Illustration: Hans Scherfig: ”Street View from New York”. Oil painting, 77 x 56 cm, 1930.*

The Danish artist, journalist and author Hans Scherfig spent seven months in New York in the years 1929-1930 where he had gone to meet the Austrian artist and communist Elisabeth Karlinsky who he would later marry.

What Scherfig experienced in America only confirmed his communist world view and he would join the communist party after having returned to Denmark. In addition to a large body of paintings and drawings, Scherfig produced this article during his stay.

Translation note: This text was written almost a century ago. It contains a few uses of the soft N-word used to satirise racism that has been preserved in the translation for documentary purposes.

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Impressions from New York

• Hans Scherfig, 1930

Everywhere in New York, huge posters have been put up: Business is good keep it good. Forward America — Nothing can stop the U.S. There is no crisis. It is the government that produces these posters, which is the typically American, naive way of creating optimism. It is the same touching naivety that makes the cinema audience hiss when villainous deeds occur on the screen, and makes them clap like mad when the hero finally triumphs. That naivety which is Americans’ best quality, and which moves the foreigner.

Forward America — nothing can stop the U.S.! It must be driven home, it must be repeated. It is the small daily dose that does it. You are the mightiest nation in the world! You are the supreme race! You are the richest and most important! That is the one thing Americans have always heard. In school, in church, on the radio and at every political meeting, in every newspaper, in every film. You are the greatest and happiest! Hence this contentment, this American smile. They rush off in the subway in the morning. They work mechanically.

You gulp down your food standing up — always the same sandwich and the same dishes, in automat cafeterias or drugstores, all exactly alike. This is not a meal; you merely metabolize the necessary calories in the quickest possible way. Home again in the subway, and then film and radio — ever the same narcosis. You are full, you do not freeze, and the film and the entertainment ensure that you never feel scruples, never think. You have all reasonable necessities: a car and sports matches and chewing gum and weekly magazines with film-star romances, the private lives of boxers, and pictures of lovely women and legs. You are content. The American stands with the statistics in hand and knows that he is better off than everyone else.

People rush about and are always busy in Berlin as well. In New York, however, they do not merely rush; they emphasize and relish their busyness: Look how we rush, look how precious our time is, we rush, we rush! Out of the way, we have no time!

In Vienna and Copenhagen they love foreigners, and are most delighted when they scold their city. In New York they impress them. We have the tallest building in the world here — what do you say to that? Come on then, gentlemen of Europe, everything you have, we have too. We have much, much more. We have Gothic cathedrals and Rococo palaces. We have old German cities, an exact copy of Rothenburg and large parts of Nuremberg. We have everything, and the rest we’ll buy. Mr. Ford has long been thinking of buying us a pyramid and moving the Garden of Gethsemane over to Long Island. We also have a fine copy of the Riviera. In every exact detail we have reproduced the Côte d’Azur’s hideous stucco villas and disgusting hotels. We have everything, everything we want. We have no use for your extravagances. No damn modernisms. Be gone, Berlin, with your steel and glass houses! We have style here, old grand style in fifty storeys. Renaissance and Baroque with stucco and ornament and cherub bottoms right up to the thirtieth floor. Taste and art and gilded ornamentation, magnificent façades and columns, symmetry and monumentality. But no nonsense. Row houses, soup kitchens — what on earth is that? Unemployment relief, social welfare — who’s that muttering? Every man for himself! And besides, we have the Salvation Army with rat-a-tat-tat and boom-boom, and bazaars and charity committees of billionaires’ wives. In God we trust!

The Americans are satisfied with themselves and proud of themselves. Every man who arrived here without a homeland suddenly became patriotic and self-assured over here. They have acquired their contentment through suggestion, through incessant repetition, through simple advertising techniques. And there is one thing in particular they are proud of, one slogan that has been hammered into them from the moment they were born. It is Liberty, the famous American liberty — the greatest in the world.

It is nice to have liberty. To wake up in the morning knowing that you has liberty is something so delightful that no oppressed European can imagine it. Liberty is something comfortably neutral, something everyone can rally around and cheer for. You can celebrate and march in the streets and demonstrate for liberty. When you have this great shared national liberty to be enthusiastic about, you get ample outlet for all your passions and is not tempted to stray into harmful political and social pursuits.

As is well known, American Liberty stands out there in the water, gazing menacingly over at Ellis Island, where the immigrants are held in internment. (N.B.: the immigrants may be viewed by the public. Boat departs from Battery Park.) She is 306 feet tall and also very broad, and weighs a whole lot of tons. She is truly, unconditionally, the world’s greatest liberty. She is of bronze and cement, and can also be obtained with an alarm clock in the base, or as a night lamp and thermometer, and is found as such in every respectable home.

