14
LIONEL TRILLING
half over? Was it not nearly fifty years since Eliot wrote "Por–
trait of a Lady"? George Meredith had not died until 1909, and
even the oldest among us had read one of his novels in a college
course-many American universities had been quick to bring
into their purview the literature of the later nineteenth century,
and even the early twentieth century; there was a strong sup–
porting tradition for us. Had not Yeats been Matthew Arnold's
contemporary for twenty-three years?
Our resistance to the idea of the course had never been
based on an adverse judgment of the literature itself. We are a
department not only of English but of comparative literature,
and if the whole of modern literature is surveyed, it could be
said-and we were willing to say it-that no literature of the
past matched the literature of our time in power and magnifi–
cence. Then too, it is a difficult literature, and it
is
difficult not
merely as defenders of modern poetry say that all literature
is
difficult. We nowadays believe that Keats
is
a very difficult poet,
but his earlier readers did not. We now see the depths and
subtleties of Dickens, but his contemporary readers found
him as simply available as a plate of oysters on the half shell.
Modem literature, however, shows its difficulties at first blush;
they are literal as well as doctrinal difficulties, and they are to be
dealt with by young men brought up with a lax secondary edu–
cation and an abstract and generalized college education-if our
students are to know their modern literary heritage, surely they
need all the help that a teacher can give?
These made cogent reasons for our decision to establish, at
long last, the course in modern literature. They also made a
ground for our display of a certain mean-spirited, last-ditch
vindictiveness. I recall that we said something like, "Very well,
if they want the modem, let them have it-let them have it, as
Henry James says, full in the face. We shall give the course, but
we shall give it on the highest level, and if they think, as students
do, that the modern is the facile, the easily comprehended, let
them have their gay and easy time with Yeats and Eliot, with
