ELINOR GRUMET - The Apprenticeship of Lionel Trilling

The Apprenticeship of Lionel Trilling
Author(s): ELINOR GRUMET

Source: Prooftexts, Vol. 4, No. 2 (MAY 1984), pp. 153-173
Published by: Indiana University Press
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ELINORGRUMET
The Apprenticeshipof Lionel Trilling
for Sherman
Paul
his career as an essayist and writer of

BEGAN
TRILLING
fiction in the pages of a journal devoted to the "advancement
of Jewish
culture and ideals." From the spring of 1925, when he was nineteen
in the Menorah
years old, to the autumn of 1931, Trilling published
Journal a total of eighteen book reviews, a personal essay, an essay in
LIONEL
from French, and four short

literary history, two signed translations
stories, at least two of which were conceived as chapters of novels. At
the end of those six and a half years, Trilling divorced his literary career
from Jewish cultural interest. That divorce was a thoughtful and con
scious act. This essay describes the terms of Trilling's affiliation with
theMenorah Journal, and examines some of the materials
that explain his
of American
Jewish culture as appropriate ground for the
an
of
life.
intellectual
development
The Menorah Journal had been founded in 1915 as the organ of the
a forerunner of the Hillel move
Association,
Intercollegiate Menorah
rejection
ment, under the editorship of Henry Hurwitz. The Menorah movement

ceased to be an extracurricular
force on American
campuses
by the
but the Journal was published fitfully until the early 1960s:
Depression,
Hurwitz died in 1961, and a final memorial
issue was brought out by his
son the following year. The Menorah Journalwas handsomely designed.
Its well-written
articles were
informative or speculative,
though non
scholarly.
Like
its parent organization,
PROOFTEXTS 4 (1984): 153-173
the Journal styled itself radical
@ 1984 byThe JohnsHopkins UniversityPress
ELINOR GRUMET
154
within
among educated
Jewish circles, but aimed for respectability
Itwas available by subscription only, and had national circu
Americans.
movement
and its publi
lation. The historic centrality of the Menorah
cation lies in the institutional definition they gave to secular Jewish
American
Jews.
identity among college-educated
1923 and 1931, Elliot Cohen-like
Lionel Trilling, then
Between
the
Menorah Journal. In
in
twenties-was
editor
of
his
managing
only
for the American
1945 Cohen would design Commentarymagazine
Jewish
on the same secular, cultural model. Then, as earlier, he
Committee
would attract a stable of young writers with his forceful personality and
the occasion he offered for a spirited assessment of Jewish life, observing
the standards of literary excellence.
first introduced Lionel Trilling to theMenorah: In
Henry Rosenthal
Rosenthal were both
1925, Lionel Mordecai
Trilling and Henry Moses
and best friends. They served together on

under the
the staff of the Morningside, Columbia's
literary magazine,
editorship of fellow-students Clifton Fadiman and Victor Lemaitre. The
had quality; Whittaker
Chambers,
John
magazine
Jacques Barzun,
for the
S. Guy Endore, and Meyer
Gassner,
Shapiro were writing
Morningside those same years; Louis Zukofsky and Mortimer Adler had
seniors at Columbia
College,
appeared in its pages several years earlier. Trilling, Rosenthal, Fadiman,

and Herbert Solow were known as campus intellectuals, and meeting
often in the Hartley Hall dormitory, came to be called the Hartley Cor
poration. (Trilling himself did not live in the dorm, but walked to school
from his parents' modest apartment at 108th Street and Central Park
West.) The members of the Hartley Corporation
brought one another
into Elliot Cohen's
circle at theMenorah Journal.I
The friendship between Lionel Trilling and Henry Rosenthal was
at this time. Their long

especially significant in Trilling's development
conversations
confirmed them in the values they shared: respect for
excellence and critical intelligence; faith in the primacy of literature and
works of imagination, and the fresh superiority of their own observations
about cultural life. They were also bound by the issue on which they
then
implications of being Jewish. First Rosenthal,
finally differed-the
Elliot Cohen, were Trilling's Jewish higher education, and Trilling's later
the heuristic
about Jews and Judaism were
public pronouncements
of these friends adopted by Trilling as conclusions. Their
observations
fiction and essays in the Menorah Journal show that young Trilling and
each other's tendency to ground their work in
Rosenthal
encouraged
autobiography.
in an article
Reflecting on several of his Jewish students at Columbia
Doren
in
Van
written for theMenorah Journal, and published
1928, Mark
noted the disparity between the two friends. He described Rosenthal:
155
in any Columbia
not very tall, I believe;
class was
in his mind,
then as now was
of something
impression
corresponding
to something
in his figure and his face, that was
almost
long
grotesquely
first Jew I remember
The
but my
out. He
drawn
presented
his pale,
ascetic
are we
going
to my
features
read Mencken.
have
What
I had not mentioned

past Mencken?"
think, did I ever mention
him, since
to talk about?
Are
not
one
after
germane
we
to get
day nor, I
to the course.
But
in the class
Mencken
he was
attention
the flicker of a smile: "I
of the firstmeetings of the class and said without
going
that
if I did speak of him thereafter, I am sure I guarded my remarks with a
. . .which
were
at this face, the eyes
in immi
down
glance
always
dropped
nent disapproval,
to see how
I must
to
be. For I quickly
learned
truthful
us call him A. A developed
in the presence
of-let
watch
the
my
step
fiercest
method
experience
waiting,
of
with
attack
ever
I have
that
controversy.
It was
which
at any moment
pale-from
as
in my
known
if his mind
itmight
none
too
long
a
lay in
coil-deadly,
rise and strike. Scorn
forme, I thought then, as well as for all of the other students and virtually
all of thewriters and thinkers of theworld-scorn was the very fiberof his
faculties;
. . .He wrote
many
only by saying No.
one
was
he
sole
author
of a little
essays
during
period
in manuscript
issues he deposited
whose
upon my desk.
weekly
was
or
he
that he ever wrote
praised
anybody
anything;
inveterately
he
could
periodical
Nothing
himself
express
for me,
brilliant
and
satirical, and he did the job thoroughly with each new victim. Though
often
I of
of,
approve
itwas
what
wondered
he
never
course
me
did
like, who
asked-it
it was
would
itwas
have
he
could
been
conceivably
He
dangerous.
and I could not have

necessary
why
was
A graduated;
told him why.
answered
however.
my question
Eventually
a
came
to me
to make
into a seminary
and word
that he had gone
himself
have
would
rabbi.
He
He
still
revolution
approves
reminding
asked
to approve,
And
had approved,
then, of God!
is in the seminary,
and I hear
against
of God.
his
the
amazed
methods
teaching
see him
I can
hearers
And of Trilling Van Doren
in some
of all
I remembered
that he has
there.
future
they never
that
this was
But
pulpit,
knew.2
something
I know
that
pale
so.
like a
started
he
as wrath
still
itself,
wrote:
as a freshman,
each year, and
F, starting
grew more
brightly
melancholy
more
in
nature
from
fastidious
his
beguiling.
Something
gentle
kept him
was
no
means
and
rendered
him
of
he
satire,
irony
though
incapable
by
unaware of absurdities; ifhe had been he would have been informed of

them quickly enough by his friendA. F spoke diffidently,with a hushed and
harmless voice; and though he wrote exceedingly well he found ithard to
decide what towrite about. I thought I detected inhim a particularly sensitive
and at the same time healthy set of nerves, and said tomyself that thiswas
equipment indeed for a story-teller or a poet. He became both-but was
careful tomaintain the amateur standing which his fastidiousness forced
him to prefer. He took up this,he took up that, only to letboth fallgracefully
at his feet,which passed lightly on to other pleasant fields.He is a college
ELINOR GRUMET
156
instructor now in theMiddle West

versity
of Wisconsin],
persons
and
slowly
ripened
of blame
for a
[in 1926-27, Trilling taught at the Uni
he writes
whence
few
others.
back
He
letters
still
for a few
full of praise
out
himself
is feeling
respectfully, with dignity, and with grace. What he will eventually do, ifhe
does it at all, will be lovely, for itwill be the fruit of a pure intelligence
in not
too
a sun.3
fierce
brooded deeply on the difference between Trilling and