On the whole, there is much art in the homes here. Nowhere else in the world have I seen so many bronze figurines and plates and tiered stands and paintings in bright red plush frames. The taste is also for painted velvet screens and coloured terracotta figures. In wealthy, more “modern” homes, the antique-modern master-painter style so familiar to us prevails, with many sconces and artificially distressed worm-eaten furniture, wooden chandeliers, and old German beer steins.

Beer steins and whisky jugs and, altogether, everything that can lead the mind toward the enjoyment of alcohol are extraordinarily cherished. People talk incessantly about liquor and drinking; it has become an obsession. I experience the same in Copenhagen when I am with “furloughmen”: they can talk of nothing but booze and lose themselves in memories of old benders. In all cigar shops and drugstores one can buy hollow walking sticks and bottles camouflaged as cameras or other innocent objects. They are displayed publicly in the windows. And these childish toys delights the Americans. Big, strong, grown men display such bottles with an expression of enormous cleverness and a touching glee. It is the same pride we felt when we as high-schoolers during recess sneaked away from the Metropolitan School over to “Admiral Gjedde’s Yard” and dared to drink a dram. It was a feat. Small boys do not smoke cigarettes because they particularly like the taste, but only because it is forbidden and exciting. And Americans are by nature surely no more drunken than other peoples; they are merely, in their naive way, self-important about being able to drink, just as schoolboys are self-important when they secretly dare to smoke cigarettes.

But this fantastic delight of grown men over a hollow walking stick filled with whisky can only be conceived of in a city where it is common for people at social gatherings to entertain one another with card tricks, stunts, and other antics. It is the American “Familie-Journal”^[1] culture, New York’s terrible “smartness” jargon.

Learning the language is downright impossible, because roughly a third of all words and expressions are jargon, pulled from revues and newspapers, and therefore constantly shifting. “How do you like our oysters? Raw. Raw. Raw. Horse and wagon, horse and wagon. Team. Team. Team.” It is this football jargon that grates on the foreigner’s nerves.

New Yorkers are horrendously loud; they make a racket, they push and shove. The foreigner seeking directions is helpless and a laughingstock. The mere fact that he is not a New Yorker is, in itself, ridiculous. Postal clerks in Copenhagen are generally unhelpful, in Germany they are rude, but in New York they are contemptible. Sending a Christmas package from here is worse than facing the draft board at the old Sølvgade Barracks.

Other cities make an effort to make as pleasant an impression on the stranger as possible. New York simply boasts and wants to overwhelm. It is the biggest in the world, this thing here. And they must know what it has cost. This is a monument to so-and-so. It cost 100,000 dollars. This church cost 5 million and the land in this park is worth 100 dollars per square foot. And they love statistics and proves everything through them, they love high figures and graphic charts. The newspapers mention with pride how many people drank themselves to death on Christmas Eve, and how many Negroes were lynched on Independence Day, and the rise in annual murders is illustrated by charts and popular drawings.

They do not take pride in being able to show foreigners beautiful things; New York’s compulsion to impress is merely the parvenu’s naive boastfulness. It cost that much. Can you beat that?

It is not so pleasant to be a stranger here. Come to Vienna, and you are immediately at home. You are entertained in the cosiest way by tram conductors and waiters; perfect strangers invite you to their homes after a chance encounter in a railway compartment. In New York you are simply pushed around and have your toes trodden on. Hurry up!

And it is expensive being a tourist in New York. I must pay seven dollars a week for a small, narrow yellow room. It is about as wide as my cabin on the Oscar II, but twice as long, and the wildlife is more abundant here. I do not much care for the insects, but the neat little mice are agreeable. They emerge at night and rustle among my papers. They gnaw at my tomatoes, and they have bitten a hole in my sugar bag. At first I grew nervous when they visited me in bed and walked across me with their small cold feet. But now I have grown fond of them and regard it as an expression of solidarity. I will not set traps or scare them away. They are welcome to eat a little tomato. They are my friends, and we ought to stick together here in this unpleasant city.

It has been a strange winter. Most of the time it was mild spring weather, so one could go out without an overcoat. Then suddenly there came a couple of days with twenty degrees below zero, and then snow and slush and mild weather again. The streets are always so filthy; people set the garbage cans out on the sidewalk or throw rubbish into the gutter. In the evening the children light fires on the trash heaps, so the house fronts are illuminated by spectacular bonfires. Nobody bothers to shovel the snow, and all New York’s fine new cars spray slush over us poor pedestrians. Ancient vehicles are only used for ambulances; otherwise you see almost nothing but brand-new models. It is like ladies’ hats: merely a question of vanity. You must have an expensive car if you want to be considered somebody; it is not worth much as a means of transport in a city where there is a stop signal every twenty meters, but it is only meant to serve as a display of its owner’s wealth. He would rather paint the price on it. But if you are in a hurry, you must take the subway.

