Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, 1944-1984 [1 ed.] 0826215076, 9780826215079, 9780826262578

Citation preview

ROBERT B. HEILMAN AND

ERIC VOEGELIN

ERIC VOEGELIN INSTITUTE SERIES IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Other Books in the Series Art and Intellect in the Philosophy of Étienne Gilson by Francesca Aran Murphy Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World by John von Heyking Eros, Wisdom, and Silence: Plato’s Erotic Dialogues by James M. Rhodes A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding by Ellis Sandoz Hans Jonas: The Integrity of Thinking by David J. Levy Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence by Thomas J. McPartland The Narrow Path of Freedom and Other Essays by Eugene Davidson New Political Religions, or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism by Barry Cooper Transcendence and History: The Search for Ultimacy from Ancient Societies to Postmodernity by Glenn Hughes Voegelin, Schelling, and the Philosophy of Historical Existence by Jerry Day



ROBERT B. HEILMAN AND

ERIC VOEGELIN  A Friendship in Letters 1944 – 1984 Edited with an Introduction by

Charles R. Embry Foreword by

Champlin B. Heilman

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS COLUMBIA AND LONDON



Copyright ©  by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri  Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved           Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heilman, Robert Bechtold, 1906– Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin : a friendship in letters, 1944–1984 / edited with an introduction by Charles R. Embry ; foreword by Champlin B. Heilman. p. cm. — (Eric Voegelin Institute series in political philosophy) Includes index. ISBN 0-8262-1507-6 1. Voegelin, Eric, 1901—Correspondence. 2. Heilman, Robert Bechtold, 1906—Correspondence. 3. Political scientists—Correspondence. I. Title: Friendship in letters, 1944–1984. II. Voegelin, Eric, 1901– III. Embry, Charles R., 1942– IV. Title. V. Series. JC263.V632H44 2004 320'.092'2—dc22 2003022024 This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, z., . Designer: Kristie lee Typesetter: Crane Composition, Inc. Printer and binder: The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group Typefaces: Adobe Garamond

 Publication of this book has been assisted by generous contributions from Eugene Davidson, Texas A&M University–Commerce, and the Eric Voegelin Institute.

To Polly

This page intentionally left blank

 CONTENTS

 Foreword by Champlin B. Heilman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Editorial Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Letters Delightful Acquisition Letters ‒, ‒ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  With a Humble Request Letters ‒, ‒ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Philia Politike Letters ‒, ‒ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Hurried over the Face of the Earth Letters ‒, ‒ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Not a Postscript at All but a New Essay Letters ‒, ‒ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  What Was Formed at That Time Holds Together Letters ‒, ‒ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Appendix A Chronology of Letters and Locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Appendix B Number of Letters and Publications Referenced in Letters . . . . . . . . .  Appendix C Selected Enclosures in Various Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

This page intentionally left blank

 FOREWORD Champlin B. Heilman

 The kind invitation to write a foreword for a collection of my father’s correspondence with Eric Voegelin brings up powerful feelings because my dad, the consummate letter writer, sits, letterless, at age ninety-six, wheelchair bound, in a dementia ward to which he refers, entirely without irony, as his “club,” whose fellow residents are his “team.” However, my focus is not my father’s dramatic change, but rather that for seventy-two years letters were a constant and dominant part of his life. The letters in this volume testify to my father’s erudition and eloquence, so in this foreword I want to reflect on his letter-writing habit as I observed it and as I experienced it through nearly forty-three years of weekly exchanges. His last letters in  would lose their way, might change direction from one recipient to another midway, or be addressed oddly, as when he wrote to his nephew (a dean at Auburn University) as the “Dean in Alabama”; often they would not be sent at all. Still, he tried to write as he had since age twenty-two, when he went off to graduate school: a letter a week to his family and then a flood of letters at various intervals to a staggering range of recipients, all reflecting his great faith that the written word is the best form of communication. He was ever skeptical of telephones, fearing that they were costly instruments of bad news. Sometimes I suspect that this skepticism had more to do with his helplessness when faced with any kind of mechanical task, even those involving the machines he loved, like changing ribbons on his Smith Corona (later Royal). He always used a portable typewriter, feeling that the “electrics” were way too finicky for his pounding, and stuck with his portable to the end, utterly refusing to join the world of “word processing,” a phrase he felt was an abomination. The computer itself he thought a curse since it would not, as some hapless but well-meaning colleague asserted, “help [him] to write better and faster.” He thought he composed quite well enough on the typewriter. Had he become a computer user, I think that he would have still sent his letters by U.S. mail rather than by e-mail, believing that important matters like letters deserve a more traditional and formal delivery. ix

x

Foreword by Champlin B. Heilman

Pound he did; my earliest recollections of going-to-sleep sounds were of his typing in the neighboring room. He was a four-finger typist—rapid and virtually error free—and his many secretaries were in awe that so few fingers could produce so many pages of manuscript so rapidly and accurately. While his article and manuscript composition was more often reserved for the library, where first drafts were handwritten, letter writing dominated his office: each day’s mail was carefully lined up for reply by typewriter, an efficiency that sometimes must have dismayed his correspondents, particularly when Robert’s reply made it into the same day’s return mail. This decades-long pattern continued into later years when I would line up letters for him, only to return several weeks later and find the stack much as I had left it. Even then he would disappear to his desk to “answer some letters,” as he would say. Since correspondence was for him a form of written conversation, he maintained certain expectations for both himself and his correspondents. Not the least of these was timeliness, a fluid standard that varied considerably, depending upon subject matter, correspondent, urgency of material, and a mutually if informally agreed-upon pattern of frequency. For example, Robert constantly wrote letters to the editors of the Seattle Times, a paper he “memorized” daily, badgering them about grammatical and spelling errors or oddities in expression, but rarely about editorial issues; he grumbled that the Times did not respond to all his letters, and was relieved when a Times columnist (whose name, coincidentally, was Robert Heilman) told him that his letters were posted as admonitions to write more carefully. As head of the English department, Robert developed over the years many relationships with students who later became correspondents. One of these former students was James Cole, now retired from the University of Wyoming at Laramie. In a recent letter he remembered my father’s epistolary style: “Your father was a faithful correspondent, writing detailed, incisive letters, always friendly and personal, with good humor as with wit. His head apparently ran lickety split all the time and his words kept [up] in a dazzling kind of spontaneous performance that . . . was a pleasure to behold.” For a while when he was head of the English department at the University of Washington, Robert responded to people’s letters with questions about language, sort of a “Dr. English– Dear Abby” responsibility that he seemed to enjoy. These single-response episodes he dispatched fully and carefully in a few days whether the correspondent was a schoolboy from Missouri or a worker in a local sawmill. He and I exchanged letters weekly, usually a couple of single-spaced pages written on Sunday; if either of us wrote later, an apology was issued. The frequency of his letters to Eric varied, depending on their personal schedules as well as the subject matter of the letters; sometimes, unusual delays occurred.

Foreword by Champlin B. Heilman

xi

While a fluid punctuality was always a primary expectation, Robert also expected both himself and his correspondents to read carefully and to respond appropriately, either noting or commenting on particular items. I developed the habit, after paternal scoldings, of outlining items on which he would expect some sort of response, and often more than half my letter would be taken up with these topics. His expectation to be answered by his correspondents sometimes proved painfully expensive, especially at tax time when he would pound out a page or two of single-spaced questions about his return only to be dismayed that his bill contained a significant increase due to the CPA having spent “billable hours” responding to his questions. That dismay often turned to fury, a fury that he never understood was caused in part by his epistolary instincts. For Robert, the epistolary give-and-take was like a good conversation, but even better in that many such pleasurable conversations could be happening simultaneously with family members, old friends, colleagues, institutional writers of various kinds, and of course with his favorites like Eric, who led him to think and understand in new ways. Beyond punctuality and careful responses, Robert and Eric shared institutional frustrations, humor, and a sense of language. For example, Robert felt that a search committee he chaired wanted someone who was “safe and simple” rather than adventurous and visionary, and Eric noted of a proposed humanities program that at least “some of the faculty will be compelled to read the books they are supposed to discuss.” Both men could also be humorous; for example, Robert was especially funny when he lamented to me his perpetual failure to have one of his many submissions to the New Yorker published. Eric commented humorously on his favorite place for inspiration—“sitting in the bathtub and smoking a cigar”—and disagreed with a couple of LSU colleagues named French and Frye by punning that he was neither “French nor fried.” Both Robert and Eric responded to the language of their correspondents or to writers they might be discussing. Since my style was fairly pragmatic, Robert would compliment me on being unexpectedly fluent or witty, much as he appreciated my cousin’s letters that were “playful” and “lively”; others’ letters he condemned as too “flat.” Similarly, Eric felt that a colleague was guilty of “circumlocutory heaviness.” Finally, just as Robert and Eric dealt with shared intellectual issues, particularly in regard to manuscripts in progress, Robert and I would exchange letters on my teaching, particularly novels or ideas I was playing with in regard to motivating high school students. He was pleased to hear that his introductory material on novels or ideas on tragedy and melodrama actually made their way, even if casually, into my classrooms. The tone of these exchanges was definitely more paternal than professorial.

xii

Foreword by Champlin B. Heilman

That paternal tone also typifies my sense of Eric, although avuncular might be more accurate a word. As a small boy, I found him gentle and friendly, if distant; perhaps he was just bemused at the small, towheaded creature that would occupy a bed when the two couples were socializing. Later, when I visited Munich and the Voegelins took me in, I found him almost constantly smiling at this fellow who was between student and soldier. While Lissy, who was always talkative and warm, would show me around by taking me to their country cottage, to museums, or to lunch, occasionally the three of us would go in the evening to a concert and once to see the opera Wozzeck. This opera so excited Eric that contrary to his usual affable distance he expounded on it to us vigorously. Later, after Eric and Lissy came to the Hoover Institution, my wife and I exchanged several meals with them; always Eric was friendly and curious about our lives as teachers and parents of two small children. One such meal occurred when Robert and Ruth were staying in Palo Alto with us, and we all marveled at the lunar landing. Overall, Eric was amiable and interested, qualities his and Robert’s letters often reflect, especially as the two men inquired about Lissy, Ruth, Pete, or Mike (the Heilman family cat, named for the LSU mascot). Now that the era of Robert’s correspondence with Eric and me has ended, I fear that a useful, pleasurable, and valuable way of connecting with family, friends, and colleagues is giving way to the ubiquitous e-mail with its ephemeral convenience and speed. I miss the epistolary connection with my dad, I miss those weekly, written discussions that cemented and expanded a filial bond, and, judging from the flow of letters to him from all over the nation, many others will miss their regular exchanges with him as well, maybe even the Seattle Times. Champlin B. Heilman Palo Alto, California December 2002

 A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S

 It is my happy task now to acknowledge those persons who supported this endeavor in various ways; of course, their generous support and help in no way makes them responsible for any errors or lapses that appear herein. First I would like to thank the many people at Texas A&M University–Commerce who have provided various types of support—both recently and through the years. Mathew Kanjirathinkal, graduate dean until August , provided several minigrants that supported this project in its early stages. These enabled me to examine the Voegelin Papers (microfilmed) at the Eric Voegelin Institute at Louisiana State University, and the Heilman Papers at the University of Washington, Seattle. I continue to appreciate his support and recognition of my work. I am very grateful that Elton Stetson, interim dean of the graduate school, has continued the support of the graduate school for this project. Natalie Henderson, doctoral degree coordinator, has always promptly answered all my pleas for help and provided administrative support for my research. Finnie Murray, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, approved several research-load reductions that helped me finish the manuscript and complete the tasks necessary for its publication. I would also like to thank Paul Lenchner, head of the political science department, for his encouragement and steadfastness throughout various crises, his openness to a variety of academic activities, and, finally, for his support of a course-load reduction to complete this manuscript. I want also to thank College of Arts and Sciences dean Finnie Murray for granting this time to complete the manuscript. Charles Elliott, my friend and department head for many years, supported all the crazy projects throughout my career here, projects that ultimately culminated in this one. Assistant Dean Linda Matthei of the College of Arts and Sciences provided additional funds for travel to the Eric Voegelin Institute. Michael Odom, adjunct professor of art and friend, helped with the identification of American artists. Philippe Seminet, assistant professor of literature and languages, helped me understand French phrases and customs. My colleagues in the political science department, JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz and Ayo Ogundele, have provided welcome infusions of energy and new ideas for the old curmudgeons such as myself. To my students, Sarah Gammage Ramm, Jackie Barr, and Gretchen Boettcher, who helped me with various onerous proofreading tasks, xiii

xiv

Acknowledgments

I extend my thanks. The political science administrative assistant Jana Dooley happily attended to those tasks that would otherwise make our jobs much more difficult. Graduate assistants Aashit Shah and Hillary Gleason provided further proofreading support. I would be remiss in my acknowledgments if I did not recognize the daily support provided me by the professional staff of the James G. Gee Library of Texas A&M University–Commerce and thank them for their help. Diane Downing, director, Scott Downing, interlibrary loan librarian, and Carolyn Trezevant, reference librarian, have, over the years, taught me much about resources and have always helped me when I came up against problems I thought insoluble. Marsha Keenan maintains the Internet databases that were indispensable in the preparation of this book. I received help from a distance, too. Wanda Ashley, coordinator of the Eric Voegelin Institute at Louisiana State University, helped make my several visits to the microfilmed Voegelin Papers both pleasant and profitable. Gary Lundell and Karyl Winn, as well as the entire staff of the Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives made me welcome and were most helpful while I worked in the Heilman Papers at the University of Washington, Seattle. Gary Lundell, as well as Carol A. Leadenham, assistant archivist for reference of the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, provided very timely support late in the revision process, and I acknowledge their help with a special thankyou. The staff of the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, were also helpful to me on the occasion of my visit there in August . Emily C. Howie, reference librarian, Library of Congress, provided information on the U.S. Congress. Scott Segrest, political science doctoral student at Louisiana State University, enthusiastically supported my early work on this project and generously checked various items in the Voegelin Papers microfilm. Germain J. Bienvenu, of the Special Collections Public Services division of Louisiana State University Libraries, provided answers via e-mail, and other staff members of Special Collections pointed me in the correct directions for ferreting out information during my visits there. Christine Weideman, archivist at Yale University Library, answered questions via e-mail as did Bob Bykofsky, records manager of the Rockefeller Foundation. The Voegelin scholars Manfred Henningsen, Geoffrey L. Price, Hans-Jörg Sigwart, and Gilbert Weiss supplied information—also via e-mail—that helped me annotate several of the letters. I acknowledge and thank them for their generous responses to these requests. Both Steve Ealy of the Liberty Fund and Brendan Purcell, lecturer in philosophy at University College, Dublin, encouraged me early to pursue this project when it seemed only a slight possibility.

Acknowledgments

xv

To Brenda Bell, Dick Fulkerson, and Jim Reynolds, colleagues and friends who for many years encouraged my interests in literature and who—fortunately— never took me as seriously as I wanted to be taken, thank you for the years of conversation and argument. I also acknowledge with gratitude the friendship of Mary Elaine and Bob House, who, in remaining committed to the life of the mind and creative endeavors, have constantly challenged my ideas in conversation, but have never faltered in their support. I want to say a special thanks to Champlin B. Heilman who, on behalf of his father, granted permission to publish material from the Heilman Papers, generously consented to write a foreword for this volume, and enthusiastically read the correspondence in manuscript. I wish especially to thank three people at the University of Missouri Press: Beverly Jarrett, for her early interest in this project and for her continued support and advice during its development; Jane Lago, for her helpful advice early in the revising process; and Julianna Schroeder, for the scrupulous copyediting that saved me from many embarrassing inconsistencies and errors. Finally, I wish to thank three special persons who have long believed in and encouraged my work on literature and philosophy. My mentor and friend, Ellis Sandoz, introduced me to political philosophy and Eric Voegelin forty years ago when I was a graduating senior at Louisiana Tech University. I thank him for showing me the way long ago. To Tim Hoye, my friend and colleague (as well as professor of government and history at Texas Woman’s University), thank you for those spirited conversations in which we never allowed the other to finish his sentence and for your devotion to a common enterprise. To Polly Detels, my wife, I dedicate this book, for without her love, devotion, and encouragement I would not have traveled this part of the road.

This page intentionally left blank

 E D I TO R I A L N OT E S

 There are  letters in the correspondence between Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin; that this collection includes  results from my inclusion of a letter from Lissy Voegelin to Heilman approving his request to dedicate Magic in the Web: Action and Language in Othello to Eric. This is Letter . Also, included with Letter , a note written by Heilman, there is a note written to Eric by Ruth Heilman. Of the  letters, Heilman wrote  and Voegelin wrote . The first letter was probably written in  or , although the first letter with the date including year was written by Voegelin on July , . Most of the letters were found in the Voegelin Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, box , folder . Several were found in other boxes of the Voegelin Papers, and fifty-four were found in various accessions of the Robert B. Heilman Papers, Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives, University of Washington Libraries. The Heilman Papers were given to the University of Washington Libraries in twentynine separate accessions and there are several boxes that are “unaccessed.” I was permitted to examine the materials of these boxes by the librarians of the Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives, but I found no additional letters. It is apparent from reading the correspondence that several letters—perhaps as many as three or four—are missing. These letters may, of course, no longer exist, but then they may turn up in some unsuspected folder. For the most part, the letters appear in this volume as they were written. For convenience of reading I have standardized dating of the letters and spelling of a writer’s name (such as Dostoevsky). Letters that were written entirely by hand are indicated with “[OH]” (original holograph) at the top. Angle brackets (< >) indicate that a remark, signature, or other material was handwritten onto an otherwise typed letter. If a marginal note occurs in a letter, I have indicated in square brackets ([ ]) the place that remark appears on the page of the original. Some of the letters were unsigned because they are transcribed from copies found in the writer’s files; I have inserted the customary signature—Bob or Eric—in brackets. I have italicized all book titles and foreign phrases except for Latin phrases that have passed into general English usage. In the case of obvious typographical errors or minor misspellings, I changed these silently. Punctuation has remained essentially unchanged, except I silently changed punctuation to conform xvii

xviii

Editorial Notes

to standard typographical practice (such as placing colons and semicolons outside quotation marks, and periods and commas within them) and a few minor commas for clarity in sentences. I have also silently eliminated some unnecessary dashes if a comma or period was already present. Where persons are referred to only by their surnames, I have supplied upon the first appearance of the surname their given names—where these could be determined—in brackets in the text. If a title for an article or offprint that is mentioned does not appear in the letter and I could determine same, I placed it (with citation) in a footnote. Words that are added for clarification of meaning, I placed in brackets. Where brackets appear in the original, I changed these to ordinary parentheses. For reasons unknown to me, Heilman spelled “Lissy” in various ways; I have left these various spellings unchanged.

ROBERT B. HEILMAN AND

ERIC VOEGELIN

This page intentionally left blank

 I N T RO D U C T I O N

 A special pleasure it is to say my thanks to my friend and colleague Professor Robert B. Heilman (University of Washington) for his help in improving my English. His thorough analysis of sections of the manuscript, his reasoned advice with regard to grammar and style, his congenial understanding of relations between philosophical subject matter and means of linguistic expression, have had a pervasive effect. I can only hope that the disciple will not disappoint the master too deeply.1

Thus wrote Eric Voegelin in the final paragraph of his acknowledgments in Israel and Revelation (1956). Robert B. Heilman responded immediately after receiving the book; he wrote Voegelin: I owned the book for an hour or two before, in that preliminary leafing through the “back matter” and the “front matter” by which one explores the periphery, I came across the “Acknowledgments” and the last paragraph on the page. I am very much touched, as I am overwhelmed by your excessive generosity. . . . I should be in danger of a bad case of pride did not Ruth come to my spiritual rescue by remarking firmly, “What a paradox! You as master and Eric as disciple!” (I will omit her punctuation of this by exclamatory breathing.) I am disposed to go beyond a literal reading of the paragraph and to take it rather as evidence of a kindly personal feeling—a very fine thing to have. There is nothing more gratifying than “my friend and colleague.” (Letter 66) Heilman’s response—emphasizing as it does Voegelin’s phrase “my friend and colleague”—acknowledged in turn the central components of the relationship between Robert B. Heilman (b. 1906) and Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) that flowered in 1942 and lasted to Voegelin’s death in 1985. The forty-year correspondence opens a window on the nature and extent of their friendship, as well as their absorption in literary criticism. That Voegelin in his acknowledgments connected the terms friend and colleague indicates a recognition of both the personal and 1. See the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 14, Order and History, vol. 1, Israel and Revelation (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 25.

1

2

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

professional dimensions of his relationship with Heilman. The personal dimensions of the friendship include expressions of loving concern for the other person and his family, while the intellectual dimensions include both matters of the calculative intellect and academic issues, as well as the noetic as symbolized in Plato and Aristotle. Although the noetic dimension of their friendship is never articulated directly in the correspondence (or elsewhere as far as I am aware), the relationship between Heilman and Voegelin was rooted to a large extent in Aristotle’s homonoia, or like-mindedness. And while over time the relationship also exhibited those other characteristics of Aristotle’s description of friendship—the useful and the pleasant—it displayed a shared love of the Good, which according to Aristotle characterizes the best form of friendship, and a common commitment to excellence. Voegelin specifically refers to participation in the nous while responding to Heilman’s argument that politics is melodrama. He asserts: Politics is indeed melodrama, if politics is understood as a relation between friend and foe; as a compulsion to take sides in a struggle for power. . . . Insofar as politics actually assumes this form, and unfortunately it does all too often, the description is empirically adequate, and your thesis is correct. This conception of politics, however, is in radical opposition to the classic conception of Aristotle: that the essence of politics is the philia politike, the friendship which institutes a cooperative community among men, and that this friendship is possible among men insofar as they participate in the common nous, in the spirit or mind. (Letter 84)

The Friendship Robert Bechtold Heilman was born in Philadelphia, was educated in English literature, and received degrees from Lafayette College (A.B., 1927), Ohio State University (M.A., 1930), and Harvard University (Ph.D., 1935). After teaching at the University of Maine, Orono, Heilman joined the English department of Louisiana State University in 1935. Eric Voegelin was born in Cologne, Germany, moved with his family to Vienna in 1910, and received his Dr. rerum politicarum from the University of Vienna in 1922. After the Anschluss, Voegelin fled Austria to Switzerland, and from there he emigrated with his wife, Lissy, to the United States. He took a position in the government department at Louisiana State University in 1942. It was here that the friendship began.

Introduction

3

In his recollection of Eric Voegelin in The Professor and the Profession, Heilman remembers that he first met Voegelin when he lectured at Louisiana State University in 1940 or 1941; they became better acquainted after Eric and Lissy moved to Baton Rouge. By the time the Heilmans moved to Seattle in 1948 so that Bob could head the English department at the University of Washington, the friendship between Bob and Eric, which included Ruth and Lissy, had developed the marks of a lifelong friendship. This friendship would ultimately sustain three sets of correspondence: a forty-year correspondence between Heilman and Voegelin, a correspondence between Ruth and Lissy that lasted beyond the death of Eric in 1985, and a correspondence between Lissy and Robert after Ruth died in November 1985. After being courted by various universities in this country and abroad, Voegelin left Louisiana State University to become a professor at the University of Munich and founded there the Institut für Politische Wissenschaft in 1958 (renamed Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politische Wissenschaft Universität München in 1968). He left the University of Munich in 1969 to become Henry Salvatori Distinguished Scholar at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, at Stanford University. There he became a senior research fellow in 1974 and held that position until his death. Heilman retired from the University of Washington in 1976 and was appointed professor emeritus the same year. Robert Heilman was the consummate academic professional. Having chosen English literature and criticism as his professional foci, he devoted his life to these interests. Not only did he cultivate this commitment through research and publication, he actively served English higher education and the American professoriate. As the “executive officer” (department head) of the English department at the University of Washington from 1948 through 1971, he defended would-be visiting lecturers Kenneth Burke, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Malcolm Cowley against university administrations influenced by conservative, anticommunist critics, all the while attending to the daily work of leading and 2. Robert Bechtold Heilman, The Professor and the Profession (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 85. 3. In 1991, six years after Eric’s death, Heilman would dedicate The Southern Connection: Essays by Robert Bechtold Heilman (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991) to “Alex B. Daspit, Thomas and Josie Kirby, Lissy Voegelin. Friends from LSU days to the present.” 4. Some of Lissy Voegelin’s letters to Ruth and Robert may be found in the Robert B. Heilman Papers, accession 1000–5–90–19, box 3, folder 5. 5. See Appendix B, which matches the letters with publications referenced in correspondence, year by year.

4

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

administering a large department at a major university. He belonged to and served in national leadership positions in the Modern Language Association of America, the American Association of University Professors, the Shakespeare Association of America, and Phi Beta Kappa. In Autobiographical Reflections, Voegelin recalled that his acquaintance with Heilman, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren of the English department at LSU was especially important to him “because I now had access to the interesting movement of literary criticism and gained the friendship of men who were authorities in English literature and language.” The intellectual connection with Heilman was made soon after Voegelin moved to LSU. As Voegelin worked his way back into the primary documents from which the History of Political Ideas would grow, as his understanding of these documents deepened and changed, he came to believe that consultation with scholars from various disciplines— Greek philologists, theologians, specialists in ancient myths, as well as literary critics—was a central part of his enterprise. The personal and social dimensions of the friendship were likewise established early. In July 1944 Voegelin wrote a long letter from Harvard telling Heilman that Lissy had written him about the chicken creole she had enjoyed at the Heilmans’ the previous Sunday; he added that he was jealous because he had to put up with Harvard people and dull Sundays. He had been able, however, to learn certain things in Harvard Yard. He wrote: 6. For documents and newspaper clippings relating to the controversies involving Burke, Oppenheimer, and Cowley, see Heilman Papers, accession 1000–2–71–16, box 11, folders 7–10 and 12. Correspondence and documents relating to the administrative business of the English department while he was executive officer are to be found in the Robert B. Heilman Papers, accession 1000–2–71–16, boxes 1–12, as well as in correspondence found throughout the twenty-nine accessions. See also the note to Letter 40, Robert B. Heilman to Eric Voegelin, October 14, 1952, in the Voegelin Papers, box 63, folder 11. Heilman also published articles on these affairs; see Heilman, “Cowley as University Professor: Episodes in a Societal Neurosis” (Horns of Plenty: Malcolm Cowley and His Generation 1, no. 3 [fall 1988]: 12–25); and “Burke as Political Threat: A Chronicle of the 1950s” (Horns of Plenty: Malcolm Cowley and His Generation 2, no. 1 [spring 1989]: 19–26). 7. Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 59. Brooks, Warren, and Heilman were active participants in the debates occurring within the discipline of literary criticism and were members of the movement generally known as “the New Criticism,” which opposed the hegemony of historical studies in the study and interpretation of literature. Intermittent discussions of and/or references to some of these issues may be found in Letters 35, 56, 57, 64, 65, 66, 137. 8. Protesting to Heilman in 1981, Voegelin asserted that “my business consists in knowing people from whom I can learn something” (Letter 146).

