Complete Prose Works
met by at least an equally subtle and tremendous force-infusion for
purposes of spiritualization, for the pure conscience, for genuine
esthetics, and for absolute and primal manliness and womanliness--or
else our modern civilization, with all its improvements, is in vain,
and we are on the road to a destiny, a status, equivalent, in its real
world, to that of the fabled damned.
Prospecting thus the coming unsped days, and that new order in
them--marking the endless train of exercise, development, unwind, in
nation as in man, which life is for--we see, fore-indicated, amid these
prospects and hopes, new law-forces of spoken and written language--not
merely the pedagogue-forms, correct, regular, familiar with precedents,
made for matters of outside propriety, fine words, thoughts definitely
told out--but a language fann'd by the breath of Nature, which leaps
overhead, cares mostly for impetus and effects, and for what it plants
and invigorates to grow--tallies life and character, and seldomer tells
a thing than suggests or necessitates it. In fact, a new theory of
literary composition for imaginative works of the very first class, and
especially for highest poems, is the sole course open to these States.
Books are to be call'd for, and supplied, on the assumption that the
process of reading is not a half-sleep, but, in highest sense, an
exercise, a gymnast's struggle; that the reader is to do something for
himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed
the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the
hints, the clue, the start or frame-work. Not the book needs so much
to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does. That were
to make a nation of supple and athletic minds, well-train'd, intuitive,
used to depend on themselves, and not on a few coteries of writers.
Investigating here, we see, not that it is a little thing we have, in
having the bequeath'd libraries, countless shelves of volumes, records,
etc.; yet how serious the danger, depending entirely on them, of the
bloodless vein, the nerveless arm, the false application, at second or
third hand. We see that the real interest of this people of ours in the
theology, history, poetry, politics, and personal models of the past,
(the British islands, for instance, and indeed all the past,) is not
necessarily to mould ourselves or our literature upon them, but to
attain fuller, more definite comparisons, warnings, and the insight to
ourselves, our own present, and our own far grander, different, future
history, religion, social customs, &c. We see that almost everything
that has been written, sung, or stated, of old, with reference to
humanity under the feudal and oriental institutes, religions, and
for other lands, needs to be re-written, re-sung, re-stated, in terms
consistent with the institution of these States, and to come in range
and obedient uniformity with them.
We see, as in the universes of the material kosmos, after
meteorological, vegetable, and animal cycles, man at last arises, born
through them, to prove them, concentrate them, to turn upon them with
wonder and love--to command them, adorn them, and carry them upward
into superior realms--so, out of the series of the preceding social and
political universes, now arise these States. We see that while many were
supposing things establish'd and completed, really the grandest things
always remain; and discover that the work of the New World is not ended,
but only fairly begun.
We see our land, America, her literature, esthetics, &c., as,
substantially, the getting in form, or effusement and statement, of
deepest basic elements and loftiest final meanings, of history and
man--and the portrayal, (under the eternal laws and conditions of
beauty,) of our own physiognomy, the subjective tie and expression of
the objective, as from our own combination, continuation, and points of
view--and the deposit and record of the national mentality, character,
appeals, heroism, wars, and even liberties--where these, and
all, culminate in native literary and artistic formulation, to be
perpetuated; and not having which native, first-class formulation, she
will flounder about, and her other, however imposing, eminent greatness,
prove merely a passing gleam; but truly having which, she will
understand herself, live nobly, nobly contribute, emanate, and,
swinging, poised safely on herself, illumin'd and illuming, become a
full-form'd world, and divine Mother not only of material but spiritual
worlds, in ceaseless succession through time--the main thing being the
average, the bodily, the concrete, the democratic, the popular, on which
all the superstructures of the future are to permanently rest.
Notes:
[20] "From a territorial area of less than nine hundred thousand
square miles, the Union has expanded into over four millions and
a half--fifteen times larger than that of Great Britain and France
combined--with a shore-line, including Alaska, equal to the entire
circumference of the earth, and with a domain within these lines far
wider than that of the Romans in their proudest days of conquest and
renown. With a river, lake, and coastwise commerce estimated at over two
thousand millions of dollars per year; with a railway traffic of four to
six thousand millions per year, and the annual domestic exchanges of the
country running up to nearly ten thousand millions per year; with over
two thousand millions of dollars invested in manufacturing, mechanical,
and mining industry; with over five hundred millions of acres of land
in actual occupancy, valued, with their appurtenances, at over seven
thousand millions of dollars, and producing annually crops valued at
over three thousand millions of dollars; with a realm which, if the
density of Belgium's population were possible, would be vast enough to
include all the present inhabitants of the world; and with equal rights
guaranteed to even the poorest and humblest of our forty millions of
people--we can, with a manly pride akin to that which distinguish'd the
palmiest days of Rome, claim," &c., &c., &c.--_Vice-President Colfax's
Speech, July 4, 1870_.
