OUR COUNf.RY AND OUR CUL TU,REI
LOUISE BOGAN
1. The American intellectual, before he can change his
attitude toward America and its institutions, must be able to locate
and recognize the exact contemporary situation as it exists around
him. He is not only rather behind the times, but has exhausted
his
surplus spiritual funds during the last crucial twenty years, so that
much of his power of close observation has been blunted. His im–
mediate task is to re-charge himself with new power from the society
around him. Rather than looking at "institutions," he should apply
himself to the direct experience of contemporary American life, and
try to grasp some stable facts, from the fluid energy by which he is
surrounded. Two focal points of this energy are: (a) the youngest
generation (born
circa
1930) and (b) the contemporary American
arts, both "popular" and formal. Apocalyptic visions of the future
and nostalgic yearnings over the past, at the moment, will not do at
all. The actual present is now the region of time which tends to be
neglected.
T his neglect has come to pass because we are now, in America
as elsewhere in the Western world, artistically and spiritually at a
point of stasis. We stand in the midst of what the French have called
"an inter-generation"-one not characterized by fresh creative activ–
ity, but by imitation, repetition, analysis and critical appraisal. "The
modern style," in the graphic and plastic arts, is now the accepted,
"official" style; and modern literature has, for some time past, been
hardening progressively into a set of recognizable cliches. The aca–
demic curriculum, moreover, now has the modern situation well in
1. This is the third part of a symposium, the preceding installments of which
were published in the two previous issues. The editorial statement on the subject
appeared in the May-June 1952 issue.