Introduction

5

you learn a lot here about the war. For instance, that it will be over before next spring. Reason: the grass in the Harvard Yard. The lawns were trampled into mud by the army; this year they were reseeded and fenced in: —the vox populi says: the Corporation would not invest $1 in grass-seed, unless they had precise information that the new grass will stay and not be trampled down again—by a crop of soldiers. —I also know when the next world war will start. The statisticians have found that there is a 100% correlation between the outbreak of world wars and the celebration of world fairs in Switzerland. World fairs in Switzerland were held in 1914 and 1939, and the wars broke duly out. The next world fair is in 1964!! (Letter 4)

Two events later in 1944 demonstrate the trust and goodwill that had already developed between the Heilmans and the Voegelins. Acting as agents for the Voegelins, who were away from Baton Rouge, the Heilmans purchased a house on their behalf. Bob also accompanied Eric to his naturalization hearing where he would testify to Voegelin’s “potential for good citizenship.” From the first the two men seem to have been drawn together by a recognition that they were engaged in a common enterprise and that they shared common philosophical and academic values. Both were committed to an understanding of literature as expressions of the human experience, to precision of linguistic expression, and to excellence in scholarship. Moreover, they shared an opposition to positivism and historicism in the social sciences and humanities. Each commented on the other’s work during the first three years of the correspondence. In 1946 Voegelin wrote an eight-page letter commenting on the manuscript of Heilman’s work in progress, an analysis of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Heilman incorporated some of Voegelin’s suggestions, which included quotations from Goethe, into the final manuscript, published in 1948 as This Great Stage: Image and Structure in King Lear. The next letter in the correspondence, dated November 4, 1947, contains responses by Heilman to one of Voegelin’s working manuscripts for the History of Political Ideas. Nine days later Voegelin wrote his now-famous letter on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. The intellectual dimension of the friendship was thus firmly established by the time the Heilmans moved to Seattle in 1948. As befits such a friendship, the correspondence between Heilman and Voegelin ranged over many topics. From family matters to LSU gossip to travelogues, 9. Heilman, Professor, 91, 93. For Heilman’s complete recollection of Voegelin, see pp. 85–102. 10. Robert Bechtold Heilman, This Great Stage: Image and Structure in King Lear (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948).

6

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

from brief exchanges upon current political and cultural issues to extended comments on academic politics, from substantial exchanges on philosophical and literary issues to extensive commentaries on each other’s manuscripts and publications, Heilman and Voegelin reveal the depth and warmth of their friendship in these letters. Heilman’s admiration for Voegelin and his work took several forms: He would praise Voegelin’s insights in his latest manuscript or article; he eagerly commented on and edited Voegelin’s manuscripts; and he campaigned to keep Voegelin in the United States when Voegelin began to look for a different position in the early 1950s. Voegelin’s affection and respect for Heilman’s skills as a literary critic and writer were articulated in attempts to persuade Heilman to return to LSU, in praise for his work on Shakespeare and drama as well as for his elegant English style, in his invitation to Heilman to lecture to students in Munich, and in the eagerness with which he looked forward to visits to or from Heilman. Heilman’s admiration for Voegelin’s work and Voegelin’s confidence and trust in Heilman appear early, for example in the following exchange of 1952: I am coming with a humble request today. Enclosed you will find the MS of the first chapter of the History of Political Ideas, which [is] supposed to develop the principles of interpretation for the whole subsequent study. The chapter, thus, has a certain importance, both as the first one and as the statement of principles. Hence, I should like to have it written as well as my inevitable shortcomings will allow. I wonder whether you would read it (it has only thirteen pages), and while reading it mark on the margin any awkwardness that still will need ironing out. Of course, I know that you are busy and that my request smacks of impertinence; and I shall not be surprised if you tell me flatly that you just don’t have the time for it. Nevertheless, you will see that this is not the sort of thing that I could give to just anybody for correction; and you are simply my last resort. (Letter 37)

Ten days later Heilman replied: That you ask me to read the MS is of course only an honor. . . . You know how much I relish getting each piece of the opus that comes along. Once again this time the usual experience, within my own limits, of feeling let in on a complete new world, of having it organized, of seeing some of the time how it can be used, and of having here and there the excitement of finding a correspondence—so it seems—to some little idea of my own. (Letter 38)

Introduction

7

In the same letter, Heilman detailed how he approached the editing of Voegelin’s manuscript: As for reading the MS, that I have done with tireless literalness, putting down—and often at what length!—every measly little question or uncertainty or ignorance or stupidity that came to me, on the theory that the business here was to try to be helpful, and that it was better to risk being a bonehead and raise the issues than to look brighter, perhaps, and let them go unraised. You will have to labor through my notes, of course, but it won’t take you very long to decide whether they are idiotic or really have [a] point. I am selfish enough to hope that a few of them do have a point, but realistic enough not to have too many illusions about it. I decided that you know me well enough so that in asking me to read the MS you knew precisely how much risk you took of getting a well-meaning incomprehension that would have to be taken as the bale of chaff amid the few grains of positive assistance. (Letter 38)

In Autobiographical Reflections (1973), Voegelin would gratefully recall this service of twenty years earlier. I especially want to mention the help extended by Robert B. Heilman, who introduced me to certain secrets of the American history of literature and who was kind enough to help me with my difficulties in acquiring an idiomatic English style. I still remember as most important one occasion when he went through a manuscript of mine, of about twenty pages, and marked off every single idiomatic mistake, so that I had a good list of the mistakes that I had to improve generally. Heilman’s analysis, I must say, was the turning point in my understanding of English and helped me gradually to acquire a moderate mastery of the language.

Heilman’s admiration for Voegelin’s work was often accompanied by frustration that he lacked sufficient philosophical training to comprehend and make use of it in his own work. In his response to The Ecumenic Age, he wrote, “As to the hundreds of supporting ideas developed in the course of the exegesis, I only wish I had what it would take to take them in, naturalize them, and make them productive citizens in my own intellectual economy. Alas!” (Letter 139). Despite his 11. The manuscript with Heilman’s comments and corrections may be found in the Voegelin Papers, box 65, folder 1. It is designated there as Introduction to Order and History, vol. 1, Israel and Revelation, 1956, TS, Robert B. Heilman to Eric Voegelin, May 13, 1952. 12. Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 59.

8

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

feelings of inadequacy, Heilman committed himself to helping Voegelin improve his English fluency and this commitment represents a concrete and continuing manifestation throughout the friendship of his belief in the value and quality of Voegelin’s work. His commitment was not confined to direct commentary on Voegelin’s manuscripts and publications. When Eugene Webb was preparing a glossary of Voegelin’s terms for inclusion in his book, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History, Heilman read and commented on the entire glossary. In a note accompanying his commentary, Heilman wrote to Webb that In a sense I am making the same kind of notes here that I have generally made on EV texts and then asked him about, usually eliciting a deep sigh meaning the labored suppression of impatience, which appears in sentences beginning, “Vell, you see, Bop,” etc. I think that the problems represented in my queries are the same problems that arise in well-intending, favorable readers who presumably have some kind of intellectual equipment but are not professional theologians or metaphysicians. To that extent I think they are worth considering. What lies behind them is my most earnest wish that Eric would get across to people to whom he is not getting across, not getting across, I think, less because of foreignness of the ideas than because of the impenetrability of the linguistic medium.

Believing that Voegelin was a national asset and should be kept in the United States, Heilman made various attempts to advocate Voegelin’s hiring at the University of Washington. He also encouraged Voegelin’s interests in positions at Yale and Johns Hopkins and, in the case of Yale, counseled Voegelin on the politics of the situation. Voegelin decided, however, to leave the United States for a professorship and the opportunity to establish an institute for political science at the University of Munich. While at Munich, he returned to the United States periodically to teach at the University of Notre Dame. During one of these sojourns at Notre Dame, he was mugged returning home from town one evening. When Heilman inquired whether the unpleasant experience might destroy Voegelin’s willingness to return to America, Voegelin assured him that it had not (see Letter 91). 13. Robert B. Heilman to Eugene Webb, July 18, 1979, Heilman Papers, accession 1000–7– 90–60, folder VF 1933. 14. See Letters 17, 20, 23, 38, 66, 90 (especially), and Voegelin’s response in Letter 91. After Voegelin told Heilman that he was returning to the United States in order to take a position at the

Introduction

9

Voegelin’s respect for Heilman as a friend and colleague also found expression early in the correspondence. In the spring of 1949 Voegelin announced: “You will have heard that [William O.] Scroggs is retiring; we want a bigger and better dean; we want Heilman—I am a member of the boosters’ club” (Letter 22). Four years later in 1953, Voegelin tried again to persuade Heilman to return to LSU: “Bob [Harris] has told Pete Taylor to use the new Boyd Professorships to get some good people back here, first of all you. Would you consider that a possibility? $9600” (Letter 46). Heilman’s negative response with explanation afforded Voegelin an additional opportunity to reaffirm his admiration and respect for Heilman’s quality as a literary critic. He wrote: It is certainly a matter of great regret to us that you roundly refuse even to consider the possibility of coming back here—though this possibility up to now is no more than an idea thrown in[to] a conversation with the Dean. Your reasons are clear to me, in the sense of clarity of expression, but the professed “confidence” crisis is not clear to me at all with regard to its basis in reality. Look at your “Alcestis and The Cocktail Party”—what else, for heaven’s sake, do you want by way of achievement as a literary critic? Or look at the incidental remark in your letter: “This view of naturalistic tragedy that man is good enough, or the counter-view . . . that man is exclusively a son of a bitch.” There you have formulated the two halves of Calvinism and Pelagianism into which in America the wholeness of man has fallen apart. (Letter 48)

After learning that Heilman had won the Explicator Prize for 1956 with Magic in the Web: Action and Language in Othello—a work he much admired—Voegelin wrote “do you begin to believe now that you are quite good? I hope Ruth is hammering it into you” (Letter 76). Perhaps one of the greatest and most telling testaments to Voegelin’s respect Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Heilman wrote: “We were delighted to hear from you both that you will be at Stanford, which has obviously beaten everybody to the punch, and therefore undermined my usual inclination to feel that the actuality of that place is generally less than the reputation. Cleanth and I were both remarking that we’d failed to get any action out of our own institutions. Three cheers for Stanford” (Letter 112). 15. See also Letters 47, 48, 49, and 50 for further exchanges on the Boyd professorship issue. Voegelin himself was selected as one of the three original Boyd Professors at LSU in 1953. 16. The Explicator, a literary magazine published at the University of South Carolina during the 1950s, ran an annual contest to choose “the best book of explication de texte.” The judges who chose Heilman’s book for this award were Elizabeth Nitchie of Goucher College, Charles C. Walcutt of Queens College, and William K. Wimsatt of Yale University.

10

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

and admiration appears in a letter of 1964: “May I venture a question both humble and impertinent? Could you come to Munich, not only to visit with us, but also to give a talk to our students? They have heard about you, as you can imagine, and would appreciate it greatly to see you in the flesh and to have you for a discussion” (Letter 92). After Heilman had lectured to Voegelin’s seminar, Voegelin reported: And now, most important, your lectures. They were greatly appreciated by the students and the staff of the Institute. Not only because of their content, but above all because of their linguistic quality and delivery. With regard to the public lecture I heard from students that they were not able to follow you in every detail, but that it did not matter as they were entranced by the music of your language—what higher compliment could be paid to a Shakespearean scholar? As to the content—the role given to Shakespeare—your analysis moves along the same line as our studies do in the Institute; and as far as art is concerned, they run parallel to [Hans] Sedlmayr’s studies on modern art as a cult. . . . May I add, together with my admiration for these splendid lectures, my thanks for the impression you have made on the students. What these German boys need most, is to be confronted with solid examples of humanistic culture—and you certainly have confronted them. (Letter 103)

Voegelin admired and envied Heilman’s mastery of English language style, and as we have seen he was very grateful for the help that Heilman had extended to him throughout the years of their friendship. Although he very often followed Heilman’s editorial advice without objection, he was forced to eschew this advice on other occasions because of the philosophical implications such changes would bring with them. On these occasions Voegelin’s affection for his friend is evident in the explanations he gave for his failure to take Heilman’s advice. In his 1952 response to Heilman’s marking of the manuscript for chapter 1 of Order and History, Voegelin wrote: There were . . . a few emendations which I hesitated to accept, and I should like to explain one of the two of the hesitations—partly in order to justify my rebellious conduct, partly because the illumination which I received from your correction might also be of interest to you. For, even though I did not accept the emendation, it stirred up extremely interesting problems in a philosophy of language. Let me give you an example: “This horror induced Plato . . . to make the true order of society dependent on the rule of men whose proper attunement to divine being manifests itself in their true theology.”

Introduction

11

You suggest to change the end of the sentence to: “. . . in their possessing (or mastering) the true theology.” I did not follow your suggestion, though I am fully aware that it would bring a substantial improvement in style, for the following reason: In the history of philosophy, from Plato to Schelling, there rages the great debate on the question: who possesses whom? Does man possess a theology or does a theology possess man? . . . If I insert the verb possess into the passage in question I prejudge a theoretical issue that is a major topic in the work—and besides I would prejudge it in the wrong direction. The only permissible solution would be [a] cumbersome dialectical formula (“possess, while being possessed by” or something of the sort) that would divert attention from the main purpose of the sentence. So I left it, though with regrets. (Letter 39)

In 1974 (Letter 133) Heilman, commenting on Voegelin’s offprint “Reason: The Classic Experience,” raised his concerns with Voegelin’s use of the word tension in the phrase “tension toward the ground.” In 1976 Heilman noted again Voegelin’s nonidiomatic use of the word. This time Voegelin explained: As always I could learn a lot from your detailed praise and criticism (even with page-references!). And I am deeply in sorrow about the “tension” of human existence which is characterized by its direction toward the ground of existence. I simply do not know how to describe this phenomenon other than by the word tension which the Latins have already used to render the Greek tasis or tonos in reality. The Latin tensio derives from the verb tendere, which means, just as the English tend, being stretched or tending in a certain direction toward something. I am a bit at a loss to understand why the philosophical meaning of tension, which stresses the directional factor in the existential tension, should cause such difficulty? Especially since the cognitive direction of consciousness is covered by the related term intentionality. . . . But obviously, such questions need talk rather than writing. We shall arrive in London on July 11th, and probably stay until the fourteenth. Then we shall try to organize some visit to the southern cathedrals (Salisbury, Winchester, Canterbury, not to forget Stonehenge). We are looking forward very much to seeing you both as soon as possible. (Letter 140)

Voegelin’s affection for his friend Bob found expression in a letter Voegelin wrote from Munich in 1959 when Heilman’s son, Pete, who was traveling in Europe, landed in Munich. I happened to stand on the balcony . . . when he came down the street, and recognized him immediately by his gait and general appearance, so closely it

12

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

resembled yours. And that resemblance was even more striking at closer inspection—not only his features, but his gestures, his way of throwing back his head, of being deliberate and thoughtful, his careful speech, his choice vocabulary, his wellbred gentleness, and above all his way of being articulate. It was a curious experience to talk with the younger edition of an old friend. (Letter 84)

From the beginning of the correspondence in the 1940s, Heilman and Voegelin had participated in a common quest for understanding literature, especially tragedy. The last work written by Heilman and sent by him to Voegelin was Tragedy and Melodrama, published in 1968. After Heilman published The Iceman, the Arsonist, and the Troubled Agent: Tragedy and Melodrama on the Modern Stage (1973), he did not send Voegelin a copy on the grounds that it only extended the argument of Tragedy and Melodrama. He writes: “My flamboyantly entitled The Iceman, the Arsonist, and the Troubled Agent . . . came out a few weeks ago. Since it is only a continuation of Tragedy and Melodrama, with more recent drama as the subject, but no new theory to speak of, I will spare you by not sending you a copy” (Letter 131). That he was working on The Ways of the World: Comedy and Society (1978), Heilman mentioned in Letter 142. Possibly he did not send Voegelin a copy, for it does not appear in the Eric Voegelin Library, which was given in its entirety to the Institute of Political Science of the University of Erlangen by Lissy Voegelin. Heilman continued into the late 1970s to work on tragedy and melodrama as genres that expressed modern experiences, ideas that he and Voegelin had shared into the late 1950s and early 1960s. He also extended his work to dramatic comedy. During this same time Voegelin’s interests were expanding. Commenting upon his recently published Anamnesis: Zur Theorie der Geschichte und Politik (1966), Voegelin wrote, “I wanted to experiment with a new literary form in philosophy” (Letter 110). In 1967, he wrote Heilman: “You see, I am degenerating more and more into a theologian” (Letter 111). By 1973 the scope of Voegelin’s work included archaeological and prehistorical questions (Letter 132). Thus, by 1976, Voegelin’s and Heilman’s academic paths had substantially diverged, 17. I find no written record that Voegelin commented on this book, although there is an earlier letter in which Voegelin commented on Heilman’s article “Fashions in Melodrama,” which later became part of Tragedy and Melodrama: Versions of Experience (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968). In Letter 84, Voegelin commented that after reading “Fashions in Melodrama” he was gratified “to see that we are both on the same track.” 18. Later, The Ways of the World: Comedy and Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978) won the Christian Gauss Prize of Phi Beta Kappa.

Introduction

13

a divergence acknowledged in Voegelin’s response to Heilman’s remarks on The Ecumenic Age: “But I must tell you that I am deeply touched by the time and labor you have invested in reading a book that, after all, moves somewhat on the periphery of your main interests” (Letter 140). This divergence, and perhaps other factors, would lead to a lessening in the frequency of letters, a change in the pattern of letters exchanged, and ultimately to what Heilman would call a “thinning:” The disparity between the Giver and the Taker roles led, as it seemed to me it must, to a thinning of our relationship. . . . Listening, however enthusiastic, was not enough. I knew that Eric felt pressed by the vastness of the intellectual tasks in which he was engaged, and by the sense of a rapidly diminishing time in which to carry them out. I came to feel that I could be most helpful by not taking up time he could use more profitably in his study. We gradually reduced the number of our visits to the Voegelins, but there was never any diminution of their wonderful cordiality.

An Exemplary Year in the Correspondence While in the late correspondence there is very little discussion of ideas, from the late 1940s into the early 1960s there were seven significant exchanges (of two or more letters each) of ideas and statements of philosophical principles. One of the most important exchanges took place in 1956. That year both men published major works; Heilman published his study of Othello, Magic in the Web, on which he had been working at least since 1951, and Voegelin published the first volume of Order and History—Israel and Revelation—the first book-length study to result from The History of Political Ideas, on which he had worked since 1939. These publications launched one of the most important exchanges of 19. Heilman, Professor, 102. 20. Of the 151 letters in the men’s forty-year correspondence, 11 were exchanged in 1956, compared with 13 in 1964 and 10 in 1969. Of the approximately 126,000 words in the entire correspondence, the 1956 letters contain approximately 8,500 words while the 1964 and 1969 letters contain ca. 6,150 and ca. 4,500 words respectively. While the 1964 and 1969 letters are important for the friendship between the two, they are much less important as exchanges of ideas than the 1956 letters. 21. For a discussion of the history and vicissitudes of this proposed work, see Thomas A. Hollweck and Ellis Sandoz, “General Introduction to the Series,” in the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 19, History of Political Ideas, vol. 1, Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity, ed. Athanasios Moulakis (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997).

14

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

ideas in the entire correspondence, as well as the opportunity, noted above, for each to acknowledge publicly the influence and contributions of the other. The 1956 exchange opens with a letter from Heilman requesting a reference for his Guggenheim Fellowship application. He extended congratulations to Voegelin on his own Guggenheim and then proceeded to “a lesser thing: do you get away from Baton Rouge about June 1? My Othello book should be out near the end of the month, and I want to send you a copy, but I don’t want to have one either come when you aren’t there, or become a burden in some foreign port” (Letter 58). Voegelin replied briefly on May 19 that he would be happy to write for Heilman’s Guggenheim and then provided his schedule through an early November return to Baton Rouge. He concluded, “And now for the ‘lesser thing,’ you understater—your Othello. I am looking very much forward to it; I am delighted to hear that you want to send me [a] copy fresh from the oven; and it would be splendid if it were here about the 5th or 6th” (Letter 59). On June 8 Voegelin confirmed that he had received Magic in the Web and registered surprise at having the book dedicated to him, “a complete outsider to the ‘profession.’ ” Pressed for time, and leaving for a conference in Pennsylvania, he promised to take the book with him (Letter 60). On July 20 Heilman wrote to Voegelin from Cortland, New York—he was conducting research at the Cornell Library in nearby Ithaca—that he and Ruth were in the East for part of the summer and were hoping to make “at least an overnight stop in Cambridge to see you both” (Letter 61). Voegelin quickly wrote back on July 23 to “hasten to get our schedules straightened out so that we may get together if possible.” Voegelin indicated that he would have to be in Cambridge for two more weeks and that he was very busy reading page proofs, constructing indexes, and writing a preface for Israel and Revelation. But, he asserted, “I want to see you at all cost” (Letter 62). Before Heilman could reply, Voegelin wrote on July 24 to convey again his gratitude for the dedication: “Last night I finished reading your Magic in the Web—and at last I can thank you for the dedication in the only way I can thank, by response to the contents” (Letter 63). His response opens with the observation that the formal quality of the book—its construction, which requires the reader “to read from the beginning in order to get its full import”—“is intimately bound up with your method and your philosophical position.” Voegelin identified “exhaustion of the source” as the first principle of Magic, and explained that this formal principle was the fundamental attitude with which he ap22. Voegelin constructed three indexes for Israel and Revelation: Biblical References, Modern Authors, and Subjects and Names.

Introduction

15

proached classical literary texts himself: “no adequate interpretation of a major work is possible, unless the interpreter assumes the role of the disciple who has everything to learn from the master.” Exhaustion of the source is rooted, Voegelin continued, in several assumptions: (1) that the author “knew” what he was doing; (2) that the parts of the text work together; and (3) that the “texture of the linguistic corpus” gives rise to meaning, thus precluding any preconceptions vis-à-vis characters or motifs brought to the work by the interpreter. “Under all these aspects,” he wrote, “your book is a model of interpretation.” The second hermeneutic principle that accompanies exhaustion of the source, he continued, requires that “the terminology of the interpretation, if not identical with the language symbols of the source . . . must not be introduced from the ‘outside,’ but be developed in close contact with the source itself for the purpose of differentiating the meanings which are apparent in the work.” This principle must be rigorously followed to avoid imposing an interpretation that the work itself does not sustain. Voegelin complimented Heilman’s discipline in adhering to this second principle, which “forced upon you a richness of vocabulary for expressing nuances of emotions and ethical attitudes.” Next he asserted that the work of the literary critic is simply an analytical, rational continuation of the poet’s work along the tracks laid out in the work of art itself. The discipline of rigorously adhering to the language of the play extends from a “strand of compact motifs to the more immediate differentiations and distinctions in terms of a phenomenology of morals.” Because philosophical anthropology lies at the heart of literary criticism, and because of the compactness of the symbolic language of the poet, the literary critic can only rely upon the “linguistic corpus” until he has exhausted the meanings embedded therein. At that point the critic must develop a “system” of interpretation that extends the poet’s compact symbolizations in the same direction indicated by the poet into a philosophically critical language. In other words, the critic must translate the analytical immediacy of the poet’s compact symbolism “of the whole of human nature carried by the magic in the web,” into the rational order of his work, in which the “whole of human nature” must “now be carried by the 23. Voegelin is groping toward an adequate articulation of what he later designates “reflective distance.” Thirteen years later, in “Postscript: On Paradise and Revolution” (finished in December 1969) to the letter on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Voegelin was moving toward formulating a symbol for denoting this awareness, which in his late work would be called “reflective distance.” In the postscript, however, he used the phrase “the critical consciousness of reality” as a requirement for a reader, “critical distance” that must be maintained by the artist at some level to make the work of art possible, and “critical reader” who must supply a “secondary critical distance” if the artist does not develop it (see Southern Review, n.s., 7 [1971]: 27, 39–40).

