INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 479 



language and mode of expression, after that costume and scene, 

 finally the thought and tendency. The national character does not 

 take possession of the whole at once; it may even show itself first by 

 what it rejects, by what it finds uncongenial in the foreign literature. 



It is not always the most important works of one literature 

 which exercise the decisive influence on another. A writer may be of 

 more importance for the history of a foreign nation than for his own. 

 A work little prized by men of its own language may thus become the 

 cornerstone of a new literature. 



In connection with such a transfer of culture, permeating the whole 

 life and thought of a people, the points of agreement between single 

 works or authors have of course little significance; the important 

 things to notice are the deviations from agreement, even the slight- 

 est and most in detail the displacements and distortions; what 

 the new writer omits, overlooks, ignores, misunderstands, avoids, 

 perhaps parodies or travesties. The growing independence is first 

 revealed by negative signs. 



In times of strong dependence on foreign culture, it is already 

 a proof of a high grade of independence in an author, if, believing 

 the foreign influence excessive or even hurtful, he seeks to break 

 away from it, and to open the way for the influence of some other 

 literature more closely related to the spirit of his own people. Though 

 substituting one dependence for another, he at least changes the 

 literary centre of gravity. 



Culture can also be borrowed from peoples far distant in time or 

 space. Dead literatures can wake to new life, and in their renaissance 

 exert a new and mighty influence. Or it may happen that a litera- 

 ture voluntarily subjects itself for a time to another apparently 

 remote from it, as when an exotic style of composition becomes the 

 fashion. 



Besides these universal inundations of culture, single fields of 

 literature, single forms of composition, are exposed to inroads more 

 limited in space and time. While one sort of writing is flourishing 

 in full independence, another sort may simultaneously, and among 

 the same people, be completely subject to the influence of foreign 

 models. The number of literary subjects and motives is not very 

 great; the forms of composition have, during the course of thousands 

 of years, been only slightly widened in scope; even the metric 

 forms, the turns of style, the figurative means of expression, are 

 confined within certain limits. They preserve their identity even 

 when their connection with the literatures is dissolved; they become 

 diffused. 



Single authors also, like mighty conquerors, undertake invasions 

 of the fields of foreign literature. Usually it is the strongest intellects 

 which, in isolation, separated from their native literature, or, it 



