Tom Quirk 
Bergson and American Culture 
The Worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens

Bergsonian ‘vitalism’ challenged the dominance of Spencerian determinism in the early twentieth century and seemed to offer a new foundation for belief in human freedom and individual possibility. Quirk traces the impact of Bergsonism upon the American sensibility and shows how individual writers — particularly two such different artists as Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens — appropriated vitalistic notions and made them serve the peculiar requirements of their own unique creative imaginations.



Originally published in 1990.



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