I sit in the subway and sway, and across from me are thirty people and several Negroes, who are not allowed to be people. All sons and daughters of free America. They have come from the Balkans and Poland and from Africa and Denmark, but now they are all the same, now they are all one single type. Now they all have jaws like Americans. They sit and chew in time, chew to the subway’s swaying. They chew and chew. It is not chewing tobacco, not pleasure or stimulants. They just chew. Gum. Gum gum. Up and down. Down and up. From left to right. From right to left. The subway rocks, and the jaws go. It is rhythm. America’s famous eternal rhythm. Chew, chew, chew. Gum without taste, just chew, aimlessly idiotic chew, chew. They ought to erect a statue of Mr. Wrigley, who knew his country, and who gave his people gum to chew. Chew, chew in eternal stupid earnestness.

Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack. That is how the rhythm of America first strikes you, the music of the New World.

Original Danish text

Indtryk fra New York

• Hans Scherfig 1930

Overalt i New York er der for tiden opslået kæmpeplakater: Business is good keep it good. Forward America - Intet kan standse U. S. Der findes ingen krise. Det er regeringen, der fremstiller disse plakater, der er den typisk amerikanske, naive måde at skabe optimisme på. Det er den samme rørende naivitet, der får biografpublikummet til at hysse, når der sker skurkestreger på lærredet, og får det til at klappe som rasende, når helten til sidst triumferer. Den naivitet, der er amerikanernes bedste egenskab, og som rører den fremmede.

Forward America - intet kan standse U. S.! Det skal slås fast, det skal gentages. Det er den lille daglige dosis, der gør det. I er den mægtigste nation i verden! I er den ypperste race! I er de rigeste og vigtigste! Det er det ene, amerikanerne altid har hørt. I skolen, i kirken, i radioen og ved alle politiske møder, i alle aviser, i alle film. I er de største og lykkeligste! Derfor denne tilfredshed, dette amerikanske smil. Man jager af sted i subwayen om morgenen. Man arbejder mekanisk.

Man sluger sin mad stående altid den samme sandwich og de samme retter, i automatkafeterier eller drugstores, alle nøjagtig ens. Der er ikke tale om noget måltid, man omsætter blot de nødvendige kalorier på den hurtigst mulige måde. Hjem igen i subwayen, og så film og radio evig den samme narkose. Man er mæt, man fryser ikke, og filmen og underholdningen gør, at man aldrig får skrupler, aldrig tænker. Man har alle rimelige fornødenheder, bil og sportskampe og tyggegummi og ugeblade med filmstjerneromaner, bokseres privatliv og billeder af dejlige kvinder og ben. Man er tilfreds. Amerikaneren står med statistikken i hånden og véd, at han har det bedre end alle andre.

I Berlin jager man også og har altid travlt. I New York ikke blot jager man, men man understreger og nyder sin travlhed: Se, hvor vi jager, se, hvor vores tid er kostbar, vi jager, vi jager! Af vejen, vi har ikke tid!

I Wien og København elsker man udlændinge, og er allermest henrykt, når de skælder ud på ens by. I New York imponerer man dem. Vi har verdens højeste hus her - hvad siger I til det? Kom an, mine herrer europæere, alt hvad I har, har vi jo også. Vi har meget, meget mere. Vi har gotiske domkirker og rokokopalæer. Vi har gamle tyske byer en nøjagtig kopi af Rothenburg og store dele af Nürnberg. Vi har alt, og resten køber vi. Mr. Ford har længe tænkt på at købe os en pyrаmide og at flytte Getsemane Have over til Long Island. Rivieraen har vi også en pæn kopi af. Nøjagtig i alle enkeltheder har vi gengivet Azurkystens lede stukvillaer og modbydelige hoteller. Alt har vi, alt, hvad vi vil have. Jeres udskejelser har vi ingen brug for. Ingen forbandede modernismer. Gå væk, Berlin, med dine stål- og glashuse! Vi har stil her, gammel fornem stil i 50 etager. Renæssance og barok med stuk og pynt og englenumser op til 30. sal. Smag og kunst og forgyldt ornamentik, pragtfacader og søjler, symmetri og monumentalitet. Men ingen tåbeligheder. Rækkehuse, folkekøkkener - hvad er nu det for noget? Arbejdsløshedshjælp, social forsorg - hvem er det, der mumler? Every man for himself! Og for øvrigt så har vi Frelsens Hær med tjimdadada og bumbum, og basarer og barmhjertighedskomitéer af milliardærfruer. In God we trust!

