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Democracy in America (Volume Two)

by Alexis De Tocqueville

Book Two, Section One



Chapter XVIII: Of The Inflated Style Of American Writers And Orators




I have frequently remarked that the Americans, who generally treat of 
business in clear, plain language, devoid of all ornament, and so extremely 
simple as to be often coarse, are apt to become inflated as soon as they 
attempt a more poetical diction. They then vent their pomposity from one end 
of a harangue to the other; and to hear them lavish imagery on every 
occasion, one might fancy that they never spoke of anything with simplicity. 
The English are more rarely given to a similar failing. The cause of this 
may be pointed out without much difficulty. In democratic communities each 
citizen is habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object, 
namely himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he then perceives 
nothing but the immense form of society at large, or the still more imposing 
aspect of mankind. His ideas are all either extremely minute and clear, or 
extremely general and vague: what lies between is an open void. When he has 
been drawn out of his own sphere, therefore, he always expects that some 
amazing object will be offered to his attention; and it is on these terms 
alone that he consents to tear himself for an instant from the petty 
complicated cares which form the charm and the excitement of his life. This 
appears to me sufficiently to explain why men in democracies, whose concerns 
are in general so paltry, call upon their poets for conceptions so vast and 
descriptions so unlimited.

The authors, on their part, do not fail to obey a propensity of which they 
themselves partake; they perpetually inflate their imaginations, and 
expanding them beyond all bounds, they not unfrequently abandon the great in 
order to reach the gigantic. By these means they hope to attract the 
observation of the multitude, and to fix it easily upon themselves: nor are 
their hopes disappointed; for as the multitude seeks for nothing in poetry 
but subjects of very vast dimensions, it has neither the time to measure 
with accuracy the proportions of all the subjects set before it, nor a taste 
sufficiently correct to perceive at once in what respect they are out of 
proportion. The author and the public at once vitiate one another.

We have just seen that amongst democratic nations, the sources of poetry are 
grand, but not abundant. They are soon exhausted: and poets, not finding the 
elements of the ideal in what is real and true, abandon them entirely and 
create monsters. I do not fear that the poetry of democratic nations will 
prove too insipid, or that it will fly too near the ground; I rather 
apprehend that it will be forever losing itself in the clouds, and that it 
will range at last to purely imaginary regions. I fear that the productions 
of democratic poets may often be surcharged with immense and incoherent 
imagery, with exaggerated descriptions and strange creations; and that the 
fantastic beings of their brain may sometimes make us regret the world of 
reality.

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