AMERICAN
ODYSSEY
449
and the Dynamo," or in Henry James's indictment, but also by critical
voices in Europe. Thus it is only fitting to record, first, that the classic
writers of the nineteenth century were the "advance-guard" in respond–
ing to this radical transformation of Western culture and, second, that
the triumph of the technological apparatus is not a "characteristically"
American phenomenon either. What was new in the American experi–
ence was not the development of an industrial technology as such, but
its speed, scale, finesse, and perfection. The moving spirit behind it
was European. The captains of American industry inherited the entre–
preneurial spirit of Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro; the technical
know–
how of Franklin and Edison derives from the scientific foundations of
Galileo and Newton. The atom was not split in America but in Germany.
Both Europe and America have drawn upon the same scientific re–
sources and worshipped the same Faustian spirit; but the United States
developed the potentialities of science and technology with a speed and
on a scale which carried the industrial age far beyond the European
experience. It is only in our own time that Europe has caught up with
these tendencies inherent in its own scientific and technical tradition.
It has become a cliche to say that America is too young to pro–
duce a national literature and culture. This is true in the sense that
the United States lack "the tone of time" which Henry James missed
most as a stimulus to his own imagination. But it is also true, as Mr.
Levin observes perceptively, that this is "the oldest country in the world
today if we date its coming-of-age by the after-effects of technological
development." Now, as the technical apparatus has taken over, the arts,
and not only literature, have withdrawn from the public domain, and
not only in the United States. Where industry has moved in, beauty
has moved out, everywhere.
This perspective throws a different light upon the interminable de–
bate between Europe and America; it may also help us see certain
dominant themes in American literature,
e.g.,
guilt, or the rites of ini–
tiation and exorcism, from a different angle. It is true that Huck Finn,
Isabel Archer, or Frederic Henry were innocents a:broad; bUit it does
not follow that they were innocent at home. On the contrary, vis-a-vis
the red man and the black man, vis-a-vis the forests, rivers, and moun–
tains, they were anything but innocent. They came loaded with a sense
of guilt; and they compounded it in the conquest of America. Of course,
they were pathfinders and pioneers, pilgrims of plenty and progress;
but they were also industrial bosses, oil magnates, financial titans, swol–
len with
hybris
and reaping the grapes of wrath. There is nothing in–
nocent about the defloration of America; but the
guilt
is again an