Amerikanerne er tilfredse med sig selv og stolte af sig selv. Alle de fædrelandsløse blev pludselig patriotiske og selvbevidste herovre. De har fået deres tilfredshed ved suggestion, ved ustandselig gentagelse, ved simpel reklameteknik. Og særlig én ting er de stolte af, ét slagord, som er blevet dunket ind i dem fra de blev født. Det er Friheden, den berømte amerikanske frihed - verdens største.

Det er rart at have frihed. At vågne om morgenen og vide, at man har frihed, er noget så dejligt, at ingen undertrykt europæer kan forestille sig det. Friheden er noget behageligt neutralt, noget, alle kan samles om og råbe hurra for. Man kan feste og gå i tog på gaden og demonstrere for friheden. Når man har denne store fælles nationale frihed at begejstres for, får man rigeligt afløb for alle lidenskaber og fristes ikke til at skeje ud i skadelige politiske og sociale interesser.

Den amerikanske frihed står som bekendt ude i vandet og ser truende over mod Ellis Island, hvor immigranterne sidder internerede. (NB. immigranterne kan beses af publikum. Båd afgår fra Battery Park.) Hun er 306 fod høj og også meget bred og vejer en masse tons. Hun er virkelig ubetinget verdens største frihed. Hun er af bronze og cement og kan også fås med vækkeur i soklen eller som natlampe og termometer og findes som sådan i ethvert pænt hjem.

Her er i det hele taget megen kunst i hjemmene. Ingen andre steder i verden har jeg set så mange bronzefigurer og platter og opsatser i flere etager og malerier i højrøde plysrammer. Smagen er også for malede fløjlsskærme og kolorerede terrakottafigurer. I rige, mere »moderne« hjem hersker den også hos os velkendte antik-moderne malermesterstil med mange lampetter og kunstigt ormstukne møbler, trælysekroner og gamle tyske ølkrus.

Ølkrus og whiskydunke og overhovedet alle ting, der kan lede tanken hen på alkoholnydelse, er overordentlig yndede. Man taler ustandseligt om spiritus og drikkeri, det er blevet en tvangsforestilling. Jeg oplever det samme i København, når jeg er sammen med »frimænd«, de kan kun tale om brændevin og fordybe sig i mindet om gamle kæferter. I alle cigarforretninger og drugstores kan man købe hule spadserestokke og flasker camouflerede som fotografiapparater eller andre uskyldige ting. De er udstillet offentligt i vindu-erne. Og dette barnagtige legetøj henrykker amerikanerne. Store, stærke, voksne mænd fremviser sådanne flasker med et udtryk af uhyre fiffighed og en rørende glæde. Det er den samme stolthed, vi følte, når vi som gymnasiaster i frikvarteret sneg os fra Metropolitanskolen over i »Admiral Gjeddes Gård« og vovede at drikke en sjus. Det var en bedrift. Små drenge ryger ikke cigaretter, fordi det smager dem særligt, men kun fordi det er forbudt og spændende. Og amerikanerne er af naturen sikkert ikke mere fordrukne end andre folk, de er blot på deres naive måde vigtige over at kunne drikke, ligesom skoledrenge er vigtige, når de i smug tør ryge cigaretter.

Men denne fantastiske glæde hos gamle voksne mænd over en hul spadserestok fyldt med whisky kan kun tænkes i en by, hvor det er almindeligt, at folk i selskaber underholder hinanden med kortkunster og tricks og anden skæmt. Det er den amerikanske »Familie-Journal«-kultur, New Yorks forfærdelige »kvikhed«s jargon.

Det er simpelt hen umuligt at lære sproget, fordi ca. en tredjedel af alle ord og udtryk er jargon, hentet fra revyer og aviser, og derfor stadig skifter. »How do you like our oysters? Raw. Raw. Raw. Horse and wagon, horse and wagon. Team. Team. Team.« Det er denne fodboldjargon, der går den fremmede på nerverne.

New Yorkerne er forfærdelig højrøstede, de støjer og de skubber og maser på. Den fremmede, der ønsker oplysning, er hjælpeløs og til grin. Alene det, at han ikke er New Yorker, er egentlig latterligt. I København er postembedsmænd som regel uvillige, i Tyskland er de grove, men i New York er de nederdrægtige. At afsende en julepakke herfra er værre end at være på session på den gamle Sølvgades Kaserne.

