The Sense of the Past
*
Lionel Trilling
I
HAVE BORROWED
the title of my paper this evening from one of
Henry James' unfinished novels because the phrase, the sense of
the past, suggests that the past is not only a matter of fact and
knowledge but also of quality and sensibility. Henry James had
another phrase which I shall borrow; he wrote of "the tone of
time": I should like to speak of the effect that the tone of time has
upon us in literature and to inquire how we can keep that tone true.
Of recent years the historical function of our profession has
been repeatedly called into question. Again and again we have
heard that the central theoretical problem we must face is whether
our studies are properly to be historical or critical. The question
has been posed, of course, by the partisans of criticism, for the
historical predilection is the entrenched one in our universities.
John Jay Chapman put the case against the prevailing attitude
when he denounced "the archaeological, quasi-scientific and docu–
mentary study of the fine arts" for "endeavoring to express the
fluid universe of many emotions in terms drawn from the study
of physical sciences."
Nothing could be more salutary than the growing dissatisfac–
tion with the academic assumptions. The world, we hear, is rapidly
becoming unliterary. Since the 17th century literature has been
increasingly distrusted. Now and then literature has protested
this distrust and often, in claiming for itself a part in life, it has
claimed a greater part than it can properly have, but still the
world continues to withdraw its confidence-hence the tendency
of the more or less literate to justify their pleasure in literature
by
the "useful ideas" they get from it. And it might be said of our
profession that its very existence indicates a distrust of literature;
an unprejudiced observer might conceivably say that we are incor–
porated for the purpose of making literature an object of knowl–
edge and that only insofar as we can do that will we ourselves
trust it. Certainly we support the distrust of literature whenever
•This is a condensed version of a paper read before the English Graduate Union
of Columbia University.
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