Anti-Americanism

"Simply compare [William] James and Henry Adams, his contemporary. Adams embodied the American who despaired of his own country and was ruined by Europe. James was built up by Europe, and believed in America" (Rosenstock-Huessy).

Wow. What a brilliant insight. Not into Adams or James, I have no clue about that, but into two enduring types that still embody those we know and love (hopefully) today.

Auden on Rosenstock-Huessy

Foreword

"A good wine needs no bush," and the same ought to be true for a good book. A foreword should be unnecessary. My reason for writing this one is that when The Viking Book of Aphorisms was published, in which Mr. Kronenberger and I had included a number of quotations from Rosenstock-Huessy, a reviewer complained that he had never heard of him.

I first heard of him in, I should guess, 1940, when a friend gave me a copy of Out of Revolution, of which two chapters are included in this selection. (The whole, I am happy to say, has been re-issued as a paperback by Argo Books.) Ever since I have read everything by him that I could lay my hands on.

I should warn anyone reading him for the first time that, to begin with, he may find as I did, certain aspects of Rosenstock-Huessy's writings a bit hard to take. At times he seems to claim to be the only man who has ever seen the light about History and Language. But let the reader persevere, and he will find, as I did, that he is richly rewarded. He will be forced to admit that, very often, the author's claim is just: he has uncovered many truths hidden from his predecessors.

I was born and raised in England and always thought that I knew the history of my country between the accession of Henry VIII in 1509 and the accession of William III in 1688 fairly well, but it took a German to show me, what no English historian had done, the connection between the execution of Sir Thomas More in 1535 and the execution of Charles I in 1649, to explain the real meaning of the terms "Restoration" and "Glorious Revolution", and why the revolutionary and permanent changes made by Cromwell had to be concealed and denied by calling the years from 1640 to 1660 the "Great Rebellion."

Again, I am a poet by vocation and, therefore, do not expect to learn much about Language from a writer of Prose. Yet, half of what I now know about the difference between Personal Speech, based upon Proper Names, and Second and First Personal Pronouns, words of command and obedience, summons and response, and the impersonal "objective" use of words as a communication code between individuals, I owe to Rosenstock-Huessy. He has also clarified for me many problems of translation, for instance, the historical reasons why one cannot translate "Common Sense" literally into French or "Geist" into English.

Whatever he may have to say about God, Man, the Word, Time, etc., Rosenstock-Huessy always starts out from his own experience as a human being, who must pass through successive states between birth and death, learning something essential from each of them. For this reason I would recommend a reader of this selection to start with the two autobiographical pieces at the end. He will understand better, I believe, when he reads the others, exactly what the author means by his motto Respondeo etsi mutabor (I answer even though I have to be changed), and why he attaches so much importance to it.

Speaking for myself, I can only say that, by listening to Rosenstock-Huessy, I have been changed.

W.H. Auden

I Am An Impure Thinker - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy