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LEON KASS: Well, what's the scene? It's Memorial Day. He's just been put in contact with what
he takes to be the sort of guiding nerve of his namesake boy uncle's life. It's a dark
and miserable night. He's got the Aeneid inscribed in his hand, and he sits under the flag which
can't be seen, and it really is a kind of, as Amy said, a Francis Scott Key moment for
him.
LEON KASS: And he says "the experience of that night, coming so overwhelmingly to a
man so dead, almost rent me in pieces. It was the same feeling that artists know when
we, rarely, achieve truth in our work; the feeling of union with some great force, of
purpose and security, of being glad that we have lived. For the first time I felt the
pull of race and blood and kindred, and felt beating within me things that had not begun
with me. It was as if the earth under my feet had grasped and rooted me, and were pouring
its essence into me. I sat there until the dawn of morning, and all night long my life
seemed to be pouring out of me and running into the ground."
The end is especially strange to me. It sounds as if he's dying, he's losing his life's blood
and is turning into a plant. The image is that he's now rooted like his namesake uncle's
tree standing in the same ground and like the flagpole beneath which he's sitting...
AMY KASS: But you need roots in order to live. A plant needs roots in order to live. He's
not describing his death; he’s describing his rebirth.
BILL SCHAMBRA: Let's go with this roots and soil concept for a second. It's often said
that America isn't a nation founded on the notion of roots and soil, blood and soil,
but rather a nation that’s founded upon ideas and ideals. Does this suggest that Cather
has another view of that? How are we to understand this particular scene in relation to this
larger question--ideas vs. roots?
AMY KASS: Yeah, whenever you emphasize blood, race, and kindred, that doesn't sound particularly
American. It could be German, it could be anything. And we pride ourselves in the fact
that principles do inform us. But I think in this case, it is that attachment, that
emotional attachment, which Cather also points out, which stories in general point out, that's
as necessary for the attachment to the nation as those principles, and in this case the
story happens to be a story that enables him to find meaning in his own patriotism. And
the patriotism, as I said, is informed by the principles of the republic. So while he
emphasizes blood, race, and kindred, I think you cannot simply separate it from the fact
that it's the Star Spangled Banner that he looks to, that it’s the federal flag that
he draws, and all that that stands for.
DIANA SCHAUB: Right, so that this is blood which has been spent or sacrificed for a cause,
the cause of union and union as represented by this flag. So it does seem to me that he’s
really achieved a kind of coming together of blood and the ideas.
LEON KASS: Principles by themselves are not enough to attach anybody. And there are lots
of people who could affirm these principles, and who could live elsewhere, who might be
sympathetic to America, but really to belong depends not only on embracing those principles--that's
a necessary but not a sufficient condition--it depends, I think, upon being attached to the
history of the people who've lived their life under those principles and have struggled
and sacrificed to preserve them and to perpetuate them. And in this particular case, what he
sees is that it's his own personal legacy, not only in family ties, but also in the very
name that he carries, these are lives that have in fact been spent to protect and preserve,
not just the principles, but the entire way of life and the people who live under those
principles.