by drowsy, sensual, and mysterious blossoms of nocturnal radiance; of London with its smoky nimbus of fogged light, which was so peculiarly thrilling because it was so vast, so lost in the illimitable—had each its special quality, so lovely and mysterious, but had yet produced no beauty that could equal this.
The city blazed there in his vision in the frame of night, and for the first time his vision phrased it as it had never done before. It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one; a savage city, yet it had such tenderness; a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone and steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring, fighting a constant ceaseless warfare of men and of machinery; and yet it was so sweetly and so delicately pulsed, as full of warmth, of passion, and of love, as it was full of hate.
This is as subjective a description as one could put on paper: it is all estimates, and the reader is never told what the author is estimating.
Imagine that Wolfe is talking about a view not of a city, but of a plain at night. “The plains of New Jersey were incomparable to the plains of Brittany or Normandy.” He could use the same description, with the same adjectives and emotions, since the reader is never told why he is saying any of these things. Wolfe does not offer a single concrete to differentiate New York from anything else.
The author here cannot distinguish between object and subject, between the sight of New York and what that sight makes him feel. He projects his feeling as if it were a description of the city—as if he has said something about New York by saying that New York makes him feel that it is lovely. But this “lovely” is an estimate based on something. He has not told the reader what.
When one examines the particular things he states, there is a whole series of unanswered whys.
“The city had never seemed as beautiful as it looked that night.” He never says why. “For the first time he saw that New York was supremely, among the cities of the world, the city of the night.” He does not say why, or what a city of the night is, as distinguished from a city of the day. ”There had been achieved here a loveliness that was astounding and incomparable“—why?—“a kind of modern beauty, inherent to its place and time, that no other place nor time could match.” What is “modem beauty”? “He realized suddenly that the beauty of other cities of the night”—why are Paris and London cities of the night?—“had each its special quality, so lovely and mysterious.” He does not say what special qualities, or what is lovely and mysterious about them. Instead, he gives the reader two interchangeable generalities about Paris and London: “vast, mysterious geography of lights, fumed here and there by drowsy, sensual, and mysterious blossoms of nocturnal radiance” and “smoky nimbus of fogged light, which was so peculiarly thrilling because it was so vast, so lost in the illimitable.” Is there any specific difference between the two? None.
One can guess from the names of New York, Paris, and London, and from the words “modern beauty,” that Wolfe saw some difference between a city of skyscrapers and cities of older monuments. Had he contrasted the lights and angular structures of skyscrapers to ancient domes and the spires of churches, this would have given meaning to what he is implying. He must have seen something that made him call one city modern and the others not, and also some difference between Paris and London. But he did not identify it even to himself, let alone to the reader. All he focused on was that the three sights made him feel differently.
One cannot convey an emotion as such; one can convey it only through that which produced it, or through a conclusion drawn from the emotion. Here the author does try to project an emotion as such—and what is the result? “Blossoms of nocturnal radiance,” which is neither emotion, thought, nor description, but merely words.
Now observe the words “Paris spread below one from the butte of Sacré Cœur.” Given the absence of any specific description, this reference presupposes that the reader has been to Paris, stood on this elevation, and seen this sight. To expect that kind of knowledge from the reader is to step outside the confines of objectivity; the reader has to