Notes for a Comparison between American and European Romanticism

Author(s): Tony Tanner

Source: Journal of American Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Apr., 1968), pp. 83-103
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Association for American
Studies
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J. Amer.

Stud.

2,

Printed

1, 83-103

in Great

Britain

83

between
for a Comparison
Romanticism
and European

American

Notes

?yTONY TANNER
College, Cambridge

King's

is a version

This

of

a paper

to

read

the

of

conference

the European

Association

Studies at Rome in September

1967. The subject, which was
to
too
vast
is
admit of definitive treatment
the
clearly
organizers,
by

for American
prescribed
in
a

and
the
this
space,
tentative
exploration

should
essay
of the
topic

accordingly
in order

as no more

be

regarded
stimulate

to

discussion.

than
As

my

method relies extensively on allusions and short quotations it seemed undesirable

to over-burden this printed version with footnotes locating precisely the source
of every such reference. I have instead indicated in the text wherever possible
the title of the work cited, and itmay be helpful to add here that the essays of
Emerson on which I have mainly drawn are these: 'Nature' (1836), 'The
'
'
'
Transcendentalist
( 1844).
( 1843 ), and The Poet
I
often provided Romantic writers with important
images.
Melville's
and
whale are both used to focus on the awesome
tiger
and ambiguous
Insects, too, have often
energies at the heart of creation.
or
identification. Wordsworth
been invoked for the purposes of emulation
'
'
a
like
the
bee
flowers
visual
admires
;Emerson
among
gathers
pleasures
in his 'sunny solitudes':
the 'Humble-Bee'
Animals

have

Blake's

Sailor

of

the

Swimmer

;
atmosphere
the waves

through

of

air

of light and noon ;

Voyager
'
cries Oh, for a bee's experience/Of
are the bees of the Invisible. Nous

Emily Dickinson'
Rilke writes We

clovers

and of noon

'

butinons

?perdument
pour l'accumuler dans la grande ruche d'or de l'invisible.'1
It is an attractive and understandable
image for any Romantic writer who
in order to transmute
the pollen of perception
it into
seeks to assimilate
lemiel

du Visible

the honey

of his

the

has

spider
Robert Lowell.
1 As

quoted
(London,

and
1966),

art. But more

held

Thus
translated
p.

is the attraction which

perhaps
to
from Jonathan Edwards
writers
starts one of his earliest pieces of writing,
unusual

for American
Edwards
by

Erich

Heller

in The

Artist's

Journey

into

the Interior

153.
6-2

84

Tony Tanner
no one

'Of all Insects

'Of Insects':

is more

to their

with

wonderfull

than the Spider

way of working.'

and admirable

Respect
sagacity
in
struck to see spiders apparently
'swimming
particularly
the air' (like Emerson's
how he watched
and
bee), and he describes
see
to
to
how
sustain
in
themselves
space.
experimented
they managed
'
'
The secret, the marvel, was the way they put out aweb at their tails which
was so light that the wind took it, and held up the spider at the same time ;
especially
Edwards was

then
If the further End Of it happens to catch by a tree or anything, why
a web for him to Go over upon and the Spider immediately perceives
feels

it touches,
Perceives

when

immediately

much

from it are in the Least

to notice

Pausing
external

how

to

how

vacant

the

explore

It launched forth filament,

Ever

them,

unreeling

And you O my
Surrounded,

ever

Ceaselessly

musing,

the

brain

Proceed

surrounding,

filament, filament,
speeding

out of itself,
them.

you stand,
oceans

in measureless
venturing,

throwing,

of

seeking

space,
the spheres

the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile

Till

the

thread

strings

that

things.

Till

gossamer

in

soul

it stood isolated,

vast

tirelessly

soul where

detached,

the

nervous

is fully developed

A Noiseless patient spider,

I mark'd where on a little promontory
Mark'd

as

manner
little

the Puritan
the
imagination
effortlessly makes
of an inner process, Iwant to juxtapose Whitman's
Patient
the spider's
emblematic
Spider' where

'A Noiseless

significance

those

Jarrd by External

fact emblematic
on

poem

of

any

same

the

after

when

there's
it and

you

fling

catch

somewhere,

to connect

them,

anchor hold,

O my

soul.

Romantic
scarcely hope to find a better image of the American
to
is
almost
the
American
than
this.
and
which
Isolated
writer,
writer,
say
filament
filament,
filament,
secreting
constantly
(think of Whitman's
stream of notations
to explore,
to relate to,
and enumerations)
renewed
is the 'measureless
and to fill 'the vacant vast surrounding'.
America
'
oceans of space ; the web is the private creation of the writer, constructed

We

could

with

a view

making

of attaching himself
somehow
in which he can live on his own

to reality, a world of his own

and trans
terms, assimilating
his way. Emily Dickinson,
too,

the outside world brings

saw
of her own poetic activity
something
obviously
starts:
the spider, as in the famous poem which
forming

what

A spider sewed at night

a light
Without
Upon

an

arc

of white.

in the movements

of

American

and European Romanticism

85

softly to
the
Himself/His
spider an
an
whose
in
artist of 'surpassing merit'
hour, are
tapestries, wrought
'
to
of Light'
'He plies from Nought
Continents
;but also very ephemeral.
occurs
not
to
A
Trade.'
dissimilar
insubstantial
Henry
image
Nought/In
on 'A Dynamic
of
Adams
in the crucial chapter in his Education
Theory
'
:
History
in other

And

For

for example,
poems,
Coil of Pearl?unwinds.'

as an

convenience

watching
the spider

for

the

image,

Forces
prey.
on them when

chance

pounces

'The

She

spider...?dancing
elsewhere
calls

to a
liken man
in its web,
may
spider
theory
of nature
dance
like flies before
the new,
and
a
it can...
The
spider-mind
acquires
faculty

and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis,

together in different relations the meshes of its trap.

of memory,
and putting

taking apart

statement
in a comparably
in Henry
James's essay 'The
important
of Fiction'
the work of the spider receives perhaps
its finest trans
:
formation

And
Art

is never

Experience
of

and

consciousness,

and

limited,

a kind of huge spider-web

it is never

complete

; it is an

immense

of the finest silken threads suspended

air-borne

every

catching

particle

in

its

sensibility,

in the chamber
tissue.

is the

It

it takes to
very atmosphere of the mind ; and when the mind is imaginative...
itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into reve
lations.

a metaphor;
and
the web has been internalized
the
of
the
mind.
experience
atmosphere
it is a truism that one of the recurrent features of Romantic
art is
Now
the elevation
of inner activity over external reality. Hegel's
is only the

The

emblem

has become

has become

most
duction

sweeping of many
to the Philosophy

when

in the Intro

he says

art lies in the artistic object's being free,

the essence of Romantic
and the spiritual idea in its very essence?all
this revealed to the

In brief,
concrete,
inner

such generalizations,
of Art:

rather

to the

than

art; Romantic
some
reflection

outer

art must
of

But since for Hegel

art, this panoramic

This
inner world
is the content
eye...
an
its embodiment
in precisely
such

seek

it. Thus

the

inner

life

shall

triumph

over

the

of Romantic
inner

outer

life

or

world.

