PARTISAN REVIEW
the other hand, it
is
a geographical actuality, an actuality which
is now somewhat suspect. My own opinion is that the existence of
Europe is inseparable from an act of will. Once Christianity was the
foundation. This required coexistence of the Christian soul and the
structure of the Church. Where can we find today two similar bases
upon which the occidental world can be rebuilt?
In the domain of culture we must hear from Americans them–
selves to what degree they believe in the existence of a specifically
American culture. Let us first be clear on this point: the principal
interpreters of national culture are not the same in France and in .
the United States. With us the representative of culture is the artist.
With you it is more likely to be the professor. No one would think
of comparing Hemingway, for example (I pick Hemingway because
I consider certain of his novels among the most valuable of our
times ) , with Renan or Goethe, or even Gide. Your artists are neither
moralists nor men of exceptional cultural breadth. They have great
talent, and are good technicians-comparable to our painters.
Granted that, I see no conflict between them and the art of
the West. The idea of a rivalry between contemporary cultures is a
favorite of the Stalinists, as it was of the Nazis as well as of other
interpreters of German thought. It is a false idea.
They tell us every once in a while that there is a rivalry between
our own culture and yours in Latin America. I cannot
se~
in what.
The human mind, in cultural matters, tries to annex all that it can,
every chance it has. We might say that culture is hopelessly polyg–
amous. Latin America makes and will make its own synthesis.
That our values in this or that field are not the same may be
granted, but after all the most developed contemporary culture is
pluralistic. We cannot think of one of your great museums (or of
one of ours, for that matter) except as a place where different
cultures meet each other. And can you really say that there is much
more difference between the work of American and French novelists
than between two galleries of the Metropolitan Museum, one of
which displays Italian, and the other Spanish, Masters?
Burnham:
There can be little doubt that culturally America
is part of Europe-more accurately, is a dependent, an offshoot of
Europe.
If
significant traces of the pre-Columbian civilizations remain
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