HANNAH ARENDT AND LIONEL TRILLING
In the last few months , two friends died . They had very little in
common , except that they belonged
to
that small community of New York
writers and intellectuals that has had so much influence on the writing and
thinking of the country , but has l;l.tely been decimated by death and broken
up by political and literary disagreements. They had many failings , but
together they made up a brilliant and sophisticated group, comparable to
those gatherings of talent that came on the scene from time to time in
Europe and in this country and changed the face of culture .
One was American, very much in the Anglo-American literary tradi–
tion; the other was European, very much in the cosmopolitan European
cultural tradition. But it was in the nature of this intellectual community,
originally in New York , later dispersed through the country, that it brought
together the best of the native and the emigre minds, with both gaining by
the cross-fertilization.
This period has not yet been fully written about, and though a few
moving recollections have appeared, we have to rely on our memories , which
naturally reflect our own personalities. Part of the difficulty is that those
who have not lived through the times tend to miss the tone of ideas and
events, while those who have find it difficult to objectify them. In addition,
most of our relations and friendships were a combination of the personal
;lOd the professional, and each of these kept impinging on the other .
I first met Lionel Trilling in the late thirties . Several of us-I forget
who , though I think Fred Dupee was there-had lunch to discuss writing
for PRoLionel looked very much then the way he did shortly before he died .
He was jaunty, classically handsome, with soft but defined features, and
modest but assured , in the way only someone who sensed his own gifts could
be, as distinct from the overconfidence or underconfidence of those who do
not know their own minds . I don't recall what we talked about; all I remem–
ber is that Lionel struck me from the beginning as a man of sensibility, a
man who was interested in ideas but who soaked them up as he did feelings