Rosenthal
himself in a story called "Inventions," published in theMenorah Journal in
a character after Trilling, named
January 1928, in which he models
and a character after himself, whom he calls "Starobin."
"Dolman,"
"mannered ner
There he defines the loving tension between Dolman's
and passion as a matter of Jewishness.

have forsworn himself to see the
Starobin
"would
Jewish
nice speech, spaced in wit and
of
[Dolman's]
perpetual qualifications
a
to
gasping directness by a sound punch in
Cambridge
slang, brought
the wind from a member of the Hakoah"
(the Viennese
Jewish athletic
as
sort
"a
animated
describes
himself
of
Starobin
earlock," destined
club).
"at
both in the
to be a professional
Pharisee
home
the
Jew,
complete
velessness"
The hotly
and his own swartness
world and in the kingdom of heaven." Dolman's

imperturbability rankles
is
too
much
the
him. The fictional Trilling
young swell, amusedly sensual,
"a copybook George Moore
courteous,
given better
geometrically
shoulders and made devilish by a slight Semitic smear in the Irish face."
is "tight and smooth"; he is a man not vaguely
consciousness
Dolman's
ashamed of shaving, one born spiritually blond. The fictional Rosenthal
to jolt him to Jewish awareness,

slug him, make him watch the
in Dubnow's
rapes described
History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, trick
him by argument, convince him of his implication in a turbulent and
wants
spiritual history.
[Starobin] knew that fundamentally what all the Zionists wanted to do, and
he
certainly
among
them, was
to twist
those
soft
impassive
lips of all
the
a Yiddish salute to
Dolmans with a little good coarse Yiddish-preferably
the flag of Zion, which he should repeat unwillingly, persuaded by the
fists of an experienced Chalutz, a bronzed Palestinian bully of
Maccabean
the second
generation,
heart-whole
and
astink
with
the
soil.4
Starobin decides to challenge his friend in their senior year, setting

to
out, as Rosenthal
puts it,with a "slightly hysterical earnestness"
to find out "what kind of a Jew he was anyway."
convert Dolman,
in reality a single
the senior-year confrontation-either
Apparently
based on fact; Trilling also
incident or a series of conversations-was
in his senior year that Lionel Trilling wrote
wrote
about it. It was
"Inven
(close in title, as well as source to Rosenthal's
"Impediments"
tions"), a short story inwhich
an intense and passionately
intellectual
157
student at Columbia
tries to establish friendship with a classmate who
is well-dressed,
mannered
and nerveless. Originally
intended for the
first contribution to the Menorah
Morningside, the story was Trilling's
Journal-after he had revised it to heighten the point that the characters
were both meant to be Jews.5
Henry Rosenthal
suggested that Trilling send it to theMenorah. In
their intimate circle of friends, Rosenthal was the only observant Jew.
He took courses down the block at the Jewish Theological
Seminary
while still an undergraduate;
and he was the only one of his literary
circle who belonged to a fraternity-where
the Jewish men called their
intense
brother
from
Louisville "Hank." Rosenthal's
awkward,
intention,
as he defined it in the pages of theMenorah Journal,was tomake himself
what Stephen Daedalus
could not be-"both
pious and clever," "both
and
rabbi
maker of paradoxes,"
both Jesuit and genius.
In his early
effort to merge the religious and modern
secular compartments of his
satire served him as a way of shaming the extremes of both
positions. Lampoon forced postures to be pliant, and he defended satiric
freedom to his teacher, Mordecai
Kaplan, by claiming that itwas blas
to
it
to
believe
phemy
possible
thought that a
blaspheme God. Kaplan
a
observation
of
the
courageous
position,
great Kab
"mystic
worthy
mind,
to be at once both fully alive to the

balists," which enabled Rosenthal
and
of
and deeply in
Jewish life (Kaplan's words),
vulgarities
sterility
love with it.6
What Kaplan perhaps failed to appreciate was that Rosenthal's
satiric
faith included the obligation to satirize even his own motives and temper.
Rosenthal
observed
of his alter ego Starobin:
...
he was
although
reputedly
statement
of superficial
things
keen,
or
it was
for his
chiefly by virtue
knack
of inventing
of his
an
clever
extremely
complex (and highly literary) sentiment or relationship and assigning it

arbitrarily
to whomsoever
reticulation
in the pattern
of personality
he might
be trying to project,
. . . but
or a new Dostoevski
Proust
they had here a Marcel
heart he was more modest,
and did not fail to make
the proper
he wished
to describe.
People
were
awed
by
the
sheer multiplicity of any particular judgment which he might utter, by the
and
fancied
in his deep
discounts.7
itself
that
The young writers on theMenorah Journal considered Henry Rosen

thal their mad genius, their James Joyce, the one most marked for literary
success. As undergraduates,
he and Trilling talked long and intensely
with each other, making their minds, proceeding probably as Rosenthal
depicted Starobin and Dolman, verballydestroyingall the values they
had always professed and reconstructing

in the travail of conversation
"that beauty, truth, and religion without which the world was foul."s
ELINOR GRUMET
158
2
sent a letter to "my dear Mr. Trilling" on March
18,
his
and inviting him to lunch to
1925, accepting
story "Impediments,"
discuss the possibility of future contributions. Trilling earned $35 from
the piece, at theMenorah's usual rate of two cents a word; itwas his first
Elliot Cohen
published work in a national periodical. A year passed before Trilling's

next published story, though he did make at least one submission
that
was rejected, a story similar in subject to "Impediments"
set at Yale, and
the title does not refer to yet another
called-if
story that went
and Jerome."9
unpublished-"Donald
Jewish Novel," his second story published
"Chapter for a Fashionable
in theMenorah, was submitted with an endorsement by Rosenthal, a note
intimidatingly clever inRosenthal's way, defending the fiction's incidental

Jewishness: "To be sure, if, in one's present day literalness, the Journal
requires more rigorous evidence of the piece's Chaldean
ancestry I can
undertake to suggest toMr. Trilling that, literally or metaphorically,
he
hook the noses of his characters and, as inmy own writings, intersperse
a few judicious references to circumcision,
and so on." During
the aca
demic year 1925-26, Cohen met Herbert Solow and Clifton Fadiman
through Trilling, and learned to handle the inspired fierceness of Henry
Rosenthal's
temperament.10
same year, while Trilling worked at Columbia

on his master's
on him as an
his
his
with
and
Cohen
degree,
friendship
dependence
editor deepened; when inMadison
the following year, Trilling sent him
to "Elliot" rather than
letters in a high-spirited scrawl-now
addressed
That
"Mr. Cohen,"
and often signed "Li"-filled
revisions
about
and witty Jewish news.
Trust
you
have
recovered
from
with
the convention
notes
and arguments
[the Menorah
Convention
on the Spiritual Situation of the Jew, in January 1927]. I really think you
should have wangled (asmy English friends say) a trip toNew York forme.
If I had nothing to say about the Jew inAmerica, I could have sung or told
dirty
stories.
Rosenthal is Passovering among the nymphs and Seders of Louisville, and

to the regards he would no doubt send, he probably adds the season's
greetings.
As
in everything,
the
Jews
are
curious
in their
celebration
of
liberty: it is done by keeping one imprisoned in the house waiting for three
meals a day for eight days because no restaurant and no other person's
house is celebrating libertywith sufficient severity.'1
in Cohen's
involvement
cultural enterprise was so keen,
Trilling's
that the evening of his arrival inWisconsin,
he sat to write a story for
the Journal. He sent his early Madison
work first to Henry, who then
delivered it to Elliot. (A story written during the year he was inMadison,
159
or
lost, was finally called either "The Butcher's Sister's Doctor"
"Galatea
Trilling conceived himself a writer of Jewish
Incomplete.")
fiction at the time, defining the adjective "Jewish" by the passionateness
now
committed satirical intelligence. Though

of both Cohen's and Rosenthal's
he later recoiled from Jewish cultural enterprise, refusing to serve on
the editorial board of Cohen's
Commentary,Trilling remained personally
devoted to Cohen. He delivered his eulogy in 1959, pale and barely able
to stand. Trilling's friendship with Rosenthal was of shorter duration,
apparently ending
diverged.12
in the early thirties, when
the careers of the two men
association with the Menorah Journal lasted

