Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

There have been no American writers of equal magnitude sincetheir time—nor any comparable leaders, philosophers, or artists althoughthere have been enormous activity and many considerable talents. Thereare certain clarifications that only great genius can achieve. And since greatgenius is lacking, we would do well to return to the last occasions on whichit spoke.A number of these writers consciously discussed the problems thatarose from being an American. It is rather how they lived and thought,however, which will engage our attention. From the point of view of theEuropean, an American was nomad in relation to place, detached in relationto time, lonely in relation to society, and insubmissive to circumstance,destiny, or God. It was difficult to be an American because there was as yetno code, grammar, or decalogue by which to orient oneself. Americans werestill engaged in inventing what it was to be an American. That was at oncean exhilarating and painful occupation. All about us we see the lives thathave been shattered by it—not least those lives that have tried to resolvethe problem by the European patterns.These writers have not been chosen because they were exemplarycitizens, but each was incontestably American and each illustrates dramaticallyone or more ways of converting an American difficulty into anAmerican triumph. Each of them was what the man in the street wouldcall “ill”—his word for it would be “cracked”; but their illness, if such itwas, should throw light on a disequilibrium of the psyche which followson the American condition. As they were all writers, our study of them willbe primarily a literary one and will bear upon the language in which theywrote.The American space-sense, the American time-sense, the Americansense of personal identity are not those of Europeans—and, in particular,not those of the English. The English language was molded to express theEnglish experience of life. The literature written in that language is one ofthe greatest glories of the entire human adventure. That achievement wenthand in hand with the comparable achievement of forging the languagewhich conveyed so accurately their senses of space, time, and identity.Those senses are not ours and the American people and American writershave long been engaged in reshaping the inherited language to express ourmodes of apprehension.Paul Valéry, playing, once inserted four minus signs into Pascal’s mostfamous sentence. Pascal had said that the eternal silence of infinite spacefilled him with fright (“le silence éternel des espaces infinies m’effraie”). Valéry190