LATER--_London "Times," (Weekly,) June 23, '82_.
"The wonderful wealth-producing power of the United States defies and
sets at naught the grave drawbacks of a mischievous protective tariff,
and has already obliterated, almost wholly, the traces of the greatest
of modern civil wars. What is especially remarkable in the present
development of American energy and success is its wide and equable
distribution. North and south, east and west, on the shores of the
Atlantic and the Pacific, along the chain of the great lakes, in the
valley of the Mississippi, and on the coasts of the gulf of Mexico,
the creation of wealth and the increase of population are signally
exhibited. It is quite true, as has been shown by the recent
apportionment of population in the House of Representatives, that some
sections of the Union have advanced, relatively to the rest, in an
extraordinary and unexpected degree. But this does not imply that the
States which have gain'd no additional representatives or have actually
lost some have been stationary or have receded. The fact is that the
present tide of prosperity has risen so high that it has overflow' d all
barriers, and has fill'd up the back-waters, and establish'd something
like an approach to uniform success."
[21] See, for hereditaments, specimens, Walter Scott's Border
Minstrelsy, Percy's collection, Ellis's early English Metrical
Romances, the European continental poems of Walter of Aquitania, and the
Nibelungen, of pagan stock, but monkish-feudal redaction; the history of
the Troubadours, by Fauriel; even the far-back cumbrous old Hindu epics,
as indicating the Asian eggs out of which European chivalry was hatch'd;
Ticknor's chapters on the Cid, and on the Spanish poems and poets of
Calderon's time. Then always, and, of course, as the superbest poetic
culmination-expression of feudalism, the Shaksperean dramas, in
the attitudes, dialogue, characters, &c., of the princes, lords and
gentlemen, the pervading atmosphere, the implied and express'd standard
of manners, the high port and proud stomach, the regal embroidery of
style, &c.
[22] Of these rapidly-sketch'd hiatuses, the two which seem to me most
serious are, for one, the condition, absence, or perhaps the singular
abeyance, of moral conscientious fibre all through American society;
and, for another, the appaling depletion of women in their powers of
sane athletic maternity, their crowning attribute, and ever making the
woman, in loftiest spheres, superior to the man.
I have sometimes thought, indeed, that the sole avenue and means of a
reconstructed sociology depended, primarily, on a new birth, elevation,
expansion, invigoration of woman, affording, for races to come, (as the
conditions that antedate birth are indispensable,) a perfect motherhood.
Great, great, indeed, far greater than they know, is the sphere of
women. But doubtless the question of such new sociology all goes
together, includes many varied and complex influences and premises, and
the man as well as the woman, and the woman as well as the man.
[23] The question hinted here is one which time only can answer. Must
not the virtue of modern Individualism, continually enlarging, usurping
all, seriously affect, perhaps keep down entirely, in America, the like
of the ancient virtue of Patriotism, the fervid and absorbing love of
general country? I have no doubt myself that the two will merge, and
will mutually profit and brace each other, and that from them a greater
product, a third, will arise. But I feel that at present they and their
oppositions form a serious problem and paradox in the United States.
[24] "SHOOTING NIAGARA."--I was at first roused to much anger and
abuse by this essay from Mr. Carlyle, so insulting to the theory of
America--but happening to think afterwards how I had more than once been
in the like mood, during which his essay was evidently cast, and seen
persons and things in the same light, (indeed some might say there are
signs of the same feeling in these Vistas)--I have since read it again,
not only as a study, expressing as it does certain judgments from the
highest feudal point of view, but have read it with respect as coming
from an earnest soul, and as contributing certain sharp-cutting metallic
grains, which, if not gold or silver, may be good, hard, honest iron.
[25] For fear of mistake, I may as well distinctly specify, as
cheerfully included in the model and standard of these Vistas,
a practical, stirring, worldly, money-making, even materialistic
character. It is undeniable that our farms, stores, offices, dry-goods,
coal and groceries, enginery, cash-accounts, trades, earnings, markets,
&c., should be attended to in earnest, and actively pursued, just as
if they had a real and permanent existence. I perceive clearly that the
extreme business energy, and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth
prevalent in the United States, are parts of amelioration and progress,
indispensably needed to prepare the very results I demand. My theory
includes riches, and the getting of riches, and the amplest products,
power, activity, inventions, movements, &c. Upon them, as upon
substrata, I raise the edifice design'd in these Vistas.
[26] The whole present system of the officering and personnel of the
army and navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of their
trebly-aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a
nuisance and revolt, and belong here just as much as orders of nobility,
or the Pope's council of cardinals. I say if the present theory of
our army and navy is sensible and true, then the rest of America is an
unmitigated fraud.