art included

Romantic

. .

since Classical
nearly everything
or
view of the internalization
of reality
subjectivization
s
at
and
Erich
Heller
in
The
Artisf
brilliantly
(examined
length by
Journey
into the Interior) will not help us very much
in an attempt to suggest some

of the differences
analogy
a specific

between
point

between

American

the American
of departure.

writer

and European
This
Romanticism.
and the spider may at least provide

Tony Tanner

86

II
of all those early American
of the formative
writers
experiences
such as no European
solitudes
of a sense of space, of vast unpeopled
Ren? says
could have imagined. As the hero of Chateaubriand's
Romantic
a
are
in
turmoil
auditors:
to his American
forced
constantly
'Europeans
One

was

to build

their

own

solitudes.'

reverse

The

was

true

for

imposed on him. Nothing

for him than to take a few steps to find himself confronting
oceans of space where Whitman
in those measureless
Solitude

Romantic.

was

the American

all but

seemed

easier

and caught up
found his soul

towards empty space is

This gravitation
as
literature, even if it appears only in glimpses,
the narrator of The Sacred Fount turns away from the
for instance when
and staring up at the sky finds the night air
crowded house of Newmarch
to
the grossness
of our lustres and the thickness of
'a sudden corrective

both

surrounded

a constant

and detached.

in American

or when
our medium';
to you sometimes?just

the narrator

of The Last Tycoon

says

'It's startling
air.' Charles

air, unobstructed,
uncomplicated
is justified in starting his book on Melville
{Call me Ishmael) with
'
to
:
announcement
I
Space
be
the central fact to man
take
the emphatic
cave to now. I spell it large because
from Folsom
born in America,
it

Olson

comes large here. Large,

But like those spiders who
and without mercy.'
came under Jonathan Edwards's
formidable
artist,
scrutiny, the American
at sea in space, had to do something
to maintain
once he found himself
and one instinctive
himself,
response was to expand into the surrounding
'
' '
: I behold them from
Cullen Bryant writes of The Prairies
space. William
the
dilated
while
heart
in the
the first,/And
swells,
my
sight/Takes
'I
the
of
chant
chant
Whitman
claims
vastness';
dilation';
encircling
'
the heart refuses to be imprisoned
records how
Emerson
; in its first and
narrowest pulses it already tends outward with a vast force and to immense
and

innumerable

expansions..

.there

is no

outside,

no

inclosing

wall,

no

eye, and his mind after it, was continually

to a man
remotest
to
the only true encirclement
drawn
the
horizons;
the very perimeter
with
circles was earth's vanishing
obsessed
point,
he writes about
of the visible world where sight lost itself in space. When
'
'
'
The Poet and his attraction to narcotics of all kinds Emerson
says : These
are auxiliaries
to his passage out
to the centrifugal
of a man,
tendency
to
him
the
into free space, and they help
escape
custody of that body in
circumference

to us'. Emerson's

he is pent up, and of that jail-yard of individual relations in which

in San Francisco
this year!)
he is enclosed.'
(That could have been written
has some marvellous
lines about the
Near
the end of Waiden Thoreau
which

'ethereal

flight'

of a hawk which

sported

alone

'in the fields

of air'.

'It

American

and European Romanticism

87

no companion
in the universe...
and to need none but
appeared to have
ends the book,
it played.' Thoreau
and the ether with which
the morning
enough, with the parable of the bug which hatches out in
appropriately
an old table and breaks

free into 'beautiful

at the end of Song ofMyself

'
: I depart as air...
elements

'

literally
In these

and winged
life',
feels himself diffused

and Whitman
back

three seminal American

into the

Romantics

a dilation
can
of self, which
'centrifugal
tendency';
vastness. But of course
of self, into the surrounding
become an abandoning
since words
if this were all we would have had no record of the movement

we

find

a similar

in the process of
carefully strung together by a man
as
seems
into
Emerson
the
circumambient
air,
morphosed
'
save
: Can you not
in a letter to Samuel Gray Ward
me, dip
water, find me some girding belt, that I glide not away into
are not

being meta
to recognize
me into ice
a stream

or

a gas, and decease in infinite diffusion?'

Like those spiders swimming
in
and
writer
throws out filament, filament, filament,
the air, the American
a web to sustain himself
weaves
in the vastness. Paradoxically
these webs
are often

notable
for being composed
of many very concrete particulars
is also one of the earthiest
Thoreau
and empirically
facts
perceived
(thus
it is as though
these solid details offered some anchoring
of writers);
a poem as a stay against confusion,
Frost described
he
attachment. When
as
a
more
it, for the American writer,
stay
might have
accurately phrased
against diffusion.
is the writer's
The web

style; the concrete details are the nourishing

ensnares
and transforms. And what extraordinary
particles
American
Romantics
have spun:
webs
the
(and indeed post-Romantics)
Emerson's
essays for instance, which often seem to tremble and blur with
or Waiden and Moby Dick
to counteract,
the very vertigo they were written
seem
to
return
Romantic
stock
themes?the
which,
repeat
although
they
which

the web

the voyage?are
of a stylistic idiosyncrasy which can scarcely be
in European writing. And much of that style is not being used
paralleled
so much as to fill in the spaces between
to explore self or environment
self
at
to
and environment.
first
have
Again, Song ofMyself
vaincu,
glance appear
'
'
in common with The Prelude,
much
and the phrase
sublime
egotistical
to Wordsworth
which
Keats
to
could certainly
be extended
applied
to nature,

Whitman.
and

And

landscape,

hearts/Maintain
are belov'd',

between
yet the sense of harmonious
reciprocities
that 'intimate communion'
which,
says Wordsworth,
with

the minuter

which

mind
'our

properties/Of
objects
already
more desperate
and sometimes
from Whitman's
ecstasies.
hysterical
'My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,/With
the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds
and volumes
of worlds.' This
verbal and visual pursuit of objects and worlds
to fill up his void is some
is absent

88

Tony Tanner

what

different

visible

from

scene/Would

the serene
enter

for Wordsworth,
'the
which,
into his mind/With
all its solemn

stealth with

unawares

imagery'.

