Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

“The whale shed off enticings.” As foreigners who are learning ourlanguage frequently inform us, we Americans are forever putting prepositionsand adverbial particles to new uses. Here the “off” combined with the“enticings” gives the impression of a continuous fulguration. It is not only anexpression of vivacity and energy; it reveals our national tendency to restoreto the past its once-present life rather than to immobilize it, to bury it underthe preterite. In narration this assumes a great importance, for Americanswish to declare that all living things are free—and were free— and the pasttenses in narration tend to suggest that we, telling the story from its latterend, see them as “determined” and as the victims of necessity. When we cometo discuss the American time-sense and its struggle to reshape the syntaxof the English language, we shall see that one of its principal aims has beento give even to the past tenses the feeling of a “continuous present,” a dooropen to the future, a recovery of the we-don’t-know-what-will-happen.On this page we are shown the bull and Europa “rippling straightfor the nuptial bower in Crete.” Water ripples; tresses ripple. Had we readin a present-day author, English or American, that “Leander rippled straightfor Sestos,” we would have condemned it as a vulgarity. What saves thisphrase from vulgarity is the gamut of tones that are juxtaposed in this 19thcentury page—which brings us to our second consideration.A novel element in our classics of a century ago is the fact that theywere written for a classless society, they were written for everybody. Europeanliterature for two and a half centuries had been directed to an audienceof cultivation, to an elite—Molière’s farces not excepted, Dickens’s (imminent)novels not excepted. The assumption on the part of our Americanwriters that they were addressing a total society has since disappeared; weare now in the famous division between the highbrows and the lowbrows;but, given the basic considerations of our American life, such an assumptionshould constitute the natural function of a much larger part of Americanwriting.What are the signs that a writer feels himself to be addressing thetotal community rather than an elite? There are many; I am about to give two,both drawn from the realm of the grand style. It is well to note first, however,that this consideration has nothing to do with whether or not a writer useslong words or erudite allusions. It has nothing to do with a condescensionto semi-literacy. The 1611 Bible and the works of Shakespeare are filled withincomprehensible phrases; millions pore over them daily; we read right on,sufficiently nourished by what is intelligible to us.203