16

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

magic of the system.” “And here,” Voegelin enthused, “I am now full of admiration for your qualities as a philosopher. For you have arranged the problem of human nature in the technically perfect order of progress from the peripheral to the center of personality. . . . You begin with . . . the problem of appearance and reality; and you end with the categories of existence and spiritual order.” Voegelin found Heilman’s “conception of ‘parts’ of a tragedy” generally important for the historical and social sciences, as well as for literary criticism. He wrote: You have used, or created, an ontological category that brings to philosophical consciousness that action and language, body and soul, emotion and expression, experience and symbol, etc., though they must be distinguished, are all “parts” of a whole, in this case of “tragedy” as a literary genus. The ultimate consubstantiality of all being is recognized, when everything—from a storm, or a sword, or a part of the body, through actions and speeches, to essences of character and spiritual transfigurations of a soul—is part of the web that mysteriously carries the meaning of being and existence. (Letter 63)

Finally, Voegelin offered a point, “if not of disagreement, at least of hesitation in acceptance,” in reference to Heilman’s formulation of a modern variant of tragedy: a situation in which a character intended as tragic “never knows what hit him.” Voegelin pondered whether the term tragedy applied under such circumstances and then raised the more general problem of a particular culture’s spiritual substance and the necessity of creating an appropriate symbolic form to articulate that substance. The letter of July 24 ends with his observation that We have no tragedies today. The phenomenon of the mass man cannot be brought on stage authentically. The appropriate methods for describing it are 24. In his friend’s explication of Othello, Voegelin recognized an affirmation from Shakespeare of a crucial component in his developing philosophy, that is, the consubstantiality of all being and the access of that consubstantiality through the concrete consciousness of an individual human being. In The New Science of Politics (1952) Voegelin had formulated this insight: “Science starts from the prescientific existence of man, from his participation in the world with his body, soul, intellect, and spirit, from his primary grip on all the realms of being that is assured to him because his own nature is their epitome” (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 5, Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions; The New Science of Politics; Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, ed. Manfred Henningsen [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000], 91; see also the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 6, Anamnesis, ed. David Walsh, trans. M. J. Hanak, Gerhart Niemeyer et al. [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002], 398).

Introduction

17

again philosophy, the reflections of the moralist—or the work of the literary critic—all of them addressed not to the general public (which has ceased to exist) but to the enclaves of spiritual and intellectual culture that survive precariously the periods of disorder.

After this the Heilmans visited the Voegelins in Cambridge, where they had ample opportunity to discuss Magic in the Web before Heilman answered the July 24 letter in a letter dated August 19. After thanking Voegelin for a generous and thorough reading, Heilman proceeded to the substance of Voegelin’s critique: “Some of the principles I can consciously claim,” he wrote, “others I fear I have just blundered into” (Letter 64). He then considered Voegelin’s central proposition that the interpreter must assume “the role of the disciple who has everything to learn from the master.” In a sense one can get out of it only what one brings to it; except perhaps that if one, so to speak, lies open to it fully enough and long enough, it may enable him actually to effect some transcendence of his own limitations (an interesting possibility, that, which just came into my consciousness, as I was writing this, and which needs further thought). But always in writing I wished I had a Voegelin vocabulary for the phenomena of mind and spirit present in the play. (Letter 64)

Heilman wrote that he hoped to have displayed “an adequate order of ideas (‘the whole conception of human nature’) by means of which to make the critical statement.” He asserted that the conception of parts was implicitly assumed in critical practice even though it did not appear to have widespread formal acceptance in contemporary criticism. In fact, he acknowledged that his elaboration of the doctrine of parts was aimed at the neo-Aristotelians at Chicago who seemed to him “rigidly doctrinaire” and who would, at any rate, probably “jump all over me.” Finally, he reminded Voegelin that during their visit in Cambridge they had talked about the possibility of a “modern variant of tragedy” but that he would have to think more about it. At this point in the letter, Heilman raised an issue that would provide Voegelin the occasion to elaborate upon his own vocation as a scholar. Heilman observed: Two theoretical points of mine you did not mention, probably because they seemed either obvious one[s] on the one hand, or on the other too perverse to talk about. I mention these only because I do not feel completely sure

18

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

of myself and wondered how the propositions looked to you. The first was the effort to distinguish two aspects of a work—the “was” and the “is.” To this formulation I was driven by the dominance of historical studies, in which it is assumed that the work has a single reality which is derivable only from the historical context. This seems dangerous nonsense to me (and I need not explain to you that I do not contemn historical studies), for it appears to deny the existence of a non-historical permanence which I find inseparable from myth, fable, the artistic formulations of the imagination, etc. . . . The second point followed from this: my assumption of the power of the critic to view the work, at least in part, non-historically, i.e., to transcend the intellectual and cultural climate of his own time and thus to be able to identify in the work those elements that conform to the eternal truth of things. The historical relativists argue, of course, not only that the work is relative only to its times, but that the mind of the critic is relative only to his own times, in which he is hopelessly enclosed. Therefore the practice of literary history is the only true humility in the literary student; the critic who pretends to be doing anything but historicizing is an egomaniac. So I postulate his share in the divine power to see all times in simultaneity. Frivolous? Reckless? (Letter 64)

He ended the letter with the hope that “it isn’t another eight years until we see you and Lissie again.” Voegelin wrote again three days after Heilman’s letter of August 19. The general phenomenon identified by Heilman in his letter was familiar to Voegelin, and he asserted that it was, indeed, the Victorian hangover of historical relativism. The various questions which you indicate in your letter seem to me to be all connected with efforts to find the critical basis beyond historical relativism, and by that token they are connected with each other. The question of the “was” and the “is” that you raise is, for instance, in my opinion only another facet of the question raised earlier in your letter that, on the one hand, one can only get out of the play what one brings to it while, on the other hand, if one lays oneself open to the play, one can get considerably more out of it than one thought one had brought to it. Let me dwell a bit on this issue, because it is after all the central issue of my life as a scholar and apparently yours, too. The occupation with works of art, poetry, philosophy, mythical imagination, and so forth, makes sense only, if it is conducted as an inquiry into the nature of man. That sentence, while it excludes historicism, does not exclude history, for it is peculiar to the nature of man that it unfolds its potentialities historically. Not that historically anything “new” comes up—human nature is

Introduction

19

always wholly present—but there are modes of clarity and degrees of comprehensiveness in man’s understanding of his self and his position in the world. Obviously Plato and Shakespeare are clearer and more comprehensive in the understanding of man than is Dr. Jones of Cow College. Hence, the study of the classics is the principal instrument of self-education; and if one studies them with loving care, as you most truly observe, one all of a sudden discovers that one’s understanding of a great work increases (and also one’s ability to communicate such understanding) for the good reason that the student has increased through the process of study—and that after all is the purpose of the enterprise. (At least it is my purpose in spending the time of my life in the study of prophets, philosophers, and saints). . . . History is the unfolding of the human Psyche; historiography is the reconstruction of the unfolding through the psyche of the historian. The basis of historical interpretation is the identity of substance (the psyche) in the object and the subject of interpretation; and its purpose is participation in the great dialogue that goes through the centuries among men about their nature and destiny. And participation is impossible without growth in stature (within the personal limitations) toward the rank of the best; and that growth is impossible unless one recognizes authority and surrenders to it. (Letter 65)

The last clause of this passage—“that growth is impossible unless one recognizes authority and submits to it”—deepens the meaning of the central principle of Voegelin’s literary criticism, which had been formulated with the aim of accurately interpreting a work of the imagination. Heilman had responded to that formulation with the (sudden) thought “that if one, so to speak, lies open to it fully enough and long enough, it may enable him actually to effect some transcendence of his own limitations” (Letter 64). Now, Voegelin clarified that “submitting to authority” and “learning from the master” leads one to the discovery of what one could not have expected prior to the submission, that is, the education of the disciple. Submission to the authority of a major work or writer— a Plato or a Shakespeare, for example—represents the crucial stance for one who would educate himself in dialogue with a classical writer, and who would thus 25. As a rather amusing twist to the idea of lying open to a work of literature, I quote the last few lines of Voegelin’s letter to Heilman on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw: “I hope you do not take it in ill that I pester you with this long letter. It is, of course, an unmitigated presumption that I should express myself at length on James, exactly one week after I have read any work at all of his for the first time. Nevertheless, I think, you will have seen that just now I am lying flat on my stomach in admiration for James. And such a prostrate position sometimes distorts the perspective” (Letter 11).

20

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

participate in “the great dialogue that goes through the centuries among men about their nature and destiny.” At this point Voegelin turned the tables on Heilman’s historical relativists, noting that it is the relativists who are indeed the egomaniacs: because they maintain that no one can be understood, they themselves do not have to confront their own mediocrity. One would not even need to address their argument were it not for the social force of historical relativism: one may well follow the Roman question: cui bono? Who profits by the assumption that works of the mind are so thoroughly determined by historical circumstance that the pursuit of truth about the nature of man is not recognizable in them? The answer is obvious: the spiteful mediocrity which hates excellence. The argument of historical relativism is the defense of the little man against recognition of greatness. If Plato is encased in the circumstances of the 4th c. B.C. and Mr. Jones in the circumstances of the 20th c. A.D. the community of the psyche is interrupted; no confrontation from man to man is possible; the discomfort discovering and admitting one’s own smallness before the great is averted; and above all, the obligations arising through confrontation with greatness have disappeared. All men are on the same level of circumstanced equality. Behind the personal viciousness that puts social strength into historical relativism, there lies the much larger issue of the revolt against God and the escape into gnosticism. For “the measure of man is God,” and the life of the psyche is the life in truth. By interrupting communication with those who live in truth, the life in truth itself is avoided. Historical relativism is the radical attack on the communication of truth through the dialogue in history. (Letter 65)

But for a few historical examples of his point and an observation about the illiteracy of the neo-Aristotelian “Chicago school,” the conversation that had begun on July 24 with Voegelin’s response to Magic in the Web seems to end here. In the antepenultimate paragraph of his letter, he mused: The summer advances. Your visit was a high-point. To see you and Ruth and after so many years, and in so excellent shape, was truly refreshing. I am getting now in the years, where one has known people for a sufficient period of time to see what has become of them. And the cases are rare where the “promising young men” of their thirties have not become the disappointing blighters of their fifties. But when the psyche is healthy, aging is not a blight but a growth.

Introduction

21

Three more letters—one from Heilman and two from Voegelin—were to follow in this remarkable year. On October 13, Heilman wrote to Voegelin after receiving a copy of Israel and Revelation and reading Voegelin’s formal acknowledgment of his contribution to Voegelin’s idiomatic English. He praised Voegelin’s style for its “easy mastery of a technical vocabulary” that rises to a “combination of knowledge and feeling,” that sometimes “infuses a passage with especial power, as of the scholar and prophet in one,” and that occasionally produces “a kind of poetic effect” (Letter 66). He continued: It’s hardly becoming of me to go beyond the verbal medium, but I have to say that in reading just a few pages I experience again that very rare feeling of being in the presence not only of great learning, which is clear to all, and not only of great learning conjoined with the seer’s passion, which is much less frequent than scholarship alone, but of this combination held with a sort of serenity in which are both power and wisdom. And here, lest I become embarrassing, I stop. I will read, as you know, with limited competence, but with a lot of application and enthusiasm, and with enough gifts to learn I hope, and with the kind of perspicacity that will enable me to steal for the embellishment of anything I may do hereafter. Lest the unlimited admiration of even a grammarian become corrupting, I will for your welfare include the modifying influence of Ruth’s comment on the book, “But it has no illustrations!”

In the same letter Heilman applauded Voegelin’s remarks on historical relativism from the previous letter and commented on the connection between Voegelin’s statement that the study of art “makes sense only if it is conducted as an inquiry into the nature of man” and a sentence from Israel and Revelation that “Amnesia with regard to past achievement is one of the most important social phenomena.” He wrote: In teaching the literature of the past I keep feeling that the best thing one can do with it is to try to combat the characteristic amnesia of the 20th century— not basically an amnesia of events and phenomena (though that is always conspicuous) but an amnesia with regard to the full human potential. Even in the Victorian novel (which is likely to be revered now on what seem to me to be very insubstantial grounds, that is, that it was “really revolutionary” and saw through the foibles of its age) I find a spiritual breadth that one hardly gets today, for instance, a presentation of the human capacity to move toward a discipline of the ego, toward caritas. In that sense, at least, it has a view of human

22

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

nature, of human possibility, that is needed in the interest of truth. Our own discoveries about ourselves are almost exclusively in the direction of our Iagoism.

In a brief letter dated October 17, 1956, Voegelin thanked Heilman for his generous letter and noted how Ruth is most refreshing with her complaint about the lack of illustrations—incidentally, I agree with her. One could do really quite something through the addition of two dozen photographs to a work of this nature. The changing styles of the royal portraits in Mesopotamia and Egypt are an eye-opener for the spiritual development; they reveal subtleties that cannot be caught by the literary texts and their interpretation. (Letter 67)

Finally, in a letter dated December 29, 1956, from Frankfurt am Main, Voegelin remarked on the pressure of affairs, assured Heilman that his Guggenheim appraisal of him (a copy of which he enclosed) had gone to the foundation in due time, and reported on his negotiations concerning a position in Munich. He remarked that spending Christmas in Vienna with Lissy’s family had been quite interesting because of the number of Hungarian emigrants filling the city: What strikes one in talking with these people (historians, journalists, etc.) is the long-range view which they take: the manifold of the Byzantine and Asiatic cultures, as living in the manifold of Eastern peoples, is a living reality. Marxism is one, but not a very important, representative expression for these people—now on the wane. What interest[s] is what will come afterwards. And there they regret that so little is really known in the West about the undercurrents of experiences and ideas in the East. They consider it the most important task for science, to find out a good deal more about Eastern living culture than is known in the West today. The Western literature, including the American, about Communism—based as it is on the reading of a few books and articles of persons who hold the limelight—they consider ludicrous. (Letter 68)

Over the course of the correspondence between the two friends, multiple exchanges of ideas like that of 1956 occurred, but in 1971 such exchanges gave way to reports on current work or the provision of an article offprint. From January 1971 through 1984, only twenty letters passed between them; of these Heilman wrote twelve and Voegelin eight. Heilman’s last letter to Voegelin, dated December 8, 1981, reads in part:

Introduction

23

How very charming and generous of you and Lissi to propose lunching Ruth and me once again. What sponges we are—not only of the bounty of both of you but especially of your time. I rather feel that, like ladies about to be hanged some years back, you might well “plead your belly,” i.e., its filled state, relinquish the lunch, assign the care of the ladies to me, and devote the needed time to your desk. But then, alas, we should miss your wit. So I can’t push the really sensible idea too hard. (Letter 150)

And then he ended with: Ruth coughs, and I hear the melodies of tinnitis. But we make out. You both sound in excellent shape. Good. Au voir, Best greetings to you both, Bob

In the last years of the correspondence, Ruth and Lissy visited often on the phone, and from time to time Bob and Eric would join them in the phone conversations. Since Eric and Lissy lived in Stanford, and Pete Heilman and his family lived in Palo Alto, Bob and Ruth Heilman visited the Voegelins from time to time when they were in the area; they last visited the Voegelins in December 1984, about ten days before Eric’s death in January 1985. In a recollection of Voegelin, Heilman wrote: After Eric’s death the matter [of the decreasing number of visits] came up in a conversation between Lissy and me. Perhaps I brought it up, wanting to explain myself, no doubt hoping to have been seen as considerate and helpful rather than indifferent or unfriendly. Lissy’s comment went something like this: “Yes, Eric noticed that you weren’t coming over as much. He wondered why. He was very sad about it. He was very fond of you.”

In Voegelin, Heilman had encountered a thinker who “kept me on my toes and seeing over the usual border lines” (Letter 109). Heilman would thus describe himself as the “taker” in his relationship with Voegelin, but Voegelin had found more in Heilman: a sympathetic, enthusiastic, and imaginative reader who was eager to attend meticulously to Voegelin’s English style. He saw also in 26. Heilman, Professor, 101. 27. Ibid., 102.

24

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

Heilman an American intellectual untainted by the dominant trends in the philosophical thought of Europe and firmly rooted in the texts and spirit of English and American literature and culture. When Heilman spoke of himself as “a native informant” for Voegelin on the American South, he spoke truer than he knew. Heilman was the “native informant” on America—an informant whom Voegelin could trust to approach his own ideas as an intelligent and sensitive American interlocutor. In 1928 Voegelin had described his introduction, through the offices of his mentor John R. Commons, to the American mind: The stranger to any culture always faces the difficulty of making his way from the periphery, where isolated details perplex him, to the center where they can be understood. And only rarely is he lucky enough to find this deepest meaning embodied in a living person, so that almost effortlessly he obtains direct access to the center of a culture.

Voegelin might have said the same, later, of Robert Heilman. Beneath appearances—the decreasing number of letters exchanged, the “thinning” of the friendship, as Heilman put it—ran the deep and abiding friendship founded at LSU and nourished, thereafter, more by letters than by the infrequent face-to-face meetings. In 1975, Eric wrote to Bob, “It was a great pleasure to have you all here for X-mas. With you here, I was just reminiscing, and having seen the [Robert] Harrises in November in Charlottesville, and having letters from Cleanth Brooks, Louisiana was not such a bad place at all. What was formed at that time holds together” (Letter 135).

28. Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 1, On the Form of the American Mind, ed. Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper, trans. Ruth Hein (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 1.

 D E L I G H T F U L AC QU I S I T I O N Letters 1–36, 1944–1952

 1. Baton Rouge, May 27 [No Year] Dear Eric: To fortify—or destroy, as it might be—my easy generalization about [William] Blake I have checked the OHEL Bibliography (II, 347 ff.),1 and I find that I was substantially right, although I had not known the amount of the relatively recent work on Blake. Editions of Works: Facsimile, 1880–1900. Of complete works, other—see: 1874, 1898 [1893] ([William Butler] Yeats and [Edwin John] Ellis); next, 1904. Of selections, 1839, 1874, 1887, 1880, 1893. The facts indicate very limited 19th century interest. Biography: [Alexander] Gilchrist 1888 ff., [Frederick] Tatham 1906, others since. Studies: There are a number of essays, all apparently biographical and superficial, scattered through the 19th century. Nothing by anybody of critical stature. The beginning of consistent interest appears late in the century, as the following notations show: 1869—[Algernon Charles] Swinburne 1877—[Henry Gay] Hewlett 1893—[Joseph Antoine] Milsand, Littérature anglaise et philosophie (Dijon) 1895—[Richard] Garnett 1896—James Thomson 1900—R. Kassner, Die Mystik, der Künstler, und das Leben (Leipzig) 1903—[William Butler] Yeats 1906—Richter, H., Wm. Blake (Strasburg) 1907—P. Berger, Wm. Blake: Mysticisme et Poesie (Paris; tr. D. H. Conner, 1914) 1907—Stepford Brooke 1907—[Arthur] Symons 1909—[Basil] de Selincourt 1. Oxford History of English Literature.

25

26

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

1910—[G. K.] Chesterton 1910—T. Sturge Moore, Art and Life: Wm. Blake and his Aesthetic

And many others since, “too numerous to mention,” but the following look interesting for one reason or another: B. Fehr, “Wm. Blake und die Kabbala,” in Eng. Studien, 1930 Ba Han, M., Wm. Blake: His Mysticism, Bordeaux, 1924 “ The Evolution of Blakean Philosophy, Rangoon, 1926 Pierce, F. E., “Etymology as Explanation in Blake,” Phil. Qu. 1931 White, H. C., The Mysticism of Wm. Blake, Madison, 1927 ([Cleanth] Brooks doesn’t think much of the female who wrote this)

By the way, I know that you don’t need and haven’t time to read this stuff: I send it along only because you might be curious about the details. Sincerely,

2. [No date] Dear Eric, During some talk last night I happened to mention this poem by Hardy to Lissie, who thought you might be interested in it: On an Invitation to the United States My ardors for emprize now lost Since life has bared its bones to me, I shrink to seek a modern coast Whose riper times have yet to be; Where the new regions claim them free From that long drip of human tears Which peoples old in tragedy Have left upon the centuried years. For, wonning in those ancient lands, Encased and lettered as a tomb, And scored with prints of perished hands, And chronicled with dates of doom, Though my own Being bear no bloom I trace the lives such scenes enshrine, Give past exemplars present room, And their experience count as mine.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

27

The charm of the hosts and the delightfulness of the other company and the suavity of the schwimp and the lovely deceptive mildness of the champagne all made a beautiful dreamless night and a clear sky this morning. Encore!

3. University, Louisiana [No Date] [OH] Dear Voegelin, Did you happen to see the note on Dostoevsky by James Farrell, the Chicago left-wing realist, in the N.Y. Times Book Review Section, January 9, 1944, p. 3? What he says about Dostoevsky, by way of explication, ties in very prettily with your recent remarks on (a) Russia and (b) the inevitability of suffering in the world; and his objections to D. are a fine illustration of “optimistic rationalism.” Regards, Heilman

4. Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 12, 1944 [OH] Dear Bob: I just had an enthusiastic letter from Lissy, telling of chicken creole, nice people and generally, a lovely Sunday she spent with you and your family—but the chicken creole came first. I envied her very much; nothing of the sort is to be had here; just beans, Harvard people and dull Sundays. Last night—it was terribly hot—I wanted to drink a glass of beer, the first since I am here; nothing doing: of all days it was the day of primary elections. But then you learn a lot here about the war. For instance, that it will be over before next spring. Reason: the grass in the Harvard Yard. The lawns were trampled into mud by the army; this year they were reseeded and fenced in: —the vox populi says: the Corporation would not invest $1 in grass-seed, unless they had precise information that the new grass will stay and not be trampled down again—by a crop of soldiers. I also know when the next world war will start. The statisticians have found that there is a 100% correlation between the outbreak of world wars and the celebration of world fairs in Switzerland. World fairs in Switzerland were held in 1914 and in 1939, and the wars broke duly out. The next world fair is in 1964!!—that’s the sort of [thing?] you can learn nowhere but at Harvard.

28

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

Otherwise, I am drowned in German constitutional history of the Middle Ages. It is a horrible experience, particularly the East. I am all in favor that the Russians get East Prussia after what I have gone through with it. —By the way, I wonder how soon they will get it: whether that [indecipherable] drive will go on, or whether it will stop somewhere around Königsberg. Macmillan and Harcourt-Brace, both seem to be interested now in the “book.” But, oh!, the time they take to make up their minds! In my next life I shall become a publisher; it seems to be a more leisurely occupation than that of a writer. I hope very much, they will be through “considering” by September so that I can give a definite answer to [?] Williamson. Please, give my regards to Ruth: I regret infinitely that I could not enjoy her company, nor the chicken creole, last Sunday, together with Lissy (please note that Ruth’s company comes first with me, and the chicken creole second). Yours very sincerely, Eric Voegelin

5. Baton Rouge, July 21 [1944] Dear Eric, I am delighted enough at hearing from you to forgive the additional “n” with which you adorned my name; it set Mr. [Lewis B.] Lucky and the whole Legion Security Committee on me, being considered prima facie evidence of enemy-alienism. And my forgiveness would have to be increased, also, by my consideration of Ruth’s pleasure at the position which you gave her in your list of the lovely things to be enjoyed on a Heilman Sunday. Yet I must say for Lissy that her own placing of the chicken at the top of her joys showed, after all, a quite exquisite tact: since her own cooking cannot be excelled, what better point on which to offer praise to a rival? Now if you always ate at the Piccadilly, her praise of Ruth’s chicken would have to be considered indeed to be lacking in finesse. Your news of the Harvard mind and its functioning is all delightful: the stories about the grass and the world fairs in Switzerland and their predictive values have had a nice little circulation hereabouts. I hope that your search for beer is not always impeded by the local political activities, and that the publishers hasten on to a quick realization of what they have got—and then start bidding against each other. It would be interesting to have you here to discuss all the events of the last twenty-four hours—“fateful” ones, as the press would say: the fall of the Tojo cabinet, the conclusion of the Democratic campaign, the progress of the war,

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

29

and most of all the events (or alleged events) inside Germany. Being victims of the spirit of journalism, we all hung on radios all day today; nobody gets anything done; and when it is all over, no one knows much either. LSU continues its businesslike decline: at the moment we are all in a stew as to who will succeed the deposed [Wendell H.] Stephenson. Even [John Earle] Uhler, the Strode of LSU, has been mentioned; the very best we can hope for is [Fred C.] Frey. Rumors fly; fama crescit eundo;  at the moment fama is, amidst her growth, busily engaged in firing Brooks and me. After five years I am almost used to this execution by act-of-tongue. On personal grounds alone, but very strongly on them, we all anticipate your return in the fall. My best wishes for a “productive” summer. Sincerely yours,

6. Baton Rouge, October 25, 1944 Dear Eric, Thank you very much for the reprints. Siger comes somewhat as an old friend, but not one who doesn’t need further cultivation. Some of the Nietzsche materials are familiar, but here they come in a pattern which I am glad to have. 2. The headlines for the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate on July 20, 1944, included the following: “Six Nazis Killed in Quarrel: Disagreement over Hitler Strategy Leads to Fatal Shooting,” and “Tojo’s Entire Government Resigns in Japanese Upset: Hirohito Plans Parley with Home Affairs Minister to Direct Complete Reorganization, Form New Cabinet.” For July 21, 1944, they included the following: “Hitler Reveals Army Plot to Overthrow Nazi Regime: Bomb Explosion Fails to Kill Fuehrer; Would-be Assassin Dies; Himmler Begins Purge of ‘Usurpers,’” and “Hirohito Names ‘Copremiers’ of New Jap Military Regime.” 3. Wendell H. Stephenson was professor of history and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1944. John Earle Uhler was a member of the LSU English faculty who wrote a locally controversial novel, Cane Juice. The novel led to his firing; later he was reinstated with the help of the ACLU and AAUP. He was also a member of a faction in the department opposed to Heilman, Brooks, and Warren (see Thomas W. Cutrer, Parnassus on the Mississippi: The Southern Review and the Baton Rouge Literary Community, 1935–1942 [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984], 18–19). Strode taught English at the University of Alabama (1914–1963), wrote travel books, wrote a biography of Jefferson Davis, and edited Jefferson Davis’s letters. In 1949, Fred C. Frey was dean of the university; he was replaced in 1953 by Charles E. Smith. 4. “Rumor gathers strength as it goes”: a reference to Virgil Aeneid 4.174–75. 5. Voegelin, “Siger de Brabant,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (June 1944): 507– 26, reprinted in the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 20, History of Political Ideas, vol. 2, ed. Peter von Sivers (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), chap. 11. 6. Voegelin, “Nietzsche, the Crisis, and the War,” Journal of Politics 6 (1944): 177–212; reprinted

30

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

I hope that this article gets around to some of the popular philosophers who speak so easily and knowingly of Nietzsche; and I wish there could be general circulation of the interpretation of the meaning of the “war-guilt” business. It’s remarkably convincing. But I enjoyed the whole thing: in the realm of information, not only the Nietzsche but the establishing of the positions of [George] Santayana, [Stefan] George, etc.: and in the realm of style, the nice understatement, like the one concerning [Crane] Brinton, or that on [Rohan d’Olier] Butler on p. 186. Since we’ve been on this before, may I point out three or four minor matters of idiom? P. 198, for “despair to find” read “despair of finding;” p. 199, for “blame others to be” read “blame others for being,” and for “ripe to fall” read “ripe and ready to fall”; p. 202, for “insistence to create” read “insistence upon creating.” Very sincerely,

7. Baton Rouge, November 20 [probably 1944] Dear Eric, I have finally read your contribution to the symposium on research in political theory, and I have profited from it—as usual. To me it was pure, delightful acquisition of information to read what have been the theories as to the substance of political theory; and what seemed to me to go most to the heart of the matter is the distinction between political theory as the study of governmental authority and political theory as including “problems of spiritual disintegration and regeneration, and of the community-creating political myth . . .” No idioms marked! I tried several of the others, but truth to tell, they seemed relatively on the surface; so I went away. One Ruth Beattie, whom I sent to you in the fall, assures me that she will be “eternally” grateful therefor. All regards,

in the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 10, Published Essays, 1940–1952, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), chap. 5. 7. On November 20–21, 1943, Voegelin participated in “Research in Political Theory: A Symposium” at the American Political Science Association annual meeting. This was a meeting of the Political Theory Panel of the Research Committee of the APSA. Voegelin’s contribution was published as “Political Theory and the Pattern of General History,” American Political Science Review 38 (1944): 746–54, reprinted in the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 10, Published Essays, 1940–1952, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), chap. 6.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

31

8. Cortland, NY, July 3, 1945 [OH]8 Dear Eric, Here’s a ¶ from a recent Nation which, if you haven’t seen it, may amuse you. Our trip was very hot but uneventful except for some anomalous—but apparently innocuous—doings in the motor. For some reason—perhaps that I’m having a bit of [a] hangover from my brief illness—it exhausted me, and I’ve been good for nothing since we’ve come here. And things to be done are piled up. I hope that your social pleasures undergo a diminuendo so that you can get into really exhausting work. I can say this now that we’re no longer around, for we very much enjoyed seeing you. Our best wishes to you and to Lissie. Cordially, Bob

9. April 9, 1946 Dear Robert: I have finished the Lear, —and I am still enchanted. It is a masterpiece of careful, exhaustive analysis; and the organization of the subject-matter according to the strata of meaning, from the sight-pattern to the religious attitudes, is flawless. No criticism can be leveled against the construction of the whole. And the only desideratum is, as I told you over the telephone, an Introduction for the non-professional reader that would inform him on the state of the Learquestion so that he can appreciate what you are doing and why. Of course, you will not expect a dilettante to indulge in a critical evaluation of details. Only to prove the carefulness of my reading let me relate some of the notes which I penciled down while going through the MS. Concerning the sight-pattern. This whole part raises an interesting problem of method. You try to analyse the pattern of imagery, that is of the structure of the poetic medium by which a meaning is conveyed that itself transcends the level of sensual symbolisms, that is of the sight, clothes, etc., expressions. This enterprise poses two questions: (1) Not all of the language-body of the drama has significance as symbolism for the transcendent meaning. A word like “see” may have symbolic function in the structure of the whole, or it may be irrelevant to it because its meaning is confined to a limited pragmatic context—as when a person would say “Look 8. This note was written on a clipping from an article in the Nation. I have not been able to find the issue from which it was clipped.

