A Thought On Literary Goals
by Thomas Fortenberry

I was recently doing some literary research and came across this fact, which makes me reevaluate my own goals. In the early part of our nation's history, our citizens were acutely aware of a lack of history and culture, so worked very hard at creating a national culture of unique art, music, literature, etc., which could all be called "American." After an initial flurry (Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas Paine, Noah Webster, Washington Irving, J. Fenimore Cooper, etc.), things settled a bit. Then in the mid-1800s an effort was made to create a second artistic boom, an American Renaissance. This was accomplished largely by the giants such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. These were very driven writers and truly desired to alter and uplift American culture and create a viable body of American literature. By the way, beyond the usual texts and anthologies of American literature, there is an excellent study of the whole period/phenomenon called American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman by F.O. Matthiessen (Oxford University Press, 1941).

But, now comes the part to stand your hair on end: during the American Renaissance in one five year period alone (1850-55)-- along with numerous other works but for the sake of this point considering only Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Hawthorne, and Whitman-- we were delivered the masterpieces Representative Men, The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, Moby Dick, Pierre, Walden, and Leaves of Grass. These American literary demigods helped recreate our native literature and change the nature of literature worldwide. For example, Whitman's Leaves of Grass broke the mold, fulfilling the promise of Romanticism while breaking tradition in half and ushering in the age of modern poetry. As he noted in his foreword: "Past and present and future are not disjoined but joined. The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is."

This amazing five year period is a miracle of revelation. I have been thinking about it nonstop since reading of it. How much changed in that brief time? How much did we gain, how much did we grow? Our literature ripened on the vine before our eyes. Emerson wrote in Representative Men: "There is a moment in the history of every nation, when, proceeding out of this brute youth, the perceptive powers reach their ripeness and have not yet become microscopic: so that man, at that instant, extends across the entire scale, and, with his feet still planted on the immense forces of night, converses by his eyes and brain with solar and stellar creation. That is the moment of adult health, the culmination of power."

So that man extends across the entire scale. That is the moment of the culmination of power. These are not light words, and what was accomplished were not light deeds. Not only did they define their goals, they attained them.

Which brings it all down to us, here. Now, my thought on this is that here we sit not only at the turn of a new century, but in the dawn of a whole new millennium. It is the first millennium America has ever seen dawn, too young a nation to have witnessed the former. Not only that, but another first: we are living in a world dominated by the United States. Today the entire world is largely at peace, ourselves included. We are not warring hot or cold, we are not invading or colonizing, and relatively speaking the world's economy is booming. It is a prosperous age. America, eschewing an old-styled empire, has spawned the global age of interconnection. Granted, we are the dominant economy, culture, and language. But this is happenstance and occurrence, not force, and it bears a great responsibility. Therefore, I ask: What contribution are we as a people making to the future of literature and our world culture? What are our goals? Taking a cue from our ancestors, what could we as writers and artists do in the next five year period to transform world literature as we know it? When they were writing in a time of turmoil leading up the great tragedy of the Civil War, why can't we in an exciting, peaceful, and prosperous era not only match but surpass the former American Renaissance? Why can't we have a millennial explosion of creativity that changes the very nature of art and literature and thought for the next thousand years, having an impact on world culture such as that of the Greeks on the millennia following their rise? Can we even conceive of and meet such a challenge? Do we have the necessary strength of will?

My brother and I have played a game throughout our lives to urge each other on, to drive ourselves. We play it by pointing out fascinating or great new achievements occurring on any given day in any field of endeavor, and then, basically, questioning each others' integrity, prowess, and will to power. It is very good natured and for a good purpose: we have often been of great impetus to each other. We call it simply "What have you done lately?"

Granted there are always those writers who narcissistically claim to be writing only for themselves and their own enjoyment. Good for them. But I feel an obligation to write for an audience, not just for self, and to make a contribution to the world around me. So, I am issuing a challenge, both to myself and to all.

What have you done lately?

Thomas Fortenberry is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He owns Mind Fire Press and edits the literary magazines Mind Fire, Phic-shun, Maelstrom, Soul Unmade, Morphiseum, Writer's Choice, and The Southerner. He was recently a judge for the prestigious Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction and the 36th Annual Georgia Author of the Year Awards. He is the founder of the Kids4Kids Network, Third Party Screenplay Productions, Association for the Advancement of Racial Cohension (AARC), and the Global Knowledge Series of Arts and Sciences (GKSAS). Email: Kurvanas@aol.com.