160
STEPHEN SPENDER
most opinions about America are irritatingly prejudiced and
misin–
formed. What I mean is that America with its air of knowing all
the answers and believing that it can solve all problems produces an
image of total knowledgeability. One consequence of this is that there
seems to be a transparent quality about American life, as though ev–
erything has been put under the microscope and talked about over
the loudspeakers.
V
It
would
be
a gross simplification to say that the criterion for
cultural values in America is money; in the purely financial sense
this is probably less true than of Europe. The truth is that, culturally
speaking, America has been a buyers' market and Europe a sellers'
one; which means that, nearly always, it has been Europeans who
have named the price.
Americans are often accused unjustly (when the accusation
comes from Europeans) of materialism. There are, of course, conspic–
uously materialistic, plutocratic Americans, and there is the America
of great corporations and trusts, of "deals" and corruption which is
materialistic. But this, although
it
may be milked for cultural pur–
poses, does not lend its character to the culture. America
is
not as
blatantly - nor as aesthetically - materialistic as the old Europe
which built Venice, Versailles, St. Peter's, etc. European materialism is
- or was - aristocratic. It combined the selfishness and ostentation of
the ruling class with its lack of any sense of responsibility to "the
peo–
ple." It could
be
as selfish socially as it was disinterested artistically.
Those who employed the greatest architects to build, the greatest art–
ists to adorn, a hospital or school, felt more responsible for the beauty
of the building than for the comfort of the inhabitants. The ideal
building of the Renaissance was one in which no one lived at all.
Europeans are in the position of heirs who, inheriting vast man–
sions filled with statues and canvases and gold plate and marvelous
ceramics, have not had to
think
about the price paid, across many
centuries, for these
things
at all. In fact the most sensitive of these
heirs have been able to regard these objects as beyond price - and
not to be thought of in the economic context - but as marble, paint–
ed, golden, crystal and porcelain solidified invisible values. That is
why Europeans consider themselves as so spiritual and Americans as
so materialist.