32

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

here” or “There you see” in a determinative, pragmatic sense, without implications concerning the metaphysical problem of “insight.” Here begins the art of the interpreter who has to catch all the “sees” which have a function as transcendent symbols and to omit the “sees” that have no such function. As far as I know the King Lear[,] you have done an excellent job of catching the sight-symbols. I have found only two occasions for notes: (a) On p. 21 you catch the “see” in IV, 7, line 55: I will not swear these are my hands: let’s see; I feel this pin prick.

I think you can defend this “see” as symbolic[;] though, if it stood alone, it would perhaps be a border-case. I do not find mentioned in this context, however, the preceding lines: I should e’en die with pity, To see another thus.

These lines would give support to the symbolism of line 55, and should perhaps not be separated from the second “see.” (Though they are quoted in another context.) (b) I do find in IV, 6 a “see” that I do not remember having been mentioned in your study, though this may be simply my oversight. And I am too lazy to recheck. Anyway here it is: Edgar: Let’s see these pockets; the letters that he speaks of May be my friends. . . . Let us see: Leave, gentle wax; [sic] and, manners, blame us not; To know our enemies’ minds, we’ld rip their hearts; Their papers, is more lawful.

Here the relation between the “see” and the intelligence to be gained by opening the letters is explicit. (2) The sight-pattern that runs through the King Lear can be a basic symbolic structure for the higher levels of meaning because the world of the senses is loaded, indeed, with meanings beyond the physical context. “Ice” is not just water at a certain temperature; it is “icy.” And “eyes” are not just optical apparatuses but mediums of intelligence. Here, as far as I can see, lies the root of the symbolic value which words denoting sensual objects and functions can gain in the context of a poem. The word-body of a verse can be loaded with meanings

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

33

beyond the meaning explicitly contained in the sentence as a grammatical unit. That is to say: in a poem (and for that matter also in good prose; with certain limits) the implied meaning of the word-body can be used to echo, amplify, surround with fringes, etc., the explicit meaning of the statements. This raises the second methodological question: the question of the interlocking of wordsymbols as carriers of implied meanings, with the explicit meanings of the text. You have solved the problem of interpretation correctly, if I may be so insolent as to venture the opinion, by first elaborating the word-pattern as the carrier of the implied meaning and then proceeding to the levels of explicit meaning. You have also indicated the shift from the implied to the explicit level of meaning by a skillful change in terminology: you speak of the sight-pattern and the clothespattern, but quite rightly of the nature-theme. The affair becomes complicated, however, in the madness-pattern. I do not see in this later change of terminology an inconsistency but rather an indication of the methodological difficulty. For madness, indeed, belongs to the level of explicit meanings as well as to the level of the senses in its variants of real and assumed madness in the acting persons. The methodologically consistent solution would be, in my opinion, to adopt a theory of meaning that would permit [one] to see the whole poem as one world of meaning from the sensually implied (in objects, actions, states of mind of the dramatis personae, etc.) to the most explicit (in blunt metaphysical propositions in oratio directa). —As it is, I have the feeling there is a crack in method insofar as the “sight-pattern” analysis leans a bit heavily on the objective, physical structure of the word-body. That does not mean that the term “pattern” should be abandoned. On the contrary, it should be retained. But it should be made clear that a poem can have a pattern, because it has a word-body; and that it can have a word-body because the body is a carrier of meaning. Nothing, therefore, should be changed in the text. But a few judicious remarks on the problem here indicated would probably enhance the value of a masterful analysis and be a contribution to a theory of poetry. The nature-theme. The locus criticus of the nature-theme is I, 2. You have dealt with it at length on pp. 64 ff. and 123 ff. And, I think, you have got every ounce of meaning out of the scene that is in it. Here I would have to make only one suggestion—always with apologies for my insolence: that this central topic needs a bit [of ] “pulling together.” Again nothing need be changed[,] but a few summarizing words might be in place which elucidate the internal structure of this most carefully knit scene. As I understand it, the problem is the following: The conceptual apparatus of Shakespeare in handling the problem of nature

34

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

is humanistic. The position of Edmund (Thou, nature, art my goddess) is the sophistic conflict between physis and nomos. The nomos, the order of society, appears as “the plague of custom” and “the curiosity of nations”—non-obligatory for the man who represents nature in the form of the forces of the individual. The Hellenic natural man of Critias and Callicles is the model, as well as, perhaps, the virtù of the Machiavellian demonic personality. The existence of man is natural, the substance is the natural will. (“Rationalism” seems to me only a component in this idea of man as a demonic natural agent). —Gloucester on the other hand (These late eclipses, etc.), represents the nature-complex of the Timaios. As against the physis of Edmund he stands for the order of the whole, the nomos. —Both positions have their right and their wrong—indicated in the self-revelations and mutual criticisms of the two representatives. The physis of Edmund is at fault for the reason stated explicitly by Gloucester: “Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects.” That is to say: the view of nature which disregards the sympathetic texture of the nomos can calculate eclipses and explain them rationally, yet etc. the sympathetic context is thereby not abolished. Here lies the wrong of Edmund and the right of Gloucester whose nature is not entirely superstitious or superficial. (This point would also have to be taken into account in the explanation of Gloucester’s religious development). —At the same time, however, this passage contains Gloucester’s admission of his wrong: for the eclipses can be calculated, and there is really a nature in the perspective of the calculating, pragmatic will that one cannot neglect without incurring sanctions. —Edmund again admits the wrong of his position in the self-revelation (which you have pointed out very finely) when he wills the “base to top the legitimate,” motivated by his resentment without any reason. The consciousness of this irrational violation of order (the nomos) is present from the beginning and is acknowledged as the guilt in the last scene (V, 3: “The wheel is come full circle”) when the wheel of the nomos remains victorious over the will of the physis. —The wrong of Gloucester is brought out, finally, by Edmund in his caustic analysis of the rationalizing motives of Gloucester in shoving responsibility on necessity and denying the will as an independent agent. —(One more level of meaning seems to be touched in Edgar’s line: “How long have you been a sectary astronomical?” This seems to be a sally against the astrological fad among Shakespeare’s contemporaries). Minor points. p. 22 (pencil mark); “probably” perhaps too cautious; the line 263 hardly leaves a doubt, that indeed the “promised end” is meant.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

35

p. 29 the word “appearances” reminds me that all appearances are dissolved in V, 3: “The weight of this and time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

p. 115 (pencil mark; see also the pencil mark on p. 67): “Christian transvaluation of Lear’s pagan world”: This transvaluation is going on in Lear himself perhaps more strongly than your comments on pp. 67 and 115 would suggest. At least, that is how I understand the lines in V, 3 beginning: “No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison. . . .”

The stratum of rulership is likened here in the most revolutionary manner to the sphere of the Gods—and hence unsuitable for man who knows his limits. The humble are praised who are “God’s spies”; theirs is the lasting reality: “and we’ll wear out In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones That ebb and flow by the moon.”

Almost a Dostoevsky touch. (There are interesting angles to the “common man”). p. 136. The discussion of the oath “By Apollo.” These oaths of Lear and Kent carry perhaps a meaning that would fit in your sight-pattern interpretation. Apollo is the God of Light, who also can strike with blindness. Lear’s oath “Now, by Apollo,—”

follows Kent’s lines “See better, Lear, and let me still remain The true blank of thine eye.”

and it is followed by Kent’s rejection “Now, By Apollo, king, Thou swearst thy gods in vain.”

Lay the accent on the “by Apollo,” and you get an interesting meaning that would be fortified by the second oath “By Jupiter” which Kent obeys—Jupiter is the God of governmental order. There also may be some meaning in the exchanging of oaths “By Jupiter,” “By Juno” in II, 4, due to Kent’s insistence that it is the son and daughter who commit the outrage. Those women.

36

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

The closing scene. There are two interesting final touches to the sight-pattern on the occasion of the death of Lear. Lear’s “Look on her, look, her lips . . .” is taken up by Edgar’s “Look up, my lord.” But the time for looking at last has given way to sightless death. Extremely important for the whole structure of the tragedy seem to me the closing lines of Albany: “The oldest hath borne most: we that are young, Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”

The question imposes itself: Why should the younger generation not live so long as the older, and experience the same disorder again? The answer seems to be that with the end of the tragedy we do not simply pass on to the next generation who will give us a repeat performance of the Lear, but that we leave the “old age” in the sense of the saeculum senescens and enter a new era. The theme of “age” (your MS pp. 68 ff.) would be enlarged beyond the biological age of the dramatis personae into the “aging of the ages.” And the old age in the biological sense, which has caused so much disorder, would be a symbol of the senescence of the saeculum. In the new era, people will not grow so old (but also not see so much). The tragedy is not a “history” but is removed into a mythical aion before the present. Goethe, Shakespeare und kein Ende (1813). Some excerpts that might interest you. “On Shakespeare has been said so much that it might seem as if nothing were left to be said; still, it is the quality of the spirit that it will move the spirit without end.” “If we call Shakespeare one of the greatest poets we mean to say that not easily anybody ever perceived the world as he did; that not easily anybody who ever expressed his inner intuition thereby transposed the reader in a higher degree into a consciousness of the world. It becomes for us completely diaphanous: all of a sudden we find [ourselves] as confidants of virtue and vice, of greatness, littleness, nobility, damnation—and all this, and even more, through the simplest means. If, however, we ask what these means are, it would seem at first sight as if he worked for our eyes; but we are deceived: the works of Shakespeare are not for the eyes of the body.” “The eye may be called the clearest sense by means of which communication is most easily possible. But the inner sense is still clearer and it is reached by the most perfect means of communication, by the word: for the word is really moving and fertile while what we perceive by the eye stands before us strangely and by far not so efficaciously. Shakespeare speaks to our inner sense: it ani-

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

37

mates our imagination and a world of imagery with a complete effectiveness of which we can hardly give an account.” “Shakespeare associates with the spirit of the world (Weltgeist); like it, he penetrates the world; to neither one anything is hidden. But while it is the business of the world-spirit to preserve the secret, frequently even after the deed, it is for the poet to betray the secret and to make us the confidants of the deed.” “Everywhere is England, girded by the ocean, ringed by mist and clouds, active in all quarters of the world. The poet lived in a noble and important age and represents its form, and even mis-form, with great serenity.” “Hardly will be found another poet who realizes in his single works every time another idea, an idea which is operative throughout the whole work—as can be shown in Shakespeare’s.” —“The whole Coriolanus is permeated by the frustration that the mass will not recognize the quality of the better man. Caesar embodies the idea that the aristoi do not want to see the first place occupied because they believe mistakenly that they can act collectively. Anthony and Cleopatra says with [a] thousand tongues that indulgence and action are incompatible.”



10. November 4, 1947 Dear Eric, My delay in returning your MS to you has meant not that I have been slow in getting to it (except that I was away for several days), but that I have been reading it very slowly and doing considerable re-reading in order to make myself as sure as nature permits me to be that I got the point. I think that the complex materials of Chapter 5 are excellently organized and presented, and, beyond that, make fascinating reading from end to end. What one senses, if a tyro may venture such a point, is an absolute mastery of the materials, and one has the impression that the Laws could not have been expounded in any other way. 9. The MS to which Heilman is referring no longer exists in the form that he read it, unless it may by chance be found in someone else’s correspondence with Voegelin as a copy. The problem of manuscripts dealing with the early materials of the History of Political Ideas is excellently stated by Athanasios Moulakis, in vol. 19 of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, in his introduction to Voegelin’s History of Political Ideas, vol. 1, ed. Athanasios Moulakis (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997).

38

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

Aside from the unfolding of the substance, one especially enjoys the constant irony, sometimes almost entirely concealed, at the views of the Laws which prevail in a liberal, secularist world. And such a lovely parenthesis as “inseparable parochialism (some call it love of freedom) . . .” And again, such fine clarity and force of definition as in “the law of the spirit: that doing evil is worse than suffering evil.” As always in reading your MSS I have the page-by-page feeling of learning, not so importantly in the realm of historical information [top:] as of truth generally. I enjoy something that I do not think will be widely perceived—the strong emotional undercurrent that gives a touch of poetic quality to your exposition at those moments when, as one sees even before you make the point explicitly, there is a parallel between the existential situation which Plato deplores and the 20th century way of life. You will pardon the element of selfish pleasure that creeps in when I feel, as I perhaps should not do, that your exposition of the form of the Laws is a validation of my procedures with respect to Lear. I like the symbolic poem which you have written at the end, using as your materials the legend about Plato’s death. If I am correct it works on three different levels. At a very few places I have marked matters of idiom, etc. But there are so few that it becomes rather ostentatious to mark those that are still apparent. How you have mastered the language! On p. 414 I am in doubt about the word casuistry, which in general usage means almost exclusively “equivocal, specious reasoning.” At several places where I felt some lack of clarity I found that on re-reading I could clear myself up. Indeed, in the whole 100 or so pages there is only one passage which, after several re-readings, I still am not sure about. I think I have got the point straightened out ; but I am not quite sure; and it may be that the exposition could be sharpened up a little for the aid of other such numbskulls as I (if we are worth the effort). This passage is the last several pp. of “2. Theocracy and the Invisible Church,” i.e., pp. 149–153. On p. 349 you say that theocracy is Plato’s limit, that he cannot see that the solution must be in the form of the church, that is, the invisible church. At this point one has a mental picture of a shortcoming in Platonic thought. On pp. 350 and 351 you indicate that the Laws represent a compromise with the frailty of men—the Pauline, ecclesiastical phase of the heroic thought that appeared in the Republic (the analogy with the development from the Sermon on the Mount to the Pauline 10. There is a discrepancy in the pagination to which Heilman refers in this paragraph. Since the manuscript no longer exists, these cannot be corrected (see preceding footnote.)

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

39

church is wonderfully lucid and illuminating). Here, then, one has a picture of a concession that Plato is making, and one wonders about its relationship to the failure [left:] noted on p. 349—or are the two points just juxtaposed without there being any relationship between them? (Doubtless this point should not come into the reader’s mind; I am only indicating that in the arrangement of the materials it does.) Then on 352 you clarify partially by saying that theocracy is Plato’s limit in that he does “not distinguish temporal and spiritual order.” I take it this means that the polis is not an adequate embodiment of the spirit—but I’m not sure, and perhaps a little amplification would help here. Then the final point—that the deficient theocrat has still written a religious poem which in its character as art does reach the universal of which he falls short as political theorist (correct?). Thus the final contrasting picture which comes to my mind is this: Polis: temporal Form is not determined by spirit

Laws as poem: universal Form is determined by spirit

If this is all messed up, all I can do is confess to stupidity; but if it is correct or approximately correct as a reading of your text, then I think that a little fuller discussion and perhaps sharper pointing, especially of the antithesis of theocratic concept and poem, might help. I have noted down this loose commentary on the several pages simply to show the kind of minor—obviously not very serious—obstacles one runs into in the passage as a whole. But in view of what is accomplished by the whole chapter, this is hardly more than a quibble. I am privileged to have read the section, and I remarked again to Ruth, as I have done so often, that this work must be on our ready reference shelf about the hearth as soon as it is printed. Yours,

11. November 13, 194711 Dear Robert: With avidity I have swallowed your interpretation of the Turn of the Screw, as well as your article on the Freudian interpretation. Both pieces have gratified me 11. Since this letter was edited for publication in the Southern Review (n.s. 7 [1971]: 9–24), I have included it here virtually as it was originally written by Voegelin. For clarity the following minor changes were made: a few amendments were made using brackets, a comma was silently deleted, and house-keeper was regularized to the closed spelling.

40

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

very much. The article on the Freudian interpretation is a revelation for an outsider concerning what is going on in the select circles of intellectual interpreters of literature—if I hadn’t just had my hair cut, it would have stood on end. Your own interpretation (for what my opinion is worth) looks most convincing to me. That is, indeed, the proper method to be employed: follow the pattern of symbols and see what emerges by way of meaning. I must qualify my agreement, however, in one point: I agree as far as you go; but in my opinion (again for what it is worth) you are not going far enough. If I try to substantiate this opinion, I find myself, however, at a bad disadvantage. Of course, I know nothing about James; and there seem to be extant various utterances of his by which he himself has indicated a line of interpretation—and again, of them I know nothing except what you quote in your article. This is a particularly awkward situation because the suggestions for further interpretation (which I shall permit myself presently) seem not to agree with the lines indicated by James himself. Let me state, therefore, the principle which I am following in my suggestions: the basis for the analysis of a literary work must be the work itself; if the author has expressed himself on the meaning of his work, such utterances are most valuable if they clear up obscure points; but if (as it seems to be in this case) the utterances of the author are in open conflict with the text of his work, then the meaning offered by the text has to prevail. This, by the way, is a nice puzzle for you as a historian of literature; thank God, I can express myself about a work of James without professional responsibility.

I. Let me anticipate a few results of the analysis so that we have firm points of reference for the remarks concerning details. I believe that the Turn of the Screw is a study, not on the mystery of good and evil only, but on this mystery in relation to the complex of consciousness-conscience-virtue. Specifically, I have the suspicion that this study of the tensions of the soul has a coloration to its generic character which permits us to characterize it more closely as a study of the Puritan variant of the generic problem. Moreover, in the symbolization of this problem through the persons and movements of the story, all of the figures are of equal importance. The characterization of the study as a piece of childpsychology is not wrong, but it touches only one aspect of the whole structure. Let me begin, not with the children but with the grown-ups—an order which is permissible because the children enter the stage later. (The chronology of entrance, by the way, is of extreme importance for the symbolic play.)

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

41

The grown-ups are, in the order of their social hierarchy, the employer, the governess and the housekeeper. They symbolize, in this order, God, the soul, and the earthy, common-sense existence. The soul is released by God to enter on its struggle with forces of good and evil (children and apparitions). This release has the form of an employment and of its acceptance on very interesting conditions. The central problem of the relation between God and the soul is the problem of communication. In the prelude to the story itself the relation is characterized explicitly as one of confidence with erotic implications. The “prospective patron” is “a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of his life, such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage.” The gentleman is ready to employ the girl under the curious condition: “That she should never trouble him—but never, never: neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let him alone.” The soul is on her own, burdened with full responsibility for its problems, equipped with nothing but the embodiment (money from the solicitor) which is the scene of the struggle. The girl accepts: “She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for her sacrifice, she already felt rewarded.” At this point, the mystery of good and evil begins to unfold. There is the “gentleman,” “rich, but fearfully extravagant,” “of good looks, of expensive habits, of charming ways with women,” unloading the responsibility on the girl (the anima); and there is the girl, accepting an employment which looks like a sacrifice—for whom? for God! It is a fascinating sacrifice, which has its “reward” in the “obligation” to the employer; it is for him that she undergoes the ordeal. “She succumbed to his seduction.” Is God a seducer? We shall see. Meanwhile, the sacrifice is not quite imaginary. We learn, that the girl had a “predecessor” who met a horrible end; and we learn that there were others who refused employment on such conditions. Others have rejected employment in this fashion. This seems to be the crucial point for answering the question whether the study of the soul is, indeed, generic, or whether it has a specific coloration. The strange condition is the assumption of full responsibility, without recourse to communication (prayers for help) and consequently without help (grace). From the beginning, James has defined his study carefully as a study of the demonically closed soul; of a soul which is possessed by the pride of handling the problem of good and evil by its own means; and the means which is at the disposition of this soul is the selfmastery and control of the spiritual forces (the symbol of the governess)—ending in a horrible defeat.

42

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

II. The key-passage concerning the problem of communication occurs in Chapter XIII of the story. The situation between the governess and the children has reached the critical point where both parties to the struggle know that the other knows but keep silent on their mutual knowledge. The unbearable tension, the sense of imminent peril, however, increase the moments when they discuss the “precious question that had helped through many a peril:” “When do you think he will come? Don’t you think we ought to write?” But they do not communicate; they only talk about the writing; and the inquiry carries off many an “awkwardness.” The situation, however, has gone beyond an “awkwardness” that can be carried off by “inquiring” whether “He” will come. It would be urgently necessary that “He” comes really and saves them from the peril. But why do they not write to “their uncle in Harley Street,” the uncle in the street of the physicians, to the great healer? The failure to write is complicated. The children actually want to write; and, as a matter of fact, they have written; but the governess has intercepted the letters. The “inquiry” thus remains at the stage of an expectation of the coming. “We lived in much profusion of theory that he might at any moment arrive to mingle in our circle.” But will he really come and save them? “It was impossible to have given less encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine, but if we had not had the doctrine to fall back upon we should have deprived each other of some of our finest exhibitions.” And what are these fine exhibitions? The psychology of these “exhibitions” is one of the masterpieces in the story. The analysis of the “exhibition” begins with the flat statement: “He never wrote to them.” But why does the uncle not write to the children? Perhaps “that may have been selfish.” But it is not quite selfish; the relationship between the employer and the governess enters this strange silence of the uncle for his children. His silence “was a part of the flattery of his trust of me; for the way in which a man pays his highest tribute to a woman is apt to be but by the more festal celebration of one of the sacred laws of his comfort.” The responsible rule over the forces of good and evil is entrusted to the soul itself, as a lieutenant of God. It is most “flattering”; the employer knows how to handle women; the vanity is tickled by the divine charge of salvation by proxy. Hence the governess intercepts the missives of the children; “I held that I carried out the spirit of the pledge given not to appeal to him.” The legalistic formulation of “the spirit of the pledge” shows that the anima is up to tricks. The letter of the pledge had only said that she, the governess, should not appeal to the employer; the interpretation of the spirit, that the children should not write, is her own. The employer had only enjoined the

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

43

governing conscience, the responsible ego, not to appeal to him; he had not enjoined that no appeal should rise to him from the depth of the soul, overriding freedom, conscience and ego. The “spirit” of non-communication, and of the repression of the desire for communication, is not the spirit of the employer; it is the spirit of the governess. Moreover, the governess does not simply intercept the letters; she lets the children know “that their own letters were but charming literary exercises.” She does not simply interrupt the communication of the children; she poisons their effusion by the consciousness that the attempt to reach the “employer” is a literary exercise, not a real appeal that even could reach its address. And why this peculiar game of the make-believe appeals? These letters “were too beautiful to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to this hour.” The letters were not just too beautiful to be thrown away; they were too beautiful “to be posted.” The motive of the interception begins to emerge: it is not the “spirit” of the pledge; it is the vanity and jealousy of the soul bent on self-salvation. The governess does not discourage the letters to be written; on the contrary, she lets the children write them in the full consciousness that they will reach nobody but the governess herself. The cry for salvation becomes a game; it “added to the satiric effect” of the supposition that the savior “might at any moment be among us.” And then follows the revelatory sentence: “It was exactly as if my charges knew how almost more awkward than anything else that might be for me.” —that is, if the real savior would come and by his coming humble the pride of the governess who has undertaken to rule her charges by her own means. And one step deeper into the abyss of the pride of self-salvation: the governess notes that in all this nothing appeared more extraordinary “than the mere fact that, in spite of my tension and of their triumph, I never lost patience with them. Adorable they must in truth have been, I now reflect, that I didn’t in these days hate them!” When the crisis has advanced (Chapters XVI, XVII) to the open outbreak of the daemonic forces, the governess at last is ready to direct her appeal to the employer. But now the situation is reversed; now it is her letter that no longer can reach the employer; Miles in whom the daemonic forces have gained the ascendancy, intercepts and burns the letter, thus preparing the final tragedy without the hope of grace.