American

Among

with

nature.

tionship
see all'?Emerson's

Romantics
there is an unusual stress on a visual rela
I
'I am become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing;
famous formulation
is relevant for much
subsequent

writing. Thoreau, whose other senses were active enough, puts

asks himself
the emphasis on sight: 'We are as much as we see.' Whitman
'
'
'
'
do you see Walt Whitman
? in Salut au Monde
and answers
What

American

the phrase
'I see' eighty-three
times.
using
copiously,
new habits of attention,
recovered visual intimacies with nature,
Obviously
as well
were crucial for European
Romantics
(and Ruskin was to make
literally

and

to be found
of sight an instrument
arguably more sensitive than anything
more
But
in
in American
than
the
often
America,
English
writing).
to his
Romantic's
response was also auditory. Keats
listening darkling
one
ears
of
the
is
Romantic
whose
many
poets
only
English
nightingale
'
or music
were highly receptive to any vibrations
that reached them. With
did the loud dry wind/Blow
what
strange utterance
through my ears',
'I heard among the solitary hills/..
motion',
.sounds/of undistinguishable
'
a gentle shock
in that silence, while he hung/Listening,
Then
sometime,
of mild
carried far into the heart the voice/Of
mountain
surprise/Has
torrents '?these
of the voices
from Wordsworth
examples
of landscape may be readily multiplied,
the most
perhaps
where
the sound of the woman's
'The Solitary Reaper',
lasting nourishment

famous

being

song provides

for the poet:

The music
Long

The

and utterances

after

inmy heart I bore,

it was

heard

no more.

do not give the impression

Romantics
of valuing auditory
to the point, for the English Romantics
in quite this way. More
to the outside world
a state of
visual relationship
betokened

American

responses
a purely

a loss of intimacy,
a failure of poetic vision.
deprivation,
Coleridge's
'
an
on
severance between self and surrounding
Ode'
this
hinges
Dejection:
'I see them all so excellently
things:
fair,/I see, not feel, how beautiful
And
are!'
in Dejection',
'Stanzas Written
Shelley's
they
by lamenting
some
as he looks
other 'heart' to 'share in my emotion'
the absence of
at the scene

in front of him, is also asserting

the insufficiency
of mere
or
A
nature
visual
with
in fact
sight.
purely
predominantly
relationship
or detachment
can indicate a state of alienation
from it. An auditory
to
response suggests that the sounds of the environment mean
something
the hearer,

something

within

becomes

alert

to something

without

which

American

and European Romanticism

89

at least the
to speak a comprehensible
suggests
language. This
even
of communication,
of significant
possibility
relationship,
perhaps
of a kind of dialogue. To be linked to a thing only by sight is at the same
time to be severed from it, if only because the act of purely visual appro
the eye and the object. And
space between
implies a definite
priation
seems

have been predominantly

watchers. Thoreau,
supposedly
'
can still use this strange image : I enter
in his environment,
some glade in the woods...
and it is as if I had come to an open window.
I see out and around myself.'
left man-made
behind
dwellings
Having

American

writers

so immersed

to describe his feelings. To be

him, he reintroduces
part of their architecture
as
of nature and yet to see it
is
in the midst
through an open window
some
to
cut
to
off
from
in
also
Emerson
often
refers
feel
it.
way
surely
as 'spectacle'
to all shades of visual
and is extremely
sensitive
a
as
to
it
is
ride to have the
when
he
take
coach
says
experience,
enough
to
from all relation
the observer'.
world
surrounding
'wholly detached
'
He said of the soul : It is a watcher more than a doer, and it is a doer, only
the world

This
in turn anticipates
the better watch.'
James, whose
are
all
excluded
from
great watchers,
thereby
figures
participation
in the world they survey?like
James himself,
leaning intently out of one of
in his house of fiction. Again, in Hemingway's
the many windows
characters
of their alienation.
their visual alertness and acuity is in part a symptom
that

it may

central

Those

American

writers

we associate with
most

subsequently)
(and many
in space; not, certainly,
tied
very firmly to the vast natural

typically
fast into

the New England Renaissance

to be swimming
felt themselves
nor
any society,
really attached

In many ways this state was

environment.
to sport in fields of air could be the ultimate
and preferred;
ecstasy. On the other hand there was the danger of, as it were, vanishing
or diffusing
The
emergent
strategy, variously
altogether.
developed
by
cherished

could hold them in place,

writers, was to spin out a web which
which would
occupy the space around them, and from which
they could
their environment
look out into the world. But even when they scrutinized
into their
with extreme care, and took over many of its details to weave
were
seldom
in
communion
webs of art, they
with nature.
any genuine
on
seem
to
other
do
the
have
Romantics,
hand,
European
enjoyed moments
different

of reciprocal relationship
and half
'half perceive

with

nature

create'. With

and could
Wordsworth

truly of what they

they could consider

speak

as essentially
to each other'.
In discovering
adapted
same
were
at
the
time discovering
themselves
; in internalizing
they
what was around them they were at the same time externalizing what was
'
as Coleridge
often described.
The forms/Of Nature have a passion
within,
'man

and nature

nature

in themselves/That

intermingles

with

those works

of man/To

which

she

Tony Tanner

90

summons

him.'

intermingling
from American
Nature
with
that

That

is Wordsworth,

of Nature's

it is just that sort of fruitful

creative potencies
that is absent

and

and Man's

which
tends, rather, to testify that
writing,
Nature
off from man's
is indeed seen, seen
approaches.
the intervening
intense clarity through
it leaves precisely
but
air,
own
to
be
the
filled by
writer's
filament.
That
space
intervening
Romantic

holds

between

marriage
abiding
American

Romantic
Romantics.

subject
dream,
When

and
and object, mind
is seldom
consummated
Emerson

of

speaks
to a perceptual
objects' he is pointing
in American
for important differences
Romanticism.

of natural
Of

course

it would

strangely fluid writing

his definitive
attitude.
a conception

nature, which
in the work

is an
of

the

'the cool disengaged

air
experience which makes

be an unacceptable
of Emerson's
simplification
to fix on any one of his descriptions
of nature as
But in his first famous essay on 'Nature' we find

of nature markedly
documents.
European

from any to be found in any

all
it is the fluidity,
the insub
comparable
nature
the
of
is
which
stressed.
Emerson
transparency
may
stantiality,
'
when he talks of that wonderful
sound likeWordsworth
congruity which
much was a stock Romantic
subsists between man and the world'?so
or hope. But what a strange congruity Emerson's
is. To the poet,
piety,
a poetic mind
he says, 'the refractory world is ductile and flexible'. When
a
matter
is
The
'dissolved
Transcen
nature,
by
thought'.
contemplates
different
Above

was pertinently
described
dentalism says Emerson,
(and Transcendentalism
on Puritan
as 'that outbreak
of Romanticism
ground'
by James Elliot
'
to find his solid universe growing
Cabot1) has only to ask certain questions
turns
the
world to glass'; when he looks
dim and impalpable'. The
'poet
at nature he sees 'the flowing or the Metamorphosis'.
'The Universe
is
' '
we
on
now
:
this surface
which
stand is not fixed, but
fluid and volatile
in all this sliding, dissolving,
is any 'fixture or stability'
'
'
are
not
in
soul
it
is
'.
built
like a ship to be tossed,
the
We
melting world,
Since his Nature
is distinctly
but like a house to stand,' says Emerson.
seem
at
to
and the 'ethereal tides'
times almost
inundate him as
watery,
sliding.'

