Lionel Trilling
A SPEECH ON ROBERT FROST:
A CULTURAL EPISODE
On March 26th, Henry Holt and Company, the publishers of
Robert Frost, gave Mr. Frost a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria in
celebration of his eighty-fifth birthday. I was the speaker at the
dinner. I am publishing what I said about Mr. Frost not because I
think it to be especially interesting in itself but because it made the
occasion for a disturbance of some magnitude and I should like to
answer the question that has often been put to me: What did I
say that could so nearly have approached a scandal?
Some of the substance of my speech was made public by
J.
Donald Adams in his column in
The New York Times Book Re–
view
of April 12th. Mr. Adams wrote from a copy of my manuscript
which, with my permission, had been made available to him by
Henry Holt and Company, and he reported with sufficient accuracy
those parts of the speech to which he took exception. It should be
said of Mr. Adams's reply to me that it took exception only to the
critical judgment I had expressed. Mr. Adams did not question my
taste or tact except in one small and perhaps facetious instance–
he thought it "unfortunate . . . in view of Frost's shock of white
hair," that I should have "identified the poet with the Bald Eagle."
(But every American worthy of the name knows that the Bald Eagle
is not bald at all and that in maturity it is distinguished by its shock
of white hair.) Nevertheless the reply of Mr. Adams created the
impression with some people that, so far from my having paid
tribute to a venerable man at a celebration of his life and achieve–
ment, I had actually offered him an affront. I gather that the chief
cause of the presumed offense was my having spoken of Mr. Frost
as "a terrifying poet."
Certainly what I had said as reported by Mr. Adams offered
an affront to some part of American opinion. It was a very deep
affront if I can judge by the letters, published in the
Book Review
