Sugar-coat the grim truth as we may, and ward off with outward
plausible words, denials, explanations, to the mental inward
perception of the land this blank is plain; a barren void exists.
For the meanings and maturer purposes of these States are not the
constructing of a new world of politics merely, and physical comforts
for the million, but even more determinedly, in range with science and
the modern, of a new world of democratic sociology and imaginative
literature. If the latter were not establish'd for the States, to form
their only permanent tie and hold, the first-named would be of little
avail.
With the poems of a first-class land are twined, as weft with warp,
its types of personal character, of individuality, peculiar, native,
its own physiognomy, man's and woman's, its own shapes, forms, and
manners, fully justified under the eternal laws of all forms, all
manners, all times. The hour has come for democracy in America to
inaugurate itself in the two directions specified--autochthonic poems
and personalities--born expressers of itself, its spirit alone,
to radiate in subtle ways, not only in art, but the practical and
familiar, in the transactions between employers and employed persons,
in business and wages, and sternly in the army and navy, and
revolutionizing them. I find nowhere a scope profound enough, and
radical and objective enough, either for aggregates or individuals.
The thought and identity of a poetry in America to fill, and worthily
fill, the great void, and enhance these aims, electrifying all and
several, involves the essence and integral facts, real and spiritual,
of the whole land, the whole body.
Pages:
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489