Making One out of Many - The namesake, - By willa cather

BILL SCHAMBRA: Today we're going to be discussing Willa Cather's story, “The Namesake,” written in 1907. Willa Cather, of course, is one of America's best loved authors, having written such classics as “My Antonia” and “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” Some quick historical facts that bear on today’s story: born in Virginia in 1873, one of Cather’s uncles died fighting in the Civil War, as a soldier for the Confederacy. She would later assume his middle name as her own. Shortly after leaving the University of Nebraska in 1895 with a solid background in the liberal arts, she spent some years in Pittsburgh where she would edit a magazine and later teach high school. And in 1902 she visited Europe and Paris for the first time, where she like so many Americans of that era, promptly fell in love with the city. So Amy, why don’t you give us a quick summary of “The Namesake.” AMY KASS: The story is set in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. On the eve of his return to America, Charles Bentley, and six of his fellow American art students gather in the apartment studio of the great sculptor Lyon Hartwell. On display, ready for casting, is Hartwell's latest, and by his own lights, his best, most important figure, The Color Sergeant--a work that draws the admiration and a little bit more than envy from the art students. Moved by their response and Bentley's impending departure, the usually reticent Hartwell tells the young men the story of his own belated and very emotional American homecoming. Born in Italy to a self-exiled American artist, Hartwell was orphaned by age 14. Still, he remained in Rome, studying sculpture, attempting to fulfill his father's own ambitions, and when he came of age he moved to Paris to continue to pursue his artistic career. Ten years later when he was just on the cusp of some success, he was suddenly summoned to America. His grandfather died, leaving his ailing maiden aunt without any other relatives to take care of, so he's summoned to take care of her. So he remained in America for two years waiting for her illness to run its course. There he languished feeling utterly estranged from everything around him, including the family home, and especially from the bustling industrial world that was encroaching upon it. One thing only drew him near: a portrait of his boy uncle, his namesake, who, he later learns, had died in battle during the Civil War at age 16, covered by the federal flag he had been carrying as a color sergeant. Months later, his aunt asks him to go up in the attic to retrieve the federal flag so that it could be flown on Memorial Day for his namesake's memory. There he also found what he had been looking for--namely, a trunk, with his own name on it. Later that evening he went to inspect the contents of the trunk, which included all the boy's toys, clothing, letters he had written, and other paraphernalia, but as he was about to close it, he noticed a copy of Virgil's Aeneid, in the back fly leaf of which his uncle had drawn the federal flag, initialed and dated 1862. That's the year before which his uncle had enlisted. And above which he had written the first two lines of the Star Spangled Banner--or the opening question of the Star Spangled Banner. The discovery engendered an epiphany. With the book in hand, he rushed down to the garden and spent the rest of the dark and ominous night beside the locust tree his namesake had planted years ago, with the flag barely visible flapping overhead, sitting there until the dawn's early light, he felt, for the first time he says, the pull of race and blood and kindred. He felt beating within him things that had not begun with him.” Hartwell's story is concluded, the young men are riveted in silence, Bentley's cab arrives, and Bentley and the young man go downstairs while Bentley proceeds to go off to America. BILL SCHAMBRA: Let's go back to the beginning of the story. How does Lyon Hartwell appear to his young admirers in this studio, and why? DIANA SCHAUB: Well, they're drawn to him first because he's a great sculptor. They're young men studying the same art. But they're also drawn to him because of his connection to America. Though Hartwell was born abroad, everyone describes him as simply being from America. So it's said that Hartwell seems to sum up all of America in his person, from ocean to ocean. All of the rest of the young American sculptors are regional in some way, they're from New Hampshire or they're from out West. In a way, Hartwell by not being in America but rather being from America, that distance from America seems to enable him to sum it all up or to embody it all. LEON KASS: In part, as Bentley says to him on the occasion, admiring the now finished magnum opus, the color sergeant, he says I almost think that it's only because you're not really an American that you can manage something like this, that you have the