October 4, 1949

The Editor
The Saturday Review of Literature
25 West 45th St.
New York 19, N.Y.

Sir:

In "Poetry's New Priesthood," Mr. Hillyer associates what he calls the "new aestheticism" with "intellectual neo-Fascism." Furthermore, the writers tainted with this "new aestheticism" have, in his words, "pooled their separate timidities and frustrations"; and their "sterile pedantry" is "based on a sense of personal inadequacy." The Bollingen Award Committee, he suggests, was infected with this aestheticism, and he goes on to state categorically that "half the committee" were "sympathetic to a group which has a genuine power complex."

These charges are serious; they go beyond matters of intellectual disagreement; they have to do with moral character and personal motive. The writers attacked are, it is charged, frustrated men with power complexes, men lacking moral courage and integrity, men who are impelled by Fascist motives.

Mr. Hillyer ought to list the names of these vicious persons. His responsibility to the public demands it: in order to protect itself, the public needs to know definitely who these men are. An effective Paul Revere cannot afford to be mealy-mouthed. Moreover, in this case, vagueness serves not only to screen the wicked aesthetes but to compromise those possibly innocent writers who have blundered into the "subsidized quarterlies" through misapprehension. If the list is produced and published, such innocent persons will be freed from suspicion. Surely the process of proving "guilt by association" must be quite as repugnant to Mr. Hillyer as it is to most right thinking Americans. By all means, let us have the names.

Dec. 2, 1943

Dear Mr. Brooks:

We are enclosing a copy of a letter sent to Mr. Berryman in reply to a peremptory telegram demanding publication of his petition, to which your name is attached.

The Saturday Review
of LITERATURE

25 West 45th Street, New York 19, N. Y.

Mr. John Berryman
120 Prospect Street
Princeton, New Jersey

Dear Mr. Berryman:

I am afraid that I do not agree with the first sentence of your somewhat brusque telegram. We do not regard our request as unreasonable. You asked us to publish a letter signed by over seventy names condemning Mr. Hillier's articles in The Saturday Review and our editorial position in the matter. Many of the signers are known to us; others are not. We are aware that you have approached writers who disagreed with the petition. We believe we are justified in attempting to publish the complete response to this petition, and not merely one side to it. In any event, the letter has already been published elsewhere and, I presume, widely distributed since it was inserted in a pamphlet, "The Case against the Saturday Review of Literature," published by Poetry Magazine.

We would like to call your attention to the fact that this controversy over the Bollingen Award to Ezra Pound started in June and was continued in our letter pages until mid-October when we brought it to an end. During its course we published scores of communications from subscribers and others. Although the average of the opinions expressed in this way ranged from five, to seven to one, in favor of our position in regard to "The Pisan Cantos" and "modern" poetry, we published an equal number on both sides of the argument. In addition, we have published articles by critics and poets. I defy anyone to find an argument on either side that has not already appeared in print in our pages. To demand, as you have, that we publish a letter of this nature, which does not indicate that there are other writers who do not agree with your position, and so to ask us to open again to the public this six-months' old controversy, seems to us to be unreasonable. We can understand your eagerness to have this printed outside of the realm of Poetry Magazine. If you will agree to our request, we have a letter in reply from Robert Hillier ready for immediate publication.

Harrison Smith

HS:KG

BOOKS and the ARTS

SRL: UNFAIR TO LITERATURE?

[In *The Nation* of December 17 I printed a letter, addressed to the *Saturday Review of Literature*, which was turned over to *The Nation* for publication when it became clear that the *Saturday Review* would not publish it. The letter, which was signed by eighty-four persons representing a wide range of academic and literary opinion, was a vigorous protest against the publication last June in the *Saturday Review* of two articles by Robert Hillyer.

*The Nation's* publication of the letter and of my comment elicited the following statement from the editors of the *Saturday Review*.—Margaret Marshall.]