Trilling's
a year of master's work
from Columbia;
through Trilling's graduation
as
an
in the Department
"assistant"
of English at the
there; his year
University ofWisconsin,
teaching lower division courses; and four more
Altogether
School, and part-time

years of literary study at the Columbia Graduate
teaching in the Evening, Extension and Day divisions of Hunter College.
In addition to the work published in theMenorah Journal, there survive in
an essay, "The Changing Myth
the papers of the Menorah
Association
of the Jew," written between

the autumn of 1930 and the autumn of
1931 (but published only in Commentary almost fiftyyears later inAugust
1978), and a pointless review of James Sykes' biography of Disraeli's
stories mentioned
wife. The Yale and Madison
above survive only in
passing reference.13
The word "identity" was not in common use in the 1920s; the writers
who apprenticed themselves to theMenorah Journal rather described their
affiliation with a Jewish magazine by evoking the terms "self-acceptance,"
"self-realization,"
or,
less
frequently,
"authenticity."
That
catch-phrase
for all types of felt Jewish inauthenticity, "self-hate," was applied to the
Jewish situation only in 1930 in Berlin by Theodor Lessing; so what the
Menorah men eschewed went under the name of "self-denial" and "shame"
at being a Jew. Trilling defined the Jewish self-acceptance
they promoted
as a Jew's "finding pleasure and taking pride in the identification, dis
covering in it one or another degree of significance. From which there
might follow an impulse of kinship with others who make the same
recognition, and perhaps the forming of associations on the basis of this

and belongingness
kinship." He readily predicated that self-acceptance
in theMenorah that he
of himself, noting in a personal essay published
was among those who "had investigated and in part discovered what it
means
to be a Jew to one's self." His claim was warranted by his involve

in the business of building an American
Jewish culture through
the pages of theMenorah Journal, as ElliQt Cohen conceived it.'"
1929
In 1929, Trilling stood before the delegates
to the December
ment
Convention
of the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association,
himself as an example of a young Jewish writer whom
presenting
the Menorah
ELINOR GRUMET
160
Journalhad saved from diversion to other fields and dissipation of talent.

His appearance was both an act of public relations and the kind of
a
Here was
encourages:
testimony Alcoholics
Anonymous
personal
young man saved by theMenorah Journal,one of "the young men, earnest,
trained, perhaps talented, whom Judaism loses only with a terrible effect
on itself"-as Trilling described the redeemed in a letter that same year.
of commitment to his first public forum and love for itsmanaging

editor, Trilling wrote a very long and very personal endorsement of the
Menorah Journal in 1929 at Cohen's
request-a
request made of all his
a time when
stable of writers-at
the finances of the Journal were so
desperate that its continuance was called into question.15
is best read as his retrospection on
letter of endorsement
Trilling's
Out
to him, written even as he was freeing

the Journal had meant
it to be was
himself from the Journal's program. What he described
a
one of those organs of critical imagination
"little magazine,"
essentially
which, as he explained years later in his introduction to the Partisan
Reader, keep "our culture from being cautious and settled, or merely
what
sociological, or merely pious." For in the late 1920s, Trilling's feelings

about America were similar to Waldo
Frank's and Lewis Mumford's:
America was unsupportive
of native creativity, and hope for cultural
in a
excellence
lay only in the work of critical subgroups. He wrote
Menorah review of this country: "America, where
it is considered best
that . . . freedom and creation
[be] shown their limits." The Menorah
Journal and its program of Jewish cultural nationalism provided such a

creative subgroup. Itsmembers might imagine that their creative activity
and stood related organically to
grew from a soil richer than America's,
their smaller Jewish society as both means and end, redeeming it from
in the same way
that Matthew
Arnold
cultural
Babbitry,
supposed
would
leaven
the
life.
the
of
From
activity
lump
English bourgeois
was
a
of
the
Menorah
dream
of
view,
Jewish point
program
Diaspora's
end in an autonomous
Jewish cultural center, such as Simon Dubnow
had
and
Cohen's
imagined. From the American
point of view-Elliot
was a communal dream of premodern creativeness
Lionel Trilling's-it
and organic, folk integrity in the desert of middle-class
sham and
boosterism.16
I have been trying hard [Trilling's endorsement concluded] to understand

the reason which would, of all Jewish activities, firstabandon the Journal. I
can only see such an action as to the last degree illogical. It seems tome that
the whole purpose of practical Jewish endeavor is to create a community
that can read The Menorah Journal.More exactly, of course, what Imean is
that this purpose is to construct a society that can consider itsown life from
a calm, intelligent, dignified point of view; take delight in its own arts, its
own thoughts, the vagaries of its own being. Itmay be argued, of course,
that the Journal does not do these things. But granted that it does, it is
161
performing an essential function in the Jewish body. And if it does these

things, it is a madness to cut itout from the Jewish body.
If the situation of the Jewswere suddenly made perfect, if therewere no
longer struggle and heartbreak, many forces inpresent Jewish lifewould be
and made
stranded
useless.
the Menorah
But
It is not
useful.
only
the best
often
things
a means
that a thing can be both

are both-creation,
love,
In a perfect
not.
Journal would
Jewishworld, the Journal,with very little change, would

and
still be valid and

an end.
Perhaps
truth.
I have tried to thinkwhy the Journalmust of all things in Jewish lifebe first
I cannot
sacrificed.
discover
I can
why.
only
waste.As forhow the IntercollegiateMenorah

the Journal,
it not?-the
much
I simply
cannot
it. The
conceive
see
the
a terrible
as
sacrifice
Society can be justifiedwithout

purpose
Society's
have
learning,
we
so much
then
spiritual
fertility,
have
is
is cultural,
purpose of Jewish life is cultural, is it not? Have we

we
then so
so much
intelligence in Jewish life thatwe can afford to chuck a good deal of itvery
casually over the side? Nobody can think thatwe have. A good Jewishbook,
a fine Jewish thought is rare enough, God knows. You bet He knows. And
He knows that all the ewes are blemished, that the column of smoke rises
crooked
as a corkscrew,
the sanctuary
...
buzzes
If the Journal
over
that unclean
with
is chucked,
into a Benevolent
accidents
happen
to the priests,
that
flies.
then
Judaism
has
also
to be chucked
and made
Association.
And then a man could decently make up his mind whether he wanted
join that bunch or the Elks.'
to
are speaking in these lines. Trilling's

itself very early, and its young voice is
established
literary generation
voice
of collective feeling, and its unedited tone, the tone of
often the
if he
asked Trilling
twelve years later, Hurwitz
adolescence. When,
use
refused:
this
letter
of
of endorsement, Trilling
could make public
. . .Then
"For one thing, I very much dislike itsmanner of expression;
a
were
in
written
for another thing, those paragraphs
special context
so
me
exist
for
and
for
me, doesn't
which,
any longer
they can have
H. L. Mencken
and Sinclair Lewis
truth only historically."18