heat to pull off, to carry off, an idea of this sort. And Hartwell says, perhaps that's the case. And he uses that kind of challenge and invitation based on their perception of him and his work to in fact tell them his story. BILL SCHAMBRA: I'm struck by the degree in which Hartwell is sort of creating a republic in front of our eyes. He has these young men from various states divided by their state affiliations, they're certainly divided by self interest, they're all very much interested besting one another. DIANA SCHAUB: Especially, they think that in being called home, whoever is called home is taken out of the race in some way. So his story really shows him that in being called home, that's the place where they can actually gain this heat, or find their subject matter that will really turn them into true artists. BILL SCHAMBRA: The heat was something that his father didn't have. He was dabbling in marble things, he never had that heat. LEON KASS: Marble statues, Indian princesses, and he went for the glory of art. But he had actually nothing in him to create. So it's all imitation of something else. AMY KASS: Actually the father was regarded as a renegade by the family because he didn't return home to join the Civil War. That's rather important. Though he's not entirely alienated from the family, and we know that from the fact that he names his son for his half brother. BILL SCHAMBRA: What attracts Lyon Hartwell to the portrait of his namesake? What is it that draws him to that? What does he see in it? DIANA SCHAUB: I think there are a couple of things. First there's a universal appeal. Everyone who looks at the portrait is captivated by it. The portrait is said to convey this energy and gallantry and joy and life. So it's just this very handsome young man that anyone would respond to. But I think there's also a very specific appeal for Hartwell, and we've already hinted at that by speaking about Hartwell's own father. His own father had been an expatriate, but a very dissatisfied one. He's described as the most unhappy of exiles. But in looking at this picture of his uncle, he sees the visage of his father, but the visage of his father now transformed and glorified, and he very much wants to understand the source of that. AMY KASS: Yeah, that's very important. In a way the portrait gives him back the father that he never knew. So the portrait is itself very attractive, but it's more than just a portrait for him. LEON KASS: It's also, in addition to these very good things, this is the only sign of life or vitality that he finds on his trip home. DIANA SCHAUB: It's not quite right that there's no vitality in the America that he comes to, it's just that he doesn't respond to the kind of vitality that America now evidences. We're told that the great manufacturing city, I take it is Pittsburgh is just a few miles from the family homestead, but he's repelled really by what he sees as this relentless energy. It was interesting to me that energy is the word that is used to describe both the boy in the portrait--you know, he responds to his energy--but when he actually returns to America, he's repelled by this new kind of out-thrusting energy. AMY KASS: He is attached, as you say, to the energy in the portrait. We don't know after he has his epiphany of what he thinks of the energy of the rest of America. DIANA SCHAUB: Yeah, but I take it that what we learn about his other portrayals, his other sculptures, gives us some indication. So we're told that he has a sculpture of the Scout and the Pioneer and the gold miner and those are, again, examples of this sort of out-thrusting energy, but not of an industrial sort. LEON KASS: See I would disagree slightly. There's a sentence in which America is energetic in all respects, but he's interested in the heroic, in the heroic exploits of the individuals. In addition to those things, the other things he's doing is sending home statues of heroes of the Civil War, which goes to battlefields and other places to keep alive the memory of individual greatness. DIANA SCHAUB: So it's not only the energy but the gallantry. LEON KASS: The gallantry, the nobility...Now whether he would come to see the commercial spirit, the industrial spirit, the taming of the West and all of these things, as of a piece with what his namesake had done, I don't know. But it certainly...it looks like the end of all of human gallantry and what's left is the trees are covered with soot, the rivers are brown, and the old order... AMY KASS: Everything is dead...dying... BILL SCHAMBRA: And yet, we're finally...he finally does attach himself to America in the midst of this rather dismal...I'm struck by the degree with which he has to penetrate that sort of industrial, drab world in order to get to his roots, and yet he's able to do that, which is quite striking. It's only when he finds the trunk, right, that he finally, really understands this person that is his namesake. Can you say something about that? What