If there

to them, we may wonder what will be the origin of this

he opens himself
stable house of self which can stand firm in the flowing flux of Existence.
is sometimes
facts
Emerson
very specific about individual
Although
to has no autonomy
and very little
fabrication. We
look in vain for the specificity
in European Romanticism,
which are so common
of all those place-names
or 'Lines Composed
or
Blanc
Mont
while
it is Tintern
whether
Abbey
the nature
and perceptions,
local identity. It is a mental

Quoted
Henry

he refers

in his essay
'Emerson',
James
by Henry
Edel
ed. Leon
1956),
(New York,
James,

reprinted
p. 70.

in The American

Essays

of

American

and

European

Romanticism

91

the Left Ascent

of Brockley Coome,
Somersetshire,
May
1795'
the
dazzles
America's
that
Emerson
says
'ample geography
(Coleridge).
a
in
unusual
and
dazzled
ways.
imagination may
respond
imagination'
often than not, is to treat nature as a flimsy,
His own response, more
Climbing

either to see through it, or

flowing tissue of appearances. He is concerned
but he tends only to
from it. It is indeed a source of emblems,
withdraw
an
assert
between
the
difference
this emblematical
Perhaps
quality.
is a sign existing at a definite
and a metaphor
is that an emblem
remove from what
while
of different material;
it signifies and composed
a metaphor merges
the sign and the thing signified. For Emerson Nature

emblem

than metaphors
; it provided no final resting
of
Here,
perhaps, we can detect vestiges
as
and misleading?
of matter
fallen, flawed,
suspicion
benevolence
Emerson's
about
essential
the
programmatic
optimism
amatter

was more

place, no home,
the old Puritan
despite
of all creation.

of emblems

for the mind.

it is, Emerson's
Nature
lacks the substantiality,
to
in
found
be
many European Romantic writers.
reality,
or a manifestation
a
be
Emerson
Nature
In
may
symbol for the mind,
it tends not to be is its own solid self.
of the invisible Over-Soul.
What
we grow
said Emerson,
'believe in the external world'. When
Children,
However

the local external

older we

realize

dramatic
might
What

that it 'appears only'. Perhaps Emerson

of Nature
than when
for his concept

phrase
be 'the apocalypse

parent,

Emerson
fluid,

often

suggested

it

trans
of a ductile,
and the hard, opaque,
of the real American
landscape. This

is to interpose
between

nature

he talks of playing
and toys. The genius,
balance and toss every object
he says, who
like Shakespeare,

baubles

no more

of the mind'.

has done

apparitional
otherness
refractory
(and dazzling)
to himself
he
makes
Nature
amenable
way
how

found
he

with

his version

himself

and his purposes.

It is notable
a
as
Nature
if it were
of
collection

in his journal,
and
'can upheave
we must be
in Nature
for his metaphor';
'
tosses the creation like a bauble from hand

he writes

to hand'.

less tossable from hand to hand, less bauble-like,

than
Anything
in
the American
the
to
mid-nineteenth
hard
would
be
century
landscape
is swimming
in air; and this Nature,
think of. But Emerson
this flowing
stream

of soft transparent
is the web he has created to keep
playthings,
or Keats's
afloat. By contrast Wordsworth's
is, if
poetic Nature
not the apocalypse of reality, at least its consecration. More recent American
writers have not found themselves
in exactly the same vast otherness
as
himself

the mid-nineteenth-century
writers.
If anything
they have to deal with
a congestion which would
an emptiness which
them
rather
than
squash
course
a
swallow
of
there
is
kind
of
crowdedness which
them, though
might
feels like a vacancy. But when Wallace
Stevens says that 'resistance to the

Tony Tanner

92

of ominous
and destructive
consists
of its con
circumstance
a
as
so
an
an
into
far
amenable
version,
different,
possible,
explicable,
in a way which
he seems to be placing
the emphasis
is
circumstance',1
'
'
so
Romantic
often
American
of
the
which
has
converted
attitude,
typical
pressure

the given environment

into something amenable, not necessarily
benevolent
to the
if we think of Poe, Hawthorne,
but amenable?ductile
Melville,
of their art.
weavings

Ill
'Thou shalt leave the world',
tells his American
poet-figure
'
:
of
the
world
actual
the
shall fall like summer rain,
impressions
adding
not
to
but
troublesome
invulnerable
essence'. Reality becomes
copious,
thy
a
In its place, as he says
like
something
light shower, easily disregarded.
at the end of 'Nature',
is the
itself a house'. This
'Every spirit builds
we
seen
have
house
which
the
artist
the
American
already
web)
(or
own
sustenance
for
his
unhindered
and
constructing
stability,
development.
Emerson

Emerson
his
your own world',
goes on to admonish
a
a
for
readers in
starting-point
phrase which has given Richard Poirier
his exciting
Poirier's more
book A World
Elsewhere.
fully developed
corroborate my suggestion
ideas, as in such a passage as the following,
and the expansion of
that the creation of a verbal web, safe for habitation
a
:
is major characteristic
of American
Romanticism
consciousness,
'Build

The

therefore

books which

English

inmy view constitute

are

literature

very

early,

in fiction : they resist within

the world.

dominate
defiance

shows

Mark

Hawthorne,

Their

sometimes

often

a distinctive American
clumsy

examples

of

tradition within

a modernist

their pages the forces of environment

have
styles
as carelessness.

Twain,
James?they
an environment
of

an

eccentricity

of

impulse

that otherwise
even

defiance,

Emerson,
Thoreau,
Cooper,
serve
both
and
resemble

if the

Melville,
heroes
their

as writers
to create
their
efforts
'freedom',
though
by trying
are often
as if historical
must
in
books
written
American
be wholly
language.
as if
can
no
cannot
such
life
forces
environment,
history
possibly
provide
give
can create
to 'freedom',
and as if only
the liberated
place.
language

on the Emersonian
comments:
Elaborating
image of the house, Poirier
like an obsession
of something
in
'Waiden is only one of the examples
to appropriate
literature with plans and efforts to build houses,
American
'
the houses
in Cooper, Mark Twain,
; he mentions
space to one's desires
in The Golden Bowl,
The House
of the Seven Gables, Fawns
Sutpen's
Hundred,
house,
Wright,
expansion
1 'The

estate, even Herzog's

country
Gatsby's
like Frank Lloyd
of crucial architects
of a house
'the building
is an extension
and an

Silas Lapham's
house,
of course the work

and

and he
of the
Irrational

adds
self,
Element

an act by which
in Poetry',

in Opus

the

self possesses

Posthumous

(London,

environment
1959),

p.

225.

and European

American

Romanticism

93

a way of interposing
It is certainly
by nature'.
world
and
the
and
given
obviously of particular
yourself
to
in
and need,
America
the
where
freedom,
importance
unparalleled
erect habitations
of one's own design has produced unique architectural
otherwise

dominated

your world

between

and literary structures alike. Poirier could have developed his point further.
'
Fairer House
than
says I dwell in Possibility?a
Emily Dickinson
'
Prose we can see that it is also the house of her own style. Similarly
all
those extremely ornate and cunningly decorated,
coloured and upholstered

When

on enthusiastically)
commented
interiors in Poe's stories (which Baudelaire
are surely images of his own pure art style which he so defiantly opposed
to the unpoetical
of contemporary
barrenness
America.
(One might note
on
in passing Edith Wharton's
house decoration which
enthusiastic writing
her fictional works.) The
preceded
4
'
Architecture
(in Opus Posthumous)
manner

What
Let

us

opening
admirably

of building
a chastel

design

de

stanza

of Wallace

evokes

this whole

Steven's
attitude

shall we build?
chastet?.

De

pens?e...
cease
Never

to

deploy

the

structure.

Keep the laborers shouldering plinths.

Pass the whole of life hearing the clink of the
Chisels

of

the

stone-cutters

cutting

the

stones.

