritual suggestiveness, where any more
inclosing theme for idealist, poet, literary artist?
What we have written has been at noon day--but perhaps better still
(for this collation,) to steal off by yourself these fine nights, and
go slowly, musingly down the lane, when the dry and green-gray
frost-touch'd leaves seem whisper-gossipping all over the field in
low tones, as if every hill had something to say--and you sit or lean
recluse near by, and inhale that rare, rich, ripe and peculiar odor
of the gather'd plant which comes out best only to the night air. The
complex impressions of the far-spread fields and woods in the night, are
blended mystically, soothingly, indefinitely, and yet palpably to you
(appealing curiously, perhaps mostly, to the sense of smell.) All is
comparative silence and clear-shadow below, and the stars are up there
with Jupiter lording it over westward; sulky Saturn in the east, and
over head the moon. A rare well-shadow'd hour! By no means the least of
the eligibilities of the gather'd corn!
A DEATH-BOUQUET
_Pick'd Noontime, early January, 1890_
Death--too great a subject to be treated so--indeed the greatest
subject--and yet I am giving you but a few random lines about it--as one
writes hurriedly the last part of a letter to catch the closing mail.
Only I trust the lines, especially the poetic bits quoted, may leave a
lingering odor of spiritual heroism afterward. For I am probably fond
of viewing all really great themes indirectly, and by side-ways and
suggestions. Certain music from wondrous voices or skilful players--then