WILLIAM PHILLIPS
773
language- to cling to the old metaphor- ran most forcefully when
confined to the banks that governed its course . But we who come
after the hundred-year hegemony of the ordinary reader, we who see
around us, in all these heaps of appliances (each one a plausible
"electronic miracle"), the dying heaves of the caste-free passion for
letters, should know how profoundly- and possibly how irreversi–
bly-the mummers have claimed us.
Cynthia Ozick's latest book is
Art and Ardor : Essays,
recently pub–
lished by E .
P.
Dutton .
William Phillips
OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE
The purpose of the original symposium on "Our Country
and Our Culture" was quite precise, and the problems we addressed
were concrete. The questions in 1952 were specific. Essentially, we
wanted to know whether it was our country and culture or theirs .
That is , whether writers and intellectuals generally do, or should,
feel identified with their country and their culture- not that this is
a unidimensional culture- or think of themselves as outsiders, as
internationalists rather than nationalists, more concerned with ab–
stract or ideal principles and causes, with the fate of other peoples or
of humanity as a whole, than with the survival of their own country
and the democratic values associated with it. The adversary view
Editor's Note: This is a revised version of a talk given at theY.M. H .A. in a series of
symposia on Our Country and Our Culture, in January 1984.