In his letter of endorsement,
the Journal:
Trilling
recalls his first impression
of
When I first saw the Journal, my emotions were naive but not, I think,
difficult to explain nor unworthy. Iwas first struck by its handsomeness: I
had never seen a modern Jewish publication thatwas not shoddy and dis
gusting. Here I found no touch of clumsiness or vulgarity;-believe me: this
was perhaps the firstpublic Jewishmanifestation ofwhich I could say that.
I suppose my naive apprehension of this acted as a sort of catalyst to
whatever vestigial Jewish feeling I had had. I saw that this Jewishmanifes
tation was careful, considered, intelligent. I had heard no rabbi be these
162
ELINOR GRUMET
I had
things,
though
and legitimate
no
I saw
rabbis.
many
apology
was
taken
Judaism
as an accepted
made....
being
a story I had written

two Jewish students.
I do not
about
Iwrite with much
the things
but as I remember
affection,
a pretty
a situation
it still seems
It exploited
between
story.
good
in my
I had
heard
thing;
drawer
remember
usually
that story
two Jews; but I had not said theywere Jews; and I tried to hint itbut not say
itby giving the characters names thatmight or might not be Jewish. This
did not make
evasion
before
when,
were
they
the story
the story
sending
more
it
Jews
gained
the gain
truth;
by
a better
became
Menorah
Not
truth.
have
truth. But
truth-general
I indicated
that
unmistakably
it contain
only did
particular
a gain
it made
truth
of writing
the
because
representation
is repeated
situation
been
in general
It
truth.
save
in The
nowhere
printed
save
develop,
about
or
to say that, in one way
times a month,
in every
else can these pieces
appear;
twenty
the Journal
Nowhere
publishes.
a lie will have
not be able
to appear,
been
told
am
truth has not.
I myself
in
interested
the
fictional
chiefly
of the Jew; and remembering
the fiction which
the
exploits
one
for each
not
I shall
of this
implications
in another,
this
and
to the Journal,
Journal.
The
piece
of particular
It could
story.
It had
dishonest.
that will
Jew, as it is published by the established houses,

written
about
in the Journal,
know
that
I know that the Jew is
without
nowhere
easy "sympathy"
fearlessly,
else as a human
and not as a problem.
being
is a terribly
done.
important
thing to have
carefully,
nowhere
this
save
I
And
But I fear Imust return tomyself. With the publication of my story Iwas
I could
caught.
not
I did
Jewishness.
gestures.
compensatory
characteristic-I
weakness,
honesty,
but it helped
direct
of
that
extraneous,
could
into
it. I used
the story would
have
as one
it as "mine"
talk of
selfishness.
strength,
I began
my life. When
entered
Jewishness
get
it as part of my individuality and it functioned like a
thing. I accepted
personal
I was
about
not obsessed
with
Jews.
thinking
I did not,
I think, make
romantic
and
religion.
as an important
But I accepted
the fact of Jewishness
escape
not
I wasn't
to conceive
to be
a more
told
talks of a person's
it was,
sure what
very
a story, some
that
this
"universal"
element
Jewishness
appeal
was
without
it.
This may have been true, though I think not, but certainly the story always
took
on
more
life
for me,
more
clarity,
more
point,
if
it contained
Jewishness.19
Trilling was committed in the same way Cohen was to the conscious
creation of a Jewish cultural renaissance
in America,
and he betrays
certain Menorah
in his early reviews and letters: Elliot
idiosyncrasies
ironic eye for reading current events; Henry Hurwitz's
Cohen's
profound
faith in objective, sociologically-oriented
Trilling's vision, a
history-in
relief for Jewish insecurity; and a
history of early American
Jewry-as
certain taste for Jewish curiosa. He enjoyed, for example, Stopford
Brooke's description of Browning's
"Jewish quality," and cited it to scold
Cohen formaking cuts in one of his stories. Then there was the appendix
163
1905 edition of George Croly's Tarry Thou Till I

to Funk and Wagnall's
Come,which Trilling found interesting for its tabulation of "the sullen or
eager responsa of Jewish rabbis and scholars to the question: What do
you think of Christ?" Trilling also shared the feeling for Jewish com
a
munity, even beyond his immediate group. In 1928, he published
was
Dies."
He
"Another
translation of Paul Morand's
Jew
poem
looking
hard at the facts of history Rosenthal wanted him to confront. The poet
describes the body of a victim of a pogrom: "Upon his cheeks the seals of
hobnails, I and his ripped mouth hangs open, I a box emptied of cries-."2O
But Trilling's
specific interest, as he pointed out in his letter of
in
his own craft, what he called Jewish fiction-novels
endorsement,
lay
stories
both by and about Jews. He requested to review work
and short
a
Myer, had just been published
by L. Steni, whose novel, Prelude to Rope for
in England; and the novel Jud Suss (Power, in English) by Lion Feucht
the German
wanger,
Jewish writer enjoying tremendous popularity,
who at about the time of Trilling's request had submitted a satire sup
pressed by the German government, exposing the rise of antisemitism
there and inAustria. (Itwas a piece published in two parts in theMenorah
with theWandering
Journal in 1928, called "Conversations
Jew," inwhich
the then unfamiliar symbol of the swastika was footnoted and explained
for American
readers.) Trilling's main project while associated with the
was
a
to Jewish fiction, a critical essay he projected,
Journal
prolegomenon
to be definitive on the subject. The closest he came to producing itwas a
course he taught in theMenorah
Summer School in 1930 on the Jew in
experience he recalled made especially trying by the presence

of Cecil Roth in the earlier sessions. While preparing the course, during
the academic year 1929-30, Trilling lectured on the subject before at
Fiction-an
Societies of Hunter and Adelphi, then both women's

least theMenorah
colleges. His essay "The Changing Myth of the Jew" was a summary of
the essence of the six-week survey course, probably written after the
summer
was
over.21
Trilling's commitment to theMenorah Journalwas purely social and

cultural, and did not include longings for Zion. He apparently shared
Solow's
Herbert
skepticism about the Zionist movement,
profound
recalling that during the riots in Palestine in 1929, several of theMenorah
letters indicate that he
circle were pro-Arab on principle. Elliot Cohen's
was deeply upset by the anti-Jewish violence, but even for him Zionism
In his
finally meaningful only for its power as a cultural movement.
dream of organic community, he felt Zion in some way an arbitrary
source of inspiration, the more serious challenge being to educate Jewish
character inAmerica. That solved, then political Zionism, or perhaps a
was
intrinsically appealing project, might be undertaken.22

Trilling's commitment to theMenorah Journalwas also not a religious
one. In his letter of endorsement, Trilling explained:
more
ELINOR GRUMET
164
My family is orthodox, with a pretty sound tradition of learning and piety

behind it.But, likemost familieswith such a tradition and with sincere and
not
intentions
unintelligent
of
it, it was
continuing
I see
out.
losing
its
Jewish gestures as the swing of the clapper of a bell: while the clapper hung
in the bell itwas intended for, it struck the sides and gave forth a sound.
But now the clapper had been hung in a bell thatwas too big for it. It swung
it could
but
So,
never
reach
the side of the new
my
except
sentimentally,
not go through
for you
need
environment.
could
gestures
parents'
the rationalizations
No
not
touch
of a young
came.
sounds
me
man
at all.
who
was
bored and unattracted by thewhole business.

