Guest guest Posted December 19, 2005 Report Share Posted December 19, 2005 A Mon, 19 Dec 2005 07:02:50 -0800 Reflections in the Evening Land: The celebrated critic Harold Bloom, despairing of contemporary America In September, the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying at Zion Church in Whistler, Alabama: " The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time if we just wait. " >> Reflections in the Evening Land >> >> The celebrated critic Harold Bloom, despairing of contemporary America, turns to his bookshelves to understand the trajectory of his country >> >> Harold Bloom >> Guardian (UK) >> Saturday December 17, 2005 >> http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,6000,1669276,00.html >> >> Huey Long, known as " the Kingfish, " dominated the >> state of Louisiana from 1928 until his >> assassination in 1935, at the age of 42. >> Simultaneously governor and a United States >> senator, the canny Kingfish uttered a prophecy >> that haunts me in this late summer of 2005, 70 >> years after his violent end: " Of course we will >> have fascism in America but we will call it democracy! " >> >> I reflected on Huey Long (always mediated for me >> by his portrait as Willie Stark in Robert Penn >> Warren's novel, All the King's Men) recently, >> when I listened to President George W Bush >> addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Salt >> Lake City, Utah. I was thus benefited by Rupert >> Murdoch's Fox TV channel, which is the voice of >> Bushian crusading democracy, very much of the >> Kingfish's variety. Even as Bush extolled his >> Iraq adventure, his regime daily fuses more >> tightly together elements of oligarchy, plutocracy, and theocracy. >> >> At the age of 75, I wonder if the Democratic >> party ever again will hold the presidency or >> control the Congress in my lifetime. I am not >> sanguine, because our rulers have demonstrated >> their prowess in Florida (twice) and in Ohio at >> shaping voting procedures, and they control the >> Supreme Court. The economist-journalist Paul >> Krugman recently observed that the Republicans >> dare not allow themselves to lose either Congress >> or the White House, because subsequent >> investigations could disclose dark matters >> indeed. Krugman did not specify, but among the >> profiteers of our Iraq crusade are big oil (House >> of Bush/House of Saud), Halliburton (the >> vice-president), Bechtel (a nest of mighty Republicans) and so forth. >> >> All of this is extraordinarily blatant, yet the >> American people seem benumbed, unable to read, >> think, or remember, and thus fit subjects for a >> president who shares their limitations. A grumpy >> old Democrat, I observe to my friends that our >> emperor is himself the best argument for >> intelligent design, the current theocratic >> substitute for what used to be called >> creationism. Sigmund Freud might be chagrined to >> discover that he is forgotten, while the satan of >> America is now Charles Darwin. President Bush, >> who says that Jesus is his " favourite >> philosopher " , recently decreed in regard to >> intelligent design and evolution: " Both sides ought to be properly taught. " >> >> I am a teacher by profession, about to begin my >> 51st year at Yale, where frequently my subject is >> American writers. Without any particular >> competence in politics, I assert no special >> insight in regard to the American malaise. But I >> am a student of what I have learned to call the >> American Religion, which has little in common >> with European Christianity. There is now a parody >> of the American Jesus, a kind of Republican CEO >> who disapproves of taxes, and who has widened the >> needle's eye so that camels and the wealthy pass >> readily into the Kingdom of Heaven. We have also >> an American holy spirit, the comforter of our >> burgeoning poor, who don't bother to vote. The >> American trinity pragmatically is completed by an >> imperial warrior God, trampling with shock and awe. >> >> These days I reread the writers who best define >> America: Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, >> Mark Twain, Faulkner, among others. Searching >> them, I seek to find what could suffice to >> explain what seems our national >> self-destructiveness. DH Lawrence, in his Studies >> in Classic American Literature (1923), wrote what >> seems to me still the most illuminating criticism >> of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Of the two, >> Melville provoked no ambivalence