Archibald MacLeish and American Democracy

Abstract

A RCHIBALD MAcLEISH, if we are to believe certain recent gossip in intellectual circles, is a once-distinguished poet who has allowed his talent to lapse and a superficial thinker whose ideas have shifted in every intellectual wind. But I believe an examination of evidence will show that apparent break in his poetic development is only, in his own phrase, time out to kill a snake, and that he has moved, through stages of thought no more inconsistent than should be expected of a maturing mind in a changing world, to a position of literary and cultural criticism which is a distinct contribution to contemporary American thought. For in months of national self-searching between fall of France and Pearl Harbor he was among most active and able of many writers seeking a new understanding of nature of democracy vis-a-vis fascism, and of relationship of intellectual to a democratic society; his present activities and utterances are logical sequel. No one has more clearly pointed out cultural nihilism of fascism. No one has better expressed concept that what we are fighting for is the American future. To trace development of these and other stimulating ideas and to examine them will be, I believe, to emerge with a healthy respect for Archibald MacLeish as poet and analyst of American democracy.