OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE
Editorial Statement
The purpose of this symposium is to examine the ap–
parent fact that American intellectuals now regard America and
its institutions
in
a new way. Until little more than a decade ago,
America was commonly thought to be hostile to art and culture.
Since then, however, the tide has begun to turn, and many writers
and intellectuals now feel closer to their country and its culture.
The follm-ving quotations illustrate the earlier pattern and the
change that has recently occurred.
Here, for example, is the artist-hero of a James story speaking
in 1879:
We are the disinherited of art! We are condemned to be superficial. We
are excluded from the magic circle. The soil of American perception is
a poor, little, barren, artificial deposit. Yes! we are wedded to imper–
fection. An American, to excel, has just ten times as much to learn as
a European. We lack the deeper sense: we have neither taste, nor tact,
nor force. How should we have them? Our crude and garish climate,
our silent past, our deafening present, the constant pressure about us of
unlovely circumstances are as void of all that nourishes and prompts and
inspires the artist as my sad heart is void of bitterness in saying so! We
poor aspirants must live in perpetual exile.
-The Madonna of the Future
Ezra Pound in 1913:
o
helpless few in my country,
o
remnant enslaved!
Artists broken against her,
Astray, lost in the villages,
Mistrusted, spoken against
