FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF LIONEL TRILLING
11
Nothing has so filled me with shame and regret at what I have not
done.
[1962?]
The second volume of Camus' notebooks makes the same effect on
me as the first - boredom and depression because of the sense that
this mind is like my own except that it does not fear to be histrionic,
to "see itself' and to impose itself. The dullness of its wish to be vir–
tuous, and to show that it is virtuous....
[1963]
"Criticism is the adventure of a soul among masterpieces."
Adventure:
a word used by comfortable, habitual men to permit them
the illusion that some part of their existence is free and courageous.
Soul:
If
one believed there was such a thing, one did not name it this
lightly, as if one thought that the church music of Saint-Saens ex–
pressed a truly religious mode.
Masterpieces:
typical of the self-important humanism of the 19th cen–
tury: it has in mind an
artist
who
achieves,
no doubt by
struggle
or
toil,
one or another
great
work; it proposed a hierarchy of grandiosity in
the arts and it pretty clearly implied that only the best is good
enough for
us.
[1963]
Seven years old - in bed
ill-
my mother enters, leading a group of
children; they are older than me, seemed of another generation,
and, really, of another order of being, in part because they are not
Jews. This is very subtle, because there was no overt sense of anti–
Semitism in my family, or, rather, there was a principled determina–
tion to ignore its possibility so long as possible. I had played with
them a few times, our game being a rather elaborate snow-battle
with a fort. All was snow outside as they entered in outdoor clothing,
glowing with the cold. They stood at the door, not to be infected.
They were enormously self-possessed, as it were armored in good in–
tention. I recall a boy-leader, godlike to me in beauty and authority,
and a girl, bold
&
boylike. They had come to tell me that I was missed,
and that in my absence they had elected me "captain." Enchanted,
overwhelmed, embarrassed by their kindness, I did not believe this,
knowing it to be a lie told to cheer me up. I imagine that I did not
respond well out of embarrassment. I imagine too that I suffered
some disappointment when I returned to play and found that I was,
of course, not captain and could not have exercised leadership.
