Politics & Power Quote by Randall Jarrell

Jarrell lands the punch with an analogy that flatters no one: the Atlantic divide, he implies, is less a tragic clash of civilizations than a familiar comedy of misread signals. By comparing Europeans and Americans to men and women, he borrows a ready-made script of mutual incomprehension - and then undercuts its supposed stakes. The sly reversal is the engine of the line: they understand each other worse than they think, and the failure matters less than they imagine. Pride, not destiny, inflates the drama.

The intent is diagnostic, almost teasing. Postwar transatlantic culture liked to treat “Europe” and “America” as coherent personalities: Old World sophistication versus New World energy, refinement versus vulgarity, tradition versus innocence. Jarrell, a poet-critic with a skeptic’s ear for cultural self-mythology, punctures that binary. The subtext is that both sides are performing: misunderstanding becomes a way to keep one’s identity crisp. If Europe can complain about American naivete, it gets to stay “Europe.” If America can bristle at European condescension, it gets to stay “America.” The misunderstanding is functional.

The men-and-women comparison adds another barb: these categories are socially constructed, overgeneralized, and convenient. Jarrell isn’t endorsing the stereotype so much as exploiting its recognizability to expose the same lazy essentialism in international talk. The closing clause - “than either of them suppose” - is the quiet humiliation. The real object of satire isn’t the other side; it’s our craving to believe our cross-cultural friction is profound, when it’s often just habit plus ego.