At
At
one
Iwas
college
it was,
the time,
that a clever
granted
of the clever
I believe
young
man
young
and
you
was
a
men.
not
I need
perhaps
completely
will
explain
this, either.
remember,
free
taken
spirit. This,
for
too you
will understand. I suppose that the characteristic thing about our intelligent
societywas itsassumption that religion (I use theword with a littleRuskinian
machinery:
"religion,"
"binding"
of any
sort) was
not
a valid
thing.23
By his own account, Trilling lived as a child in a "comfortable New

in a community united around synagogue
suburb," Far Rockaway,
to 108th Street, Trilling was
activities. Later, when the family moved
Max
then a student at the
trained for his bar mitzvah
Kadushin,
by
a
and
of
Mordecai
Jewish Theological
Kaplan.
Seminary,
protege
York
rather than
the Trilling home as Conservative,
but the
still a significant amount of observance,
was
on
in
conversation
the
value
of
cultural
Judaism and its
emphasis
to the best of the larger world. The house was kosher,
accommodation
Kadushin
Orthodox:
recognized
there was
learned in traditional
and Trilling's maternal
grandfather, who was
was
a
in
turns
the
up in Lionel's story
presence
Judaism,
family. (He
David Trilling, Lionel's father, urged his son
"Notes on a Departure.")
inHigh School, and study Hebrew
to lay tefillin while
for the sake of
While
he
with
Lionel
culture.
studied
Kadushin,
Jewish
accompanied his
His
tutor to services every week at Kaplan's
bar mitzvah
Center.
Jewish
was held at the Seminary
and was
followed by an original speech
delivered in the family circle. In later years, Kadushin
recalled, Trilling
was moved by the death of his mother
to say Kaddish.
In the 1920s,
was
solicitious of his friend Rosenthal's
orthodox practices,
Trilling
because he knew them intimately, but he did not attach himself to the
Menorah Journal in order to share them. "I did not get religion."4
to the Menorah Journalwas not the
Finally, Trilling's commitment
result of a longing for Jewish study in its own terms. In his letter of
endorsement, he makes the statement: "It seems tome that there is but
one thing which must be done for Judaism today. Content must be
must be given it." Trilling's
and
call for meaning
given it.Meaning
content is less astonishing when one realizes that these are the exact
words ofMordecai
Kaplan, which Trilling certainly was hearing at that
165
It is a slogan of cultural renaissance

from Rosenthal.
Trilling
excellent
repeated, but for him, the call for Jewish content-something
to study and contemplate-must
have had literal force. He found Judaism
contentless because
the classics of the tradition were
to
inaccessible
him. In his celebratedly "Jewish" essay, "Wordsworth
and the Rabbis"
and that the
(1950), Trilling explains that he never mastered Hebrew,
point
Sayings of theFathers,which he had read many times as a boy when he was

to be davvening in Hebrew
School, defined the extent of his
supposed
with
His characteristic way of
traditional
literature.
Jewish
familiarity
in
and
the
Menorah
fiction
reviewing Jewish
Journalwas to compare
poetry
the contemporary work with other works of established excellence and

of similar style or genre or concern, in the canon ofWestern
literature;
so placing Jewish imaginative writing in its proper secular tradition, and
extending and refining his own intellectual points of reference in the
literature ofWestern
civilization.25
For example, in his book reviews, when
to evaluate the
he wishes
he refers to the style of Lamb,
prose of Robert Nathan,
and Sheridan. And at the center of Lester Cohen's novel The
Goldsmith,
Great Bear is a hero larger-than-life; Trilling concludes that the novel is
too-delicate
wanting only after he has surveyed "our" responses to fictional titans,

which we have learned from familiarity with the heroes of Balzac,
and Dreiser;
and from our familiarity with
Nietzsche,
Galsworthy,
the
hero
of
the
Icelandic
Grettir,
saga that bears his name, and with
and with Plutarch's Alexander. During his Menorah years,

Tamburlaine,
the tradition Trilling mastered and shored up was that ofWestern
liter
ature. He was finally so insensible to the integrity of the transmission of
other literary traditions, that it did not concern him that confessing
ignorance of all but one short collection of rabbinic maxims in translation,
of his observation
about the
might be an embarrassing
qualification
and the Rabbis"

(that early draft of chapter 4 of
Sages. "Wordsworth
a
on Words
and
after
all,
Sincerity
Authenticity) is,
study and meditation
not
rabbinic
literature.26
worth,
It is noteworthy too in this connection, that when writing criticism
the
Menorah Journal, Trilling had already adopted the first person
for
later criticized as a
plural of the British essayist, for which he was
about
coterie writer. At that early date he was already generalizing
our" emotional and intellectual habits, derived from what "ve" have
education. On the
read or heard about, being people sharing aWestern
seem to function as an extension of

level, the pronouns
psychological
the autobiographical ground of Trilling's work. By saying "we," he creates
a community-by-incantation
which shares and validates the culture as
he perceives it.He is also iterating his choice of community. Overtly, he
is simply making Victorian "speaking prose" his own-the
language of
ethical meditation on the state of society. It is a style used by nineteenth
ELINOR GRUMET
166
century British writers, who assumed in talking to their countrymen, as

Trilling and Harold Bloom later put it in their anthology of Victorian
literature, "that there really is an English nation; with particular problems
to make, and with a definable destiny to

the mode for the Jewish and the edu
translated
pursue." Trilling easily
cated American nations. The contemporary Jewish fiction that interested
him had no roots in Jewish history or letters, though it, and Trilling's
criticism of it, are a part of Jewish history now.27
During 1929-30, Trilling served as an assistant editor of the maga
to confront
and decisions
zine. The
agreed with him less than the

job of reading manuscripts
in the Menorah
the
intellectual work he undertook
spirit. He made
a
to
establish
usable
cultural nationalist's
attempt
past by retrieving
arts and letters. Though he
Jewish heroes from the history of Western
considered several subjects, Trilling wrote only one essay on a Jew-in
led him to what he had not counted on: a
the-arts, and it probably
someone
else's crisis of Jewish identity.
confrontation with
"A Friend of Byron," as the article

Isaac Nathan,
subject was
called, who had originally set the poet's Hebrew Melodies to music.
as someone whose
career in culture was a
Trilling understood Nathan
failure of the most frightening and reprehensible
kind: Nathan was
a
between
full
the
of
education,
Jewish
parents who had
caught
legacy
His
was
hoped he would enter the rabbinate, and his own personal ambition to
eminence in the British cultural circle closest to Byron. Nathan's
solution,
as Trilling read it,was to pass as a composer by cribbing Jewish liturgical
music, and a literary critic by moralizing on texts in the "sanctimonious"
of the pulpit. He betrayed the integrity of both traditions, tra
ducing Jewish piety and English artistic excellence inhis ambition. Trilling
could not tolerate the familiar falseness of Nathan's
cultural position,
and he wrote of him with uncharacteristic
condescension.
cadence
Poor
Nathan!
Poor
not
tradesman,
in that anomalous
position
a gentleman,
an
not yet quite
some
in
social
respected
firmly
Nathan
quite
seeking
to set yourself
of three
tall hats,
not
of yours,
artist!
Poor
niche,
as
quite
Nathan
like a club
window as possible, trying to shake off the [Jewpeddler's] crowning tower

one
on
top of another!
. . . Poor,
too greatly the world of the Gentiles, who

Huziel,
David
Kimchi,
been a good-enough
and a bad critic!28
Rashi,
and
Julius
poor
Nathan
who
envied
could cite Jonathan, son of
Africanus,
and who
might
have
rabbi in Israel, but who became a mediocre musician
For all its resemblance to "polite" gentile opinion, Trilling's objection

to Isaac Nathan was a Jewish one: IfNathan was vulgar, itwas because
he did not accept himself as a Jew and rest there. Nathan was Jewishly
in
inauthentic, which meant-as
Trilling would define inauthenticity
1970-that
he made "the sentiment of [his] being dependent
on the
167
opinion of others." By the ungenerous

temper of the idea of "self-hate,"
Nathan deserved the contempt of one exploring his own Jewishness.29
3
But Trilling could not proceed
for long on the assumption
that
lifewas something political, to be rallied, built up, defended. He
found Jewish cultural nationalism an intellectual dead-end, and his sub
sequent criticism was impervious to the claims of ethnic groups upon
the English canon which established
his terms of excellence.
Finally
Trilling could not permit himself to be implicated in Jewish cultural
dilemma of being caught
agony. He could never allow Isaac Nathan's
to be his own, nor would he permit
between
longing and allegiance
cultural
Jewish emotion to determine the content or the conclusions of his intel

lectual life.This iswhat Henry Rosenthal's
fictional counterpart Starobin
discovered on confronting his friend Dolman
during their senior year at
college.30
In Rosenthal's
story, "Inventions," Starobin decides to "convert" his
friend, feeling in the challenge the anxiety of a test-case. Can Judaism
be accepted by an honorable and clever-minded man? Will the miracle of
belief grip Dolman,
and so extend their meeting of minds to a meeting
of souls? IsDolman open to the "kartharsis of pleasant dread" on inclining