III. The spiritual process of the catastrophe is introduced by a page (Chapter XXII) which explains the title of the story. Flora, in fever, has disappeared with the housekeeper; the governess prepares to face Miles alone over the dinner

44

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

table. She is badly shaken. At this juncture she felt “how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature.” The interruption of communication with the “employer” is now driven a step farther; the will has become rigid to be blind for the fact of the supernatural. The supernatural is, “revoltingly, against nature.” And what is this “nature”? Here James himself puts the term into ironical inverted commas. “I could only get on at all by taking ‘nature’ into my confidence and my account.” What is going on must still be happening within “nature.” The “monstrous ordeal” of the governess, can be no more than “a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant.” It can demand no more by way of treatment than the means which she has employed hitherto, that is, “another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.” She has a little doubt whether it will work, for, after all, this is an “attempt to supply, one’s self, all the nature.” No more will be thrown into this last battle than the nature and the will of the ego. And, let us not forget, the nature and common sense of the housekeeper has departed with Flora. So she begins turning the screw still further. The turns of the screw do not bring the desired result of salvation. The operation starts under a ray of hope. The boy is about ready for the confession, when the face of Quint appears at the window “like a sentinel before a prison.” The governess closes Miles in her arms and prevents him from seeing the horror; and the confession actually comes under way. The disappearance of the letter is cleared up, and the confession of the misconduct in school is half out. This, however, is the turning point in the operation. Miles has surrendered the rigidity of this silence. “He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left it there.” But she does not leave it there; the screw turns on. “I was infatuated— I was blind with victory, though even then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was already that of added separation.” She presses on, extorting the confession, until she extorts the name of his ultimate evil obsession, the name of Quint. With this supreme moment of consciousness, in naming the evil one, the obsession ceases—but with the obsession ceases the life of the little soul. The evil is gone, but the good is gone, too. “His little heart, dispossessed, had stopped”; and human virtue holds in her arm a dead soul.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

45

IV. All this is no more than the outline of the spiritual story; we have no more than scratched the surface of the symbolism. In penetrating to the deeper layers of the structure, we may start with that other masterpiece of the story, the page on the apparition of Quint. (Chapter III.) Quint does not simply appear, without previous warning. He materializes out of the mood of the garden in which the governess takes her walk, in the twilight, at the most restful hour of the day, after her duties are discharged and the children brought to bed. What is this mood? It is the mood of possessiveness and justification. At the hour of the walk the governess can enjoy “almost with a sense of property that amused and flattered me” the beauty of the garden. It was a pleasure at these moments “to feel myself tranquil and justified.” The peace of the just soul originates in reflections “that by my discretion, my quiet good senses and general high propriety, I was giving pleasure—if he ever thought of it!—to the person to whose pressure I had responded.” She is doing what her employer expects her to do “and directly asked of me”; and what greater joy can there be than to live up to expectations and direct orders? A sense of righteousness is spreading. “I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable young woman.” And she takes comfort in the faith that her high qualities “would more publicly appear.” Something, however, was missing in this paradise of righteous fulfillment. On her walk in the garden, the governess dreams; she dreams of the face in Harley Street—that it would be “as charming as a charming story” suddenly to meet “someone.” “Someone would appear there at the turn of a path and would stand before me and smile and approve. I didn’t ask more than that—I only asked that he should know (James’ italics!); and the only way to be sure he knew would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome face.” This kind, handsome face is present to her, smiling approval, knowing her in her righteousness; and, indeed, turning out of a grove, her dream comes true, “someone” stands on the tower of the house, “someone” is looking down on her. But the figure that faces her is not the image that had been in her mind. “I had not seen it in Harley Street.” It is the face of Quint. The apparition has materialized out of her dream—and when a woman dreams of someone who will know her, it may turn out that she has dreamt of someone else.

46

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

V. Quint has materialized out of the dream of the righteous soul to be approved and to be known, “publicly.” Let us next consider the relation of the governess to Miss Jessel, her predecessor. Miss Jessel is throughout the story associated with Flora, as the corrupting daemon of the angelic innocence of the child; as Quint is associated with Miles. But there is a moment when Miss Jessel comes closer to the governess. After the scene on the churchyard with Miles, the governess returns home with the intention of leaving her charges. What has happened? The conspiracy of silence between the governess and Miles has been broken. The boy wants to go back to the school that will not receive him back; if not to this school, then to another one. The suspense cannot drag on forever; if the governess does not find the way out, the “uncle from Harley Street” himself must “come down.” Miles asks the crucial question: “Does my uncle think what you think?” The question makes her “drop straight down on the stone slab” of a tomb by the side of which they are standing. Miles continues: Does he know “the way I’m going on?” The governess perceives that a straight answer would ultimately result in a “sacrifice” of her employer. She wants to avoid this “sacrifice” and puts the boy off: “I don’t think your uncle much cares.” But Miles can no longer be put off; the uncle can be made to come down, and if the governess will not do it, then, the boy says “with extraordinary brightness and emphasis”: “I will!” This is the point from which the governess takes her road to damnation. “The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed him.” She is agitated; but her awareness of this agitation “had somehow no power to restore me.” There she sits on a tomb that now has become her tomb. “I sat only on my tomb and read into what my little friend had said to me the fullness of its meaning.” And what is this meaning? The boy now knows that she is afraid of facing the “employer.” “He had got out of me that there was something I was much afraid of and that he should probably be able to make use of my fear to gain, for his own purpose, more freedom.” The judgment would have to be faced; the “intolerable question” of the dismissal from school would come up. “That his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these things was a solution that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to bring on; but I could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it that I simply procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth.” The boy “is immensely in the right”; he has the right to ask of her: “Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with you a life that’s so unnatural for a boy.” The question of “nature” is touched again; and it is touched

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

47

in its ambivalence. From the position of the boy it is “unnatural” to lead this life of seclusion in the garden by the side of the governess; his “nature” requires that the mystery of his evil be cleared up by the guardian. From the position of the governess [what] is unnatural, [is] “this sudden revelation of a consciousness and a plan” in the boy. The question can no longer be put off; its putting off is now the evasion of judgment. The consequences do not fail to appear: the boy, who now knows of her fear, has gained a new freedom, the freedom for his evil; and in the governess a strange transformation takes place. The governess is sitting on her tomb. Her pristine nature is buried; but what is the shadow that now rises from the tomb and takes the way back to the house? She does not know yet, while she leaves the churchyard in order to prepare her flight. But in the hall, “tormented with difficulties and obstacles,” “I remember sinking down at the foot of the staircase—suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the spectre of the most horrible of women.” The sense of this identification drives her on and up the stairs, towards the schoolroom, in order to gather up some belongings. And there, at the table, sits the “predecessor” herself. The apparition rose “with an indescribable grand melancholy of indifference and detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood there as my vile predecessor.” The apparition fades, but “Dark as midnight in her black dress, her haggard beauty and her unutterable woe, she had looked at me long enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers.” The identification has advanced, and there is an instant of chill feeling “that it was I who was the intruder.” In wild protest against this inversion, the governess cries out loudly; and the air is cleared for the moment.

VI. “There was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I must stay.” Miss Jessel has come close to the governess; their fate is linked; the relief is only momentary. The children return from church; the atmosphere is now heavy with the suspense of catastrophe. Miles has gained his new “freedom.” On the first occasion he uses it to charm the governess by the offer to play for her the piano for half an hour. Too late she discovers that he has bound her by his spell long enough to give Flora the opportunity to escape for the meeting with Miss Jessel. In despair she sets out with the housekeeper to save the child; they find the girl on the lawn beyond the pond; and on the other

48

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

side of the pond, plainly visible to the governess, stands Miss Jessel. At last the evil is brought into [the] open—but now something unexpected happens. The housekeeper sees nothing, in spite of the admonitions: “She’s as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest woman, look—!” And Flora does not look in the direction where the governess sees the apparition; she looks at the governess herself. “Without a convulsion of her small pink face” Flora [has] not even feigned to glance in the direction of the announced prodigy; instead she turned “at me an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me.” The girl was somehow converted herself “into the very presence that could make me quail.” The presence of the judgment has come over the governess: “I quailed.” But not yet can she read the verdict; or rather she can read the verdict, but she is blind for its truth: “My certitude that she thoroughly saw was never greater than at that instant,” that is at the instant when the judging eyes of the girl rest on her. “In the immediate need to defend myself,” the governess calls the prodigy as witness; she directs the gaze of the girl to the spot beyond the pond: “She’s there, you little unhappy thing,—there, there, there”; and then the revealing ambiguity: “you see her as well as you see me.” But the gaze of the girl cannot be averted; her face has become that of an “old, old woman”; and “she simply showed me, without a concession, an admission of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed, reprobation.” Flora has seen Miss Jessel, indeed, while the governess sees her predecessor yet beyond the pond, in one of “the strange and high places” where the evil spirits formerly appeared. But “Flora continued to fix me with her small mask of reprobation”; “her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, had quite vanished”; “she was hideously hard; she had turned common and almost ugly.” She protests now that she never has seen anybody; she sees nobody now. “I think you are cruel. I don’t like you.” And then she wails to Mrs Grose: “Take me away, take away, —oh, take me away from her!” “From me?” cries the governess; and the little girl confirms: “From you—from you!” Flora is removed to the house; the next day she falls ill; it is decided upon that the housekeeper will take her away from the place and bring her, at last, to her uncle.

VII. The common sense and simple nature of the housekeeper have left the scene; and with her she has taken the angelic child. The “governess” has now the field

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

49

alone with Miles. The atmosphere of the “house” has changed; the scene is set for the salvation of Miles. The governess has “hurried” Mrs. Grose out of the house[:] “Leave us, Leave us!” The boy is ready for the confession: “I’ll get it out of him. He’ll meet me—he’ll confess. If he confesses he’s saved. And if he’s saved—.” “Then you are?” —asks Mrs. Grose. Then she kisses the governess and goes, crying “I’ll save you without him!” But as soon as the housekeeper had left, “the great pinch really came.” “Now I was, I said to myself, face to face with the elements.” The “crisis” is conscious to the household; the “total wreck” can be avoided only by clutching the helm firmly. The governess wanders all over the place, “very grand and very dry”; looking as if she were ready “for any onset.” “So, for the benefit of whom it might concern, I paraded with a sick heart.” The “house” has changed; and Miles has subtly changed with his new freedom. “I scarce put it too strongly in saying that what had perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction that I had anything more to teach him.” Flora has suddenly become an old woman; now Miles is beyond teaching; he is grown up and has become the equal of the governess. During the meal, and while the servant girl clears the table, suddenly the eroticism of the situation springs up. “We continued silent while the maid was with us—as silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding-journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter.” And then the boy takes up the “whimsicality” of her silent thought: “He turned round only when the waiter had left us. ‘Well—so we’re alone!’ ” Dreamlike this scene recalls the other scene in which the desire of the woman to be known had materialized in the apparition of Quint. The double-act of confession and salvation has, from the beginning, the sous entendu of a love scene. The abrupt dialogue: Are they alone? No, there are the others in the house. But they don’t count much. “It depends on what you call ‘much.’ ” “Yes, everything depends!” “You have seen much of Bly today.” “Yes, I have never been so free.” “Well, do you like it?” “Do you?” he answers smiling, with “more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain.” It has almost gone too far. Miles softens the advance: “If we’re alone together now it’s you that are alone most.” Does she mind having his company? No, she is staying on for his sake. Then, with trembling voice, the confession (her confession): the night she sat on his bed, in the storm, “there was nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you.” He becomes nervous, yet pretends it was a jest: it was “to get me to do something for you!” She admits, she wants his “confession.” I have described already the process in which the screw is turned and the confession is extracted; but underneath this process runs the symbolism of the love scene. The face of Quint appears at the window, visible only to the governess,

50

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

the “white face of damnation.” “It represents but grossly what took place within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed in so short a time recovered her grasp of the act.” The act is italicized by James, as in the first apparition of Quint was italicized the desire of the woman to be known. On the level of salvation “the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware.” “It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul.” And the human soul, in her arms, “had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead.” In fact, the face of the human soul “was as white as the face against the glass.” But now the momentary relief comes; under the confession, Quint withdraws. The governess goes on turning the screw in spite of the fact that the face has withdrawn. The mystery of the dismissal from the school is revealed through a new mystery. Miles had “said things.” To whom? To friends. “I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent.” The thought of Miles’ innocence is “appalling and bottomless.” For “if he were innocent, what then on earth was I? ” Still, there is no salvation either for Miles or the governess; the screw turns on. The face of Quint reappears at the window. “I felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle.” The wildness of her leap is a betrayal. The boy guesses a “presence”; but his back is turned from the window; he cannot see the face; he sees only the governess. And she, “from the midst of my act,” gives way to the impulse “to convert the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation.” This climactic conversion, however, will not be due to an ending of the torture; no, she turns on the screw, and directs his attention to the apparition that he will be fully conscious of it. The boy responds, still guessing; he becomes aware and pants: “Is she here?” “She” does not understand the strange “she”; and with a sudden fury he gives back: “Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel.” The screw turns on: “It’s not Miss Jessel! But it’s at the window.” The boy himself does not sense the poisonous presence that is overwhelming to her. He guesses “in a white rage”: “It’s he? ” Still the screw turns on: “I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to challenge him.” She wants him to explain the “he.” And at last, she gets the answer: “Peter Quint—you devil!” The surrender is perfect. “They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his tribute to my devotion.” She has saved the soul: “I have you, but he has lost you for ever!” The governess at last is “known.” The abomination of the “act” between Miss Jessel and Quint is consummated. Miles turns towards the window, and he sees the quiet day. But the sight does not help him. In the moment in which Quint

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

51

lost him “he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss.” The governess recovers him with a grasp that might have been that “of catching him in his fall.” The “fall” is prevented. “I caught him, yes, I held him—it may be imagined with what a passion”—until she discovers that her passion embraces a corpse. Quint is exorcized; the corpse is that of Miles, the angelic boy. And what has become of the “devil” who turned the screw, of Miss Jessel? The reporter of the story informs us: “She was a most charming person. . . . She was my sister’s governess. . . . She was the most agreeable woman I’ve ever known in her position. . . . She struck me as awfully clever and nice. . . . I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me too.” And with whom had the governess been in love? Did she succumb to the “seduction” of the “splendid young man” in Harley Street? “The story won’t tell” said Douglas; “not in any literal vulgar way.” If it was the man in Harley Street, we must remember that his face when he “knew” her was the face of Quint. If it was Miles, we must remember that again she saw the face of Quint when she embraced Miles. Was the man in Harley Street who can seduce women the devil? But then we must remember that it was the Miss Jessel in the governess who made her turn the screw, and who made God look like the devil. What I have set forth concerns what I consider the central problem of the Turn of the Screw. But there is plenty more to be said. Above all, there is the symbolism of childhood, innocence and nature, —which you have analysed so finely. And then, there are a lot of loose ends to be gathered up. For instance, I have indicated the transformation of the governess into Miss Jessel, beginning with the scene on the churchyard; but I have not followed up the parallel process of the transformation of Miles into Quint. The crucial scene seems to be that of the night when Flora looks out of the window and Miles has disappeared from his room. The governess believes that Flora is looking at Miss Jessel and is surprised to find that she looks at Miles down on the lawn; she believes that Miles is looking at Quint, but, indeed, he is looking back at Flora. Here, Miles has already become the Quint at which the Miss Jessel in Flora is looking. That introduces the further problem of the incestuous relationship between the children, and the incestuous character of the “act” in the last scene. Quint and Miss Jessel, in the mythical pre-history of the story[,] have been united by an unspeakable bond. About the nature of this bond, the incest, seems to me no doubt in the light of the fact that in the “story” they have become the evil natures of brother and sister. This question leads further on to the relation between

52

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

the “pre-history” (of Quint and Miss Jessel) and the “story” itself. I would suggest that the “pre-history” is the mythical, paradigmatic “act”; and that the “story” is the repetition (in the sense of the psychology of the myth) of the paradigmatic fall—culminating in the incest of the last scene. Following this line further, we arrive at the relation between the uncle who is “bachelor” and the “children.” Remember that in the world of the grown-ups the uncle, when he “knows” the governess, has the face of Quint. If I do not misunderstand the relations of these symbols completely, I would say that the ultimate, metaphysical conception of James goes back to a vision of the cosmic drama of good and evil as an incestuous affair in the divinity. The problem of the incest is carried through all levels of the symbolic structure; on every level the partners are identified as Quint and Miss Jessel; and Quint and Miss Jessel are identified by brother and sister; these would be the pairs: Uncle—the governess Quint—Miss Jessel The governess—Miles Miles—Flora

Then there is the problem of the “sacrifice.” The uncle does not want to bring a “sacrifice”; the governess shields him and brings the sacrifice in his stead, that is the sacrifice of the saving act. Miles, however, knows that the sacrifice must be brought by the uncle himself, and he suspects that ultimately the uncle might not “think” in the same manner on this point as the governess. The uncle must be compelled to bring the sacrifice. The sacrificial act of the governess, ineffectual, thus, is as much a salvation as a prevention of true salvation. In this point, I think, James is simply dealing with the problem of “self-salvation” through the demonically closed human will that has plagued everybody in the nineteenth century, particularly Nietzsche. If I take up your idea of the “Black Easter”—I should like to qualify it into the magic operation, through the turning of the screw, of a Black Salvation. I hope you do not take it in ill that I pester you with this long letter. It is, of course, an unmitigated presumption that I should express myself at length on James, exactly one week after I have read any work at all of his for the first time. Nevertheless, I think, you will have seen that just now I am lying flat on my stomach in admiration for James. And such a prostrate position sometimes distorts the perspective. Most sincerely yours,

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

53

12. March 19, 1948 Dear Robert: Through the letter of Ruth to Lissy, and through a letter of yours that [Thomas] Kirby showed me, I know that you are approximately settled, that you have a house, and that you even find time for work beyond your deanly [sic] activities. I should have written you already some time ago. But there is a curious mixture of obstacles just now: on the one hand, there is not much of importance to tell; on the other hand, there is excitement of such importance that it keeps me busy in various ways. First for the gossip. The only item I know about, and about which you know, too, is our lovely stormy affair. It certainly was a psychologically interesting affair; and, as a matter of course, not appreciated in its full juicyness. The mob outbreak of the attack on the stripping lady by the very persons who had come there for the purpose of watching her performing her antics, is something to ponder about. It seems to me the typical middle-class attitude about which Karl Kraus has expressed himself at length and with poignancy. The girl herself is probably a quite gifted parcel. If she had been born into better times, say the Second Empire or the Edwardian period, she might have had a career as a delightful mistress. Since it was her misfortune to be born into our age and environment, she is reduced to taking her clothes off in public because that is about the only level of eroticism that is accessible to the senile lewdness of the middleclass youth of our time. The point is that the magnificent males whom I have just characterized congregate by the thousand to get their genital excitement; and then, somehow revolted by the mass exhibition of their baseness, take their revenge on the woman in whom this baseness is symbolic reality. —The best was the report that a co-ed socked her, yelling: You are our competition! Slightly more exciting than these goings-on is the fact that Yale begins to show visible interest in my presence. I was invited to give a lecture, for the purpose 12. Thomas Kirby was professor and head of the English department at Louisiana State University. 13. Voegelin here is recounting an incident in which a New Orleans striptease artist, Stacie “Stormy” Laurence, appeared on the LSU campus on March 4, 1948. The front-page headline of the Daily Reveille (LSU student newspaper) for March 2, 1948, read: “‘Stormy’ Vows She’s Coming Here again Thursday with Band.” The lead headline of the Reveille for March 5, 1948 reads: “Enraged Students Dunk New Orleans Strip-Teaser.” 14. Karl Kraus was writer and publisher of Die Fackel (The torch). In Autobiographical Reflections, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), Voegelin talks about Kraus and his effort in restoring the integrity of the German language after the assault made on it by purveyors of various second realities in the early twentieth century (18).

54

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

of getting “acquainted.” Last week I was up there; and everything seemed to go well. No word has yet been breathed about an offer; but I was studied with obvious care by the various notables; and the chairman of the department went to the extreme of saying that I was just what they would need and that he hoped for further correspondence. Same has not arrived yet. —Through Cleanth, who takes a lively supporting interest in the affair, I know that they intend to make an offer; but according to Cleanth the offer will be lousy: an Associate Professorship with $6000. In the end I would take that of course, if it should materialize, but I would feel exploited. The lecture looked to me like a great success; with discussion it lasted for two hours and could have gone on for another hour. Perhaps they are impressed and will think better of the salary. We’ll see! For the rest, the whole incident was great fun. Yale is most desirable; lavishly equipped, a touch of snobbery, somewhat like an exclusive club. I don’t mind; I like it as long as I can laugh about it. And Willmoore Kendall and Cleanth would certainly help in the laughing. I made the acquaintance of Cecil Driver; a most delightful, scholarly figure. Of course, I told him that we had his student and great admirer [Max F.] Millikan in our department; but all he said was that George would make a good naval officer. Kendall has a fellow’s suite in one of the colleges; an enormous hall, bedroom, study, kitchen, bathroom and guestroom. He takes it with composure and contemplates transforming the manyroomed establishment into a brothel next year. Cleanth seems to be well settled and is up for cooptation as fellow in one of the colleges. Tinkum seems to be resigned to the fate of spending the rest of her years among people who are lower than “Nigras.” The only trace of hesitation that I could observe was the fact that she has not yet put up curtains in her apartment. Bob Harris is in a state of profound disgruntlement. The combination of Louisiana politics, the national comedy, the international disorder, and the possibility of my leaving are simply too much. The motivations of international politics, by the way, are curious. The suicide of Jan Masaryk seems to have made more impression than almost anything else to make the blockheads see that something is not in best order. That this 15. Tinkum [Blanchard] Brooks was the wife of Cleanth Brooks. 16. Robert J. Harris was the head of the government department at Louisiana State University, 1942–1954. 17. This event is reported in the March 11, 1948, edition of the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate. The front-page headline for that day reads: “Czech Minister Takes Own Life after Two Weeks in Communist Cabinet.” Jan Masaryk was the son of Thomas G. Masaryk, Czechoslovakia’s first president, and of a Brooklyn-born mother.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

55

drunken playboy should have committed suicide is almost unbelievable. But perhaps he has had the most horrible experience of a lucid moment; and when a frivolous moron of this sort gets a lucid moment, there is not much left but jumping out of the window. Lucid moments are a bad thing to have. I just recall that Cromwell once had one—when he chased his parliament home and called them whoremasters and drunkards. Well, that’s enough for the moment. If you can spare time from your duties it would be nice to hear from you. Most cordially yours, [Eric]

13. Seattle, April 26, 1948 Dear Eric: I have finally got fed up on waiting for the arrival of that perfect moment at which I feel free to enjoy writing a letter; it is not going to come, and in a moment of resentment at the department I am having myself the pleasure of writing you on university time. The only weak spot in this process is that your letter is at the house and so must go unanswered in the narrower sense. Forgive me please. But the most important thing in it I remember clearly—the Yale visit and the possible repercussions from it. By now I hope that the repercussion has developed into a severe rumble and the rumble into something so tangible that you can read it, study it, and make up your mind easily and happily about it. On reading your letter I was distressed by only one thing—the unimaginative dimensions of the possible offer. Maybe a prospect of a serious improvement in the faculty is almost as difficult to face at Yale as elsewhere. But we will be most delighted when something does come through if it is at all close to a palatable form, for we shall be sure that New Haven cannot always be unimaginative but must eventually come through with something like what it ought to. Ruth reminds me not to bore Baton Rougeans with comments on life in Seattle. But alas since I no longer read anything but business letters, I have to stick to the immediate scene. Don’t say I haven’t warned you. From here on, you can cease reading the letter—or let Lissie check it first to see whether it is worth the reading time (1 min. 13 sec. as they say in slick magazines). Physically we are in the main comfortable enough. The twenty-year-old house is very solid and well built, relatively inelegant by contemporary standards, but roomy and comfortable. The sloping lot presents no more difficulties to the yard-worker than does yours. We have inherited some trees, some bushes, and

56

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

some flowers that blossom prettily. When there is any view at all we can see not only the city dump and a considerable share of city below us but, across the next hill top, an attractive stretch of snow-covered mountains. But there is rarely any view, for the Japan current and the cold air from the snow-covered mountains combine to produce almost constant cloudiness and rain. By the standards we have become used to in the last twelve years, this is a cold, damp, depressing spring. In Seattle everybody is always looking forward to that ideal period which is some other time. The faculty, who are about all the people we know so far, and we don’t really know them to speak of, nearly all belong to what I should call a middle class of university people. There is almost no redneck proletariat (Heard, Lucky, Major, etc. etc.) and almost no aristocracy (Voegelin and—well, I’m not sure). Everybody is civil, decent, orderly, liberal: I can describe the place best by saying that it would be the perfect place for Rudolf [Heberle]. Everybody is full of good works, concerned about the public weal, demonically devoted to committees, practicing sweet reason, improving the lot of mankind, and of course following the trends. No one ever suspects that there could possibly be any imperfection of any kind in liberalism. I have not yet discovered anybody from whom I could learn anything important (like you) or anyone with whom I can talk in a familiar language, able to count upon a reasonably similar background of belief (like Brooks). The closest approach to either is in a couple of Germans, a geologist named [Peter] Misch and a classicist named [Ludwig] Edelstein (the former’s father, I am told, was a distinguished philosopher and literary critic), the latter of whom, alas, is going to California. But I have not yet had real opportunity to explore the personal resources. As far as the department job is concerned: before I came, they really did everything they could to get the routine work into the hands of assistants. But a great deal of it cannot be delegated, of course, and I spend most of the day on office stuff which by any standards is very trivial. On policy, which is what I was supposed to be chiefly concerned with, I have so far little influence, and it is probable that I shall have less: the closer I come to trying to act in terms of my own convictions, the closer I come, in the eyes of the brethren, to being a creature of 18. Obviously Heilman was referring to a group of people whom Voegelin would immediately know from LSU. As nearly as I can discern, this group includes Thomas P. Heard, director of athletics; perhaps Lewis B. Lucky, associate professor of social sciences and director of the Bureau of Veterans’ Education, and perhaps Hoquet A. Major, professor of French and head of the Romance languages department. 19. Rudolf Heberle, originally from Kiel, Germany, was a member of the sociology department, Louisiana State University.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

57

“prejudice.” My guess at the moment is that I am a prisoner of the department and will remain so whenever I try to break out of the more immediate prison of routine work. But I shall wait until enough time elapses to permit me to see the situation more clearly. The air of the place is fairly well defined by the general indignation at Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences, most of which I should guess you would approve of. In fact, I’d be glad for your opinion of it. The central idea is that most modern evils are traceable to nominalistic habits of mind. The New York Times and the Sat. Rev. of Lit. have both called the book “fascist” etc. (Weaver believes in authority and hierarchy and has no faith whatever in progress, humanitarianism, etc.). I suppose Weaver finished up at LSU before you came. Under Cleanth’s direction he did a thesis on southern culture which made Wendell Stephenson very indignant. (The antecedent of which is thesis.) I am liking the book very much. So the problem is not to find decent people, but to find ones who have reached at least one’s own slight penetration into what lies beneath the clichés. Ruth says to remind you that the wind blows like hell here. Tsk, tsk. We look forward eagerly to hearing from either or both of you again. If we are slow in writing, it is that the pace here has so far been pretty rough. Sincerely,

We roared over your ironies on the Brooks ménage—especially the Blanchard [Tinkum’s] hesitancies on New Haven.

