POETRY—OUR FIRST NATIONAL ART
RUSSIA first found herself as a people, that is, as a self-conscious nation, through prose fiction; Germany and England through the poetic play; Greece, Rome, and Italy through epics. It begins to appear as if the United States (what a name for a nation, and yet how apt!) is finding herself through a rather loosened-up lyric poetry.
Our land's name reveals our dilemma in art. A society of states, in which each state is a society of races, is not a nation in the Old World sense; it is not an organic fusion, but a collection, in which the differences are more marked than the likenesses. France, we say, has a soul, meaning that Frenchmen, to use James's phrase, "dip their roots in the same pool of consciousness," or more accurately, sub-consciousness; but Americans are held together not by unconscious identity, but by conscious ideals and interests. Americanism is not so much an impulse as a set of ready-made attitudes. Since these can be learned in a short time, the Americanization of immigrants goes on with rapidity.
One might expect then that an American national art would be an impossibility. The national novel, play, or epic requires typic characters, heroes who are the reflection of a people; but where is our typical American? And by typical I do not mean the conscious attitudes and manners of a man, but his essential character; for great art does not so much reveal the garb, speech, and habits, as those deep unconscious forces which differentiate one people from another. If, for instance, I see a certain kinship between J. J. Hill, Daniel Boone, Billy Sunday, and Theodore Roosevelt, or between Emerson, Dr. Eliot, John Dewey, and Woodrow Wilson, or between Lincoln, Gene Debs, John Brown, Mark Twain, and Jane Addams, I also find that, tested by the acid of art, they fail as national symbols. For not one of these is the national character heightened and intensified, but rather a sport, a divergence, a personal success. We must not be fooled by the fact that each group held certain ideas, attitudes, and manners in common; these are