in Lawrence. But >> Whitman transformed Lawrence's poetry, and >> Lawrence himself, from at least 1917 on. >> Replacing Thomas Hardy as prime precursor, >> Whitman spoke directly to Lawrence's vitalism, >> immediacy, and barely evaded homoeroticism. On a >> much smaller scale, Whitman earlier had a similar >> impact on Gerard Manley Hopkins. Lawrence, >> frequently furious at Whitman, as one might be >> with an overwhelming father, a King Lear of >> poetry, accurately insisted that the Americans >> were not worthy of their Whitman. More than ever, >> they are not, since the Jacksonian democracy that >> both Whitman and Melville celebrated is dying in our Evening Land. >> >> What defines America? " Democracy " is a ruined >> word, because of its misuse in the American >> political rhetoric of our moment. If Hamlet and >> Don Quixote, between them, define the European >> self, then Captain Ahab and " Walt Whitman " (the >> persona, not the man) suggest a very different >> self from the European. Ahab is Shakespearean, >> Miltonic, even Byronic-Shelleyan, but his >> monomaniacal quest is his own, and reacts against >> the Emersonian self, just as Melville's beloved >> Hawthorne recoiled also. Whitman, a more positive >> Emersonian, affirms what the Sage of Concord >> called self-reliance, the authentic American >> religion rather than its Bushian parodies. Though >> he possesses a Yale BA and honorary doctorate, >> our president is semi-literate at best. He once >> boasted of never having read a book through, even >> at Yale. Henry James was affronted when he met >> President Theodore Roosevelt; what could he have made of George W Bush? >> >> Having just reread James's The American Scene >> (1907), I amuse myself, rather grimly, by >> imagining the master of the American novel >> touring the United States in 2005, exactly a >> century after his return visit to his homeland. >> Like TS Eliot in the next generation, James was >> far more at home in London than in America, yet >> both retained an idiom scarcely English. They >> each eventually became British subjects, graced >> by the Order of Merit, but Whitman went on >> haunting them, more covertly in Eliot's case. The >> Waste Land initially was an elegy for Jean >> Verdenal, who had been to Eliot what Rupert >> Brooke was to Henry James. Whitman's " Lilacs " >> elegy for Lincoln became James's favourite poem, >> and it deeply contaminates The Waste Land. >> >> I am not suggesting that the American aesthetic >> self is necessarily homoerotic: Emerson, >> Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Faulkner, Robert Frost >> after all are as representative as are Melville, >> Whitman and Henry James. Nor does any American >> fictive self challenge Hamlet as an ultimate >> abyss of inwardness. Yet Emerson bet the American >> house (as it were) on self-reliance, which is a >> doctrine of solitude. Whitman, as person and as >> poetic mask, like his lilacs, bloomed into a >> singularity that cared intensely both about the >> self and others, but Emersonian consciousness all >> too frequently can flower, Hamlet-like, into an >> individuality indifferent both to the self and to >> others. The United States since Emerson has been >> divided between what he called the " party of >> hope " and the " party of memory " . Our >> intellectuals of the left and of the right both claim Emerson as ancestor. >> >> In 2005, what is self-reliance? I can recognise >> three prime stigmata of the American religion: >> spiritual freedom is solitude, while the soul's >> encounter with the divine (Jesus, the Paraclete, >> the Father) is direct and personal, and, most >> crucially, what is best and oldest in the >> American religionist goes back to a >> time-before-time, and so is part or particle of >> God. Every second year, the Gallup pollsters >> survey religion in the United States, and report >> that 93% of us believe in God, while 89% are >> certain that God loves him or her on a personal >> basis. And 45% of us insist that Earth was >> created precisely as described in Genesis and is >> only about 9,000 or fewer years old. The actual >> figure is 4.5 billion years, and some dinosaur >> fossils are dated as 190 million years back. >> Perhaps the intelligent designers, led by George >> W Bush, will yet give us a dinosaur Gospel, >> though I doubt it, as they, and he, dwell within >> a bubble that education cannot invade. >> >> Contemporary America is too dangerous to be >> laughed away, and I turn to its most