LIONEL TRILLING
515
contemporary, for S{!Veral reasons : I did not like to speak personally,
or close to personally, of men alive or recently dead; I hated dealing
with the men of my youth as if they were long historical , and of talk–
ing of the twenties
&
the thirties as if they were the last century : I
shld like to feel that I am myself a fact in American literature
&
that
makes dealing with it awkward, or it denies my being part of it. The
true judgments
&
explanations were too hard to make in public, al–
most impossible, and the judgments available for lectures repelled
me. The subject really must be dealt with in a wholly serious , sys–
tematic way, and, I feel sure, as "history of culture" rather than as a
study of individual authors, and this , aside from the subtlety
&
com–
plexity, needs a total intellectual
~
emotional involvement that I
shld never want to make, although I feel that the result might be
very good . And then the students dismay me, the particular students
who choose contemp . Am . lit to
~atisfy
some strange unspoken need.
But then all graduate students trouble
&
in a way repel me and I
must put down here the sensation
qf
liberation I experienced when I
arranged for my withdrawal frolll the graduate school , from semi–
nars and the direction of dissertatioqs. That involvement, the result
of vanity, lack of clearsightedness, a little cowardice ... has cost me
much. I was a free man when I taught in the college and ceased to be
free when I taught in the Grad . school. For one thing I became a
public character and always on
vie~,
having to live up to the de–
mands made upon a public character,
&
f1nding that the role seemed
to grow inward . The relation with the students who worked under
me was unpleasant, although sometimes seductive- most of them
were badly prepared, poorly endowed. One was led to "reject" them,
and then because of their personal situations , to become terribly
partisan with them. And the time one had to give , and the personal
involvement, almost worse than the time! And the colleagues in the
Gr. School, with whom it was almost ifi1possible to converse ... the
childish naivety-together with , of course, the considerable knowl–
edge which I did not have
&
which
r~ally
abashed me .. .. The sense
that I was part of an enterprise that I could in no way defend, and
did not want tb defend.. . . And the day I made the arrangement
with Campbell
26
to withdraw I felt liberated , what a foolish mistake
it had been ,
&
how entirely discreditable to me. And here I should set
down my ever-growing dislike of teaching
&
of the systematic study
of literature- more and more it goes against the grain .
26 Qscar Campbell .