his head for the Aleinu or on hearing the Kaddish, as Starobin experiences
it? Starobin decides intuitively to argue the heroism of the Jewish cultural
attitude as it fills him. He is not without self-irony, and approaches his
further rehearsals
of the encounter
"intoxicated
and reeling with
The noble phrases of affiliation come out in the sharp and
worthiness."
yearning voice of the satirist.
You
tell
deep
racial
roots
of
for worlds
forever,
all his
that a soul
[a Dolman]
soul's
blood.
it. You
and worlds
You
its precious
that we must
draws
tell him
of worlds.
tell him
You
sustenance
only from the
once and
kill Jewish shame
tell him to hate Gentiles
with
the new
about
culture.
culture, you say, which has the bald stink of madness;

venomous,
from Simeon
and
in one
ben Yochai
form or another
to Heinrich
it has
Heine.
curdled
And
there
There
is an
old
it is prickly and
the brains
is a new
of all of us
culture,
you
go on, out there somewhere between the Jordan and theWestern Sea
which will draft your soul into the throbbing loneliness ithungers for.This
culture will be like a cool hand to the head, like spikenard to the nostrils,
and like a beautiful wedded wife to all the passions.3'
sits listening on the couch with his legs bent up against his
Dolman
chest. He answers first by refusing the heroism: "I haven't got many
values, but what I have I shan't bury near Pisgah. I don't want to bury
ELINOR GRUMET
168
con
anything anywhere." Then he subverts his friend's arguments by
own
about
shamed
confusion
his
with
Starobin
Jewish.
being
fronting
knows that behind the Jewish rallying cry is a shame that
Dolman
social balance and self-esteem, a feeling that turns
erodes Starobin's
all the rage of the accusation of self-hatred-when
murderous-with
Starobin detects it in a fellow Jew. Dolman will have no part of that
neither you nor anybody else can
neurosis. This quiet line lingers: "...
freely make me miserable."32

is an extraordinary piece of writing. Even
"Inventions"
Rosenthal's
more than an exposure of Dolman's
coolness, itmeans to be the psycho
at
turbulence. Dolman,
logical notation and indictment of Starobin's
own
serene
the
in his
fiction
least, is decent and
system of values,
argues; he is "an idiot who had every right to be a snob and resigned the
in his Jewish attitudes, harboring mis
privilege." But Starobin writhes
thoughts, exalting in ready-made generalizations
sionary and murderous
at once loving their vision and loathing their ease, loving
of Zionism,
Judaism and hating what its arguments of justification have done to his
mind. The title of the story is from Ecclestiastes: "God made man upright;
but they have sought out many inventions" (7:29). The allusion is to the
tortuous and over-clever conversations
Starobin has with himself from
to the time he confronts him. The stream of
the time he meets Dolman
runs something like this:

I have met another Jew, a fellow cripple, with whom to establish the
strong and necessary bonds of mutual disability. But, wait: he doesn't
consider himself a cripple, he is not overly troubled by the fact that he is
a Jew, doesn't require that fact in a friendship. It's clearly a matter of
time before he snubs me. So Iwill prepare to snub him, find a character
fault: Since he downplays his Jewishness, he must be an antisemite. But
how can I say such a thing? I thought he was my equal, but he ismuch
of himself, "a saint, a gentleman, one of
better than I am, unashamed
neurosis
the sweet serene giants." So how can I show him I am better than he is?
that will make his politeness
Iwill tell him that the Jews are despicable;
Iwill pas
to them the most arrant genteel condescension. Meanwhile
sionately adopt them, become "an ideal composite of Jesus Christ and
the Baal Shem Tob," who will suffer the bruised children of Israel to
come unto me, seeing in "their raw bentschen a genuine first-rate Mass."
But ifDolman
really believes that Jews are such swine and in need of a
savior, he is despicable himself and not worth the time. On the other
. .. Can he
hand, if he refuses to believe it, leaving me inmy posture.
care for Jews more than I do, respectfully leaving them alone, while I
harangue and despise them myself? But no. I'm ashamed for them, not of
them. Iwill beat him up. But here is a man so tenaciously courteous he
will not recognize a victory by force. Iwill convert
. ..
one mountain meeting another.
him, confront him,
169
Starobin describes his spirit as ingeniously corrupted to disguise

insecurity. He knows that his defensive habits of mind threaten to
compromise his intellectual health. Several months after the appearance
of "Inventions," Henry Rosenthal
published a "Note on the Problem of
inMordecai
SAJ Review, where he argued that the

Kaplan's
was
inundation by the cliches, generali
greatest danger facing Judaism
and
definitions
of itself Jewry was defensively
zations,
speculative
and
"The
manufacturing
promoting.
dangers which beset Judaism seem
to be many," he wrote, "but it is a point worth considering whether
Judaism"
chief among them is not that Judaism will die of inanition but that Jews
. . . Jewish lifewill on the
will suddenly and on one day die of hysteria.
scene
not
die of external shock, though the constancy
American
probably
is only one
of the external pressure almost amounts to shock. There
thing it can die of, then; it can get sick of itself and die. This itmight
ismore uneasy
to be doing." In his SAJ Review article, Rosenthal
the grandiose spiritual ambitions of Zionism to reconstruct a civili
zation and conjure up a culture than his alter ego Starobin. What agitates
him is that in a generation of activity and talk, Zionism has allowed
to substitute for excellence, and "not precipitated one idea
enthusiasm
and true, nor one
that shall be not only fervent but permanent
seem
with
shall be
product of the Zionist spiritual discipline-that
personality-a
not only true but distinguished and creative." (So saying, he was rejecting
and Henrietta
like Chaim Weizmann,
Judah Magnes,
contemporaries
as his own
criticism
this
of
Rosenthal's
Lionel
borrowed
Szold.)
Trilling
conclusion about Jewish intellectual life in general, making it explicit in
a symposium
in 1944, conducted by the Contemporary JewishRecord, then
"Modern
under the editorship of Adolph Oko:
Jewish religion at its
best," Trilling wrote, "may indeed be intelligent and soaked in university
knowledge, but out of it there has not come a single voice with the note
or poetic, or even of rhetorical, let alone
of authority-of
philosophical,
are our
lamented: "Whatever
of religious, authority." And Rosenthal
common
a
our
common social habits in sociological sense,
social habit in
sense is disquiet-and
our most manifest value, distress.
a psychological
What might be the wages of this?"33
refuses to center his
the Trilling character in "Inventions,"
Dolman,
spiritual and intellectual life in the situation of modern Jewry if itmeans
assuming the personal agony he sees in his friend. In one of his Menorah
stories, "Funeral at the Club with Lunch," Trilling has a young Jewish
in the lunchroom, because
he automatically
teacher sit separately
assumes that the death of a gentile colleague will unite all the others in
an exclusive and anti-Jewish feeling, which he wishes to defy by provok
ing, sitting apart without overt cause. Suddenly, realizing his psycholog
ical reflex, he calls it a "mad and filthy" response.34
As his contributions to the Journal attest, Trilling used the composi
ELINOR GRUMET
170
tion and criticism of "Jewish fiction" to exorcise his ethnic habits of

In
mind, by making those reflexes the subject of literary contemplation.
exhorted himself to "keep the
the same way that Nathaniel Hawthorne
imagination sane," Trilling came to issues of Jewish identity with the
the balance of his emotional

of ensuring
intelligence. The
in which he came to rest after repudiating
the program of
was
in
1944
the
made
cultural
nationalism,
symposium.
Jewish
explicit
of the "gracelessness"
There Trilling explained, with acknowledgment
that being Jewish
of his position, but adamant about its appropriateness,
was for him a "point of honor," a minimal and passive position, uncon
cerned with the Jewishness of future generations,
consisting only in the
or
not
escape being Jewish, even ifhe could.
feeling that he would
deny
was
That
all. He would certainly identify himself publicly as a Jew, as he
intention
attitude
in the symposium; and he would continue to entertain