'
Let us build a castle of thought (just as James speaks of a palace of thought '),
what
is more,
let us build it of any materials we please, arranged in any
is that for these and comparable
fashion that pleases us. The suggestion
art is a continuous
of a private edifice; and the process
writers,
building
as Emerson's
of building?of
the available materials,
poet
playing with
as
rare
the
of
Stevens
with
with
baubles
exotic
nature,
plays
plays
than the
perhaps more
important
(like chastel)?is
own
or
own
weave
web?
therefore
world,
your
your
product.
here is a key cry of the American
those writers we
writer,
particularly
as
or
same sort of
The
another Romantic.
designate
being in one way
'
idea is of course also to be found in Europe,
in Coleridge's
stately pleasure
'Palace of Art' for instance. But these are different
dome', and Tennyson's
sorts of building,
built for a different purpose
(to explore the world of the
things

and words
Build

among other things), and in both cases the edifices

there has to be a waking.
represent dreams from which
'
'
A good visual example of this sort of private
in American
architecture
'
art is provided by an amazing picture by Erastus Field called Historical
creative

Monument
1

unconscious

of the American

Republic'.1

of this picture may be consulted

Reproductions
in America
Life
(New York,
1949), p. 230,
(London,
1961), p. 160.

It shows

the most

Oliver
in, for example,
and Henri
The
Dorra,

extraordinary
Larkin, Art and
American
Muse

Tony Tanner

94

from various
styles of building
at
the
tenuous
little
up
top by
result is that
really, of the painter's
fantasy. The
bridges?filaments,
are
contents
work
various
of
the
and
the
historical,
public
specific
although
the over-all effect is private and fanciful. Field is building his own world
of heterogeneous
and various ages,

m?lange
cultures

to the actual world

is more
than
apparent
such an architect. Pound
and Eliot

its relation

and

can be

Stevens

poets,

architectural

all connected

real. Among
likewise use

to build their own

of the world's
cultures
past and disparate
fragments
sort of relatively unfettered
This
when dealing
eclecticism
worlds.
private
and an utterly different
with the past is peculiarly American
thing from
the European
sense?Pound

sense of the past. If anything

it negates
the cultures of the past, tossing
plays with
as
Emerson
just
played with images of Nature.

writer's

to hand,
and new juxtapositions

hand

As

un-European.
and reassembled

the historical
pieces from
The results

can be brilliant,

original, and very

breathtakingly
of
the
real
past are dislodged
images
painting,
as
at the whim
of the poet
he spins out his web. And
in Field's

to this almost

is another aspect
into one web

forceful

gathering
together of human
effort
of
often
through
style. Faulkner
'
a
one
to
all
in
that
I'm
it
sentiment
between
sentence,
say
trying
repeats
one Cap and one period...
I don't know how to do it. All I know is to
a new way'.1 This ambition to 'put all mankind's
history
keep on trying in
to be
in one sentence'
qualities
partly explains some of the Gargantuan
an
writers?for
omni
found in many American
example,
unprecedented
there

culture

vorousness
his

which

own

the sheer

Stevens reveals
syntax as well as length. Wallace
in a letter 'for me the
towards this when he writes

effects

tendency

it is simply the desire to contain the

important thing is to realize poetry...
of it'.2 This pre-empting
of the
world wholly within one's own perception
it over on your own terms, is necessarily
this making
world and history,
a condition
art anywhere. But nowhere
do you find this will to
of much
the world
and the past in the web
of an in
more
American
in
than
certain
writers.
strong
style
A final point about this private house of the American
Romantic,
again
'
: It is awful to look into the mind
of man and see how
from Emerson
reconstitute

and contain

dividual

free

we

are.

. .
Outside,

among

appearances,
preserve
terrible freedom.' The

your

p. 501.

among

strangers,

notion

things you cannot

that the house which

itself may become a place of terror

with her trenchant economy:
1
The Faulkner-Cowley
2
Letters
of Wallace

fellows,

a hundred

File:
Stevens,

Letters
ed.

is deftly

and Memories,
Stevens

Holly

conceded

ig44~ig62
(New

you

must

do; but inside, the

the spirit builds for
by Emily Dickinson

(London,
and
York

1967), p.
London,

14.
1966),

American

and European Romanticism

95

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,

One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material

Robert

place.

Frost's

'Bereft'
similar
suggests
and the leaves hiss at him:

threatening

terrors,

when

the wind

turns

Something sinister in the tone,

Told me my secret must be known :
Word I was in the house alone
must

Somehow

Word
Word
The
how

horrors
often

take place
writer
the American
which

his soul has made

which

have

gotten

abroad,

I was inmy life alone,

I had no one left but God.

for him

in Poe's

secluded

is to be found
and which

rooms

sitting
is so often

also

alone

emphasize
in the house

and so singularly

haunted.

in his house

Alone
seems

to have

or sporting in fields of air alone, the American writer

cue from Emerson's
axiom
'Alone is heaven'.

taken his

recur constantly,
and it is most
the aspiration,
apt that
of Emerson's
first major essay should define the conditions
'
for the procurement
of solitude : To go into solitude, aman needs to retire
and
word,
the first sentence

The

as much
from his chamber as from society.' As Emily Dickinson
puts it,
'
The soul selects her own society/Then
shuts the door'. No single sentence
like Wordsworth
Emerson more
than
differentiates
clearly from a writer
this (it follows
'
Yet this may

the grandeur of nature) :

discussing
is between man and nature, for you
in the field
landscape if laborers are digging

after Emerson

has been

show us what

discord

freely admire a noble

in his delight until he is
ridiculous
by. The poet finds something
out of the sight of men.' But Wordsworth
to
does not. For Wordsworth
cannot

hard

the shepherd,
the leech-gatherer,
the reaper, or anyone else
in
of an epiphany,
with
the
occasion
could
be
nature,
intimacy
living
a
a
more
in the American
Oriental
streak
Emerson
reveals
visionary gleam.
encounter

to landscape when he emphasizes

the discrepancy
between
response
tiny
man and the vast dissolving
even
Indeed, he would
grandeur of nature.
banish those tiny figures which Oriental
include to remind one
painters
of that discrepancy.
For Emerson
the ideal landscape was the unpeopled
landscape. ' Thoreau
It would
solitude.
dwell
out

they? Not
to embrace

electric

tactile

does meet

yet his instinct is for

people in the woods,
men
I imagine, but where
be sweet to deal with
more,
seems to reach
I traverse.' Whitman
in the fields which
the whole

contacts.

Yet

his imagination
is crowded with
continent;
it seems to be more a dream of contact; for

go

Tony Tanner

'
apart from the pulling and hauling',
of those great lonely voyeurs
watching?one
looking, peering, beholding,
literature. At the end of the poem it is his evasive
who recur in American
'
to stop somewhere
for
solitariness which we feel as he promises
waiting
even
to
with
and
vanishes
close
off
his
then
without
poem
waiting
you'
the most

'
part he is out of the game',

to cover
to Emerson
could be extended
stop. Carlyle's warning
writers:
other American
'We find you a Speaker
indeed, but as it were
on the eternal mountain-tops
a Soliloquizer
vast solitudes where
in
only,

a full

men

and

their

contrast,

in a very dim remoteness..