THE NATION, through its literary editor, Margaret Marshall, has accused the *Saturday Review* of being "unfair to literature." Behind that indictment is the following bill of particulars:

1. The *Saturday Review* has so far failed to publish a letter circulated by Mr. John Berryman denouncing the articles by Robert Hillyer and the supporting editorials on the Bollingen-Library of Congress Award to Ezra Pound. *The Nation* believes that SRL was highhanded, evasive, and specious in its decision not to publish this letter.

Mr. Berryman's letter, containing seventy-two signatures, was sent to the *Saturday Review* only after it had been included in a pamphlet condemning our position published by *Poetry*, of Chicago. We had learned of the existence of the letter prior to its publication in *Poetry* through a number of writers who had refused to lend their names to it. Mr. Berryman sent the letter to SRL, "urgently requesting" its publication here. We asked for a fairly full statement explaining the background of the letter. We thought it only fair, for example, that mention should be made of the fact that many writers refused to sign. We asked Mr. Berryman, in good faith, to acknowledge this fact and include such names. This he refused to do.

Mr. Berryman's letter came to us many weeks after the Hillyer contro-

versy on the letters page had been formally closed by popular request. In all, SRL published ninety-four letters on the subject; toward the end the new arguments were virtually exhausted. There was nothing in the Berryman letter that had not been aired before.

2. *The Nation* contends that Mr. Hillyer and SRL believe that "poetry which the 'common man' cannot understand is undemocratic." No such statement has been made by Mr. Hillyer or the editors.

3. *The Nation* asserts we are against modern poetry because it is difficult. Not true. We are as opposed to the watering-down of literature as we are to coterie-literature. There is a distinction here which Miss Marshall may have failed to discern: the distinction between poetry that is difficult and poetry that is obscurantist. Even here, we entertained no objection to the publication of poetry which was not readily comprehensible even by students of poetry. What we did object to was the implied contention of the obscurantist school to the effect that if the public could read it, it probably wasn't poetry.

If *The Nation* wishes to know what it is we are against, we can be fairly explicit. We are against obscurantism masquerading as art for art's sake. We are against cults which profess to hold the exclusive keys to the literary kingdom. We are against cultural snobbery. We are against the mutual-admiration-and-benefit-society approach to criticism and literature, under which members enjoy special privileges and immunities, and write blurbs and prefaces for each other and review each other's books. We are against ganging-up, whether by representation in such important bodies as the Fellows of the Library of Congress or by denunciation of non-conformists.

4. *The Nation* claims that SRL is widening the rift between the artist and public, and, indeed, that we are "pitting" one against the other. Based on this interpretation of what we said, we are afraid that Miss Marshall has ac-

tually reversed our position. It is precisely because criticism by coterie has driven a wedge between poet and public that SRL published its articles and editorials. Our contention, in fact, was that certain poets were writing for each other, reflecting the "public-be-damned" attitude that is apparently central in their thinking. Few things have contributed more to the rift between writer and public, for example, than the Bollingen-Library of Congress Award to Ezra Pound.

What is particularly galling to the members of this school is the fact that, as a result of Mr. Hillyer's articles, the Bollingen-Library of Congress Award has been discontinued. This has resulted in the charge of philistinism and fascism against the *Saturday Review*. Charges of this sort can be answered only by the readers of a magazine and not by its editors.

In Miss Marshall's article and in much of the opposition now being relied against the *Saturday Review's* position, the core center of the controversy has been largely forgotten. If the Bollingen Award had been a private matter, no questions would have been raised. The main question, as we see it, is whether a private group of poets can utilize the prestige of the American government to advance its own school.

EDITORS, THE SATURDAY REVIEW

The Indictment Stands

BY MARGARET MARSHALL

AND now, as Portland used to say, to Fred Allen, "Shall we go?"

Section 1

First paragraph: My charge was not the equivocal one that the *Saturday Review* had "so far failed" to publish the letter. I said that the SRL had to all intents and purposes *refused* to publish it. My statement is confirmed in sentence 2; this sentence, by the way, is entirely correct.

