OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE
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basis of strength, renewal, and recognition, now that they can't
depend on Europe as a cultural example?
In attempting an answer, I shall not speak of the artist, only
of the intellectual. For purposes of his salvation, it is best to think
of the artist as crazy, foolish, inspired-as an unconditionable kind
of man-and to make no provision for him until he appears in
person and demands it. Our attitude to the artist is deteriorating as
our sense of his needs increases. It seems to me that the more we
undertake to provide for the artist, the more we incline to think of
the artist as Postulant or Apprentice, and the less we think of the
artist as Master. Indeed, it may be coming to be true that for us the
Master is not the artist himself but the Foundation, whose creative
act the artist is.
But intellectuals are in a different case. They can be trained.
They can, I believe, be taught to think. They can even be taught
to write. It is not improper to discuss what kind of work they
should be doing, and their manner of doing it, and the conditions
of their doing it, and the influences to which they might submit.
It is in a way wrong or merely academic to talk of the
influence
of European thought on American thought, since the latter is con–
tinuous with the former. But insofar as the American intellectual
conceived of the continuity as being an influence, it no doubt was
exactly that, and in being that it was useful and liberating. Yet now
it seems to me that
if
the European influence, as a conscious thing,
has come to an end, this is, at the moment, all to the good (except,
of course, as it implies the reason for its coming to an end, and as
it may suggest a diminution of free intercourse, of which we can
never have enough).
The American intellectual never so fully expressed his pro–
vincialism .as in the way he submitted to the influence of Europe.
He was provincial
in
that he thought of culture as an abstraction and
as an absolute. So long as Marxism exercised its direct influence on
him, he thought of politics as an absolute.
So
long as French art
exercised its direct influence upon him, he thought of art as an
absolute. To put it another way, he understood himself to be involved
primarily with the mental discipline he had elected. To be sure, the
times being what they were, he did not make the mistake of sup–
posing that the elected discipline was not connected with reality.