.n By
starts and ends with an address to 'my Friend'

all lie hushed

affairs

'The Prelude'

of course).
(Coleridge,
are supposed
to be soliloquizers,
All Romantics
enraptured
by their
own potency, yet a good deal of European,
of
Romantic
English,
certainly
or involves them. These
to friends, or presupposes
is addressed
poetry
even if it had to be very select, just as they
cherished company,
Romantics
seem more
in women
interested
And
than their American
counterparts.
of this go beyond the relatively trivial question of whether
the implications
It involves
had more friends than the American.
the European Romantic
of their own role in relation to
conceptions
'The poet', says Wordsworth,
their societies.
'binds together by passion
the vast empire of human
and knowledge
says Shelley
poets,
society';
'are the unacknowledged
poet is
legislators of the world'. Wordsworth's
'
'
seems
a man speaking to men
more
contrast
the American Romantic
;by
a difference

in their

relative

to be a man
American

to himself. William
Cullen
speaking
woods and dreams of a future civilization

stands in the
Bryant
'
: [I] think I hear/The
'
shall fill these deserts
;

soon
of that advancing multitude/Which
'A
fresher
wind
his
but
poem ends
sweeps by, and breaks my dream,/And
Romantic
did not have to
I am in the wilderness
alone.' The European
were
dream of crowds and societies and civilizations,
he
they
everywhere
sound

as escapists,
;and despite the fixed image of the European Romantics
and concerned with the develop
of them were very politically minded
of society. Ever
since Rousseau
had shown that society was an

turned
most
ment

arbitrary man-made
man could reshape

structure,

the

idea had

been

to the demands

that
gaining
ground
and dictates of his

society according
structures might
struc
precede and ordain political
imagination. Mental
tures. The French Revolution
demonstrated
and
the
will
both
the ability
article
of men to actively reshape their society. In a rich and authoritative

on 'English Romanticism:
The Spirit of the Age'2 M. H. Abrams demon
strates conclusively
that for the English Romantics
the French Revolution
1

Emerson:
in Selections
Quoted
from Ralph Waldo
Whicher
(New York,
1957), p. 492.
2
ed. Northrop
In Romanticism
Reconsidered,
Frye

An

Organic

(New

York,

Anthology,
1963).

ed.

Stephen

American

and

European

Romanticism

97

was

the single most formative experience

of their lives. The great outburst
or anti-social
a similar release
and
energy provoked
encouraged
of personal creative energy. Millennial
hopes and apocalyptic
expectations
ran high. The advent of the New
on Earth was
or Paradise
Jerusalem

of social

to the
argued from the French Revolution
'
vast
and prophesied
in
the
liberating changes
empire
to
The poet's role was to offer the shaping vision,
constructs which would
for social
imaginative
produce
provide models
or not, they felt themselves
constructs. Acknowledged
to be, or potentially

English
prophesied.
Book of Revelation,
of human
society'.

Romantics

to be, the legislators of the world. Most European Romantics were implicitly
on the Lake
if not explicitly
;as Hazlitt
shrewdly commented
revolutionary
was
metre
abolished with regular government'.
Of course,
School,
'regular
a part of
set in, and it is precisely
the
Romantics
story
experienced
English
a loss of hope, gave up their expectations
of a specific historical
revolution
'
on what Abrams
in the near future, and concentrated
calls the apocalypse
of imagination'.
I quote one of his conclusions,
this shift of
concerning
to
'The
has
been
shifted
from
the
of
mankind
hope
emphasis.
history

disillusion
Professor

with

the French

Abrams's

Revolution

to show how

a single
from militant
external
action to an
individual,
act
and
the
New
the
Lamb
and
the
between
;
Jerusalem
marriage
imaginative
into a marriage
between
has been converted
subject and object, mind and
creates a new world out of the old world of sense.'
nature, which
the mind

of

the writing of the Transcendentalists,

and all those we may
to consider as Romantics,
did not have this revolutionary
social dimen
that the poet's imagin
sion. It was not rooted in the energizing
conviction
in one way or another, could vitally influence
and enhance
ative visions,
of life of their fellow men. Whitman
the conditions
certainly talks of the
In America,

wish

and has dreams of a harmonious

great 'en-masse'
here the strongest
is on 'the centripetal
emphasis
in
himself.
Between that centrifugal tendency
being

yet even
collectivity,
isolation of a human
into space Imentioned
the
being in himself,

isolation of the human

earlier, and this centripetal
American
artist spins his self-sustaining
web, with society usually excluded,
or
famous use of
the most
ignored,
unenvisaged.
Appropriately
enough
the image of the spider's web
in George Eliot's Middlemarch,

in nineteenth-century
English
where she uses it to illustrate

literature

is

the complex
'
and ramifying
of all human relationships,
that stealthy
inter-relatedness
of human lots'. What
in English
literature has here provided
convergence
an image of our unavoidable
in
in the lives of other people,
involvement
American
literature has typically been the image for the patterns
and
the American
artist both fills and preserves
strategies with which
radical solitude. The contrast has at least some parabolic aptness.
7 Am.

Stud.

his
2

98

Tony Tanner

IV
another
towards society and civilization,
dealing with attitudes
is
in
worth
is
which
the
written
poem
point
put clearly
making,
by Bryant
for the painter Thomas
Cole as the latter was about to leave for Europe.
While

First

wild and savage landscapes

Bryant reminds Cole of the wonderful
he has painted
indeed
which
he
loved), then he warns him
(and
of what he will see in Europe:

which

Fair
But

scenes

shall

greet

thee

Paths,

homes,

graves,

ruins,

thou

where

goest?fair,
of men,

trace

the

different?everywhere

from

lowest

the

glen

To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air?

Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight,
But keep that earlier, wilder image bright.
In Europe,
image'.

'everywhere
himself
Bryant
of America

landscape
felt to have

values

'We need

Europe.
his 'Essay

trace

of men':

in America,
of both,

is clearly appreciative
'
'
to retain that wilder image which

wants

particularly

the

'that wilder
but

he more

the as-yet uncivilized

can provide. The wildness
of this landscape was
not available
in
and provide
spiritual nourishment
while
in
of
tonic
the
Cole,
wildness',
says Thoreau,

on American

is
Scenery'
(1835), insists that 'the wilderness
to
who
those
of
God'.
prefer Europe,
place
Against
speak
'
Cole argues that the most
of American
characteristic
scenery
impressive
is its wildness',
while in 'civilized Europe the primitive
features of scenery
or modified'.
have long since been destroyed
He instances some of the
'
: in gazing on it we
of America,
for example Niagara
splendid wildnesses
feel as though a great void had been filled in our mind?our
conceptions

Yet

a fitting

expand?we
that when
he wanted

a part of what we behold'.

to recall
(It is amusing
was
so
saw
overwhelmed
that
he
Chateaubriand
first
Niagara
to throw himself
in, and indeed did nearly fall over the edge?
become

a pregnant Romantic
woods
it was in the wild American
anecdote. And
muse
to
a
an
me'.
Such
Chateaubriand
'unknown
new,
says
appeared
a
same
new
time
At
the
would
he felt,
wildness,
anyone
provoke
poetry.)
in America
of
then was aware that the rapid 'improvements
writing
were
of
the
cultivation'
wilderness'.
'the
sublimity
inevitably
replacing
was a course of visionary
Here was a difficulty. The American wilderness
exaltation.

the land was not scarred and stained by the

Europe,
'
of history : You see no ruined tower to tell of outrage?
But if American
landscape
temple to speak of ostentation.'

