Trilling and the Frost Birthday Fracas

Abstract

Trilling and the Frost Birthday Fracas George Monteiro (bio) In the late 1950s, with the earlier publication of The Liberal Imagination (1950) and The Opposing Self (1955), two collections of critical essays, Lionel Trilling was well on his way to becoming “The Last Great Critic”—as the Atlantic Monthly would call him in 2000. But in 1959 Lionel Trilling had reviewed none of Robert Frost’s books and indeed had said nothing in print about the New England pastoral poet. Yet he accepted an invitation to speak at Robert Frost’s eighty-fifth birthday celebration. That he was chosen remains puzzling, and his remarks on the occasion sparked a literary and [End Page 492] cultural controversy that every once in a while, in six decades since, rears its ugly head. There is little doubt that Trilling boned up for the occasion. He would have read, or reread, what Randall Jarrell said about Frost in two game-changing essays collected in Poetry and the Age (1953), and he may well have discussed Frost with his Columbia University colleague Mark Van Doren. Surely Jarrell or Van Doren himself would have made a more appropriate choice for speaker at this auspicious occasion. Indeed Van Doren—who discovered Frost early, championed him without reservation (especially through reviews) and who on more than one occasion listed the poems that formed a lasting canon—was a far more logical candidate. But before going on to his unsettling speech in 1959, let us backtrack. It is not known if Trilling (or Van Doren, for that matter) heard Frost read his politically conservative poem “Build Soil” to the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Columbia in 1932, Trilling’s first year at the university as a Ph.D. candidate and teacher. We do know that Trilling heard Frost speak at a conference held at Kenyon College in 1946, but he did not much like the performance. “Frost’s strange speech,” he wrote in his private notebooks, “apparently of a kind that he often gives—he makes himself the buffoon—goes into a trance of aged childishness—he is the child who is rebelling against all the serious people who are trying to organize him—take away his will and individuality.” Yet, Trilling had to admit, the speech was “full of brilliantly shrewd things.” Referring to “the pointless discussion of skepticism the evening before,” for example, Frost said: “‘Skepticism,’ is that anything more than we used to mean when we said, ‘Well, what have we here?’” But there was as well “the horror of the old man—fine looking old man—having to dance and clown to escape (also for his supper)—American, American in that deadly intimacy, that throwing away of dignity—‘Drop that dignity! Hands up’ we say—in order to come into anything like contact and to make anything like a point.” It is hard to say just how much of Frost’s poetry Trilling had read at this point—not much, perhaps, given his admissions at the birthday dinner in 1959. But there is one other entry in the notebooks, dated 1951, that, while not mentioning Frost, nevertheless evokes the poet who wrote “The Wood-Pile.” Trilling writes: “A catbird on the woodpile, grey on grey wood, its breast distended, the feathers ruffled and sick, a wing out of joint, the head thrown back and the eyes rolled back, white. Looked so sick I thought of killing it, when another bird appeared, looked at it, took a position behind it, and assumed virtually the same attitude, although not so extremely. To distract me? This it did once more, although with rather less conviction the second time, then flew away.” Then Nature conspired to let Trilling off the hook. “Suddenly the first bird pulled itself together, flew to a tree above, sat there for a moment seeming to adjust its wing, or exercise it, then flew away.” Certainly Frost had no monopoly on the observation of “birdly” [End Page 493] shenanigans, as Trilling’s entry shows. But that entry also reveals that Trilling could see no humor in the event. There would have been rather little humor for the first bird, had Trilling followed through on his...