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Yes, this newsreel after 9/11. "I would give the greatest sunset in the
world for one sight of New York's skyline," Ayn Rand wrote in The Fountainhead,
"The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other
religion do we need?" she asked. "I feel that if a war came to threaten
this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these
buildings with my body." (From Ayn Rand's New York)
It was dark when her boat docked
in New York Harbor. Catching a glimpse of the Woolworth Building, then
the tallest building in the world, it has been quoted tha [Ayn] Rand said it
looked like "the Finger of God," "It was
dark then," Rand's words say as read in the film Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life,
"it was kind of early evening, I think about seven o'clock or so. And
seeing the first lighted skyscrapers--it was snowing very faintly, and
I think I began to cry because I remember feeling the snowflakes and
the tears sort of together." To Rand, New York was what life was about:
a purposeful pursuit. It was a place where achievement abounded. "New
York is activity and activity is life--that's what Ayn Rand would say"
says Dr. Harry Binswanger, a long-time associate and editor of The Ayn Rand Lexicon.
New York was not only a place different in appearance, but it
represented a different way of thinking and another philosophy. To Ayn
Rand the skyscrapers of New York weren't built out of steel, stone,
bricks and mortar, they were built out of adherence to the only moral
philosophy she believed the earth had ever known: individualism.
"America is the land of the
uncommon man, " Rand wrote, "the land where man is free to develop his
genius--and to get its just rewards." New York is the capital of a
place where such thought prevails, where uncommon people prosper--and
as a result, the financial capital of the world. New York symbolized
what Ayn Rand idealized in her novels--man as a creator. The city
fostered invention and ingenuity.
The New York skyline stood
against the Atlantic looking towards a corrupt world as a proud
achievement boasting of what could happen when men played their proper
role. New York showcased the magnificence of the Empire State Building,
George Washington Bridge and the RCA Building, structures which
surpassed anything ever built. "I would give the greatest sunset in the
world for one sight of New York's skyline," she wrote in The Fountainhead,
"The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other
religion do we need?" she asked. "I feel that if a war came to threaten
this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these
buildings with my body."
Rand would live in New York for most of her life.
"Chicago
was always a second-city," Dr. Binswanger noted. "In New York the whole
area from Wall Street to the Cloisters is one solid man-made
environment." And in Los Angeles, the people were less the doers,
creators and achievers than the schemers and others who just wanted to
be famous. "In New York, people seemed happy with their work and
weren't waiting for the weekend."
Many New York sites have either
direct or philosophical connections to Ayn Rand. While she set both of
her major works in New York for the most part, most of the specific
locations and characters were imaginary. But New York was where she
imagined them, and they are likely her interpretations of real-life
places and people. A statue that stands across from Saint Patrick's
Cathedral depicts Atlas holding the weight of the world on his
shoulders. Atlas Shrugged, of course is named after the same
mythological god. "If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on
his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest,
his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the
world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort
the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders--what would you tell
him to do?" Rand wrote, answering, "To shrug."
Walking up Park Avenue from 28th
to 36th Street, Rand finalized a way to prove her ethics, the root of
the concept "value" in the concept "life". "It is only the concept of
'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible.
