Ritsumeikan University

′Voices In The Air′ in Henry James′ The American Scene

by

Lyle De Souza, Tomiko Minami

One could talk of "quietness" now, for the shrinkage of life so marked, in the higher latitudes of the town, after Easter, the visible early flight of that "society" which, by the old custom, used never to budge before June or July, had almost the effect of clearing some of the streets, and indeed of suggesting that a truly clear New York might have an unsuspected charm or two to put forth. (69-70)

This paper is titled ′Voices in the Air′ for three reasons. First, it applies to the auditory images of New York used by Henry James in The American Scene. Such images, often using the notion of deafening silence (voices in the air) to make their impact, are detailed and explained subsequently. Second, it applies to the various supernatural and ghostly images that James employed in The American Scene and which will also be studied in this paper. Third, it applies to the diverse range of images that Henry James used that - like voices in the air - are difficult to gather, let alone classify under themes. Although there is a lack of a common theme in these images and, therefore, disjointedness when analyzing them, they are nonetheless a significant part of the whole when studying the images of New York in The American Scene.

Henry James first hears his "voice of the air" in New York whilst wandering around the area he lived in during his childhood, Washington Place. James had been roving around the area where he had lived; hoping to find the house where he was born but instead finds the "high, impersonal structure" he so loathes in its place. After meandering some more and finding other changes to his nostalgic memories of New York he feels "amputated of half my history" (71). The personified voice of the air is "horrible" in James′ estimation, however, it is at the same time the bearer of the truth, which hurts:

The special standard they may or may not square with signifies, you feel, not a jot: all you know, and want to know, is that they are probably menaced - some horrible voice of the air has murmured it - and that with them will go, if fate overtakes them, the last cases worth mentioning (with a single exception), of the modest felicity that sometimes used to be. (72)

In the above quotation, James had been pleased to discover that two Fifth Avenue churches that he remembered were still intact and, crucially, yet to lose their sacred dignity through being over-towered by skyscrapers. While he is happy that the churches survive, he nonetheless notes that he finds nothing in them of "architectural importance" and he probably likes them only because they are survivors from his childhood epoch. The voice in the air tells James that something will probably happen to them soon (or may have happened already) since they are "probably menaced". The voice then becomes more "sinister":

The deeply pictorial windows, in which clearness of picture and fullness of expression consort so successfully with a tone as of magnified gems, did not strike one as looking into a yellow little square of the south - they put forth a different implication; but the flaw in the harmony was, more than anything else, that sinister voice of the air of which I have spoken, the fact that one could stand there, vibrating to such impressions, only to remember the suspended danger, the possibility of the doom. (72-73)

By contrasting a glowing, flowing tribute to his friend John La Farge, the creator of the mural of New York City′s Church of the Ascension, with the "sinister voice of the air", James shows us the readers just how deeply he fears the "possibility of the doom". The voice begins to attain a ghostly, supernatural nature and it is interesting to see that within a few pages of The American Scene the voice of the wind seems to have metamorphosed into a "florid ghost" (76). This supernatural aspect is explored later in this paper.

The voice of the air appears at other key moments in The American Scene. It reminds Henry James of how desperately "interested" he is in just what he "criticizes," that he is even a "victim" of his interest. "You can′t escape from it" nor can he escape his "special responsibility" as an American, his ability to see both "its genius and its shame" (83). The voice reminds him that he knows full well that New York is a "bad, bold beauty" (84).

As Henry James walks by Central Park (near the homes of the wealthy who have gone away for the season), he is led by the voice of the air around him to a small contemplation of history. He notes that "history is never, in any rich sense, the immediate crudity of what ′happens,′ but the much finer complexity of what we read into it and think in connection with it" (136-137). The voice is now leading Henry James towards what he analyses.

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