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.834Liberal Culture in a Gilded AgeCulture is the training and finishing of the whole man, until he sees physicaldemands to be merely secondary, and pursues science and art as objects of intrinsic worth.When this impulse takes the form of a reactionary distrust of the whole spirit of the age, it isunhealthy and morbid.In its healthy form, it simply keeps alive the conviction that thelife is more than meat; and so supplies that counterpoise to mere wealth whichEurope vainly seeks to secure by aristocracies of birth.Thomas Wentworth Higginson,   A Plea for Culture,  1867In May 1864, as he was recuperating from a mild grapeshot wound and linger-ing malaria, Thomas Wentworth Higginson established a new home at New-port, Rhode Island.His relocation from a war zone to a coastal resort signaleda larger self-transformation, as the onetime abolitionist gave up soldiering andbegan to fashion a new career as a man of letters.The apparent passage fromhardship to comfort worried Higginson, who was clearly intent on avoidingthe charge of mere indolence and of retreating into   comfort and good din-ners.  He retained some of his youthful misgivings about the literary life andthe suggestion of self-indulgence it carried.This unease was most evident inHigginson s series of halting attempts to justify his new direction as an exten-sion of earlier reform commitments.In 1865, he hinted that by preparing anew edition of the Greek philosopher Epictetus, he was building on his earlierabolitionism, since this leading Stoic thinker not only had been a slave butalso had been the favorite reading of Toussaint Louverture, the greatest of allblack revolutionaries.Assembling the two-volume Harvard Memorial Biogra-phies likewise made sense, given that this commemorative project paid trib-ute to the wartime service he and others had given to the Union cause.Yet nosuch easy rationale could explain why he threw himself into a novel of mannersset among the Newport fashionable.Vindicating this project, which Higginsonpursued between 1867 and 1869, would require developing a completely newstance toward the needs of the moment.LIBERAL CULTURE 129In 1867, Higginson wrote two pieces for the Atlantic Monthly that explainedhow even light fiction might help to remedy his country s lingering short-comings.In his   Plea for Culture  and his discussion of   Literature as anArt,  Higginson insisted that Americans collective devotion to art and litera-ture would allow the world s leading democracy to continue its moral develop-ment and assure that it would not be   materialized by peace.  Intellectual andimaginative cultivation provided the antidote to a   commonplace and perhapsdebasing success  that seemed likely to accompany the overthrow of slavery.The higher realms of human expression had the power to guard against   spiri-tual obesity,  to place mere material achievements in proper perspective, andto instill the noble   conviction that the life is more than meat.  The pursuit ofimaginative art was no escapist indulgence; it was difficult, even   strenuous, but it was well worth the effort both for individuals and for the nation.Recall-ing Charles Eliot Norton s writings from the 1850s, Higginson insisted thatculture represented the   climax and flower of all civilizations  and noted thatAmerican civilization had failed to achieve this distinction.But Higginson be-lieved that the moral discipline of the war had fitted Americans to this crucialtask, if they could only channel their recent moral earnestness and energy intointellectual and imaginative pursuits.  The nation has found its true grandeurby war,  Higginson avowed.Only with the pursuit of culture would the coun-try   retain it in peace.  1Higginson was not alone in considering the possibilities of culture in theaftermath of war (or in worrying about spiritual flabbiness).Over the final thirdof the nineteenth century, liberal men of letters attempted as a group to fos-ter cultural distinction.They did so with the same sense of purpose that hadinformed their advocacy of the Union and of Radical Reconstruction.Nearlyevery aspect of their Gilded Age project could be seen in the goals set forth in1867, during the transatlantic high tide of democratic reform.If George Wil-liam Curtis s 1856   Duty of the American Scholar to Politics and the Times had called a generation to join the political and moral struggle against slavery,Higginson s plea eleven years later focused attention on the pressing tasks ofcultural stewardship.He laid out how Americans might be convinced that art,letters, and pure science were   objects of intrinsic worth  ; how the Ameri-can university might be remade; and how writers and critics might cultivatea broad, democratic appreciation of aesthetic matters.Such a program soughtboth to elevate and to broaden national culture.Noting that these verticaland horizontal extensions were mutually reinforcing, Higginson optimisticallypointed out that   great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks  but are more130 LIBERAL CULTUREoften the   summits of ranges.  Elevate the whole people, and any individualgenius would rise that much higher.The emphasis on general elevation madecultivation expansive and active [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]