It's a Fine Line in America

Mary Austin's The American Rhythm came in yesterday. I've only had time to read to page 17. Here's one passage of note:

So is all art shaped on systems of oppositions, balance without parity. What we mean by composition in art is simply right and left handedness, one hand and a pot hook. To a three-handed race all our pictures would lack balance, all our rhythms leave the sense suspended.

Thus if we go back far enough into the origin of simple poetic rhythm, we find the gesture by which In the Days-of-the-New the earth was conquered. If we look for the resolution of intricacies of rhythm called classic, we find it in the dance, and if we go back in the history of the dance we find the pattern by which men and women, friends and foes, welded themselves into societies and became reconciled to the Allness. Here we find economy of stress giving rise to preferred accents, and social ritual establishing the tradition of sequence.

Given a new earth to live on, new attacks on the mastery of time and space, and a whole new scale of motor impulses is built into the subconscious structure of the individual. Given a new experiential adaptation of social mechanisms, and all the emotive and cognitive processes set themselves to its tune. Given, as happened in the United States, an emotional kick away from the old habits of work and society, and a new rhythmic basis of poetic expression is not only to be looked for, but it is to be welcomed as indubitable evidence of the extent to which the American experience has "taken," among the widely varying racial strains that make up its people. (pp 8-9)

It's always tempting to look at ourselves through this Adamic interpretation. It's often dangerous too. But there is much truth in the concept. I doubt that Lincoln could have been Lincoln in any other country. But neither could George W. Bush. The American Adam is a double-edged sword. It can shape a new line or destroy the whole work.