LIONEL TRILLING
509
tions, there was an agency that established spirit within a man, so
that he could say that what he felt within himself was really right and
true, no matter how little it was existent outside. This agency was re–
ligion itself but also a more extensive thing
&
view of which religion
was a part. In a sense this explains the feelings of the
Politics
group .
My students discussing Billy Budd, feel that there is really nothing to
be said about the story. Vere is, to them, wholly culpable, Budd be–
ing good. Law does not express spirit- even kills it: they insist that
this is the whole and final truth in the matter. They think that Vere
is a not-exactly-bad man, but a stuffy one, and in objective result
bad. They do not understand the
tragic
choice. They want the reign
of spirit immediately. What they do not understand is that: if spirit
exists in its purity, so does evil in the form of Claggett and that Clag–
gett makes Vere necessary as an intermediate force between him and
Budd....
(1947)
"Dostoevsky could not have had certain of his insights if he had not
been psychotic" (Delmore Schwartz). But we value these insights
because they are "correct" by the standards of normal reality.
(1947)
The attack on my novel that it is gray, bloodless, intellectual, with–
out passion, is always made with great personal feeling, with anger.
-How dared I presume?
Fitzgerald, Lalley, Warshaw, Prescott.
(1948)
. At
PR
dinner we talked of the situ . of Am . intel.
&
I spoke of
how he cld not be poor
&
how he bee. isolated from his group- Sid.
Hook protested this last pt
&
I said that I felt that as I defined my
position and character by my work I found that I felt more and more
alone. He said in a very kind way: that is because you are growing
independent and establishing yourself and young people begin to
make their way
&
define themselves by attacking you. Later, speak–
ing with W . Barrett on same subj., B. said "You have managed to
estab. your life on an equilibrium, a precarious one, etc"- speaking,
nicely, of my life as if it were an observable thing. (Scholarship with–
out pedantry, university teaching without academicism- bee living
in N.Y. -a N.Y. continuity etc.) Flattered on both occasions, I had
a twinge of pain both times- and that night woke with indigestion
and the sense of some awful doom impending by reason of this belief
