The Love Song of Stephen Spender

It is agreed by most of the people I know that Joseph Conrad was a bad writer, just as it is agreed that T. S. Eliot is a good writer. If I knew that by grinding Mr. Eliot into a fine dry powder and sprinkling that powder over Mr. Conrad's grave Mr. Conrad would shortly appear, looking very annoyed at the forced return, and commence writing, I would leave for London early tomorrow with a sausage grinder. Ernest Hemingway   The Transatlantic Review

ASHARP SENSE of betrayal brought Hemingway to write so cynically of his compatriot expatriot Eliot shortly after the publication of The Waste Land in 1922. But like Hemingway, young American writers in Europe and at home were stunned by the reactionary sentiments being voiced by this pioneer poet--a man who, along with Ezra Pound, had created a new sense of the past as a vital part of the present and future, no longer as a static, restrictive force. Now, with his apocalyptic view of the decline of western civilization, Eliot seemed to argue the superiority of the past (and the European past, at that) over the future.

The crisis of Eliot's apparent change of heart came at a time when American writers were chiefly interested in an independent literary genre, free from the shackles of European tradition that seemed to be undermining its development. Having gone to Europe to search for the roots of an American literary tradition, young idealists resented Eliot's claim that their country, too, was now a part of the general ruination of the West. Most of all, they felt betrayed at the height of their struggle to break away.

In his recently published study of Anglo-American relations--"for the most part, literary" --over the past century, Stephen Spender sees the fundamental relationship as an ambivalent one. From one side, the forces of a common language and literary tradition draw the American instinctively across the Atlantic. Yet he is pulled in the opposite direction by differences that began to develop even before the Revolution and were later sharpened by America's growth and by massive immigration. "Here," claims Spender, "were the horns of the dilemma: the combination of political independence and cultural colonization." Henry James, living in Europe and trying to create a balanced Anglo-American style of writing, was, in ambition, eons away from Emerson or Whitman. To some, Europe seemed to stifle America's literary development; to others, it was the center of western spiritual values, wherein lay the roots of a new American literary tradition.

Mustering a great deal of valid empirical evidence, and some less valid speculation, Spender explains the movement which, over the past century, led America to eclipse England in its long-held position of literary dominance. What Emerson saw as England's "immense advantage" --that American thoughts really belonged to Europeans--is now America's. England now finds itself being drawn to America for its "contemporary energy," says Spender, in the same way that Americans were drawn to England by the force of the past. Factors that have affected the slow changeover of roles include the Americanization of European literature begun notably by James, Eliot and Pound, the loss of literary identity England suffered between the wars, and the effects upon literature of the decline of each culture over the past few decades. Spender examines literary influences and changes almost in a vacuum, with surprisingly little reference to the parallel economic, industrial and social transitions taking place in each country. Perhaps his evasion of this material is a blessing, for when he attempts to analyze American society, he inevitably stumbles. In his criticism of American vulgarity--which he seems to find epitomized in the phenomenon of ubiquitous pink bubble gum--he succumbs to snobbish cultural comparisons not unlike those indulged in by early twentieth century American Anglophiles. Such generalizing is absurd in a huge and diversified society.

Worse than this, however, are a few dubious conclusions about American politics. Spender marvels at the communication that Americans enjoy with even the highest figures in government:

Where else, again, would a president, without his being in the least deterred from his policy of invasion and mass bombing in Southeast Asia, yet feel so distressed at the misunderstanding of him by young protestors that, like some Arabian nights caliph wandering at night through the streets of his own capital, and mingling with the common people, he would get up hours before dawn, leave the White House, and talk to some of the student demonstrators?

NEVERTHELESS, on his own ground, there are few if any people as highly qualified as Spender to tackle the mammoth undertaking of his subject matter. Although an Englishman to the core, Spender's contact with the American literary scene has been extensive. As a visiting professor and lecturer on numerous American campuses, and as British editor for fourteen years on the Anglo-American literary magazine Encounter, Spender has been more than a mere witness to American literary activity for almost half a century. Along with W. H. Auden, C. Day Lewis and Louis MacNeice, he was part of the 'thirties foursome that brought radical changes to a somewhat stagnating English literary style and consciousness. He is known internationally not only for his poetry but for numerous critical works, the most famous of which is The Destructive Element.

By far the most insightful, informative section of Love-Hate Relations is a section entitled "Ebb Tide in England," covering English poets and the war. Spender sees World War I as a major turning point in the shifting of "the immense advantage." Americans and English alike experienced a loss of faith in the old world. Strangely enough, the American attitude towards Europe in the post-war period seems to have been strongly influenced by a detached, outsider's view of the fighting, seen through ambulance windshields by drivers like E. E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, Dashiell Hammett and Malcolm Cowley:

They had immersed themselves in their European experience, but in their role of rescuers they could not, least of all in France, become a part of the European culture. They remained always "Les Americans." They had been Europe at a time when it was scarcely possible to accept it as a superior civilization. Instead of seeing the Paris of Henry James they saw a city where there were few literary and artistic geniuses, ordinary decent hard-up people, cafes and brothels.

In England, something had been lost by the war. While Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence attempted to find the essence of an England that was fearfully "contemplating its own past and conscious of its threatened nature," Spender himself was fighting a political and intellectual conservatism that had bred a neurotic fear of change, fiercely inhibiting literary progress.

Where Spender is in his element, Love-Hate Relations is a fascinating, highly readable study of considerable depth. There may be times when he oversimplifies for no other reason than the sake of style. As a result, some superficially slick, at first appealing statements turn out, upon closer examination, to hold very little truth. "The Miller of Tropic of Cancer is a Brooklyn Whitman gone to Paris" --on the surface it is an interesting statement; but beyond that, it seems more facetious than true. If Spender falls into this here, it certainly is not the first time; nor does it lower the merit of the book as a whole. At a time when the value of cross-cultural generalizing is anything but certain, Spender risks his credibility in order to create a coherent picture of a highly complex relationship. In spite of the perils of such an occupation, he emerges with nothing worse than minor cuts and scrapes. And it was worth the risk.