Unlike

intolerable

crimes

no gorgeous
was not suffused
'associations..
uncultivated

with

a sense

.of the present

scene, the mind's

of the past
and future'.
eye shall

it was

full of what

Cole

calls

in looking over the yet

see far into futurity. Where
the
'And

American

and

European

Romanticism

99

roams, the plough shall glisten ; on the gray crag shall rise temple and
'
Romantic.
tower...
for the American
There
is a problem
Blessedly,
are
no man-made
towers marring
but
the American
there
landscape;

wolf

and richness
happily there will soon be towers springing up. The wonder
will soon be
the wildness
is its wildness,
but wonderfully,
of America
vision of
put to the plough. As soon as Cole has outlined his optimistic
landscape, he goes on 'yet I
are
cannot but express my sorrow that the beauties
of such landscapes
axe
are
of
the
ravages
away?the
daily increasing?the
quickly passing
most noble scenes are made desolate
and oftentimes
with a wantonness
a civilized

living

society

in a domesticated

the European
scarcely credible in a civilized nation'. Where
look forward to an imagined
used to the 'traces of men', might
Romantic,
for human society, the American was very aware of increasing
millennium
of the precious
He might
wildness.
cling to images of
depredations
or indulge in pieties about manifest
idealized pastoral domesticity,
destiny
and barbarism

or the melting-pot,
but his strategy on the whole was to seek out that
those unpeopled
solitude,
prescribed
reality,
landscapes,
by Emerson?in
or in art. That
is why while European
Romanticism
characteristically
looks to the past and to the future,
out of time
out of time altogether,
means history, and history means
means

Romanticism
seeks to move
into some sort of space. For time
'
'
traces of men
and society, and society
American
and

not

image' but also the spaces it

only the loss of 'that wilder
to
the
limitless
freedom
and
sport in air.
provided
of the eighteenth
of
'The great discovery
is the phenomenon
century
renew
to
and certainly
the attempt
Poulet,1
says Georges
memory,'
contact

with

factor

in the

is a decisive
past and the past of society
of Europe we call Romantic.
Chateaubriand's
so many of the behaviour
for subsequent
patterns

individual

one's

literature

Ren?, who laid down

in this. Accounting
Romantic
is exemplary
for his
poets and heroes,
in the depths of the American woods, Ren? recalls his European
melancholy
'
past. In one early phrase he anticipates many subsequent works :Memories
of these childhood

adventures

word

when

is introduced

land awakens

still fill my soul with delight.' Another

key
how the sound of bells in his native

he describes

the happiest
associations
reveries into which we

in later

life.

'All is contained

in

are plunged
by the sound of our
is a word which appears
bells.' Revery, first eulogized by Rousseau,
in European
and Rene's
literature,
very frequently
nineteenth-century
sentiment
is echoed by Wordsworth
and Proust to mention
only the most
these

delicious

native

obvious.

To

frustration,
1

Studies

cope with his misery?caused

love?Ren?
incestuous
hopeless

in Human

Time,

by Georges

Poulet

by that favourite Romantic

has recourse to the Romantic

(Baltimore,

1956).
7-2

ioo

Tony Tanner

antidote

of travel.

countries
moon-lit

'

I went

of

strong
meditations:

and sat among

and productive

the ruins of Rome

and Greece

he favours
In particular
memory.'
nourishes
the rays of this star which

'Often, by
our reveries, I thought I saw the
seated in deep thought
Spirit of Memory
a
out
side.'
I
of
Romantic
need
what
wealth
by my
iconography
hardly point
is here assembled.
And when Ren? cries out 'Is it my fault, if I find
limits everywhere,
if what
and 'I lacked
is finite has no value for me?',
he articulates
of my existence',
left
after
the
death of his
archetypal
Europe
feelings. Having
not find
sister and come to the depths of the American
does
he
woods,
to
to
fill that emptiness
and indeed he is said
die shortly after
anything
not
A
his
his
recollection.
tale,
recollection,
completing
quite in tranquillity,
something

that could

fill

the emptiness

Romantic

one which
and content there was to his
that what meaning
suggests
life is all in the past. There
is nothing emptier than the present. Ren? also
as he sits
affords us an excellent picture of a typical European
Romantic
at the edge of the sea when his sister has immolated herself
in a convent

but

after confessing her illicit love. Ren? is awaiting his ship, knowing
that his
unfilled.
will always be incomplete,
As he describes
life henceforward
the contrast between
the convent behind him and the ocean in front, we
can see him hanging between
two worlds. On the one side there is the
of infinity, calm, refuge,
and
timeless
symbol,
knowledge,
on
tides
motionless
the
the
of
Time,
other,
unfaltering
unceasing
light;
of uncertain
and moving
the place of storm, of shipwreck,
navigation,
shift and sway with
in
the swell of the sea. And
beacon
lights which
place,

the

drawn to both,
between,
Ren?.
the European,

full

inhabitant

of neither,

is the unappeasable,

to fill his inner emptiness

it is true, does not find something
in past,
or
as
one
as
future. He perhaps qualifies
of those who,
present
Georges
out of the past and
Poulet puts it, in an effort to create their identities
present or future time, risk a 'double tearing of the self by finally feeling
Ren?,

themselves
Poulet

cut off from both.

But

if nearly all Romantics

have felt what
some of them
of the present moment',
amore lasting self out of remembrance.

calls 'the infinite deficiency

to reconstitute
indeed managed
to
be one of the major defences
For memory
against the disinte
proved
of
the
self
and
endless
its
into
unrelated
diffusion
innumerable
gration
'
moments.
As Poulet puts it, all at once the mind
is able to feel an entire
train of its
itself. This past, together with the whole
past reborn within
have

and endows
it with a life that is not
surges up in the moment
a
mere
creature
of
of
intermittent
Instead
and discrete
momentary.'
being
re
the
this
sensations,
writer,
through
recapturing,
remembering,
own
It
of
the
discovers
the
his
duration.
miracle
of
past,
experiencing
emotions,

American

and

role of memory
of an awareness

on any sketch of the

this deliberate
cultivation

to embark

be out of place and unnecessary

in European Romanticism

would

101

Romanticism

European

; but

and a sense both

of society's historical past and the past

with one of his main
the
Romantic
European
provided
and activities. Let Wordsworth
suffice as an obvious example:

of the individual
themes

a sense

But

Of what had been here done, and suffer'd here

Through ages, and was doing, suffering, still
Weigh'd with me, could support the test of thought,
Was like the enduring majesty and power
Of independent nature ; and not seldom
Even

individual

remembrances,

By working on the Shapes before my eyes,

Became like vital functions of the soul ;
.

yj

and

win,

(Prelude,

781-9)

again:

in our

are

There

Which

existence

of

spots
. .

whence.

