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RICHARD POIRIER
models of America. For if in American history some ideal national
self
has had to contend from the outset with realities of time, biology,
economics and social custom, so in American literature the individual
self has had to struggle into life through media of expression shaped
by these realities. My demonstrations involve none of the usual con–
nections between historical events and literary events, since I question
the possibility of knowing what these are in relation to one another.
Instead, I propose to measure this struggle for consciousness, personal
and national, within the language of particular works. Sometimes, as
in Cooper, the existence of the struggle is evident mostly in absurdities
of style; at other times, as in Emerson, the struggle is merely evoked
rather than made, as in Thoreau, the very substance of metaphor.
Mark Twain tries to avoid the struggle, Huck Finn gets him into it,
but he then drops Huck as a subject of interest in the very book
named for him and turns his attention to a survey of the environ–
mental forces within which not even a confused consciousness of free–
dom, like Huck's, can possibly come to full life. Later, Dreiser
will
derive his creative energy from a kind of fascinated surrender to the
mysterious forces that in the City destroy freedom and even any con–
sciousness of its loss.
The books which in my view constitute a distinctive American
tradition within English literature are early, very often clumsy ex–
amples of a modernist impulse in fiction; they resist within their pages
the forces of environment that otherwise dominate the world. Their
styles have an eccentricity of defiance, even if the defiance shows
sometimes as carelessness. Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Haw–
thorne, Mark Twain, James-they both resemble and serve their
heroes by trying to create an environment of "freedom," though as
writers their efforts must be wholly in language. American books are
often written as if historical forces cannot possibly provide such an
environment, as if history can give no life to "freedom," and as if only
language can create the liberated place. The classic American writers
try through style temporarily to free the hero (and the reader) from
systems, to free them from the pressures of time, biology, economics
and from the social forces which are ultimately the undoing of Amer–
ican heroes and quite often of their creators. What distinguishes Amer–
ican heroes of this kind from those in the fiction of Mrs. Wharton,
Dreiser or Howells is that there is nothing within the real world,
or in the systems which dominate it, that can possibly satisfy their
