Why a National Literature Cannot Flourish in the United States of North America

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CHAPTER I.

THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES IS NOT A NEW PEOPLE.

Many americans, and a few foreigners, think that America is yet too young a country for possessing a National Literature. If they intend to say, that the number of classical writers of America, cannot yet compete with the number of classical writers of any old country, of course, it cannot be otherwise. But, that the living present americans cannot have an equal number of writers, as the living old nations, for no other reason, but because this nation is a new one, is what I deny.

Were America a nation of indians beginning now their civilization, independently of any other already civilized nation, to reproach them because they have not a competent literature as well as the old civilized nations, it would be the same as to reproach the times of Abram, because they were not civilized as the present most civilized nations. Such is not the case with the United States of America. The american soil is new; but, the american people is not younger than the european people. This country is composed of colonies from the old continent, who came here with the very laws, religions, learning, languages, prejudices, arts, and literature of the old continent. The classical writers of their mother countries belong to the american also: and to say that the present living american people cannot have a classical literature as well as the present living writers of their mother country, because it is too young a people, it would be the same as to say, that the language of the United States is not an english language.

Besides, if it is a soil fit to expel old prejudices, it is this new soil, now in possession of an old people as we stand in this country. Some writers, traveling through this country, supposed the americans a people of facts only, from whom fine arts, poetry, or literature cannot be expected; as if fine arts, poetry, and literature were not things of fact, as laws, government, or mechanical works. Man is an imitating being: honor an american Tasso, or an american Michæl Angelo, and instead of having too many, who aspire the presidency of the United States, you will have your Tassos, and your Michæl Angelos. That America has her artists, poets, and literati as well as England, France, Germany, or Italy, I have no doubt: but, if the genius does not flourish here as it does among the old nations, my purpose is now to demonstrate it.

I say it again; were the people encouraged to look back to standards of classical literature, so rich in all the languages of the old continent, this glorious, ambitious country, soon would have her Johnsons, her Rousseaus, her Dantes, her Machiavellis. But, the little which the americans read now, are but light works from the english press, here reprinted; contentions of parties, called politics; and american periodicals, praising each other: and these periodicals, having now the consideration of oracles in literature, keep under a contemptible silence many american geniuses, who were too independent to bend under the ruling will of any party. However, there are daily papers, as well as periodicals of my highest esteem: I mean only to say, here; monopoly can be found in every trade; and fashion, not only ruins the feet of chinese, and the shape of american ladies; fashion ruins also a National Literature.

There is, at present, in the United States of America, a fashionable, unwholsome, immoral practice of writing, which, although the ancients had not always been free of reproach, now a days, is rather too much frequented. I mean a kind of personal ridiculing, and retaliating each other’s national foible, unmercifully. If an english comes here, and finds faults with us, as no nation can be yet without faults, it is our duty to thank the writer, and correct ourselves. If the imputation is false, truth speaks for itself. But, to go into England with a spirit of revenge by retaliating with ostentation, pleasure, and self conceit, the faults which we find among that nation, faults which we have not, we must then have forgotten the very moral principle required to literature. He, or she who does not know charity, the former would do better to plant potatoes; and the latter to attend her family kitchen, or darn her husband’s stockings....