~iASSCULt
ANO MIDCULT
'603
not to identify the emotion he wants to arouse. Sometimes solemn,
sometimes gay, always straining to put it across, like
a
night-dub
violinist. Play, gypsy, play! One is never puzzled by the uneX–
pected. The Wingates are · Southern aristocrats ·and they ' are
proud and generous and they live in a big white house with pil–
lars. Abe Lincoln is gaunt, sad, kindly and "tough as a hickory
rail." John Brown is strong, simple,
fanatical~and
"he knew
how to die." Robert E. Lee does present a problem since no na–
tional cliche has been evolved for him. Mr. Benet begins cau–
tiously: "He was a man, and as a man he knew / Love, sepata–
tion, sorrow, joy and death." Safe enough. But he still hasn't
found his footing by the end: "He wanted something. That must
be enough. / Now he rides Traveller back into the west." A
puzzling figure.
The final judgment on the United States is ambiguous:
" the monster and the sleeping queen." For Mr. Benet on the
one hand doesn't want to sell America short but on the other
he doesn't want to make a fool of himself-the
Midcul~
writer
is always worried about those superior, sneering intellectuals,
however he pretends to despise them. The ambivalence becomes
a little frantic in the closing lines : "So when the crowd gives
tongue / And prophets old and young / Bawl out their strange
despair / Or fall in worship there, / Let them applaud the
image or condemn, / But keep your distance and your soul
from them. . . . /
If
you at last must have a word to
say, /
Say neither,
in
their way, / 'It is a deadly magic and accursed'
/ Nor 'It is blest' but only 'It is here.' " The American fear of
ideas (bawling prophets) and
in
fact of consciousness
(If
you
must
have a word to say) has seldom been more naively ex–
pressed. Ot the American device for evading these terrorS:
Let's stick to the
facts;
or, Say only 'It is here.' For ideas might
;lead · to . conclusions.
-
xu ·
The Enemy is clear. j:B's three comforters are men :of