is it about that discovery that makes it so significant? AMY KASS: Well, it's not entirely un-related to his response to the portrait. Besides the gallantry and the joy of life in the portrait, the portrait leaves him with a question. And he wants to know what it is that enables this young man to give up everything in a moment, to sacrifice himself in the way in which he did. And so when he goes and he finds Virgil's Aeneid in the back fly-leaf of which is this uncle's drawing of the federal flag and above that the question asked by the Star Spangled Banner...it is a moment that suddenly everything comes together for him: what it is that his uncle was living for, what it is that he was willing to die for. It has everything to do with the republic. LEON KASS: The discovery in the attic comes after he's already been on a quest for his uncle. His aunt is able to tell him that ' oh, yes, your uncle planted this one tree here in the garden, and his mother put a bench around it where she could sit. Yes he's buried in the rose garden. He finds out from an old soldier, a comrade of his, how it is the uncle actually died: tried to enlist at age 14, enlisted at age 15, in a charge against the breastworks is carrying the flag, has it shot out from his arm, losing one arm, grabs the banner in the other, and makes it to the top of his hill cheerfully laughing and is killed with the other arm shot off and dies with the flag wrapped around him. And then he wants to find out about the Civil War and he discovers it's a war fought by boys. And he couldn't somehow understand what this was about. And is then looking for, as Amy said, what was it that could've made these boys in the peak of life with all of this vivacity and energy give it all up? Here he is....the date is 1862 when he scribbles in the book. It's the year before he actually gets to enlist. And here he is studying Latin and the story of the founding of Rome and doodling pictures of cannons and other things, muskets, and his mind is elsewhere. And one can't help but think that either he's repelled by the Roman example or in a way inspired by the patriotic sentiment there. How does it stand with our republic, which is now absolutely in peril, and he can't wait to get out there and serve her. AMY KASS: That's very important. The Aeneid is about the hero Aeneas who founds Rome really out of the ashes of Troy. So it's a kind of new life resurrected. And he wants to find out, or his uncle wanted to find out, what's happening to our republic? What's going to save our republic? How does it fare with us? Are we going to live? DIANA SCHAUB: Why isn't the story that the old-timer tells sufficient for Hartwell? It's a pretty gripping story about the young man's exploits on the field. It tells this tale of valor. It's striking to me that he's somehow still in quest of the truth, he hasn't yet glimpsed the inner truth of his namesake. LEON KASS: The old timer has given an account of what happened, but it doesn't really, I don't think to Hartwell...the mere facts don't somehow explain the reason. And he reads about the Civil War, and even that doesn't explain the reason. DIANA SCHAUB: So it's that instantaneous glimpse of this boyish patriotism, when you see the drawing in the book, and the love that motivates that. AMY KASS: But it's the drawing in the book, it's the first time he sees a deed of his uncle. He sees an artistic deed of his uncle. He sees that and he sees all the doodling all over the book, but especially that drawing of the federal flag at the end. DIANA SCHAUB: That I like very much, that somehow he thinks the young boy is artistic in his way also. And what the young boy goes on to become is a flag bearer, and you could say that in a certain sense Hartwell the sculptor also becomes a flag bearer. He creates these displays of the aspiration of the American character... LEON KASS: Which means that the deeds by themselves, unless one can symbolically represent them, either in picture or in story...not enough. AMY KASS: They're not self interpreting. LEON KASS: The old timer gave him the bare facts. The meaning of those bare facts requires something.... DIANA SCHAUB: And so it's not so much Aeneas as Virgil. AMY KASS: Well, both.. DIANA SCHAUB: It's the cooperation, the inter-dependence of those two. LEON KASS: And in this case, what's very nice is that the name of this story's Virgil and the name of this story's Aeneas is Lyon Hartwell. In other words the subject and the author come together through their name and the kinship. What he discovers first of all is what moved his namesake. It's his first access to him. Through this kind of self-revelatory account of what moved his soul. DIANA SCHAUB: And it leads to Hartwell the sculptor's own resurrection. He describes himself as really having been dead before this; his cosmopolitanism has left him dead, and he now feels rooted and alive, like Lazarus brought back from the dead. I also think that there's a very nice moment in the last line of the story, the last word of the story, has this other young sculptor going back to America, he departs from the train station, which is named after Lazarus. BILL SCHAMBRA: What exactly happens to Hartwell on the night of Memorial Day? LEON KASS: 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 re-birth. 