Second paragraph: The letter was not "Mr. Berryman's letter." It was a letter

Jan. 7, 1950

January 7, 1950

15

approved and signed by eighty-four people, including John Berryman. This is a cheap attempt to reduce an impressive manifesto against the *Saturday Review* to a mere complaint by a single person. The letter was sent to the *Saturday Review* on November 4, and its receipt was acknowledged a few days later. (At that point it carried the names of seventy-two signers; twelve more were added later.) The acknowledgment of the SRL made it clear that it had no intention of printing the letter but was determined to avoid a straightforward refusal. On November 15 Poetry published a pamphlet called "The Case Against the *Saturday Review of Literature*." (It is excellent and costs only $1.) Offset copies of the letter of protest were folded and inserted in four hundred copies of the pamphlet. This hardly constitutes publication. But in any case the letter was not, as the editors of the *Saturday Review* assert, published in Poetry. The editors report, in dulcet tones, the story of their stipulation to Mr. Berryman that if they were to publish the letter they must have from him a list of the people who had been approached and had refused to sign it. Aside from the fact that Mr. Berryman had not the authority, much less the obligation, to reveal the names, this stipulation seems to me, as a working editor, at once so outrageous and so ridiculous that I refuse to believe that any experienced editor would make it "in good faith."

Third paragraph: The editors maintain that the letter, which reached them no later than November 7, came "many weeks after the Hillyer controversy on the letters page had been formally closed by popular request." How did it happen then that on the letters page of the issue of October 29, scarcely more than *one* week before the protest arrived, there appeared an indignant, ironic letter from Cleanth Brooks attacking the articles by Hillyer and demanding that he reveal the names of the persons he had accused of "intellectual neo-fascism" and of having a "genuine power complex"? It is admittedly an editor's prerogative to declare a controversy closed after a reasonable length of time. But why, if they had declared it closed, did the editors offer Mr. Berryman conditions on which, *presumably*, they were ready to

allow it to be reopened? And why were they impelled, in their far from dulcet replies to him, to label the letter a "petition"—as if the SRL were a government or a court—and to insinuate, as they did, that the letter was somehow suspect. (I have copies of the replies; they reek with suspicion and bristle with insinuations.)

I accept the editors' statement that they have published ninety-four letters. I reject their contention that there was nothing in the protest of the eighty-four that had not been aired before. What was aired that had not been aired before was the very impressive news that eighty-four people of excellent standing in the literary and academic community had seen fit formally to denounce the Hillyer articles and the *Saturday Review's* support of them. Herein, of course, is to be found the reason why the SRL did not publish the letter—its editors have offered only excuses.

## Section 2

I did not say that Mr. Hillyer and the *Saturday Review* had stated that "poetry which the 'common man' can-not understand is undemocratic." I said, and I still say, that this was the *purport* of the Hillyer articles. I have not the space, obviously, to analyze the articles here. I therefore refer readers to the pamphlet mentioned above.

## Sections 3 and 4

In these sections the editors of the *Saturday Review* resort to the same variety of tub-thumping, the same leveling of horrendous and vague charges against persons whom they forbear to name, the same general obfuscation that characterized the Hillyer articles and the editorials supporting him.

I am glad to hear that the editors of the SRL are opposed, in theory, to the watering-down of literature. I shall be even more pleased when they put their theory into practice in the pages of the *Saturday Review*.

As for coteries. There are coteries and coteries. (And, again, how about giving us the names?) Some are bad, certainly; some are good, that is, creative. For better or worse, some of our finest literature has come out of small groups of creative writers-which were denounced in their time as coteries. Let me cite just one example. Have the edi-

YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN CONNECTICUT

"Voted, to accept with pleasure the gift of the Bollingen Foundation to provide an annual prize to be known as the Bollingen Prize in Poetry of the Yale University Library, for the highest achievement in poetry by a citizen of the United States. It was agreed that the recipient be selected by a Committee of Award appointed by the President; that the prize be administered by a University Committee consisting of the Librarian as Chairman, Professor Cleanth Brooks and Donald C. Gallup, Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature in the Library; and that of the gift of the Foundation of $1250 reported today, $1000 be set aside for the prize, $250 for its administration."