14. Baton Rouge, May 1, 1948 Dear Robert: Your letter was a pleasure. I had suspected that your long silences had the causes which you now indicate. The routine of administration must be very unpleasant; one can only hope that with time the business can be transacted with greater speed or that you get some leisure for your own interests. I am a bit worried by the fact that you do not mention the Lear. I am looking forward to see[ing] it in print any day now. Also I regret to miss news about such important personages as Pete and Mike. This answer of mine comes almost by return mail because the Yale affair has reached a point where I am aching to tell you all about it. I wrote you that I gave 20. Pete, of course, is Ruth and Robert Heilman’s son, Champlin B. Heilman; Mike was the Heilmans’ cat.

58

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

a lecture there on March 12th; that the lecture was a great success; that [P. E.] Corbett, the Chairman of the Department, indulged in broad hints that I was just the man they could use, and that correspondence would ensue, etc. I went home with the idea that in the course of the next two or three weeks an offer would come. As a matter of fact: nothing has come, not even a line of thanks for giving them a lecture which cost me six working-days, inconvenience, etc., and for which I did not receive an honorarium. Neither have I heard a word from Brooks since that day. (I should add that I have written, of course, very polite bread-and-butter letters to everybody concerned on the day I arrived back home.) The only information to-date is a letter from Kendall which came last week. He confirms that the lecture was a roaring success and that in particular the graduate students were overwhelmed. Then he goes on to say that hitches have developed. In an extremely vague, conspiratorial tone, he speaks of an attempt that has miscarried. That the younger members of the department had the idea of “Changing the department into a different kind of enterprise . . . if you like, to carry out a revolution; and this meant either consent or abdication on the part of the full professors.” Of all such goings-on I had not heard a word while I was in Yale. This plan was “scotched” by the gentlemen who were supposed to abdicate. Where I come into all this, I do not know; Kendall’s letter is silent on this point. Anyway, Kendall opines that either [Cecil] Driver or [Arnold] Wolfers, or both, have vetoed an appointment for me because they were afraid that my presence might invite comparisons with their performance about which they did not care. That is Kendall’s letter. Now what am I supposed to make of all this? I am afraid of even answering Kendall’s letter because I have no intention of getting involved even faintly into any idiotic conspiracy which Kendall or Brooks, or both, have cooked up. On the other hand, since there is no word from Corbett, I am completely in the dark. I miss you very much in this contingency; do you think you could give me your advice in writing, in spite of your distressing administrative situation? Harris of course, more or less, enjoys himself because the affair seems to be ended; and tells me grandiosely: Who would care to join such a department anyway? Well, I would join it as the price that has to be paid in order to be near the Yale library, and near some other quite pleasant characters outside the Department. We enjoyed very much your description of Seattle as the perfect place for Rudolph. You mention Misch. If he is the one whom I mean, his father was Georg Misch, indeed a philosopher of considerable quality. Besides, old Misch happened to be the son-in-law of [Wilhelm] Dilthey, so that your Misch would

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

59

be Dilthey’s grandson. I should like to see the fellow; just to see what such a scion of one of the “best families” in German science looks like. For the rest, just two days ago some possibility opened to go to Vienna (to teach in a summer-school in the Law Faculty) in July. I doubt that it will materialize; the time is too short. With kindest regards to Ruth and Pete, Most sincerely yours,

15. May 8, 1948 Dear Eric, We are very much distressed by the way in which the Yale matter is going. In one sense I am not surprised, because what I know of Yale does not lead me to think that it has essentially a great deal more insight and imagination than other American universities. But it is a shame that such indications should have been given that action is imminent, and that after that no action should occur. My guess as to what happened is that Kendall had some interest in having you at Yale, but not enough to overcome some hesitancies as to what your presence might mean for him personally. Then Cleanth, who is very successful at setting other people in action, persuaded him that he would profit by your presence and after that greatly overestimated Kendall’s immediate political weight in the department and thus tacitly encouraged Kendall to enlarge his own estimate of what he could accomplish. (Cleanth is constantly using the figure of the smart quarterback who usefully directs the lunging fullback. But he rarely thinks of himself as the fullback.) Like Hitler, they overestimate the initial weakness of the enemy (the enemy being the people who want to keep things comfortably just the way they are now). Then when the real strength is shown, they are not ready for it. It seems to me that when you use the adjective conspiratorial to apply to the Brooks-Kendall operations, you sense precisely the tone which the thing has or is likely to have. Brooks has an innate flair for melodrama, and fifteen years at LSU did not diminish what his genes gave him. He used always to be steering Kendall into attacking this and that, and part of his great fondness for Kendall, although he did not know it himself (and it was only a part), lay in Kendall’s peculiar susceptibility to being used by Cleanth (perhaps for good ends: I do not wish the word used to have a sinister connotation). But you are absolutely right in wanting to avoid the fact or the appearance of getting identified with a bloc of plotters, even though the plot itself may be an admirable one

60

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

whose objectives you can totally approve of. If the old-timers don’t at the moment want you, it is of course the old question of quality; but that is the truth no one can ever admit; so they will be hot on the trail of finding a real disqualification; and if you could be tied up with a backstairs operation run by a couple of young revolutionaries, they would probably feel that the Lord had given them a wonderful piece of discrediting evidence. So I think that in writing to Kendall I should try for a discreet neutrality, difficult as it is to avoid pressing questions when one’s own fortune is so much at stake. You know—cordiality, and agreeableness, and a noncommittal indication that you are always interested in knowing about interesting things going on at Yale. I do not know what Corbett’s correspondence with you is like—whether it permits you to ask a fairly direct question about the situation. My guess is that if it does not, you are in the uncomfortable position of having to do without positive information until history or some authoritative informant chooses to enlighten you. That is, if you want to play the game cagily in the hope that something may still come of it. If you simply want to have it settled with finality, if you want to know “irregardless” as some people say, you can write Corbett very candidly about the whole thing. That Cleanth doesn’t write is to be expected. He doesn’t write anyway. Two months ago I wrote him a very specific inquiry about people he knows whom we are considering for jobs, and he never acknowledged the letter. Besides, he has some gift of forgetting the unpleasant (that remark is not fair if it is taken in the worst possible sense; I do not mean it as a severe censure at all): I have rarely known him to acknowledge making a mistake (come to think of it, I know damn few people who ever do). At the moment, from a report or two which I get, I think Cleanth is a little bit in the situation of being overwhelmed by the kind of happiness that overtakes the country boy when he goes to college and makes a fraternity that somehow he never expected to make. There is that side to him. Anyway this particular bliss is liable to blot out a lot of other things. (Let me say that whenever I identify Cleanth’s clayfoot I am able to do so largely in terms of knowledge arrived at introspectively.) This is a random gabble which does nothing I fear but repeat what you have already thought out for yourself. The better irony would be that since you wrote, something has happened which changes the whole picture and invalidates these acute speculations. Contrary to my mean emphatic predictions, Mike got completely acclimated here within a week. At the moment, all he needs is vermifuge, and this is not a regional problem. Contrary to expectations of both Ruth and me, Pete has re-

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

61

adjusted rapidly: he has fallen in with a group of congenial playmates and is so active that he has no time to think about being homesick. Ruth and I, I think, have both been much more homesick than we expected to be (which is an idiotic thing to mention to someone like you who have had real problems of adjustment). Re Yale: I had a fascinating letter from a Hopkins man who is indignant at Hopkins for letting go a couple of bright Jews. He says, “Edelstein is a truly remarkable man. Immense talents are there joined with broad and humane interests. I was very anxious to keep him here, but the local Yale clique—which always prefers amateurs and gentiles—refused to back him. The same group got rid of Harold Cherniss, who went from here to Berkeley and now to the Institute for Advanced Study, and refused to accept Richard Lattimore—a fine poet and classicist who has been compared to [Richard] Porson. They can always think of a Skullandbonzer who doesn’t know too much and holds his liquor well.” Familiar? With all our regards, Yours,

16. May 16, 1948 Dear Robert, Many thanks for your letter of May 8, with its advice in the Yale affair. On the whole, my own thoughts have moved on similar tracks but I am grateful for your confirmation since you know the persons involved and the environment much better than I do. I shall follow your advice in particular with regard to Kendall—I shall not enter into his dark hints at all but simply suggest in general terms that all news will be welcome. Nothing, by the way, has happened in the matter in the meantime. There is, however, plenty of excitement from another source. I shall tell you the story because I presume that you will enjoy to learn something about rackets and intriguing in the academic world in Europe. Towards the end of last year I had a letter from the Dean of the Law Faculty in Vienna (who is an old friend and with whom I am in correspondence) that he tried to get a summer-school organized in July of this year, that the organization proper was in the hands of [Friedrich A. von] Hayek in London (Road to Serfdom), that they wanted to 21. Richard Porson, 1759–1808, was Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge.

62

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

bring several former professors to Vienna for this summer-school, that the Rockefeller Foundation was financing the project, that he hoped very much I would be among those chosen, and that I would hear more about it from Hayek directly. Well, I heard nothing after that—neither from Vienna, nor from Hayek. And I thought the thing had been buried. We had prepared for our summer in Cambridge, to live in the house of [Gottfried] Haberler (the economist), and were all set. —In the last week of April, Haberler told me in a letter, incidentally, that the project with Vienna had materialized after all, that he was going, that I had been considered, too, but that the Rockefeller Foundation wanted to restrict the group to economists—which sounded plausible to me because of the presence of Russians and other varmint in Vienna. Two days later, however, I received a letter from the Dean in Vienna, with a formal appointment (seal and all) as guest-lecturer for this summer, and the information that the Rockefeller people would pay transportation. Joyfully I smelled a rat. I wrote the most detached and innocent letter to the R.F., telling them of the appointment, that they were to pay, but that Haberler had written me just a few days ago that only real economists were admitted to the group, whether the invitation was not perhaps a mistake, etc. —Then for twelve days nothing happened. —On the twelfth day, the R.F. wrote. Not a word about the background of the affair; simply: that I was included in the group, that $1500 were at my disposition for the trip, that I would have to hurry to get passport and Military Permit. Next day came a letter from Haberler: the director of the Rockefeller Foundation had called him up in Cambridge, read to him my letter over the telephone, inquired why the restrictions, etc. Haberler said he knew nothing, and his information came from Hayek. That’s where we are now. Surmised result: Hayek tried to restrict the group to solid, conservative, liberal, free-trade, fathead economists (I have heard in the meanwhile of another political scientist who was included out); and the beautiful idea miscarried. After all, he probably has succeeded because it is almost impossible to get the Military Permit in time, even if I get the passport. Anyway, we are in great excitement because we do not know what is going to happen for the summer. I shall go if I get the documents, but I am not particularly eager—the $1500 sounds [like] a lot of money, but the ticket alone costs over $1000. Lissy cries because she is sure that when I go up in an airplane, the airplane will go down. And generally it’s a mess. You see, the world has its colorful spots everywhere. Kindest regards from us to all of you.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

63

17. Seattle, May 18, 1948 Dear Eric, You have all our good wishes for the completion of the technicalities in time to permit you this summer’s reunion in Vienna. The Hayek story is lovely; we are delighted. Patterns of academic conduct are apparently the same; but still there are levels I would say. I am still trying to get us in at the lowest possible level. I want to quote a “confidential” paragraph from Cleanth. Only corroboratory, nothing new. “Voegelin did brilliantly, but nothing has happened, and though I was told by one of the department members the other day that the dept was still interested, I don’t know. I am also told—quite confidentially of course—that Voegelin’s lecture was simply too good: that some of the members of the dept had cooled off because they thought that V’s presence here would jeopardize their own laurels. Anyway, I hope for the best, but it’s obvious that nothing is going to be done in the way of an offer for the present.” The other day I met [Thomas I.] Cook, the English political theorist who is going from here to Chicago. I should probably say “theory man” rather than “theorist.” He is a very delightful person whose god is J. S. Mill on Liberty. Since he’s leaving I took the liberty of tossing in your name as that of a theory man they ought to look into. But nothing will happen because 1) I see that I shall carry no weight at all here and 2) everybody says [Charlie] Martin the head of pol sci is such a goddamned stuffed shirt he doesn’t want anybody good in the dept. Cook is very good on local characters. He has a handsome, mildly theatricallooking blonde wife, and they are frowned on by the properer sort. As one woman said of Mrs C, “And she’s a grandmother.” Lear is now due for August. Our very best to you both,

18. Baton Rouge, November 4, 1948 Dear Robert: Your Great Stage arrived more than two weeks ago; and I must apologize for not having written earlier. But I did not want to write an empty acknowledgment; and quite a few chores have prevented my giving proper attention to your work until yesterday. I must beg you to forgive the delay of my thanks. These thanks are due for the gift as a whole, as well as specifically for your most kind autograph dedication, and for the generous mentionings in the Foreword. On

64

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

this latter count I am now puffed with pride—except in my lucid moments when I reduce myself through the memory of your generosity and punctiliousness in such matters. Nevertheless, you ought to know that your acknowledgement has given me some stature and reputation on the campus: The other day I walked into the History Department; and a perfect stranger, some graduate student, accosted me and asked me whether I was the one who had been mentioned in your outstanding work and then expressed his sentiments respectueux (he was a Cajun or French Canadian). Now for the book itself. We have discussed the basic idea amply and you know that I am enthusiastic about this type of analysis. What I had not realized in reading the first draft (or perhaps I have forgotten it) was the scope and systematic order of problems, as it appears now in the organization of the chapters. The book as a whole is indeed, à propos of Lear, a study in philosophical anthropology at large, and specifically of the problems of human nature in a time of crisis. Under this aspect, I was particularly impressed by Chapter X and XI which, as far as I remember, were not in the draft that I have seen. If I may temper my admiration and whole-hearted agreement, as it is usual on such occasion, by disagreeing on one point, it would be the meticulous care with which you have articulated every minor problem to the last. If my memory does not deceive me, the first draft was not only briefer but fresher in expression because it left a point here and there to the intelligence of the reader. But you told me once that you would be merciless in this respect and buttress the analysis itself with prefaces, summaries, elaborations, qualifications and other aids for the poor in the mind so that the expression of your intentions would be foolproof and the marginal moron in the profession could follow the argument, even if he did not understand what it was all about. I can understand the tactical necessity of this concession; but nevertheless, I regret it personally. Another one of your opera came to my attention these days. Your very devoted disciple, Catheryn Ditchburn, brought me the volume on Forms of Modern Fiction, containing, besides 21 other papers, yours on the Turn of the Screw. I read it again with great pleasure; and I also read most of the other articles. I must say that I am very much impressed by the generally very high level of the performance; and to see that there are at least twenty-two men in the profession who can write like that, is a certain comfort to a person who is inclined to take 22. Heilman, “The Turn of the Screw as Poem,” University of Kansas City Review 14 (1948): 277– 89; reprinted in Forms of Modern Fiction: Essays Collected in Honor of Joseph Warren Beach, ed. William Van O’Connor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1948).

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

65

a dim view of contemporary achievement in literary analysis. This volume gives the impression that literary criticism in this country is resting on a broad and firm social basis. This does not mean that I am over-awed in every single instance by the performance. In particular, the attempt at causerie by the much praised Allen Tate struck me as sicklish with little substance and an abundance of bad taste. And the article on Hemingway, with its pathetic search for articulating the reasons why a littérateur is second-rate when he uses the emptiest of political clichés for characterizing a man’s motive to participate in the Spanish Civil War, made me think that its author still had to learn a few things in order to make his judgment more spontaneous and certain. Warren’s article on Faulkner, on the other hand, is very illuminating—but with regard to Faulkner, there remains the problem which we discussed on occasion, to what extent the value of an author’s work is affected by the choice of subject (provincial and unrepresentative); I would not dare to have an opinion concerning the question whether the subject mars Faulkner’s achievement, or whether he has not power enough to make it lucidly representative on a general human level,—anyway, in reading Faulkner, I always have the feeling that he got stuck short of full representative lucidity. Lionel Trilling’s on “Manners” is a very fine sociological study—though I suspect that one could know much more on this subject, if one goes after it, than would appear from this article (I remember a chapter on Manners in [Thomas Hobbes’s] Leviathan that might have helped him). My letter was delayed because, until a few days ago, I was strenuously occupied in giving the works to Erasmus and More. On closer study, they have assumed considerable historical significance as a first start of modernity, along with Machiavelli and [Pietro] Pomponazzi, before the crash of the Reformation occurred. With this chapter, I have now the architecture of Volume III (Modern) in shape. I am telling you this because I had the impression that Erasmus and More are also a concern of English Literature (the best study on More is by [Raymond Wilson] Chambers), and I wondered whether you would be interested enough to take a look at this chapter (if your time permits). It deviates from the conventional treatment considerably, as far as political science is 23. Voegelin here refers to volume 3 of The History of Political Ideas. For a complete history of this work and its metamorphosis into Order and History, see “General Introduction to the Series,” by Thomas A. Hollweck and Ellis Sandoz, in vol. 19 of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 1, ed. Athanasios Moulakis (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997). 24. Voegelin is probably referring to R. W. Chambers, Thomas More (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935).

66

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

concerned; and I would be curious what you would think of it from the point of view of history of literature (which, with the exception of Chambers, is unknown to me). If you think you have the time and stomach for it (47 pages), I could send you a copy. There is much rejoicing over the election. Everybody seems to be delighted about the discomfiture of the pollsters; and that one can lick Communism and KuKluxKlan at the same time, is also most comforting. Personally I feel happy because at least I am not represented by that mug with moustache. And that dear old [John Foster] Dulles, who just has discovered that Stalin does not believe in Peaceful Change, will not be Secretary of State also is nothing to weep about. With many thanks, Cordially yours,

19. Baton Rouge, January 1, 1949 Dear Robert: I have just come back from a meeting of the Political Science Association in Chicago. I had gone there with little expectation of enlightenment; and, on the whole, the affair was unspeakably dreary. Nevertheless, to my great surprise, I heard at least one proposition that carried the conviction of absolute truth; the proposition: “Ruth is a most charming woman.” And who do you think would spontaneously gush forth this rock-ribbed, solid axiom? It was Katie! But perhaps you are not as intimate with Katie as I am. So let me remind you that Katie is the wife of your colleague-of-leave Thomas I. Cook. I made his acquaintance in Chicago and I spent an evening at his apartment because Katie, who is ambitious in many a way, threw a reception for distinguished guests. It was a most pleasant evening because only utterly uninfluential people were present, such as [Sergius] Yacobson, [Waldemar] Gurian, [F. B.] Schick, [Heinrich Albert] Rommen and myself. Not a single big-wig or big-shot or fat cat did come. Katie was a most gracious hostess; she had prepared a huge platter of fine, cold cuts and appropriate drinks; and she assured us that there were “oodles” outside. And Katie 25. Thomas E. Dewey, who ran for president against Harry S. Truman in 1948. 26. Sergius Yacobson published “The Soviet Concept of Satellite States” (Review of Politics 11 [1949]: 184–95); Waldemar Gurian was founder of the Review of Politics at Notre Dame University. Schick taught political science at the University of Utah; Rommer taught political science at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

67

is a most charming woman, too; practically a lady. She makes the most clever conversation and has seen a lot of the world. She also speaks with an ingratiating and clear voice that carries far. I noticed with interest that Waldemar Gurian (who is a sensitive, barbarian chump from Russia) winced every time when a remark of hers from the other end of the room reached his ear. (He finally withdrew into the adjoining room). Now, Katie was a godsend because I could extract from her a lot of information about the noble institution at Seattle. She is fed up with the place and wants to stay in Chicago; as a reason she gives that Seattle is a “cultural desert.” But she was considerate enough to admit that her views may be biased because she is attached to the Political Science Department. If there were more people like you and Ruth, etc., it would be different. Anyway, the P.Sc. Department seems to be a sore spot, as I was also assured by “Tommy.” The matter interested me quite a bit because shortly before Xmas I had a letter from a man named Kenneth C. Cole, who seems to be acting head, that he would like to see me in Chicago. I let him have the opportunity; and at the same time, I took a good look at him. Well, he told me that Cook was on the point of leaving for good, in case his Chicago job would be permanent, and that he was looking for a new man. That was about all; we shall continue the conversation when the situation will be clarified. Unfortunately, however, he did not only look at me but, as I said, I looked at him, too. And what I saw aroused in me the suspicion that perhaps, indeed, Seattle is not the proper place for me. He seems to be one of these arrogant New England types; as far as I could find out, he has never done anything worth mentioning, and he acts as if he were running the world and were something like an international statesman. Remarks from “Tommy” confirmed the suspicion; and the regular chairman, a certain Martin, seems to be a somewhat stuffy figure, too. —Well, the question may never arise; for I had a talk with one of the Chicago fat-cats, and I take it that it is not so certain at all, that the Chicago people want to keep Cook. He may have to go back to Seattle, unless something develops rapidly at Columbia for him—which seems to be the place of his ultimate destiny—as I learned from another source. Incidentally, I learned (not from him) that his History of Political Philosophy is known in professional circles as the “cook-book”; and that at Harvard a man loses caste when he reads it. At present he is engaged in such useful enterprises as writing a report on American Political Science for UNESCO. 27. Thomas I. Cook, History of Political Philosophy from Plato to Burke (New York: PrenticeHall, 1936).

68

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

But let us now come to a more serious subject, that is, to yourself. I am afraid I have sad news for you about you. I mean, we don’t miss you here; I would not go so far as to say that we are glad you are gone; but definitely, we can do without you. The reason why is that you are just a literary critic—and there are oodles of them; but we have now got the real article on the campus. I mean, literature itself. In brief, we have a genuine poet. His name is [Earl L.] Bradsher. Recently he brought out a book of poetry which created quite a stir. About the quality there is no doubt; the man is headed straight for the Oxford Book of English Verse. There is, however, considerable debate about the genesis of his masterpieces. To be exact, there are two schools of thought. The one says that it came over him; the other says it came out of him. The poet himself is vague on the point, as poets so frequently are. He says he didn’t know he had it in him— which may either mean that it was in him, only he didn’t know; or that there was nothing in him, and it came from the outside. On the other hand, he admits that “something deeply psychological” had been stirring in him for years; it could no longer be contained; it broke out. It all began when he noticed that poetry was running through his head—sometimes a whole line at a time—on the most various occasions, such as when he was dish-washing or when he was sitting on a log, hunting a squirrel for dinner. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, with poetry running through him; he would get up and write it down so he wouldn’t forget it. For months he had kept it secret from his wife; but when the stage was reached where he got up in the middle of the night, naturally she found out. And it was she, of course, who overcame his modesty and pushed him into print. Moreover, he admits that his lady inspired him. You may know her; and you will be a better judge of this point than I am. His verse is striking and profound; the subject-matter ranges from an “intriguing description” of his wife, to reflections on after-life. On this latter question he has very decided opinions: he does not want to go to a heaven where angels make twangtwang! on their harps; he wants to go to a happy hunting-ground where he can make bang-bang! at the squirrels. This seems to show a certain maturity of the spiritual life. Inevitably, he was pressed to give a lecture over the radio; there was a large audience of local gentry at the studio. One of my students, who is employed by the station, told me about the impression he made. It must have been most gripping. People were sitting there, with their heads bowed, and let it sink in. When the show was over and they filed out, they still could hardly talk because they could not find words to articulate their emotions. Only now and then, one was heard muttering “Well, well!” —But I do not want to bore you further with my entirely inadequate and non-professional account. I am enclosing a

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

69

clipping from a local paper that will give you the details by the pen of a competent literary critic—you see, even in that respect we are not left quite desolate by your departure. The Brookses were here over the holiday. We saw them for an evening at the Blanchards. Cleanth seems a bit constrained after the affair in Yale this spring; but he does not open his mouth on what happened; and I did not bring up a topic which he seems to shun. He still is very much impressed by Yale and his being there; but Tinkum is less so; the curtains (about which I wrote you in spring) are still not up. He is working on some text-book, together with Warren. I heard a bit more about Yale from Willmoore Kendall, in Chicago. I do not know whether what he tells is true; but anyway it is quite amusing after a fashion. He insists that Yale is an intellectual slum and that my lecture finished me. Not so much the lecture itself but my way of delivery. I was uncautious enough not to read from a MS. but to talk freely on the subject. Thus I created the very unfavorable impression that I knew what I was talking about and had my subjectmatter at my finger-tips; the discussion was even worse because it ranged over a variety of subjects on which I also seemed to be informed in the most improper manner. Such ungentlemanly erudition frightened at least two members of the department so thoroughly that their thumbs turned down on me. Yale is a respectable place and such casual pouring forth of knowledge which should be divulged only with all symptoms of sweat on the brow from a carefully prepared paper cannot be tolerated. Nevertheless, it may not yet be the end. When the History comes out, perhaps the matter will be taken up again. That is all the news of the moment. Don’t be so engrossed in your administration and drop a line on occasion. Most cordially yours,

28. An account of this story, “Dr. Earl L. Bradsher Has Book Published: Poetry Volume to be Released Tomorrow Is First for Well Known University Literature Professor,” by Orene Muse, is found in the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate Magazine, November 28, 1948, 8–9. A picture of Dr. Bradsher in hunting gear with rifle is found with this article; part of the caption reads: “Many of the poems in the new book being published Monday were written while he was seated on a log waiting for a bird to make its appearance.” 29. The family of Tinkum (Blanchard) Brooks.

