18. Chapter XVIII: Of The Inflated Style Of American Writers And
Orators
I have frequently remarked that the Americans, who generally
treat of business in clear, plain language, devoid of all
ornament, and so extremely simple as to be often coarse, are apt
to become inflated as soon as they attempt a more poetical
diction. They then vent their pomposity from one end of a
harangue to the other; and to hear them lavish imagery on every
occasion, one might fancy that they never spoke of anything with
simplicity. The English are more rarely given to a similar
failing. The cause of this may be pointed out without much
difficulty. In democratic communities each citizen is habitually
engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object, namely
himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he then perceives
nothing but the immense form of society at large, or the still
more imposing aspect of mankind. His ideas are all either
extremely minute and clear, or extremely general and vague: what
lies between is an open void. When he has been drawn out of his
own sphere, therefore, he always expects that some amazing object
will be offered to his attention; and it is on these terms alone
that he consents to tear himself for an instant from the petty
complicated cares which form the charm and the excitement of his
life. This appears to me sufficiently to explain why men in
democracies, whose concerns are in general so paltry, call upon
their poets for conceptions so vast and descriptions so
unlimited.
The authors, on their part, do not fail to obey a propensity
of which they themselves partake; they perpetually inflate their
imaginations, and expanding them beyond all bounds, they not
unfrequently abandon the great in order to reach the gigantic.
By these means they hope to attract the observation of the
multitude, and to fix it easily upon themselves: nor are their
hopes
disappointed; for as the multitude seeks for nothing in poetry
but subjects of very vast dimensions, it has neither the time to
measure with accuracy the proportions of all the subjects set
before it, nor a taste sufficiently correct to perceive at once
in what respect they are out of proportion. The author and the
public at once vitiate one another.
We have just seen that amongst democratic nations, the
sources of poetry are grand, but not abundant. They are soon
exhausted: and poets, not finding the elements of the ideal in
what is real and true, abandon them entirely and create monsters.
I do not fear that the poetry of democratic nations will prove
too insipid, or that it will fly too near the ground; I rather
apprehend that it will be forever losing itself in the clouds,
and that it will range at last to purely imaginary regions. I
fear that the productions of democratic poets may often be
surcharged with immense and incoherent imagery, with exaggerated
descriptions and strange creations; and that the fantastic beings
of their brain may sometimes make us regret the world of reality.