Virtue,

vivifying

time,

retain

with distinct pre-eminence

our minds
Are

and

nourished

invisibly

repair'd...

{Prelude, xi, 258-65)

In the rediscovery
of the Middle
of poets like Shelley
Hellenism
as

as

retrospective

A
was

it was

'But why
this

should
corpse

revolutionary.

from Emerson

few quotations
the American

about

or in the
Ages in German Romanticism,
was
and Byron, European
Romanticism

Romantic's
you

of

your

keep

will

attitude
head

your

memory...

'

suggest how radically different

and the past.
towards memory
over your shoulder? Why
drag
'In

nature

every

is new

moment

the past is swallowed

and forgotten;
the coming only is sacred';
'how
we
until
walk
into
onward
the
landscape...
by
might
opening
easily
of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory
degrees the recollection
and we are led in triumph by
obliterated
by the tyranny of the present,
nature.'

Emerson

described

himself

as 'an endless

seeker with

no Past

at

he said of him 'he lived

my back', and in his funeral address on Thoreau
for the day, not cumbered
This antipathy
his
and mortified
memory'.
by
to memory,
to
the resolute rejection of the past, is of course connected
that old world whose
America's
national growth. For the past was Europe,
influence America had to escape if it was to discover
itself. It is part of the
and held back by the inertia of the
genius not to be dominated
to
full
of infinite possibilities,
that
the
is
still
feel
future
that, as
past,
'
Stevens put it, the vegetation
still abounds with forms n?new
forms, not

American

'Lions
1955),

in Sweden',
124-5.

PP.

Collected

Poems

of Wallace

Stevens,

(New

York,

1954;

London,

102

Tony Tanner

seems
this denial of memory
copies of the old forms of the past. However,
to rob most American writers of any experience
of duration. Henry Miller
form of the many American
is only an extreme
Romantic
and
writers,
life as an unrelated
series of spasmodic
otherwise, who seem to experience
'There is nothing
'nows'.
else than now,' says the Hemingway
hero to
can
a
The
himself.
real load of
past
certainly be every kind of burden,
and repression.
But to lack any sense of the past can be im
a
to
and
live
in
it
pure present can have its terrors. Certainly
poverishing,
must
lead to a much
less stable sense of self. As I suggested
the
earlier,
tendency of certain American writers to dilate into the space around them,
nightmare

even

to dissolve
into their environment,
is related to this flight from the
..
a
out
into time?.
scared you all
is
of
which
time.
'What
past
flight
COME OUT OF TIME AND INTO SPACE. FOREVER. THERE IS NO THING TO
fear.

is no

There

in

thing

space.' William

message
Burrough's
held
intermittently

to

sums up a position
Ginsberg
effectively
by
American writers over the last hundred years. Of course if the American
to vanish out of time and into space he would not write
artist did manage

Allen

as Burroughs
First, because,
points out, there is no thing in
anything.
than you can
space and you cannot have art without
things any more
have consciousness
without
it
is doubtful
because
things.
Secondly,
cut
the pure present, a series of spatial moments
off from
whether
utterly
at
to
all.
Needless
Whitman
the past, can mean
say, Emerson,
anything
in this way,
and even Burroughs
is still
But Emerson
and Whitman,
for example,
get very repetitive;
at times it seems as if Emerson's
as if
prose loses inner direction,

and Thoreau
writing.
indeed

did

not

vanish

at least had got out of time and into space where they are sporting
novelist had to turn to the past before he could
in air. And the American

the words

and significance. Hawthorne

sitting
those
old papers is the precise image
through
past which will
looking for some sort of American

find any subjects productive

in the customs house sifting
of the American

artist

the dynamic
provide
back for the material
and ends with

of drama

art. Mark

for his

Twain

and Melville

both

looked

of their greatest works, while James's fiction begins

sense of the present
of an American
into

the introduction

territories
drenched
with
the past. Today,
young American
European
are
to
use the figure of
Ed
Dorn
like
and
isolate
poets
trying
imaginatively
true
his
culture?the
historic past of America.
the Indian and
For good or bad the American
Romantic writers do not have that sense
the past which was so important for their European
Of
counterparts.
a
devoid
of
of
faced
'traces
course, they
clean, 'dazzling',
men';
landscape
alien in a way that the European
but humanly
speaking empty?potentially
of

landscape,

so saturated

with

history,

legend, myth,

could never

be. This

American

and

European

Romanticism

103

partially explains why the European writer can seem to be more

intimate with his landscape than the American with his, why it
genuinely
offers him so much in the way of suggestions,
and consolations,
associations,
while the American
'that wilder
landscape,
image', tends to hold off from
as pure obdurate
its watcher
fact. Of course there is a whole
tradition
perhaps

nature
in American
Romantic
poetry.
writing
celebrating
Miles
has
it
in
described
her
Eras
Modes
in English
excellent
and
Josephine
notes that the whole vocabulary
but she also, most
Poetry,
interestingly,
of

sublime

of

subtle

'psychological
was
Romantics,
English
sense
to
my
corresponds

discriminations'

which

so vast as to be almost

something
of psychological
man

between

Romantic

intimacy with
and

writing.

actual

man,

was

or developed
adopted
that the American
Romantic
not

man

For

beyond him;
his environment,
and

Emerson,
could
world

surrounding
he would
from which

nature,

which

developed
by the
in America.
This
feels nature

he does not
that sense
marks

feel that sort

of reciprocities

much

despite his celebratory

'an Iceland
often seem

to be

European

the
euphoria,
of negations'

of 'infinitude'.
escape into his visions
habitually
a
uses
Stevens
of
Wallace
the
barren
image
Similarly
wintry
landscape to
his sense of a world which
and
has not been supplemented
describe
illuminated
The

by some imaginary construct

or unmodified
unmediated
by

invented

by

the poet himself.

is perhaps a cold

world
Imagination
seems to
But whereas
and empty place for most Romantics.
the European
from
draw help from history,
friends
legend, memory,
(and lovers), from
visions of future societies, from the landscape itself, as he strives to fill that
seems to be thrown back much more
the American
Romantic
emptiness,

on his own resources, the devices and designs of his own style. To consider
toWallace
American Romantic
literature from Emerson
Stevens in this light
is to realize anew how very remarkable and inventive those resources are.
That

image of the spider, drawing the filament out of himself

an illuminating
his private web, provides
analogy for the
of the American
writer. His delight
secretion,
(or is it
own
to
is
his
verbal
put together
unique
desperation?)

recurrent

alone, weaving
and
situation,
sometimes

his

and in this activity, the ingredients which

structure;
go into the making
are perhaps
than the fact of the
less important
of each piece of filament
sustains
in the real and imagined spaces of
web
the writer
itself which
on all
Romantic
America.
The visions of the European
interpenetrated
sides with
of

their natural
that

and human
seems

to me

surroundings.
to be missing

It is just this feeling

in the work of the

interp?n?tration
If we seek him out we are most
American
Romantic.
likely to find him
as Emily Dickinson
found her spider?dancing
softly to himself, unwinding
'
his coil of Pearl. The wonder
is what
continents
of light' he thus manages
to summon

into being.