powerful >> writers in order to see if we remain coherent >> enough for imaginative comprehension. Lawrence >> was right; Whitman at his very best can sustain >> momentary comparison with Dante and Shakespeare. >> Most of what follows will be founded on Whitman, >> the most American of writers, but first I turn >> again to Moby-Dick, the national epic of >> self-destructiveness that almost rivals Leaves of >> Grass, which is too large and subtle to be judged >> in terms of self-preservation or apocalyptic destructiveness. >> >> Some of my friends and students suggest that Iraq >> is President Bush's white whale, but our leader >> is absurdly far from Captain Ahab's aesthetic >> dignity. The valid analogue is the Pequod; as >> Lawrence says: " America! Then such a crew. >> Renegades, castaways, cannibals, Ishmael, >> Quakers, " and South Sea Islanders, Native >> Americans, Africans, Parsees, Manxmen, what you >> will. One thinks of our tens of thousands of >> mercenaries in Iraq, called " security employees " >> or " contractors " . They mix former American >> Special Forces, Gurkhas, Boers, Croatians, >> whoever is qualified and available. What they >> lack is Captain Ahab, who could give them a metaphysical dimension. >> >> Ahab carries himself and all his crew (except >> Ishmael) to triumphant catastrophe, while >> Moby-Dick swims away, being as indestructible as >> the Book of Job's Leviathan. The obsessed >> captain's motive ostensibly is revenge, since >> earlier he was maimed by the white whale, but his >> truer desire is to strike through the universe's >> mask, in order to prove that while the visible >> world might seem to have been formed in love, the >> invisible spheres were made in fright. God's >> rhetorical question to Job: " Can'st thou draw out >> Leviathan with a hook? " is answered by Ahab's: >> " I'd strike the sun if it insulted me! " The >> driving force of the Bushian-Blairians is greed, >> but the undersong of their Iraq adventure is >> something closer to Iago's pyromania. Our leader, and yours, are firebugs. >> >> One rightly expects Whitman to explain our >> Evening Land to us, because his imagination is >> America's. A Free-Soiler, he opposed the Mexican >> war, as Emerson did. Do not our two Iraq >> invasions increasingly resemble the Mexican and >> Spanish-American conflicts? Donald Rumsfeld >> speaks of permanent American bases in Iraq, >> presumably to protect oil wells. President Bush's >> approval rating was recently down to 38%, but I >> fear that this popular reaction has more to do >> with the high price of petrol than with any outrage at our Iraq crusade. >> >> What has happened to the American imagination if >> we have become a parody of the Roman empire? I >> recall going to bed early on election night in >> November 2004, though friends kept phoning with >> the hopeful news that there appeared to be some >> three million additional voters. Turning the >> phone off, I gloomily prophesied that these were >> three million Evangelicals, which indeed was the case. >> >> Our politics began to be contaminated by >> theocratic zealots with the Reagan revelation, >> when southern Baptists, Mormons, Pentecostals, >> and Adventists surged into the Republican party. >> The alliance between Wall Street and the >> Christian right is an old one, but has become >> explicit only in the past quarter century. What >> was called the counter-culture of the late 1960s >> and 70s provoked the reaction of the 80s, which >> is ongoing. This is all obvious enough, but >> becomes subtler in the context of the religiosity >> of the country, which truly divides us into two >> nations. Sometimes I find myself wondering if the >> south belatedly has won the civil war, more than >> a century after its supposed defeat. The leaders >> of the Republican party are southern; even the >> Bushes, despite their Yale and Connecticut >> tradition, were careful to become Texans and >> Floridians. Politics, in the United States, >> perhaps never again can be separated from >> religion. When so many vote against their own >> palpable economic interests, and choose " values " >> instead, then an American malaise has replaced the American dream. >> >> Whitman, still undervalued as a poet, in relation >> to his astonishing aesthetic power, remains the >> permanent prophet of our party of hope. That >> seems ironic in many ways, since the crucial >> event of Whitman's life was our civil war, in >> which a total of 625,000 men were slain, counting >> both