Thursday, February 3, 2011

They keep dropping in

W.H. Auden in A Company of Readers: Uncollected Writings of W.H. Auden, Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling. In an essay "Apologies to the Iroquois", page 67. On the differences in the intellectual envrionments of the USA and UK.
Mr. Wilson is a bit of an anglophobe. Though, naturally, I do not share his feelings, I can understand them. It may take greater moral courage to become a Dandy in the United States than in England; nevertheless, I believe it is easier. British intellectual society is less boring, more intelligent and infinitely more charming than its American counterpart, which makes its collective influence much more dangerous to the individual - to resist seems rather piggy. Further, thanks to the physical size of this country, it is much easier here, if one wishes to be alone, to be left alone (in England, all one's intellectual relatives live within calling distance, and they keep dropping in).

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