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 upon the notion of roots and soil, blood and soil, but rather a nation 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 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: The 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 these principles--that's a necessary but not a sufficient condition--it depends, I think, on 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 in his very name that he carries, that 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. AMY KASS: And it's not just the legacy of the Civil War, but his father was born there, his grandfather was born there, his great-grandfather, during the revolutionary times, founded that homestead. BILL SCHAMBRA: It's the only place for miles around in which the original trees are still preserved. LEON KASS: And the trees are from the revolutionary time. People have mixed their life and their blood with this place and its cause, and that I think is also necessary really--as are the memories of those things which stories and emblems and sculptures I think provide. BILL SCHAMBRA: Yeah, his sculptures aren't abstracts of Lady Liberty or Indian goddesses or princesses...they're specific episodes in the American history. The pioneers. The gold rush folks. The settlers. They're...They're sculptures that combine specific history of this country with some sense of the larger principle that's behind it. They all symbolize larger principles, but at the same they're quite specific and quite grounded in the history of this place. AMY KASS: They provide the robust national memory that is needed in order to perpetuate that kind of attachment to America. BILL SCHAMBRA: At the end of the story, or at the end of his discovery, Lyon Hartwell, of course, goes back to Paris. Now, why does he do that? AMY KASS: Do you fault him? BILL SCHAMBRA: Gosh, I don't know... [laughter] He goes back to Paris in the name of art, of course, right. Um. And yet he's taken something of America with him. Something of his own past and something of America with him. And at that distance he's able, perhaps, to capture America better than if he were immersed in it. Going back to Diana's first point, there's something about being from America. He's not an American. He's from America. There is a necessary distance there. DIANA SCHAUB: Yeah, and he is the flag bearer. He's planted the American flag solidly on Parisian soil. I'm all for him. It also seems to me that Cather is just very aware also of the demands of art and what that required in this time period. You really couldn't carry out this kind of endeavor purely on American soil, so he's still in the process of perfecting his craft and his technique. He actually says that he's wanted to do this color sergeant sculpture for 15 years, but he hasn't really been confident of his abilities to carry it off yet. AMY KASS: He remains very much of the United States, even though he is not in it. Unlike many people who live here and don't...and aren't really of it. LEON KASS: He is teaching the Americans--he sends home his sculptures to adorn our cemeteries and our public places and is, in a way, he's offering us somewhat beautified pictures of ourselves to ourselves, a more heroic picture of ourselves, and gracing the national memory in that way. But, he says he came late to his citizenship. And it's a partial citizenship, however philanthropic, not to participate in one's own self government. Cather herself, although she fell in love with Paris, didn't become an expatriate, really, and told her American stories and glorified the American experience without ceasing to be one amongst us. So I think there's at least that difficulty about Lyon Hartwell. BILL SCHAMBRA: He's established this little republic in his studio, right? DIANA SCHAUB: He's fostering citizenship in them. AMY KASS: Exactly. And he is encouraging them to go back. BILL SCHAMBRA: That's right. He's telling the story so that the fellow who's going back won't feel badly. He's now armed with this story. LEON KASS: And in a way, as the flag itself is an emblem, he's making a one out of the many. In this group. That's...that's another way in which, by representing the color sergeant before them and telling them this story on this occasion, he's in a way doing the job that that flag does for them...that it represents and it does really for a disparate nation. AMY KASS: That's nice. You said originally they come, the seven young men, come from all parts of the United States. He emblemizes America itself from ocean to ocean, and that's precisely what his story does for them. BILL SCHAMBRA: Yes. And it ends at night. His story ends at night, now it's silent, they're no longer visible to one another as individual entities. They've all become sort of united in this story and in the darkness, the only thing you see are the cigarette tips, the rocket's red glare [laughter]...so anyway...So, let's talk about the flag more directly and explicitly for a second. It's a recurring theme obviously, and it keeps showing up in this story again and again. What are we to make of the flag? What is this story telling us about the American flag? AMY KASS: Well, among other things, we could go into something about what the flag represents and how it shows us one out of many by simply the way in which it's laid out. But I think that it's an image. It's an image which speaks thousands of words for us. DIANA SCHAUB: And it does seem to me that in a nation founded on an idea is probably more in need of that kind of tangible symbolism. So that...if I just think about my own attachments, I grew up in Minnesota, I think of myself as a Minnesotan still, even though I haven't lived there since I was a teenager, and yet I think I have no particular attachment to the Minnesota flag, and I don't think most people do. We all come from one of the states, but we're not attached to the flags of the states. So that the really rooted place doesn't actually need a flag. So I actually think there's a connection between the ideational nature of our founding and the need for these symbols, and so it's interesting then that this actually becomes the foundation for his own rootedness, this symbol. LEON KASS: The flag that now has this iconic feature in American life and really is the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave, the flag before the Civil War didn't have that meaning. In fact, in the story it's the federal flag, which means in the story it stands for the Union, as opposed to the flag of the rebellion. And so the flag acquires also the meaning of the history of the defense of the republic for which it stands. So it's not just some kind of an abstract embodiment of one out of many. One additional thing: the flag does these things, like many symbols, silently. You know, you bring things to it. The Star Spangled Banner adds something; the Pledge of Allegiance adds something. But, I'm not sure whether stories like Cather's stories don't help us even more than the flag by itself. In other words, the story about the flag and its meaning as carried by the flag bearer... AMY KASS: Needs an artist to tell it. LEON KASS: Yeah...and maybe even needs a story-teller more than a sculptor. BILL SCHAMBRA: Well, let's explore there for a moment this question and the relationship between art and stories. The art that Hartwell presents us with and the stories, the story here that Cather writes. DIANA SCHAUB: Yeah, I would say one thing about that, and I think you can see it in what we're told of the sculpture. The sculpture of the color sergeant leaves out the gory details of the actual incident. We're told that the young boy lost both of his arms, both of them were shot off. Cather's story is somehow truer than maybe the sculpture. The sculpture engages in a certain idealization or beautification. You could claim that it captures the inner truth of the moment in beautifying it, it captures the young boy's heart, but Cather's story seems to me more complete in that it captures all of those elements and can present all of those elements to us. AMY KASS: It enables us to experience what the young boy experienced, which we otherwise would have no access to. So in that sense it certainly is fuller. And in that sense, even the flag or an emblem or an image depends upon talking about it, talking with others about it, to give it some meaning. It doesn't...you put the image up there, and it's not self evident that it's going to speak to you in the way in which it speaks to this young man. DIANA SCHAUB: And so that the literature can lead to a more mature patriotism, I guess is what I would say. That Hartwell the sculptor is almost still in the grip of this kind of boyish patriotism. AMY KASS: He's in the grip of heat. LEON KASS: The story of what actually happened to the boy is a news story, it's in the local newspaper, with all the gory details of the sort you get in the local newspaper. Then Hartwell is now telling the story to the young Americans, every word of which is, of course, Cather's, but it's his narrative. He's giving them the full story, newspaper account included, along with his artistic representation of what he takes to be the heart of the matter, the beautiful heart of the matter. Cather gives us Hartwell, newspaper story, sculpture, and then some, and we're left in a position really to work on all of these levels at once. I think there is sometimes that that pictures are worth a thousand words, Diana. AMY KASS: I would like to have both of course, to preserve the image as absolutely vital, but I think you're more