70

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

20. Seattle, January 6, 1949 Dear Eric, Now I owe you answers to two excellent letters, and if the answers are not excellent, it is that the flesh is willing but the spirit weak. Anything I said about you in the book is obviously an understatement. As for the rest of it, I hope it does not too much displease you in the form into which it finally got while I ran along beside tugging at the edges like a dog at an apron and trying to make it do this or that. You and Warren both said essentially the same thing originally: make it, if anything[,] shorter. Instead I followed [Leo] Kirschbaum, who kept saying, every other page, be more explicit. Kirschbaum is a good critic in many ways, and I thought that with him as a model I would be playing for the upper middle class, so to speak, and that the nobility such as you and Warren would accept it on the grounds that the author was once a nice man, etc. Since at least one reviewer has said that the book is tedious, it is apparent that the aristocracy are a better guide to the people than the u. m. c. are. Which I should have known before. I am glad that O’Connor’s anthology, the Forms of Modern Fiction, seems to you to have some merit. About Faulkner: I find myself groping there, having certain dissatisfactions which are perhaps relatable to the characteristic which you note, his unrepresentativeness, and yet on the other hand so strongly moved by a sense of the reality of what he writes (I hope I do not seem to be praising him for realism) that I feel as if the apparent shortcoming must be the product of some critical failure of my own. I suppose my implied and loose syllogism is something to the effect that something which appears to partake so fully of life cannot be partaking of only a segment, a provincial corner, of life, but that the corner must be larger than it appears. The only work of his about which I feel able to attempt to justify the impression is The Hamlet—which seems to me to be a very fine symbolic setting forth of a decay of an old order (an aristocracy of which not much is left perhaps but which is still qualitatively superior to its successor) and its replacement by a new order dominated by a spirit of calculation (you see the Lear student seeing Lears everywhere, perhaps). Perhaps, if I am correct in finding this to be the pattern of the book, this would still not seem to you to be meaningful in a general human way; but I should argue that at least it transcends the provincial by considerable. Another book of his which I believe is not well thought of and which is not well known is The [Wild] Palms, in reading 30. Leo Kirschbaum taught English at Wayne University (later Wayne State University) in Detroit, Michigan.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

71

which I find an initial and continuing tendency on my part to regard it as a wellintended work which came out a potboiler, more strongly opposed, as I continue with the book by another tendency, to feel that there is a good deal there—a structure which is a little better than a somewhat perverse surface would lead one to expect, a kind of Romeo and Juliet theme [left:] (done in the terms) which would be dictated by a vulgar age. This is not very well put. Both here and in other books I feel always the need of detailed analysis to reach a final conviction: you know how it is, I work six months on the Turn of the Screw, and you get it all straightened out in one night. If you can send me a carbon or some other by-copy of the More and Erasmus chapter that would not have to be returned within any set time, I would be most glad, on purely selfish grounds, to read it. I put it this way because I am normally, as you know, a slow Pa. Dutchman, and in my present life I seem never to have time even for moderate reading in my own field. But I don’t yield Voegelin when I can get it. I am glad your wide literary sympathy extends also to the recent opus by Dan’l Boone I-shot-a-bar Bradsher. You remember what he used to tell his classes about Henry James: “the trouble with James is he didn’t spend enough time down at the ole swimming hole and never got his eyes blacked enough.” Dan’l’s greatest American novelist is Fenimore Cooper. Dan’l is, by the way, the almost perfect symbol of the frontier type in its aesthetic aspect, though that is perhaps a contradiction in terms. Incidentally, I met a publisher friend in NY who told me that Bradsher’s publisher is a pay-as-you-go house. I wonder whether you happened to notice one extraordinary paragraph in the Bradsher article? Here it is, complete with its subcaption: Gets Up at Night “Yes,” laughed his attractive blonde wife. . . .—“yes, and sometimes he gets up in the middle of the night to put something down.”

That, it seems to me, is a very common experience; and any deficit incurred in the Bruce Humphries account can be wiped out by selling the paragraph as a testimonial for a certain kind of patent medicine. In fact two different kinds. Cleanth is really wonderful, the way he just forgets about little things like his political science fiasco at New Haven. It works so well that anyone else somehow gets the idea it’s ill-mannered to bring up that which is being forgotten. I would like to hear Tinkum on Yale; I gather that she has not reached the bluntness of Willmoore (Oxford) Kendall, but she can sometimes be very perverse about Cleanth’s secular religions. Have you yet heard her make any cracks about

72

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

his fondness for driving their convertible with the top down? [left:] Did I ever tell you, by the way, about my disgruntled acquaintance at Hopkins who commented on the anti-Semitism of the late Bowman administration? Referring to various vacancies for which good Jewish scholars were available, he wrote, “But the Yale boys who populate this Nazi village can always find some good Skullundbonzer who can hold his likker and doesn’t know too much to embarrass them.” But, as you once pointed out, Yale has its advantages, and I do hope that all is not dead there for you. But I’m not at all sure that the book is going to reassure the boys about your amenability. Now as for the theme of Katie, fat-cats, Cook-books, cookie jars in Seattle, Cole, et al. All this does not come as a complete shock to me because shortly before I left for NY I had a note from Cole, whom I don’t know, saying that he was going to see you and that he had had a note from you saying to say hello to Heilman. And before this I had written the head, Charlie Martin, a longish letter setting forth your merits (a letter tuned strictly to Charlie’s wave length; an eclectic letter; a wonderful letter to sell a piece of goods to a guy who knows what he likes; but I will cease from this); and even before that I had utilized an indirect means to have it brought to Charlie that any time he needed a theory man, etc. etc. But I never really expected anything to come of this, and all I can say at this point is that I hope it does. They have enough dough here so that at least you might get a good raise out of [Harold] Stoke on the offer if it comes. Yesterday I was having an interview with the Executive Officer in charge of Academic Personnel, who despite all that and despite his being a fugitive from philosophy into psychology, is an amiable, fairly civilized person who is quite realistic about the staff and who would really like to have a good university here. He is not an intellectual, but intellectuals do not depress him; whenever he finds a faculty member going to the library, he is full of joy and thinks maybe we will be a university after all. Anyway, after doing all the English Department business and finding, as I pretty well knew, that we agreed almost precisely about what is wrong here in Parrington Hall, I said I knew of a good man who might be made an offer here, but from what I had heard of the gov’t department I wasn’t sure how much encouragement I could honestly hold out. I said, “My man found Cole very pompous.” [Edwin R.] Guthrie said, “Lord yes, he drives away anybody he talks to.” I said, “My man has also heard things about Charlie 31. Harold Stoke was president of Louisiana State University from 1947 to 1951. 32. Edwin R. Guthrie was provost and academic vice president, University of Washington, Seattle.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

73

Martin.” Guthrie: “What he has heard isn’t half as bad as the reality.” Guthrie then pulled down a Who’s Who to show Charlie’s incredibly extended entry, and explained, “Just a little man trying to give himself the illusion that he is a big man.” And we exchanged a few Charlie Martin stories, e.g., “Have you heard that Charlie Martin has consented to give an interview to MacArthur?” etc. Well, this is of course a strange way to start trying to lure you to Seattle. There is of course nothing to do but tell the truth about the gov’t dep’t, and that may be prohibitive; but what I am hoping is that you will be encouraged by the understanding of the front office; both Guthrie and the president are fairly shrewd about people; and that should be a real encouragement for the future. I went on to say to Guthrie, “Well, how can I counter the awful facts?” Guthrie: “Tell your man he needn’t have anything to do with these people. He can teach his classes and spend the rest of the time in the library and associate with whom he pleases.” You would of course come in as a professor and therefore would be in no position to have to please anybody. Martin and Cole, of course, are such obvious people that you might take a certain ironic pleasure in pleasing them with a half dozen well chosen words that they would not see the other side of, and thus having them at your beck and call. However, I wish to make a vulgarer [sic] appeal. The professorial minimum is now $6000. Next year, if the budget is not axed as it apparently is not going to be, the minimum will be higher. Hold out for $7000 or any other figure that pleases your fancy. Then summers will be reasonably easy financially. Your teaching schedule will be 10 hours—2, 5-hour classes. You can reduce this to 8 by cutting a couple of hours a week, a standard practice. If a situation arises in which you would like more detailed discussion of these environs, we will both write elaborately. I should try not consciously to sell you the place. I think I have already told the worst—a worst that is manageable. If they make an offer, and if you hold out for more money, let me know: I’ll get the facts to Guthrie, just in case that might do any good. Ah, Katie. Ruth would like to claim Katie’s praise and therefore hopes that they have met but is not sure. I once saw Katie at a cocktail party. Katie arouses all the ungentlemanly Charles Boyer side of me; I wouldn’t know what else she is good for. All my regards to both of you. And I wish we might look ahead to more than a passing hour in New York. Sincerely,

74

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

21. Baton Rouge, January 31, 1949 Dear Robert: You will say that I am a pest because I write you again after so short an interval. Should your splendid, long letter not have kept me quiet for some more time? But you are permanently pressed to my attention by the lovely things which I read about the University of Washington in general, and your department in particular, even in our local newspaper. But seriously, you have all my commiseration for being molested—because I am sure you are—by people who have nothing better to do than fool around with communism and getting themselves involved in the grand issue of academic freedom. The trouble is that these people really endanger academic freedom because they set a precedent by getting themselves fired, and because one cannot honestly maintain, for instance in the case of a social scientist, that the freedom of science (which after all is the relevant nucleus in that academic freedom stuff ) is in danger when a communist gets fired. I enjoyed, however, the low comedy that followed the dismissal, when our friend Cook handed in his resignation because he does not like such a naughty place. From his action I take it that his prospects of further employment in Chicago or Columbia must have picked up. I also would assume that now I shall hear soon from the government department—if they still have me in mind at all. As far as this latter question is concerned, let me thank you for the delightful information contained in your letter. That personnel officer seems to be a quite nice fellow; and you are certainly right that one could find a modus vivendi with the more dubious members of the department. (One of them, [Hugh A.] Bone, by the way, is a very agreeable person.) But the best would be an offer that would result in a raise here—Harris is already looking forward to $6500—for me. He uses me as a sort of spearhead; every time I get a raise, the others (Harris and [Alden L.] Powell) must get a raise, too, in order to preserve the proportions. I would not mind coming to Seattle at all; what makes me really hesitate is that even a considerable increase of income, say $1000, will practically be washed out for two years by the cost of moving and incidental expenses; and what will happen after two years when I should get a better offer in the East? Today, I am sending you a new opus of mine, on “The Origins of Scientism.” The last ten pages might interest you. [George] Jaffé has helped me 33. Alden L. Powell was a member of the Department of Government, Louisiana State University. 34. Voegelin, “The Origins of Scientism,” Social Research 15 (1948): 462–94; reprinted in the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 10, Published Essays, 1940–1952, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), chap. 7.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

75

quite a bit on the technicality of physics. I hesitate to send it to Cole because he might get frightened. —Unfortunately I cannot send the section on More at the moment because Gurian is reading it along with other parts of the modern period. I do not expect to get it back [in] under a month; but then I shall forward it immediately to you. Today my sabbatical semester is beginning. I am working on the final revision. Just now I am rewriting the Luther—a fascinating but laborious task because one has to do the whole interpretation from scratch; only in very recent years a somewhat more critical analysis of Luther has begun, after the caricaturistic Catholic and hagiographic Protestant treatment accorded to him previously. Even such elementary problems as, for instance, what was the object of Luther’s Reformation, are entirely unsettled; certain is only that he did not want to reform the Church except incidental to something quite different, and that he had nothing to say on the “state” for the excellent reason that the word did not yet exist in Western vocabulary. That washes out most of what has been said about Luther’s political ideas. Well, but I must not bore you with such shoptalk. We have a repetition of last year’s winter. Snow and ice and 18 F in the night. Lissy thinks it’s wonderful; but I get very cold feet when working late at night. With all good wishes for you, Ruth, Pete and Mike, Most sincerely yours,

22. Baton Rouge, April 2, 1949 Dear Robert: I have not come around yet to thank you for your letter of January 27, with the interesting clipping on the sources of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. I have not seen the monograph to which the clipping refers, but I read the poem again as well as Plato’s Ion and Phaedo. And there is, indeed, something to it. How much—is difficult to say. The last part of the poem (beginning with “A damsel with a dulcimer . . .”) takes from Ion the idea of the poet as the inspired of Dionysos, to be compared to the Bacchae. The first part of the poem takes from Phaedo elements of topography: the earth that we know as one of many such hollows in a wider earth that is suspended in heaven, the rivers that break forth in fountains and disappear in “lifeless oceans” of this vaster unknown earth, the 35. George Jaffé taught physics at Louisiana State University until he retired in 1950. 36. This letter has not been found.

76

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

idea of our hollow as something cavernous, submarine with the sky domed over it, and an inaccessible beyond of the dome, etc. The imagery, thus, is certainly leaning on Plato. Whether the content carried by these images is Platonic, is a more intricate question. Certainly Coleridge has combined the two groups of images into a new whole. Its meaning seems to me fairly clear: the first part (the building of Kubla Khan) is the structure of the myth that the poet (second part) if in a Dionysiac state would build. Insofar, I should say, the poem is an intelligible whole; and Coleridge’s pretense that it was a fragment, might be a hoax. One, furthermore, may say that the combination of the two parts is Platonic; Plato certainly understood himself as a poet; and the myth (first part) is the product of mania (second part). The myth itself, however (that is the first part), does not look so very Platonic to me. For Coleridge, if I understand him rightly, the creation of the myth, as a symbol of human existence, is the end—Coleridge would be the “artist”; for Plato, the creation of the myth is a beginning, that is, the appeal to the sensitiveness of the soul, the attempt to give it the direction beyond the pleasure dome—Plato would be the spiritual realist, not the romantic artist. —This is as much as I can see for the moment, without going into lengthy studies of the problem; it certainly is quite interesting; and I thank you very much for drawing my attention to it. For two months now, I am on sabbatical leave; that means in practice that now I have to work all the day long and can no longer loaf the morning on the campus. I am working on the revision of the third volume (modern period); and work is progressing quite satisfactorily. Unfortunately, there are always disruptions. Two weeks ago, I had to go to Durham, [North Carolina, Duke University,] for a conference of the Brookings Institution on their new “problem method” in foreign politics. They propagate as a new method the triviality that political decisions are based on an analysis of the situation and the choice of alternative courses of action in the light of the over-all aims that we want to realize. At first, I thought that was a joke. But at the conference it turned out that such analysis seems to be news to our services, civil and military. So I changed my mind and made a little speech to the effect that I was full of admiration for the incredible progress of the state department and of the military services that now they think before they make a decision, while formerly apparently that was not the custom. The assembled officials from the state department and the various colonels did not like the speech at all, but they could not say much against it because they all had come out most politely in praising the Brookings Institution for propagating the method, promising that they would use it even more since it had proved already its value and that other government departments were thinking of introducing it, etc. Various persons present who did not

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

77

have the guts to say it themselves were pleased that I did it. One of them offered to take me as a consultant to Germany next year. Our dear George Millikan, the fruity talker, was less pleased since he is a notable member of the staff of Brookings. And then, there are stirrings again in the East. Next Tuesday (the 5th) I shall give a talk in Johns Hopkins, again with the understanding (as last year in Yale) that I am looked over for an opening. I am full of black suspicions and firmly resolved to talk point-blank and tough unless an adequate offer is forthcoming. I just finished reading Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus. With mixed feelings. It will interest you as a further experiment in writing a novel, without a society of which one could write an epic, using mystical symbols as the instrument for interpreting the German catastrophe. While the thing as a whole is an awe-inspiring performance, I am not quite happy about this simplification of the German problem into a daemonic Germany whose story is written the humanistic German Mann. The weakness of Mann begins to show more than in earlier works. There is, for instance, a conversation between the hero and the devil; it invites comparison the similar conversations in the Karamazovs and in Unamuno’s Nivola—and the comparison is not too good for Mann. The defect becomes now more clearly visible as Mann’s humanism itself—one cannot fight the devil with “human understanding”; and while Mann is afraid of the devil, he is equally reluctant to trust in God. What he wants is a “humanism tinged by religion”—whatever that means. As a result of such humanistic immanentism, he gets involved too deeply with the German disaster; it is more of a personal disaster for him than it ought to be for a man who knows that the world after all is the “world.” You will have heard that [William O.] Scroggs is retiring; we want a bigger and better dean; we want Heilman—I am a member of the boosters’ club. With regards to Ruth, Pete and Mike, Most sincerely yours,

23. [Seattle,] April 18, 1949 Dear Eric, Your earthquake note indeed shames me: it is the third communication of yours without acknowledgment, until now, from me, and quite aside from my reflections upon the probability of diminishing returns, I am mortified by my 37. William O. Scroggs was dean of the Graduate School at Louisiana State University.

78

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

bad manners. It is the old story of a ragged and ill-managed life in which there is never the proper unrushed moment at which one may at least attempt to write like a gentleman instead of like an automaton going through a schedule. When the choice seems to be only between writing decently and not writing at all I am running down the middle and writing indecently, which I fear is as bad as not at all. The reports of the earthquake spread through the rest of the country are the best example of sheer journalistic irresponsibility that I have known. The quake here lasted 45 seconds; there was a mild rolling of the ground—enough to make some people feel slightly dizzy—and a very considerable creaking of walls, rattling of windows and china, rocking of chairs, cracking of plaster; from a number of buildings (probably less than 1% of the total) there dropped chimneys, a few bricks, cornices, and now and then an entire wall; no building whatever was totally destroyed; and two school-buildings which have been condemned have been so because of structural damages that are apparently almost invisible. There was, in other words, very little spectacle; you could drive thru nearly all of Seattle and be hard put to it to find visible damage; the injuries were negligible, but the fright was apparently quite considerable—especially in the gentlemen of the press. Ruth’s mother was in our house alone and was rather upset by the quivering and noises (no damage that we can find), and Pete was apparently pretty much scared by the unfirmness of terra firma and the moving of trees in a windless atmosphere. Ruth and I were in Corvallis, Oregon, where Ruth was walking the street to the 5 & 10¢ and noticed nothing, and where I was lucky enough to be leaning against a hotel wall making a phone call and thus was able, for some five seconds, to have some direct awareness of my first earthquake—in the form of strange, rather obscene movements in the wall. At Corvallis I was lecturing to the assembled AAUP’s of the state—on the topic “An Inquiry into Antihighbrowism,” which I hope I can get the AAUP Bulletin to print. I certainly owe you a glance at it, since a number of my examples are based on experiences of yours. The general line is that antihighbrowism, while it always virtuously pretends to be against falseness, affectation, etc., is really against excellence; and I proceed to various academic phenomena which are supposed to make the case. I didn’t have time to do this job but I took time because a) anything to get away from the office for a couple of days, and b) it was a means of working off an accumulation of gripes, not all of them from the present year. 38. This letter has not been found. 39. Heilman, “An Inquiry into Anti-Highbrowism,” AAUP Bulletin 6 (1949): 611–27.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

79

Your estimate of what will happen at Hopkins does not surprise me, since what I learn from my secret operative there convinces me that they are as antihighbrow as any state university. In classics they apparently let both [Harold] Cherniss and [Ludwig] Edelstein go without a gesture of protest; and we are getting their young classicist whom both Cherniss and Edelstein put number one on their list of prospects (this man told me that the present Greek man at Hopkins has for five consecutive years had his seminar do the subjunctive in Aristophanes). But all this obviously is one side of an incomplete story, and I hope the political science people there may have a little more insight. I judge that nothing else has happened in Fatso Martin’s department here, so that my brief—and I thought highly circumspect—effort to manage something has apparently died aborning. I gather that you wouldn’t have taken an offer from here if it had come, and I can’t say that I blame you, but it would have been pleasant to have had the offer come to life. I hear that they are now dickering with someone at Reed, unknown to me. I hope that not all your sponsors come to the same sad end that rumor is declaring for [Willmoore] Kendall. I can only record, for this mild sponsor, that for a year he has had neither bottles nor alien women nor historians in hand, but only office typewriters. The die quotation is fine, and I shall put it into a file for use when and if I get around to pack a few samples of the word into a learned discourse. Recently there has appeared an excellent book Shakespeare’s Bawdy which notes several of these cases but only a few. . . . ”The Origins of Scientism” lies at my right hand on my desk, atop a lot of junk, still unread: never the peaceful moment. Thank you very much for it; I know that when I have read it I shall be asking for other copies with which to perturb this modern, progressive community, which still feels that to fight the “supernatural” is one of the nobler and more mature achievements of the mind of man. I trust to get some results at least as fine as those you secured when belaboring Brookings with bricks at Durham. Your comment on Dr. Faustus is the only one I have seen which gets down to brass tacks, and I shall keep it at my elbow when I read that book. From your account I would say that Mann’s humanism is at least a step above the proud west coast variety, for if Mann is afraid of the devil he has at least got halfway. Here, we dispose of all evil by having a committee meeting. Probably any dirty cracks which I make about Washington should be entirely 40. Harold Cherniss taught Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Ludwig Edelstein taught Classics at Johns Hopkins University. 41. I find no reference to this in any of Voegelin’s previous letters. There may be a letter missing. 42. Eric Partridge, Shakespeare’s Bawdy: A Literary and Psychological Essay and a Comprehensive Glossary, rev. ed. (New York: Dutton, 1969).

80

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

reserved for myself for having got into something that is less rewarding than exacting, and that, the further we advance beyond the honeymoon stage, progresses more and more toward difficult inimicalities. As soon as one stands for something—like not promoting people just because they are advanced in years, good citizens, pleasant fellows, and beloved of their colleagues—one becomes a Public Enemy, and it becomes a nice question how much of this one should endure, causa “duty” and self-respect, in the interests of an institution of which only a small portion wishes to progress beyond mediocrity. I have about convinced myself that duty and self-respect, insofar as they are applicable to an institutional rather than to a purely private situation, are snares by which one is kept at busy work rather than essentially important work. As you once said, once in something of this sort, it is not easy to find a comfortable way out; and I find about half my waking moments spent canvassing the catalogue of ways-out. Did I tell you about a paper which I heard Charlie Martin give about his services on a cultural mission to Japan. “We advised,” quoth Charlie, “a wide revision of their studies in the direction of positivism.” I asked whether this had been done without qualification, since, I remarked, I had observed that positivistic studies in literature were generally likely to miss the literary object entirely. Charlie then did say that of course they had especial reference to the social sciences. We often speak of you, and we includes Mike, whose argot, alas, only Ruth can understand. She has also learned Dollar’s patois;  the odd thing is that Dollar and Mike do not surmount the barriers of race and language, but are reduced to the vulgar communication of hisses, claws, and murmurs. The very best from all of us.

24. Baton Rouge, November 14, 1949 Dear Robert: Today came Ruth’s letter to Lissy with the heartfelt cry for information about goings-on in the region of the deans. I should have written you about the events long ago unless I had assumed that you receive ample news on such matters from more authoritative sources. So let me report what has penetrated to a comparatively uninterested observer of the scene like myself. [Fred C.] Frey is supposed to have frequently stressed that the deanship was a burden on his creative mind and that he desired at the bottom of his heart to 43. Dollar was the Heilmans’ dog; he received his name from his purchase price at the pound.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

81

return to teaching and research. He expressed such virtuous sentiments once too often; Stoke took him up on it and requested him to put his sentiments in writing. The Supervisors agreed to put him back among the sociologists at his dean’s salary; and Stoke got a general ruling from the Board that any dean who had served fifteen years could do the same. I do not know under what conditions [H. V.] Howe was eased out; anyway he looks modest and satisfied; and the other day, after lunch, I saw [Richard J.] Russell, Howe, Frey and [Homer L.] Hitt play pool together—from which I conclude that Hitt wants to become a dean, too, sooner or later. [William O.] Scroggs went because of age-limit. He now has a room in the department where he assiduously reads the local papers and the Reader’s Digest; otherwise he is a pitiable figure and confesses that he does not know what to do with himself now that the deanery does not provide him with escape from his boredom. The new deans seem to do all right for the time being; they express virtuous intentions, but they had not yet time to put them into action. [Paul M.] Hebert has expressed his opinion that the crazy specialized schedules of certain schools must be broken up (Commerce has a course in Prison Management) so that the boys have time to learn something—well, we shall see. [James B.] Trant is much talked about as the next candidate for disappearance. Russell will soon be put to the acid test when I shall tap him for a grant for next summer. [Leo Joseph] Lassalle has recently informed the world that Britain can get out of her ditch if the people work hard enough. —As far as the “also ran” are concerned—I know little about the mood of Kirby except that a discreet aura of melancholy is hovering around him. —Powell is a pitiful case. He seems to consider himself a failure in life and “broods.” Bob Harris assures me that he was always the brooding type: when he received his appointment as full professor (at the age of thirty-nine) he took it sadly with the remark that it was about as far as he ever would get in life. I have suggested to Bob that Powell should be degraded to Instructor so that he again has something to look forward to. The catastrophe of disappointment occurred in summer—by the time we saw them in September, Vera had already calmed down. Again there is that atmosphere of sweet melancholy of the battle of life lost and a resignation to declining 44. Fred C. Frey was dean of the university, Louisiana State University. 45. Richard J. Russell, a geographer, was dean of the Graduate School in 1950; H. V. Howe, a geologist, was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; and Homer L. Hitt was the head of the sociology department. 46. Paul M. Hebert was dean of the Law School, Louisiana State University. In 1950 he was dean of the university. 47. James B. Trant was dean of the College of Commerce, Louisiana State University. 48. Leo Joseph Lassalle was dean of the College of Engineering, Louisiana State University.

