RADICALISM TODAY
47
physically deformed, for one thing. Van Wyck Brooks says that he
had a "queer twisted face." But was he bitter or vindictive, as people
claim? No more than was necessary, I would say. His essays are
surprisingly genial. He is deeply and indulgently interested in all the
foibles of human behavior. He loves the texture of life (you must read
of his adventures with the spiritually liberated French girl in the essay
called
((Mon Amie";
and you will enjoy the wistful humor and
realism of
his
story about the child, "Ernest: or Parent for a Day").
He was human, all too human.
-Isn't that a quotation from Nietzsche, Professor?
-Yes, it is, Silverman. Modern radicalism is in part Nietzschean.
But let me repeat and generalize. I apologize for being so formal.
Radicalism today begins with the radicalism launched by Randolph
Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, and their associates in the years between
1912 and 1918. (Bourne died in 1918 at the age of 32. He was a stu–
dent at Columbia, as you know, and was often in this very building.
Perhaps he sat on the chair you are sitting on, it is old and rickety
enough.) Bourne and Brooks were writing in the tradition of Whit–
man, as well as in a European tradition that may be broadly called
"Nietzschean." Put it down in the chronicle of American culture that
whenever Whitman is dismissed
as
pretentious, romantic, irrespon–
sible, incoherent, etc., American culture is enfeebled and isolated from
the source of its own strength and individuality, although these sources
are not confined to the tradition of Whitman. We are more fortunate
than Brooks and Bourne, because
they
are a part of our radical
tradition.
-I realize that there is a revival of Whitman, Professor Chase.
I
am
sorry that I have not had time to read your book on him. To be
frank, I don't like Whitman. He's too vague, almost crazy, one might
say. Where are the moral confrontations in his writings? F. R. Leavis
says...
-Oh, there's no revival of Whitman, Silverman. But let me go
on. Radicalism today is not directly political or economic.
-Well, I am glad to hear that. Those things don't interest me.
-They should. But the point is that radicalism is a method, a
polemical attitude, an attack. It does not pretend to be timeless truth.
Therefore it must be acutely aware of what
it
can and cannot do
at a given moment in history. For the moment, American politics and
