RADICALISM TODAY
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countries during intensely nationalistic eras, such as the nineteenth
century. But America is "trans-national," as Bourne wrote. It is
cosmopolitan, immense. There is no "focal center" of American
culture. No writer, no matter how great or vague in outline, can be
the sort of symbolic image of centrality Brooks saw in Whitman.
Our writers embody our culture to the extent that they embody its
contradictions. There are many ways of doing this, besides the Whit–
man way.
-You seem to be against Brooks, Professor. I thought you
claimed him as a fellow radical. Aren't you contradicting yourself,
more than is necessary, I mean?
-No, Silverman. My point is that Brooks's early writings are
radical because they isolated and defined for the first time the nature
of a realistic criticism of American culture. Brooks discovered the
dialectics of our culture. He showed us the way. His error was to
conclude that .all departments of our civilization would benefit by a
reconciliation of extremes. Actually, there were good reasons for
coming to this conclusion in 1915. At that time it was impossible not
to see a rather frightening void between the highbrow and the low–
brow. But now the void, like a hungry vacuum, has long since been
filled to the point of surfeit and suffocation. The doors must be
flung open. The cold air, the passionate light, the .abounding energy
must be let in. We need the gay science, the. . .
-Excuse me, Professor. Radicals appear to be as much given to
metaphors as are liberals and conservatives.
-Perhaps, Silverman. But the radical's metaphors are more
interesting.
-Well, I will grant you that. But it does seem to me that your
approach-extremist, dialectic, or whatever you call it-is in danger
of becoming rather abstract and sterile. I can't help noticing in Brooks
and Bourne, and in what you say too, a strong Calvinist tendency,
if I may say so. I think you would like either grace or damnation
(probably the latter) but would be uncomfortable in a merely
human, middling, good-and-evil sort of position. The moral imag–
ination warns us against a too intense spirituality. True gaiety and
geniality come from the middling emotions. The will must relax into
the ordinary conditions of its being.
-There is much in what you say, Silverman. Ideas are fully