sides. In Britain, the " great war " is the >> first world war, because nearly an entire >> generation of young men died. The United States >> remains haunted by the civil war, the central >> event in the life of the nation since the >> Declaration of Independence. David S Reynolds, >> the most informed of Whitman's biographers, >> usefully demonstrates that Whitman's poetry, from >> 1855-60, was designed to help hold the Union >> together. After the sunset glory of " When Lilacs >> Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd " , the 1865 elegy >> overtly for Abraham Lincoln, and inwardly for >> Whitman's poetic self-identity, something burned >> out in the bard of Leaves of Grass. Day after >> day, for several years, he had exhausted himself, >> in the military hospitals of Washington DC, >> dressing wounds, reading to, and writing letters >> for, the ill and maimed, comforting the dying. >> The extraordinary vitalism and immediacy departed >> from his poetry. It is as though he had >> sacrificed his own imagination on the altar of >> those martyred, like Lincoln, in the fused cause of union and emancipation. >> >> Whitman died in 1892, a time of American politics >> as corrupt as this, if a touch less blatant than >> the era of Bushian theocracy. But there was a >> curious split in the poet of Leaves of Grass, >> between what he called the soul, and his " real >> me " or " me myself " , an entity distinct from his >> persona, " Walt Whitman, one of the roughs, an American " : >> >> " I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, >> And you must not be abased to the other. " >> >> The rough Walt is the " I " here, and has been >> created to mediate between his character or soul, >> and his real me or personality. I fear that this >> is permanently American, the abyss between >> character and personality. Doubtless, this can be >> a universal phenomenon: one thinks of Nietzsche >> and of WB Yeats. And yet mutual abasement between >> soul and self destroys any individual's >> coherence. My fellow citizens who vote for >> " values " , against their own needs, manifest something of the same dilemma. >> >> As the persona " Walt Whitman " melted away in the >> furnace of national affliction in the civil war, >> it was replaced by a less capable persona, " the >> Good Grey Poet " . No moral rebirth kindled postwar >> America; instead Whitman witnessed the >> extraordinary corruption of President US Grant's >> administration, which is the paradigm emulated by >> so many Republican presidencies, including what we suffer at this moment. >> >> Whitman himself became less than coherent in his >> long decline, from 1866 to 1892. He did not ice >> over, like the later Wordsworth, but his >> prophetic stance ebbed away. Lost, he ceased to >> be an Emersonian, and rather weirdly attempted to >> become a Hegelian! In " The Evening Land " , an >> extraordinary poem of early 1922, DH Lawrence >> anticipated his long-delayed sojourn in America, >> which began only in September of that year, when >> he reached Taos, New Mexico. He had hoped to >> visit the United States in February 1917, but >> England denied him a passport. Lawrence's poem is >> a kind of Whitmanian love-hymn to America, but is >> even more ambivalent than the chapter on Whitman >> in Studies in Classic American Literature. >> >> " Are you the grave of our day? " Lawrence asks, >> and begs America to cajole his soul, even as he >> admits how much he fears the Evening Land: >> >> " Your more-than-European idealism, >> Like a be-aureoled bleached skeleton hovering >> Its cage-ribs in the social heaven, beneficent. " >> >> This rather ghastly vision is not inappropriate >> to our moment, nor is Lawrence's bitter conclusion: >> >> " 'These States!' as Whitman said, >> Whatever he meant. " >> >> What Whitman meant (as Lawrence knew) was that >> the United States itself was to be the greatest >> of poems. But with that grand assertion, I find >> myself so overwhelmed by an uncomfortable sense >> of irony, that I cease these reflections. Shelley >> wore a ring, on which was inscribed the motto: >> " The good time will come. " In September, the US >> secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was quoted as >> saying at Zion Church in Whistler, Alabama: " The >> Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time if we just wait. " >> >> © Harold Bloom 2005 >> >> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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