Jewish feelings, as he did when Jewish scholars were appointed to the
and he came home grinning; but he would
English faculty at Columbia,
not
and those feelings to legislate
identification
that
permit
absolutely
his emotional or intellectual life.a3
did, for instance,
of Religion
Department
College
Wellesley
NOTES
HHMA
Cincinnati,
=
Henry
Ohio
Hurwitz-Menorah
Association
collection,
American
Jewish Archives,
=Menorah
MJ
Journal
13 (May 1925): 162-64; Hartley Corporation:
1. "Comment,"
Columbian,
Morningside
19
interview with James and Elsa Grossman,
1925, p. 168, and 1924, p. 1970; Personal
Park West?see,
for example, Trilling,
lived at 478 Central
the Trillings
1978;
August
26 March
box 59, folder 10.
Letter to Ada Diamondston,
1926, HHMA,
IHave Known," MJ 13 (June 1927): 264-65.
Doren,
"Jewish Students
are identified
in his Autobiography ofMark Van Doren (New York,
1976.
20 October
In the
from Clifton
Fadiman,
1958), p. 130; and in a letter received
=
=
= Clifton
=
Fadiman, C Meyer
article, A
John Gassner,
Schapiro, D
Henry Rosenthal,
= Lionel
= Charles
E = Herbert
Solow, F
Prager, a friend of theirs,
McBurney
Trilling, G
who Fadiman believes never quite found himself, and died in his thirties.
Van
2. Mark
Van
Doren's
students
"In 1927 only an editor of Elliot Cohen's

ironic imaginativeness
could have thought
to invite a college teacher of English, even in New York, to write about the Jews he had
Commentary (March 1979):
Trilling, "Lionel Trilling, A Jew at Columbia,"
taught!"?Diana
43.
3. Van Doren,
4. Rosenthal,
pp. 267-68.
49.
extended
MJ 14 (January 1928): 49-61,
quotation,
a friend
was suggested
in "Inventions"
by James Grossman,
identity of the characters
of both men at the time: interview, see note 1 above.
23
5. Trilling, "Impediments,"
MJ 11 (June 1925): 286-90; Trilling, Letter to Cohen,
to Cohen,
2
Letter
1924
box 7, folder 14; Trilling,
October
[actually 1925], HHMA,
"Inventions,"
The
December
1929,
p. 2, HHMA,
box 59, folder 10.
171
6. Rosenthal
11 (October
Student: Advanced
1925): 508;
Model/' M]
"Theological
M. Kaplan,
microfilm
reel 571a> entry for 12
diaries,
AJA,
copy,
unpublished
to consult
November
1928.1 am very grateful to the late Mordecai
for permission
Kaplan
Mordecai
13 March
1977.
and quote from his diaries: Letter received from Mordecai
Kaplan,
7. "Inventions,"
pp. 50-51.
8. Personal
10 February
interview with Diana
1976; "Inventions,"
Trilling,
and James Grossman
and Joyce; Diana
Trilling
Elsa
9. Trilling,
1924
[1925];
Letter
Trilling,
recall that during that period Rosenthal

remembers
that he wrote half a novel.
to Cohen,
18 March
1925;
4 August
Letter to Cohen,
wrote
essays
p. 57.
on Proust
Letter to Cohen,
23 October
n.d.
[1926]; Trilling, Letter to Cohen,
all inHHMA
box 59, folder 10.
Trilling,
I am very sleepy ...:],

[from Madison,
beginning:
10. Trilling, "Chapter
for a Fashionable
Jewish Novel," M] 12 (June-July 1926): 275-82;
16 February
to Trilling,
Letter to Cohen,
Letter to Cohen,
Rosenthal,
n.d., addendum
in the Thirties,"
box 59, folder 10; Solow:
1926, HHMA,
Commentary 41 (May
"Young
3 April 1926, HHMA,
box 59, folder 10.
1966): 46; Fadiman: Trilling, Letter to Cohen,
"I see your friends Fadiman, Solow and Rosenthal

inWisconsin:
Cohen wrote Trilling
from time to time. They weep when
your name, but otherwise
they mention
they preserve
in one, at least, is not notably too even. Your friend
the even tenor of their ways?which
Henry,
Imean,
barrel."?Cohen,
11. Trilling,
is at the point of excommunicating

the whole
Letter to Trilling, 11 November
1926, HHMA,
Letters
to Cohen,
2 February
1927:
3 April
lot of us;
lock, stock and

box 59, folder 10.
1926;
both
in HHMA,
box
59, folder 10.

12. Trilling, Letter to Cohen,
n.d. ["I am very sleepy"], HHMA,
11 February, 1976; Diana
interview with Albert Halper,
Personal
February 1976.
13.
box 59, folder 10.

Trilling,
interview,
Assistant
from Bernard
of
Archivist, University
Schermetzler,
1977.
Library, 6 October
from Spring
Sessions
of Hunter College
Trilling taught in the Evening and Extension
he
1928 to Fall 1929, and Fall 1930 to Spring 1934; during the academic
year 1928-1929,
Wisconsin
was
Letter
received
Memorial
in the Day Session,

on temporary assignment
and he taught in the Hunter
in 1932 and 1933.?Letter
received from Rose Gilligan, Archivist, Hunter
Sessions
15 May
Summer
College,
1978.
in
"The Changing
of the Jew," Commentary 66 (August 1978): 24-34;
proofs
Myth
box 60, folder 2.
Lionel Trilling, Nearprint
Box, AJA; TS inHHMA,
Biography
Review
of Mary Anne Disraeli inHHMA,
box 60, folder 2; Trilling himself may have
n.d. [Hunter College
stationery;
thought little of this review: Trilling, Letter to Cohen,
box 59, folder 10.
begins: "This is the account"], HHMA,
14. "Young
in the Thirties,"
p. 46; "A Light to the Nations," M] 14 (April 1928): 402.
on Friday, 27 December
1929:
15. Trilling
IMA Convention
spoke at the National
box 67,
Convention
of Menorah
of the National
Societies,"
pp. 3-4, HHMA,
"Report
2 December
box 7, folder 15; Trilling's
folder 16; Trilling, Letter to Cohen,
1929, HHMA,
of the young men comes from this letter of endorsement.
description
An
introd. to The Partisan Reader: Ten Years of Partisan Review, 1933-1944:
16. Trilling,
Anthology, ed. William Phillips and Philip Rahv (New York, 1946), rpt. in The Liberal Imagination
1953), p. 93;
(Garden City, N.Y.,
On America: Trilling, "What Price Jewry?"

M] 13 (April1927): 219; Jamesand Elsa
interview.
Grossman,
17. The letter of endorsement:
Trilling,
Letter
to Cohen,
2 December
1929, HHMA,
box 7, folder 15.

18. Hurwitz,
Letter to Trilling, 28 May
1941; and reply 2 June 1941, both inHHMA,
box 60, folder 1.
19. Trilling, Letter of endorsement.
20. An American-Jewish
Forefathers," MJ 14 (February 1928):
history: "Our Colonial
ELINOR GRUMET
172
an admirable
there: "if Jews need relief and assurance,
scholarly
Trilling writes
book on early American
such as I have described
[an 'exhaustive
Jewish history, a
will bring them more comfort, showing as it
and authoritative']
dispassionate
production
into the American
woof
have been woven
will that their (racial if not lineal) ancestors
219-20.
work
from the beginning."