right than wrong. I think the story about that, speaking about that image, is what vivifies it for us. It's not an accident that this is a story within a story. And so even Cather recognizes the need for stories to be told. LEON KASS: ...to be told and re-told. LEON KASS: And although this story now is more than 100 years old, I just find it immensely moving because, notwithstanding all of the changes that have taken place in this century plus since the story is written and half century more from the Civil War...this story rekindles a kind of an appreciation of what it has taken in order for us to live here with this kind of freedom and prosperity, to have the luxury sometimes to forget about those things, and to know the price that has been paid and what actually goes into the fact that the banner still waves. BILL SCHAMBRA: Let's go back to Amy's point for a second. Why stories? What was the point of collecting stories and poems and songs? AMY KASS: It reflects the point we were making earlier. The stories speak more directly to the heart, which has to be engaged as well as the mind. So that stories do precisely what these artistic embodiments try to do. They try to incorporate that energy. BILL SCHAMBRA: So it brings the heat, so to speak. AMY KASS: It brings the heat. DIANA SCHAUB: The sculptor's last name is Hartwell. AMY KASS: Makes the heart well. DIANA SCHAUB: Makes the heart properly disposed. AMY KASS: Just as Hartwell is looking for meaning for his life, meaning most people do, and patriotism is one way to give meaning to one's life. How do you convey that to somebody? It's not by arguments. We could tell you everything that America stands for and it might not inspire you. But to have an example which makes the same point and dramatically enacts it enables you not only to identify with that person who is enacting it but to embrace that. So, I would say, it's another way in which national attachment, which is patriotism, becomes invigorated. BILL SCHAMBRA: Let's go back to the beginning: The Namesake. What's the importance of The Namesake? LEON KASS: What does it mean to name somebody for somebody? It means that ....you think that the life of the person for whom you are naming your child has some significance or ought to have some significance for the new life coming forward. And for the person who is the younger version of the namesake--I mean, both of them, in a way, you could call them both namesakes--but the younger person would somehow think that his life should be informed for the sake of the name that he has been given. And then the question is how do you do honor to your name, because your name is not just yours alone, but is an inheritance. And here Hartwell makes an effort to come to terms who it was for whom he is named, and when he feels the blood and the kinship and the race within him at this time, it's as if his uncle's blood now lives in him in a way which it never has before. And for the first time, he's sort of earned the name, and to some extent the cause for which his uncle spent his brief vitality. And, it in a way raises the question for all of us: what would it mean to do honor to those who've come before us, even if we don't carry, literally, their exact name? Can one feel the ties of race and blood and kindred and the causes to which our ancestors gave what was theirs? Whose namesake are we? And what would it take to live up to that inheritance? AMY KASS: So the namesake is not the person for whom you're named, but you. LEON KASS: Well, I think, technically speaking, the namesake is the younger person who is named for someone else, but you would say 'he's my namesake'--that could go either way. But the idea of for the sake of the name, and that even has certain religious overtones, on things done for the sake of the name, that's a summons to some kind of higher purpose, and to recognize. And, in fact, that's sort of what's wrong with Hartwell to begin with. Hartwell has no memory. Thanks to his father. [AMY KASS: He has no real purpose.] Thanks to his father's having left everything for art, he's robbed his son of any memory 'til misfortune brings him home and offers him a great gift. Thanks to his memory of the past, he has a glorious future. And that seems to me to be our circumstance. And this connection through the name is the beginning of the recognition of where we've come from and what we owe. AMY KASS: One other point about naming. I know it has kind of a religious overtone, but literally, when you name a child...to name something is to call it into being. And that gives it its life. And that's what he comes to realize. BILL SCHAMBRA: Well this has been a terrific conversation with the editors of a wonderfully informative and even inspiring new volume, entitled What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. Thank you all for watching, and thank you editors, Amy Kass, Leon Kass, and Diana Schaub. LEON KASS: Thanks very much, Bill. AMY KASS: Thank you.