Andre byer anstrenger sig for at gøre et så behageligt indtryk på den fremmede som muligt. New York bare praler og vil overvælde. Det er verdens største, dette her. Og man skal vide, hvad det har kostet. Dette er et monument for den og den. Det har kostet 100.000 dollars. Denne kirke har kostet 5 millioner og jorden i denne park er 100 dollars værd pr. kvadratfod. Og man elsker statistik og beviser alting derigennem, man elsker høje tal og grafiske fremstillinger. Aviserne nævner med stolthed, hvor mange folk der drak sig ihjel juleaften, og hvor mange negre der blev lynchet på frihedsdagen og fremgangen i årlige mord anskueliggøres ved kurver og populære tegninger.

Man er ikke stolt over at kunne vise udlændingen smukke ting, New Yorks trang til at imponere er blot parvenuens naive storpralen. Så meget har det kostet. Kan I slå den?

Det er ikke så godt at være fremmed her. Kommer man til Wien, er man straks hjemme. Man bliver underholdt hyggeligt af sporvognskonduktører og kelnere, man bliver inviteret hjem til vildt-fremmede mennesker, som man tilfældigt træffer i en jernbanekupé. I New York bliver man bare puffet og trådt over tæerne. Hurry up!

Og det er dyrt at være turist i New York. Jeg må give 7 dollars om ugen for et lille smalt gult værelse. Det er omtrent så bredt som min kahyt på »Oscar II«, men dobbelt så langt, og dyrelivet er her rigere. Insekterne bryder jeg mig nu ikke så meget om, men de små pæne mus er hyggelige. De kommer frem om natten og rasler i mine papirer. De gnaver i mine tomater, og de har bidt hul i min sukkerpose. I begyndelsen blev jeg nervøs, når de besøgte mig i sengen og spadserede på mig med små kolde fødder. Men nu holder jeg af dem og opfatter det som et udtryk for samfølelse. Jeg vil ikke stille fælder op og ikke skræmme dem væk. De må gerne spise lidt tomat. Det er mine venner, og vi bør holde sammen her i denne ubehagelige by.

Det har været en mærkelig vinter. Den meste tid var det mildt forårsvejr, så man kunne gå uden overtøj. Så kom der pludselig et par dage med 20 graders frost og så sne og søle og mildt vejr igen. Gaderne er altid så grisede, man stiller skarnbøtterne ud på fortovet eller smider affaldet i rendestenen. Om aftenen tænder børnene ild på skarndyngerne, så husfacaderne er oplyst af fantastiske bål. Sneen tænker ingen på at skuffe væk, og alle New Yorks fine nye biler sprøjtede søle over os stakkels fodgængere. Kun til ambulancer bruger man ældgamle vogne, ellers ser man næsten kun helt nye bilmodeller. Det er ligesom med damehatte, det er blot et forfængelighedsspørgsmål. Man må have en dyr vogn, hvis man vil regnes for noget, den er ikke meget værd som befordringsmiddel i en by, hvor der er stopsignal for hver 20 meter, men den skal også kun tjene til at vise sin ejers velstand. Han ville helst male prisen uden på den. Men har man travlt, må man benytte subwayen.

Jeg sidder i subwayen og duver, og over for mig tredive mennesker og en del negre, som ikke må være mennesker. Alle sønner og døtre af det frie Amerika. De er kommet fra Balkan og Polen og fra Afrika og Danmark, men nu er de alle ens, nu er de en type. Nu har de alle kæber som amerikanere. De sidder og tygger i takt, tygger til subwayens duven. De tygger og tygger. Det er ikke skråtobak, ikke nydelse eller stimulans. De tygger bare. Gummi. Gum gum. Op og ned. Ned og op. Fra venstre til højre. Fra højre til venstre. Subwayen vugger, og kæberne går. Det er rytme. Amerikas bekendte evige rytme. Tygge, tygge, tygge. Gummi uden smag, bare tygge, hensigtsløst idiotisk tygge, tygge. Man burde rejse en statue af mr. Wrigley, som kendte sit land, og som gav sit folk gummi at tygge. Tygge, tygge i evig stupid alvor.

Smask. Smask. Smask. Smask. Sådan virker i første omgang rytmen i Amerika, den nye verdens musik.

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1. Familie-Journalen (founded 1877) was Denmark’s most widely circulated weekly magazine, offering wholesome, sentimental fiction, household tips, and harmless parlor entertainment for the middle-class family. By invoking its name, Scherfig equates American social life with this kind of mass-produced, childishly trivial amusement. ↩︎