Interstitial Literature

Bruce Wilshire may be the most under-rated American philosopher of the 20th century. I have long treasured his "Epilogue: Self-Limitation as the Ground of Hope," a contribution to his edited volume Romanticism and Evolution, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons (1968), 314-317. In this epilogue, Wilshire articulates the sober Romanticism one finds in Thoreau, Wordsworth, Tolstoy, and Wallace Stevens--though he credits William James' "philosophy of radical finitude" (316). Wilshire writes:

The universe is open not only on its periphery, but there are open spots within it as well. There is room for the individual to rattle around; room to change the world a little if one wants to and has the courage to; or room to draw a few breaths in peace and just to dream. Hence along with irreducible individuality and freedom there comes irreducible limitation (ibid).

And this is not a bad thing. As with Peter L. Berger's notion of "ecstasy," Wilshire finds freedom, true freedom, in the interstices of life; for it is "only when we forget that most mysteries are hidden in the tissues of everyday life, and are not grand and portentous, do we swing wildly from one extreme of mania to the other extreme of despair" (ibid).

What appeared to the romantics to be high sentiment for action, all too frequently degenerated into sentimentality--a substitute for action. Could it be that too much emphasis was placed on the single moment and the single leap and that no faith was left over for the many little moments and many little leaps (ibid)?

We find our joy "in limiting ourselves to what is really possible to live with over many ordinary days in contact with many ordinary people ... The romantics pictured the infinite as their outermost environing context; for us the infinite is embedded in the grit of an inescapably daily and inescapably contingent human existence. If we are to step beyond the romantics, it is possible only because of them; but to step beyond is to step into the finite (317)."

Thoreau, Tolstoy, Wordsworth, and Stevens all understood this humble truth and, in pursuit of it, pioneered a genre of interstitial literature: one in which the grandest possibilities presented themselves with the quiet persistence of a walk in the woods.

"If your trade is with the Celestial Empire," Thoreau wrote in Walden (Everyman's Library, 18), "then some small counting-house on the coast, in some Salem harbour, will be fixture enough."

This is the sober Romanticism that speaks reverently "of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them" (Stevens, "Large Red Man Reading" from The Auroras of Autumn).

It is the god Elijah encountered at the mouth of the cave on Mount Horeb:

11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

13 And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah? 1 Kings 19: 11-13 (KJV)

The god of the dihliz: of the spaces in-between.