Brooke: Trilling,
to Cohen,
n.d. [begins: "I think I have make all the necessary
"The craft with which Browning's
box 60, folder 1; Brooke wrote:
him that he could insert into his poems thoughts,
illustrations,
legends,
Letter
HHMA,
corrections"],
intellect persuaded
twisted knots
as
a fine artistic sense would
have omitted was
of reasoning which
Jewish as the Talmud."
Jewish curiosa: "Changing
Croly, Tarry
Myth of the Jew," Commentary, p. 29; George
Thou Till 1 Come (or Salathiel) (New York, 1901), pp. 551-70.
trans., "Another
Jew Dies," MJ 14 (April 1928): 369.
Trilling,
and
21. Trilling, Letters to Cohen,

2 February
1927, both
University];
29-34,
Faculty Club,
Columbia
the Wandering
with
Jew," MJ 14 (January 1928):
review
swastika footnote: (January 1928): 32. Fadiman
1928): 148-59;
later reviewed
102; Trilling
1927):
MJ 13 (February
Feuchtwanger's
19 (June 1931): 470.
Feuchtwanger,
and (February
of Feuchtwanger:
novel Success: MJ
The Menorah
n.d. [stationery of the Men's

in HHMA,
box 59, folder 10.
"Conversations
Summer
School: Trilling, "The Jew in Fiction: A Syllabus
by Lionel
School
Summer
box 60, folder 2; and bulletin of the Menorah
1930,
Trilling," HHMA,
in the collection
of the Summer
of David
p. 12, original
Trilling wrote
Lyon Hurwitz.
course of 1930 was a disaster,
"I do recall . . . that my Menorah
Summer
School
School:
at one of the early meetings
of the
of Cecil Roth
by the presence
received from Trilling, 27 June 1975.
of her illness that
Trilling recalls that Lionel did not finish the course because
the worse
made
class."?Letter
Diana
summer.?Interview.
26 April 1929,
Letter to Francis Grossel,
Leah Edelstein,
Trilling
speaks at Hunter:
at Adelphi:
Activities
and
of
of
box 70, folder 14; Trilling
HHMA,
"Report
Membership
15 August
box 67, folder 3.
Menorah
1939, HHMA,
Societies,"
in the Thirties,"
22. "Young
p. 46.
on his visit to Yale,
"The Ideal Rabbi," MJ 5 (February
1919): 37. Reporting
Cohen,
as opposed
as a "non-Zionist,"
to an "anti-Zionist":
characterized Cohen
Alexander
Dushkin
to Hurwitz,
3 February
Letter to Nathan
Letter to Hurwitz,
1919, addendum
Dushkin,
box 20, folder 4.
Isaacs, 9 February 1919, HHMA,
inwriting a letter to the

In 1970, Trilling
and Norman
Podhoretz
joined Irving Howe
sentiment
Times to express disgust with
the pro-Arab
of the young Jewish
13 September
of the New Left.?Times,
members
1970, Sec. 4, p. 15, col. 1.
New
York
23. Trilling,
24. Trilling,
Letter
of endorsement.
Forty," Contemporary Jewish Record 7 (February 1944): 15; personal

30 August
1978; Diana
Trilling, "Lionel Trilling, A Jew at
interview.
Columbia,"
p. 41; James and Elsa Grossman,
25. Trilling, Letter of endorsement;
statement about Jewish content
compare Trilling's
in the SA]
editorial note (actually composed
with Mordecai
Kaplan's
by Henry Rosenthal)
"Under
interview with Max
Kadushin,
Review 7 (1 June 1928): 3: "The content of Jewish

content
in Jewish
does not yet exist so much
creation
for Jewish living is obviously

is a civilization,
and to encourage
such creation were
to such a Judaism."
of materials
that Judaism
commitment
largely to be created; there

need only point to it. The
the first corollary of the proposition
life still needs

life that one
the best earnest
of one's
and the Rabbis,"

The Opposing Self (New York, 1955), p. 124.
Trilling, "Wordsworth
inMJ 17 (December
26. Review
of There isAnother Heaven by Robert Nathan,
1929):
inMJ 13 (November
1927): 522.
292; review of The Great Bear by Lester Cohen,
27. Trilling and Bloom, Victorian Prose and Poetry (New York, 1973), p. 5.
173
28. "A Friend of Byron/' M]

12 (August-September
1926): 380, 381.
29. Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.,
1971), p. 102.
30. Note Trilling's
in 1948, that the struggle between
articulated
conclusion,
and minority
groups
is largely
majority
insubstantial:
. . . the
question
of whether
the American
attitude toward "minority" groups, par
and Jews, is not the equivalent
of class differentiation.
I think it is
ticularly Negroes
of the novel it is not the
not, except in a highly modified way. And for the purposes
same thing at all, for two reasons:
it involves no real cultural struggle, no significant
conflict of ideals, for the excluded
group has the same notion of life and the same
as the excluding
the novelist who attempts
the subject
group, although
the tactic of showing
that the excluded
group has a different and
naturally
better ethos; and it is impossible
to suppose
that the novelist who
chooses
this
aspirations
uses
the satirical ambivalence

toward both groups
particular
subject will be able to muster
which marks
it has a social parti pris.
the good novel even when
?"Art
and Fortune," Liberal Imagination, p. 253n.
31.
32.
33.
pp. 56, 59.

Ibid., pp. 60, 61.
Ibid., pp. 54, 49; SA] Review 8 (9 November
"Inventions,"
1928):
11; "Under
5, 9-10,
p. 16.
34.
"Funeral
35.
"Under
"Lionel
Trilling,
at the Club With
Lunch," M]
Forty," pp. 15-16; Diana Trilling,

A Jew at Columbia,"
p. 46.
13 (August
1927):
Forty,"
385.
interview, February
1976; Diana
Trilling,

ELINOR GRUMET - The Apprenticeship of Lionel Trilling

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ELINOR GRUMET - The Apprenticeship of Lionel Trilling

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The Apprenticeship of Lionel Trilling

Author(s): ELINOR GRUMET

his career as an essayist and writer of

from French, and four short

ment, under the editorship of Henry Hurwitz. The Menorah movement

its parent organization,

PROOFTEXTS 4 (1984): 153-173

the Journal styled itself radical

@ 1984 byThe JohnsHopkins UniversityPress

and best friends. They served together on

appeared in its pages several years earlier. Trilling, Rosenthal, Fadiman,

at this time. Their long

The Apprenticeship of Lionel Trilling

I had not mentioned

the flicker of a smile: "I

of the firstmeetings of the class and said without

if I did speak of him thereafter, I am sure I guarded my remarks with a

and I could not have

And of Trilling Van Doren

unaware of absurdities; ifhe had been he would have been informed of

instructor now in theMiddle West

[in 1926-27, Trilling taught at the Uni

brooded deeply on the difference between Trilling and

and passion as a matter of Jewishness.

and his own swartness

world and in the kingdom of heaven." Dolman's

to jolt him to Jewish awareness,

Starobin decides to challenge his friend in their senior year, setting

an intense and passionately

The Apprenticeship of Lionel Trilling

to be at once both fully alive to the

of his alter ego Starobin:

complex (and highly literary) sentiment or relationship and assigning it

sheer multiplicity of any particular judgment which he might utter, by the

The young writers on theMenorah Journal considered Henry Rosen

depicted Starobin and Dolman, verballydestroyingall the values they

had always professed and reconstructing

published work in a national periodical. A year passed before Trilling's

intimidatingly clever inRosenthal's way, defending the fiction's incidental

same year, while Trilling worked at Columbia

Rosenthal is Passovering among the nymphs and Seders of Louisville, and

The Apprenticeship of Lionel Trilling

committed satirical intelligence. Though

in the early thirties, when

the careers of the two men

association with the Menorah Journal lasted

School, and part-time

of the Jew," written between

recognition, and perhaps the forming of associations on the basis of this

to be a Jew to one's self." His claim was warranted by his involve

Journalhad saved from diversion to other fields and dissipation of talent.

of commitment to his first public forum and love for itsmanaging

to him, written even as he was freeing

sociological, or merely pious." For in the late 1920s, Trilling's feelings

Journal and its program of Jewish cultural nationalism provided such a

I have been trying hard [Trilling's endorsement concluded] to understand

The Apprenticeship of Lionel Trilling

performing an essential function in the Jewish body. And if it does these

that a thing can be both

Jewishworld, the Journal,with very little change, would

still be valid and

waste.As forhow the IntercollegiateMenorah