February 11, 1950.

The above is a true copy from the records of the Yale Corporation.

Copy for
Mr. Babb.
✓Professor Brooks
Mr. Gallup

SECRETARY

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1950.

The New York

YALE TO TAKE OVER
BOLLINGEN AWARDS

It Names Same Jury That Last
Year Caused Row by Giving
Poetry Prize to Pound

ALTERS METHOD OF CHOICE

Dr. Seymour, University Head,
Expresses Confidence in the
Committee's Objectivity

By RICHARD H. PARKE

Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Feb. 13— Yale University announced today that it would henceforth administer the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, an award that caused bitter controversy last year when it went to Ezra Pound, who is under indictment for treason.

Dr. Charles Seymour, university president, disclosed that the award committee would be the same as that which gave the disputed prize to Pound, who has been adjudged insane and who is now in a Washington mental hospital. Last year, however, the prize was administered by the Library of Congress and the committee members were known as Fellows in American Letters of the library.

Asked to explain why, considering the dispute, Yale had named the same award group, Dr. Seymour said:

"In view of the distinction of the members of the committee to judge the work of the year just past we have confidence in their objectivity and look forward with interest to the selection which they will recommend."

The committee, whose members include Conrad Aiken, W. H. Auden, Robert Penn Warren and Karl Shapiro, was sharply criticized last year by Robert Hillyer, Pulitzer Prize poet, and other writers. The group later issued a joint statement denying that any "sympathy for fascism" or "irresponsible estheticism" was involved in its award of the prize for Pound's work, "The Pisan Cantos." Pound was in an American Army prison camp abroad when he did his final work on the volume.

Mr. Hillyer, reached today at Kenyon College, Gambler, Ohio, said he was happy that Yale was to administer the prize. He explained that he had "always said that the committee should be detached from the Government."

Investigation Canceled

The Library of Congress was ordered last August to disassociate itself from all prizes and awards, including the Bollingen, which pays $1,000 annually. At the same time, a projected Congressional investigation of the Pound award was called off.

In his announcement, Dr. Seymour explained that the prize would be under the direct auspices of the university library. As in the past, the funds are being made available by the Bollingen Foundation, a philanthropic trust established by Paul W. Mellon, a graduate of Yale in 1929.

Mr. Mellon, son of the late Andrew W. Mellon, one-time Secretary of the Treasury, has made many benefactions to his alma mater, among them a gift of $2,000,000 last June for an expansion of the university's program of psychiatric guidance for its students.

The university's announcement said that its Bollingen Prize would be awarded to a "poem or book of poems by a citizen of the United States published during 1949," although the committee may take earlier work into consideration. Under Library of Congress sponsorship, the rules provided that the award could also be made to a former citizen. In this connection, it was recalled that Mr. Pound is a citizen although he had lived abroad for many years.

Yale also is stipulating, it was said, that the committee may decline to make an award for any year in which it feels that none is justified. The first award is expected to be announced in the spring.

Last year the committee acted as a whole. Now there will be an executive committee of five to select the winner from nominations made by the entire board. This committee, known as an executive committee, will be composed of Leonie Adams, Katherine Garrison Chapin, Mr. Aiken, Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Warren.

Each to Submit 3 Names

James T. Babb, university librarian, who will be chairman of the administration committee, explained that the five-member award group was established because it was felt that the entire committee would have difficulty in arriving at a common choice.

Members of the entire committee will submit three names each to the five-member group. However, it was pointed out that the executive committee could disregard the nominations and make its own selection.

Other members of the general committee include Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan, Robert Lowell, Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Tate, Willard Thorp and Dr. William Carlos Williams. The announcement said that invitations to serve had been sent to T. S. Eliot and Paul Green, who also served last year. It is understood that an entirely new selection committee will be named next year.

The administration committee, headed by Mr. Babb, includes Cleanth Brooks, Professor of English at Yale, and Donald Gallup, curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature in the library and assistant professor of bibliography.