STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE
BY
D. H. LAWRENCE
NEW YORK
THOMAS SELTZER
1923
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
I. THE SPIRIT OF PLACE
II. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
III. HECTOR ST. JOHN DE CRÈVECŒUR
IV. FENIMORE COOPER'S WHITE NOVELS
V. FENIMORE COOPER'S LEATHERSTOCKING NOVELS
VI. EDGAR ALLAN POE
VII. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND "THE SCARLET LETTER"
VIII. HAWTHORNE'S "BLITHEDALE ROMANCE"
IX. DANA'S "TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST"
X. HERMAN MELVILLE'S "TYPEE" AND "OMOO"
XI. HERMAN MELVILLE'S "MOBY DICK"
XII. WHITMAN
FOREWORD
Listen to the States asserting: "The hour has struck! Americans shall beAmerican. The U.S.A. is now grown up artistically. It is time we ceasedto hang on to the skirts of Europe, or to behave like schoolboys letloose from European schoolmasters—"
All right, Americans, let's see you set about it. Go on then, let theprecious cat out of the bag. If you're sure he's in.
Et interrogatum ab omnibus:
"Ubi est ille Toad-in-the-Hole?"
Et iteratum est ab omnibus:
"Non est inventus!"
Is he or isn't he inventus?
If he is, of course, he must be somewhere inside you, Oh American. Nogood chasing him over all the old continents, of course. But equally nogood asserting him merely. Where is this new bird called the trueAmerican? Show us the homunculus of the new era. Go on, show us him.Because all that is visible to the naked European eye, in America, is asort of recreant European. We want to see this missing link of the nextera.
Well, we still don't get him. So the only thing to do is to have a lookfor him under the American bushes. The old American literature, to startwith.
"The old American literature! Franklin, Cooper, Hawthorne&Co.? Allthat mass of words! all so unreal!" cries the live American.
Heaven knows what we mean by reality. Telephone, tinned meat, CharlieChaplin, water-taps, and World-Salvation, presumably. Some insisting onthe plumbing, and some on saving the world: these being the two greatAmerican specialties. Why not? Only, what about the young homunculus ofthe new era, meanwhile? You can't save yourself before you are born.
Look at me trying to be midwife to the unborn homunculus!
Two bodies of modern literature seem to me to have come to a real verge:the Russian and the American. Let us leave aside the more brittle bitsof French or Marinetti or Irish production, which are perhaps over theverge. Russian and American. And by American I do not mean Sherwood