And the reason is that no American poet, no American man of letters has taken the responsibility upon his own person. The responsibility for what? There is the fire. Rush into it. What is literature anyway but suffering recorded in palpitating syllables? It is the quiet after the attack. Picking a sliver of bone from his mangled and severed leg he dipped it in his own gore and wrote an immortal lyric. Richard Cœur de Lion shot through the chest with an iron bolt wrote the first English--no, French, poem of importance. What of democratic Chaucer? He was only a poet but Richard was a man, an adventurer, a king. The half mad women rush to impregnate themselves against him. And this is literature. This is the great desirable. Soaked in passion, _baba au rhum_, the sheer proof of the spirit will do the trick and America will be King. Up America. Up Cœur de Lion. Up Countess Wynienski the queen of Ireland. Polyphemus took first one shape then another but Odysseus, the wise and crafty, held firm. He did not let go but Polyphemus did. In fact the God could not exist without Odysseus to oppose him. Why man, Europe is YEARNING to see something new come out of America. In a soup of passion they would see a little clam. Let us smile. This is-- The danger is in forgetting that the good of the past is the same good of the present. That the power that lived then lives today. That we too possess it. That true novelty is in good work and that no matter how good work comes it is good when it possesses power over itself. Europe's enemy is the past. Our enemy is Europe, a thing unrelated to us in any way. Our lie that we must fight to the last breathe is that it is related to us. We are deceived when they cry that negro music is the only true American creation. It IS the only true from the European point of view. Everything is judged from that point of view. But to us it is only new when we consider it from a traditional vantage. To us it means a thousand things it can never mean to a European. To us only can it be said to be alive. With us it integrates with our lives. That is what it teaches us. What in hell does it matter to us whether it is new or not when it IS to us. It exists. It is good solely because it is a part of us. It is good THEREFORE and therefore only is it new. Everything that is done in Europe is a repetition of the past with a difference. Everything we do must be a repetition of the past with a difference. I mean that if negro music is new in an absolute sense---which it is not by any means, if we are to consider the Ethiopian--the probable Ethiopian influence in Egypt--then it is new to Europe as it is to us. It is not necessary for us to learn from anyone but ourselves--at least it would be a relief to discover a critic who looked at American work from the American viewpoint.