82

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

years. Besides[,] Powell’s health is not the best—though just now on a trip to Knoxville I observed that for supper he had coffee and a sweet roll, followed by two candy-bars; he felt just as ill as I would have felt in the same case, but seemed to consider it a disease to which only a sick man would be exposed. I have rather the impression that he is a serious case of infantilism. My own affairs are in the smouldering stage as always before Christmas—the violent outbreaks come in spring. The John Hopkins affair is dormant for the time being; Tommy Cook is appointed for a year; we shall see what is going to happen later. I just saw [Carl Brent] Swisher, the head of the department and my chief opponent, in Knoxville (at the meeting of the Southern Association); we were together on a panel and found ourselves in hearty agreement on the world at large and the American Constitution in particular. I had a long mellow talk with him later in the day and he was positively sweet. Unfortunately, I do not know whether he is getting soft on me, or whether he has concocted a dark scheme by which he is getting rid of me for good. This summer I heard from a friend that I had made a bad impression on him last spring when I was in Baltimore because I looked like a go-getter; he was convinced that I would be head of the department as soon as [I] got there, using the position as a stepping stone for a deanship and ultimately the presidency of Johns Hopkins. That is the sort of impression I make on unbiased people! —While waiting for the presidency of Johns Hopkins, I have applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship for a trip to Europe next summer. I have procured lovely recommendations; the only hitch is that usually the Guggenheim people prefer giving fellowships for longer periods of time than three months—we shall see how it will turn out. —There is also something simmering at the Maxwell School in Syracuse. The History is strongly progressing. I am revising the first volume for the very last time. During the summer I finished the new Aristotle; and since September I have written a new section (following the chapter on Aristotle) on the theory of characters and skepticism. Just now I am rewriting the Hesiod—it will run well into fifty pages—with rather interesting discoveries concerning the emergence of metaphysical speculation from the myth. Enclosed is a sample of the Plato. It may interest you because it contains a few things about the dialogue as a form of art. The cat situation and similar problems, I take it, Lissy will report in due course to Ruth. Very sincerely yours,

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

83

25. Baton Rouge, April 3, 1950 Dear Robert: This is just a line to let you know about the general pleasure caused by your article in the periodical of the AAUP. I was green as ever with envy when I took in your accomplished style, but for the rest it was pure joy to see you informing the masses that the only excuse for writing is its quality. Lissy and myself also recognized a few materials which apparently you gathered here at LSU. Bob Harris also was greatly pleased. Bob, by the way, is in excitement. He received a request from the Office of Education whether he would go to Germany for a 3 or 6 months period in order to represent American culture to the backward areas of the world. His assignment would be Munich; they have an Amerika Institut there; and Bob, I take it, would have to give lectures on American government and democracy. He wants to do it in fall of 1951. Dashiell [Harris] declares firmly she would never leave God’s own country, and he would have to go alone. I just received preliminary information that I got a Guggenheim Fellowship for my expedition to Europe this summer; this greatly facilitates the trip, monetarily speaking. In July I hope to be in Munich in order to see [Alois] Dempf; on this occasion I also can explore the Amerika Institut. The History is going well. The revision of the first volume is progressing. I just finished a new section on the Greek tragedy—if you were here I should pester you with reading it. Aristotle’s Poetics, by the way, at the risk of shocking you, is far from impressive on the subject of tragedy. The famous definition (“pity and fear” etc.) is not good at all. Hope you have a nice summer. With all good wishes for the family in the widest possible sense, Cordially yours,

26. Seattle, April 7, 1950 Dear Eric, Glad if you got a moment’s amusement out of the AAUP thing. From you, any compliment is a most valuable thing, even though the one on my style, I fear, is hardly deserved. Incidentally, my knowing that it would be a speech probably made the whole thing considerably milder in manner than if it had been meant for a more esoteric audience. I am sure you recognized the LSU references. Doubtless, also, it will have occurred to you that if everybody referred

84

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

to in the text had received a fitting honorarium, your royalty check would have been pretty considerable. I am most happy that you have the Guggenheim, which settled, early enough to reduce the attendant worries, the financial problems that have beset earlier proposed excursions. Has Ruth written Lissy since learning about Lissy’s trip? We’re very glad things are working out so nicely. Since “happy” hardly seems the right word, I’ll simply wish that the trip be a fruitful one for you. I wish I could listen in on a full report from you on your return. You put me to shame with this last letter that increases my indebtedness to you. My answer to your previous letter was supposed to be written one day when I could go back over my marginalia on the Plato reprint and mention specifically those parts that had particularly impressed me. The reprint is floating around among interested colleagues who are now becoming accustomed to my phrase, “As the best man I know says, etc.” and learning to learn from the same source. Anyway, the interjected contemporary parallels were beautifully done, and what in a lesser hand might have been journalism was here a very nice gloss on the text. Yesterday I was talking to a Macmillan editor named Cecil Scott, and, when he became politely but not agonizingly deprecatory about Macmillan wealth, I suggested that they were doing some admirable penance by publishing your work, about which I ventured a few untrammeled predictions. He seemed not too well informed, so I assumed that he was a rather lesser editor. I keep looking for the book with an impatience which would permit me to accept happily something less of the perfectionist in you; one of these revisions must be the last. I would very much like to see your statement of the difficulties inherent in the pity-fear definition; I think I have never been shrewd enough to question it formally but have always felt a little uncomfortable with it through my inability to relate it satisfactorily to the form. In my drama course this year I have been experimenting with the idea of basic structures of comedy and tragedy as types: I am proceeding tentatively on the basis that the tragic conflict is the conflict within the soul, and the comic conflict is the conflict within society, or, in other terms, the conflict between the individual, whose wholeness is a datum, and other forces outside himself. The tragic conflict, of course, has outer manifesta49. Although the article Heilman is referring to could be Voegelin, “Plato’s Egyptian Myth” (Journal of Politics 9 [1947]: 307–24), it is more likely Voegelin’s “The Philosophy of Existence: Plato’s Gorgias” (Review of Politics 11 [1949]: 477–98). These two articles were absorbed into the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 16, Order and History, vol. 3, Plato and Aristotle, ed. Dante Germino (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000).

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

85

tions of such a sort that the inner conflict becomes a kind of cosmic turmoil; in comedy it is precisely the private individual and the cosmos which don’t get involved at all. Incidentally, in this scheme of things, tragedy includes “happyending” (the conflict in the soul is not unresolvable), and comedy includes a great variety of types known popularly by other terms—melodrama, farce, problem play, and even, I think, “romantic tragedy” (the “whole” individual is destroyed by an “outer” force, not a moral or spiritual one, but by something like “society,” war, etc.). Well, you know my dreadful limitations in anthropology, so you will not be surprised at the expressions of whatever naïvetés appear in this sketch. I may eventually have to give it all up; but, I must say, so far I have found it not a schematic descriptive system to be forced upon reluctant materials, but of positive illumination in discerning an apparent order in the materials observed. I have just finished a little essay to be an introduction to an edition of Gulliver’s Travels. I virtually ignored the first three books, which seemed relatively obvious, and concentrated on the Book IV, the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, which seemed to me to have interesting possibilities, and turned out something which seemed to me to be the final truth. Subsequently I find myself reasonably well anticipated by an eccentric scholar or two. Alas. Well, it is good that Dashiell will take no risks in furrin parts. What would Senator McCarthy think? I hope Bob goes and profits. Please give him my best. I am going to teach at California for six weeks this summer. Not at all enthusiastic about the teaching, but it will forcibly get us away from here and will also provide expenses for seeing San Francisco, etc. I continue to be regarded by my colleagues as an amiable but doctrinaire fellow who on philosophic grounds tests all tolerance and who on administrative grounds may have to be got rid of for not appreciating the many local boys who admit they teach wonderfully but have no other professional interests; and by the front office as “one of our best administrators.” Does any department chairman automatically take on, without knowing it, a kind of corruption which makes him view his colleagues with jaundiced eye, and his superiors through rose-colored glasses? With our best to both of you,

86

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

27. [Baton Rouge,] April 18, 1950 Dear Robert: Enclosed you will find my study on “Tragedy.” I am afraid you are in for it, without any excuses on my part. The reason why is that you were unwise enough to let me know about your most recent classification of dramatic forms. What struck me as a splendid insight is your insistence that tragedy has (or at least can have) a “happy end.” That, I think, really goes to the center of the problem. And I should like very much to hear what you have to say to my dilettante attempt that seems to move in similar grooves. And then you dispense another tantalizing morsel—about Gulliver. I wanna see it; when does it come out? Where, etc.? Can one order already a copy? We have a lot of things to do just now. Lissy is leaving next week. I am racing to finish the sophists and Socrates. And just today I received a letter from Cook’s which suggests difficulties with our passage back from Europe. Heinie is going around telling people about your article in the AAUP. He is mighty proud that his pool-room activities are now immortalized. With all good wishes,

28. May 21, 1950 Dear Eric, Reading your MS on tragedy took me back to BR days when I used to get constant enlightenment from sections of your book—a kind of experience I have hardly had since. As you will guess, what comes across to me with particular freshness in the present essay is the account of the political developments which create the milieu in which tragedy can flourish, the analysis of that milieu, the notation of the passage of conditions favorable to tragedy, and of course the over-all definition of Aeschylean tragedy through the fine detailed considerations of the Suppliants and the Prometheus. My impressions of the Frogs were somewhat similar to yours, although I had not worked them out so well. One thing that I had especially thought of in connection with the Frogs was the rather wide range of critical attitudes which Aristophanes assembles there, so 50. This manuscript is no longer extant but was absorbed into the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 15, Order and History, vol. 2, The World of the Polis, ed. Athanasios Moulakis (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000).

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

87

that, even when one finds him in what you nicely call the naturalistic position, he seems still to have a considerable awareness of approaches to the aesthetic object of which one may avail oneself. Your basic definition of tragedy I shall probably take over as more precise than my own tentative one and at the same time as probably more flexible. What delights me is that, unless I am misreading badly, I am not too far away from you to start with. In that connection, you will understand my pleasure in deciding, after reading your account of the Prometheus as involving “the theomorphic symbolizations of forces of the soul as acting personnel of the drama,” that this was precisely what I had been trying to say to my class about Eumenides, and in subsequently discovering that you also made this description of the Eumenides. (Incidentally, the Eumenides bothers me somewhat, perhaps because my 19th century translation ({Lewis} Campbell’s) gives the wrong note. What comes thru is a rather complacent sense of victory. I think of your two fine sentences on p. 177: “The movement of a soul toward the truth of being does not abolish the demonic reality from which it moves away. The order of the soul is nothing on which one can sit down and be happy ever after.” Am I wrong on thinking that the demonic reality represented by the Erinyes is too patly disposed of and that Athenians—like the 20th century generally—are a little too confident of having the spiritual world in hand?) The discussion of Prometheus reminded me a little of the fulminations against “romantic titanism” that I used to hear from the late Irving Babbitt. I see now where he missed, however,—in being inadequately aware of “the forces in the human soul that will create social order when they are properly balanced,” and in being inclined simply to regard Prometheus as a villain and a symbol of all the evils of progress, man-worship, etc. I like the idea that there may be a tragic situation without a tragic actor. Our times generally? I have long labored with the doctrine of catharsis and have constantly found myself opposing the position which you also oppose—namely, that the effect of tragedy is to afford a sort of necessary “relief ” from pent-up emotions (comparable to getting drunk, going to a dance, vicariously playing a football game, etc.). I always found myself embarrassed when I came across such interpretations; they seemed to imply that tragedy really had a meaning only for people with emotional constipation, that it is a kind of psychiatry, and that for “normal” people it could have no meaning. Perhaps the only thing to do, then, is to throw the doctrine out entirely. As an alternative I had sought for another possible meaning for the term (doubtless awed by authority and feeling that it must

88

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

be “right”). In general I had toyed with the possibility that what was meant was that the specific kinds of emotional engagement experienced during the play were resolved by the play, and not permitted to continue indefinitely as if the play were coterminous with and indistinguishable from experience generally. In this view, pity and fear as the typical emotions felt by the tragic spectator have an important function—the means, so to speak, by which the spectator experiences, as you put it, “the shudder of his own fate” as bound up with that of the tragic hero (p. 173). Pity and fear are the expression of his being bound; if he were not identified with the hero, he would neither pity nor fear. However, the experiencing of pity and fear is proper to the time when the drama is in progress, not to the time afterwards; this view, of course, puts one into the position of having to assume the active pity and fear as being replaced by some sort of residuum of sympathetic contemplation which is the permanent means of “binding the soul to its own fate through representative suffering.” A victory for Dike ends pity and fear or at least modifies them; the reaching of a moral equilibrium which seems to me to be characteristic of tragedy transforms the specific emotions evoked by the plot; this is the catharsis. But the mark of the emotions remains—if one can assume this, then it is not necessary to regard catharsis as a mere ending of an experience, a final, no-traces-remaining sort of emotional phlebotomy. There may be some relevance to this hypothesizing in Joyce’s doctrine of static vs. kinetic art—an interesting idea, as I understand it, although the concepts, I think, are poorly named. The most mature kind of art is “static”; i.e., self-contained, self-resolved, un-hung-over, leaving one with an experience of a completeness, so to speak. Kinetic art merges into life; by it, one is left in an emotional state which leads to action of a non-artistic kind. This is the realm of problem play, melodrama, homiletic fiction, exhortatory rhetoric, etc. Its business is not to effect a catharsis because it is concerned not with a vision of truth but with a specific kind of action. Well, you will probably dismiss this as beside-to-the-point, as Archie says. But I thought I’d risk tossing my speculations in to see what you think of them. I hope you will not object to my having had the secretary make a copy of about 15 pp. of your MS to file with my tragedy notes. Have you seen the symposium on “religion among the intellectuals” which Partisan Review has had going on for four issues?  I have found a number of the contributions rather illuminating, especially those by the poets [James] Agee and [W. H.] Auden, and that by the historian H. B. Parkes. You will of course have guessed the PR technique of having a few on one side and then lining up 51. Vol. 17, 1950

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

89

the furious naturalists to tear the hell out of the others. I continue to be astonished, altho I suppose I should not be, by the insolent braggadocio tones of the naturalist contributors. It is almost enough to make one conclude that naturalism of itself has a stunting effect upon the growth of the personality and stops it permanently at the level of the sophomore. The funny thing about Heinie and his poolroom is that my reference was to colleagues here; I had completely forgot about the LSU applicability of the symbol. The Gulliver is an intro to a text edition to be put out by Mod Library. It’s almost entirely about the 4th voyage—an endeavor to dispose of the rather trite cries of “misanthrope” which the sentimental raise against Swift. I’ll be glad to send you a copy when it comes out, supposedly next fall some time. You’re good to ask about it. Lissie should by now be safely abroad, and you almost ready to take off. We hope all travel problems get ironed out. With best wishes from both of us.

29. Baton Rouge, May 26, 1950 Dear Robert: Thanks for your highly interesting letter. I suspected that we were thinking in this matter of tragedy along parallel lines, and I am very glad indeed to have on the whole something like an approval from an authority of your rank. Your suggestions concerning catharsis are highly valuable. I am inclined to agree with the idea that catharsis makes sense if the “fear and pity” is understood as the emotion aroused by the tragedy itself and then assuaged by it. The great question is: was that Aristotle’s intention? Perhaps—but I do not find the slightest little clue to such an interpretation in the Poetics. Why be so modest? It looks to me as if that were your very own theory! I do not consider it very probable that Aristotle had this idea in mind because generally—taking his work as a whole into consideration—the specifically Platonic sense of tragedy (which in turn is closely related to the Aeschylean paradigma) is signally absent from his work. Werner Jaeger, for instance, considers this absence the mark of Aristotelian thinking (he did not “brood” like Plato, Jaeger does not like “brooding”); and I should also say that the Ionian sense of nature as a great, untragic order is the deepest stratum of sentiment in Aristotle. 52. Robert B. Heilman contributed an introduction and bibliography to Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, A Tale of a Tub, and The Battle of the Books (New York: Random House, Modern Library College Edition, 1950), vii–xxx.

90

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

The Partisan Review escaped me. Much to my regret. I have simply too much to do. But the worst—that is, the analysis of Greek texts—is now over. In two days I am going to leave. From Galveston to Genoa. The preparations were rather exhausting—I had to make sure that the people whom I want to see are in the places where they are supposed to be when I come there. Lissy seems to have an excellent time in Vienna—in particular, with the opera. According to her latest account she is ogling a silver-fox which seems to cost only one-fourth of what it would cost here—or so she says. All good wishes for you and the family, Cordially yours,

30. December 1, 1950 Dear Robert: I have to apologize for having remained silent for so long. The cause is not negligence but a rather overwhelming amount of work—which is still increasing. But about that sad story a bit later. First, what interests you probably most, that is, the local situation. Bob Harris is very much occupied and excited because apparently three universities compete for his services. There seems to be a chance in Columbia (where he will teach summer-school); there is permanent interest in Illinois; and the prospects thicken in Connecticut—where, as far as I know, you have a hand. I am not quite clear yet, whether he seriously is after any of these chances, or whether he cultivates them rather with an eye to the bargaining pressure that they will give him here in LSU. Lissy, the perspicacious woman, insists that he really wants to stay here. Moreover, in February he is invited to give some lecture and seminars at Vanderbildt—but apparently there are no further intentions back of it. Only, he has to do a lot of work to prepare for the occasion. Besides he is a member of the library-building committee which absorbs a good deal of his time. On one occasion, I was called in to give my opinion on the desirability of a social science reading room in the new building; and on that occasion I learned from the mouth of [Harlan L.] McCracken that such a room was unnecessary because our students are not inclined to do research; and research is “when you read a book.” —Further excitement for Bob is provided by the drop in enrollment, and the prospects of a further drop, if the war situation 53. Harlan L. McCracken was professor of economics and head of the economics department.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

91

should worsen. The students, in fact, will probably be spread thinly next year, because the class of high-school students that fell out is reaching now the junior year. But beyond that critical point it does not look so bad. And if a war comes, then a lot more will be upset than just the enrollment. —A ticklish point in the department is Mr. [Andrew] Gyorgy[,] who has aroused Bob’s iron determination to get him out by the end of the next year when his contract expires. He has, indeed, committed more sins to embarrass Bob than anybody should commit—and besides he believes in the United Nations and corrupts students with his convictions—so I won’t cry when he departs. —For the rest, I am on the Library Committee this year, which gives me an opportunity to see some of my colleagues in the raw—it is a sorry lot, one cannot even work anger about the little shitters. And now about my predicament. The summer in Europe has taken three months of my time. This time certainly was not wasted but it has delayed the work on the big History. Moreover, in January I have to give the Walgreen Lectures in Chicago. They are supposed to be published, and so I write them now out for print. The topic is “Truth and Representation,” and more than two thirds is finished. That has occupied [me] since we are back, end of August, and it will take me through the Christmas vacation. It is hard work because it is my first systematic study on theoretical politics since my abortive attempts about 1930; and I want to make it as good as I can. Fortunately, as far as the problem is concerned, the thing works out much better than I had hoped for. I think I have been able to find the theoretical instruments for dealing with the problem of Western Civilization and its decline—that will be a basis for a later study on cycle theories. —With regard to the History I have got the Macmillan people at last around to publish the work in two volumes separately. The first volume, Antiquity and Middle Ages (about 1100 pages), will be finished by summer and go to print. The second volume, about the same size, will take a year more to finish. The trip to Europe, as I said, was not a waste. I undertook it primarily because I wanted to be sure that in my own work I was up to date before I embarked on publications of a systematic nature. Well, I found that I am up to date and in several respects a bit ahead of it. Nevertheless, the broad confirmation that so many other scholars are working along the same lines, was most valuable; 54. These lectures would become Voegelin’s The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952). Reprinted in the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 5, Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions; The New Science of Politics; and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, ed. Manfred Henningsen (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000).

92

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

and naturally I acquired information concerning whole ranges of problems which I myself had not worked through in sufficient detail, especially the problems of Gnosis and of certain Patres. —I arrived in Geneva and had a day there for seeing everything. At the end I had a lot of blisters but I had made even a two hours round of the medieval fortifications on the outskirts in the hills. The next day I was in Milan. The Cena of Leonardo was an overwhelming impression; it is by far not as damaged as people usually say—at least I could see enough to keep me busy for an hour. And then there was the Brera [Palace]—I was not prepared for it, and I was properly floored by a whole palace full of paintings of the Lombard schools; here I saw for the first time what a “province” in Italy really means—it is practically a nation by itself. —In Vienna I gave four lectures on “State and History.” It is difficult to be fair to the situation in Vienna. The university is a dump if compared with what it was in the 1920s. But when you come to think that there are [Otto] Brunner and [Friedrich] Heer (two of the best medieval authorities), [Albin] Lesky (a classical philologist), three or four eminent lawyers, half a dozen first rate art historians, and besides an Opera which is well on its way of [sic] becoming again the best in the world, the “dump” has its attractions after all. Nevertheless, I had not a moment’s desire to go back there; the more technical difficulties of living are so tremendous that the price would be too high. —Then we proceeded together to Salzburg, Innsbruck and Munich. In Innsbruck I saw a former colleague, a sociologist, who had been an ardent Nazi—he is reticent but still a Nazi—you gain the impression that nothing can be done—one must just wait until that generation dies out. —In Munich I saw Dempf, one of the finest philosophers at present. He confirmed an impression which I had formed already in Vienna—that all the good men are well in their forties if not fifties. There is nobody in his middle thirties who would have written an interesting book that justified the judgment that here a new authority is growing. The inroads of Hitlerism were apparently deeper than one would have assumed. Dempf himself is very much alive and pouring out the MS’s that had accumulated during the Hitler period. —Switzerland was the most fruitful. Two days in conversations with Karl Jaspers, Fritz Lieb, Edgar Salin and Karl Barth is probably an event that could not be duplicated in quality in any other city in the world. And in addition there were [Hans von Urs] Balthasar in Zurich and [Olof Alfred] Gigon in Bern. Balthasar should interest you (if only you could read German); his Apocalypse is really a new standard in historiography of literature. My chief interest was in his new Theology of History; I hope I can get Gurian to publish it 55. The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci, is in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

93

in English. —Between Bern and Paris we stopped over in Dijon—again a great surprise because we were unprepared. There is completely preserved the medieval capital of Burgundy; and we worked hard for two days to absorb at least the most important monuments, paintings, sculptures etc. —About Paris I shall say nothing; it is simply too much what all is going on there in philosophy etc. —I have brought a ton of books; and that will keep me busy for a while with digesting.

31. Baton Rouge, July 7, 1951 Dear Robert, It is a long while I have not heard from you except in roundabout ways and, of course, through the letters of Ruth to Lissy. There is just a break in work; and I can drop a line, along with the enclosed reprint. I thought it might interest you because it has some bearing on Renaissance literature. I am teaching summer-school this year because the revision work that I am doing now can be done best at home. Still, some new items have to be added. Just now it is the turn of Homer who hitherto did not have a chapter because I had not developed the methods for analyzing the very complicated psychology in which divine inspirations, predictions of fate, dreams, conferences among the gods, etc., function as the unconscious. But now I can do it—or at least I fondly believe I can. The wrath of Achilles is already dissected to its last corner; and the fascination of Helena (a juicy morsel) is practically cleared up. In the course of this work I have become a firm believer in the existence of Homer; somebody must have written these intricately constructed works; they cannot have grown like Topsy as German philologists still maintain. You have acquired [Harold] Stoke as graduate dean for Washington, so I understand. And I take it that you had a helping hand in bringing it about. With all good wishes to you and the family,

56. There is no further indication in this letter as to what article this refers. 57. This reference to “Topsy” alludes to chapter 20 of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly. In this chapter the young slave Topsy is being interrogated by her new mistress. Asked how old she is, Topsy answers: “Dun no, missus”; asked who her mother was,

94

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

32. Seattle, July 11, 1951 Dear Eric, Your last letter plus the Machiavelli offprint are strong reminders that I have owed you a letter for a long time. I will not give excuses; I think the ultimate one is that in writing to you I should prefer to have the illusion, at least, of having something intelligent to say, and that my present life makes the possession of any such illusion increasingly difficult; and gossip alone seems hardly to justify writing. But now I write, if only to show that I would rather engage in gossip than engage in nothing, as a means of not wholly losing contact with you. I have not read the Machiavelli, but I have read the Marx: with all that usual sense of enlightenment that comes from reading you—a virtually unique experience. One thing that kept coming to my mind in the course of reading was the apparent similarities between certain Marxian ideas and certain democratic habits of mind, or at least certain aspects of the American temper which appear inseparable from democratic thought (or from “crude democracy,” perhaps, if one can make the analogy). “. . . all life is social throughout, it has no dimension of solitude” (280). The description of the “total individual” or of “socialistic man” (293) sounds singularly like a description, at the theoretical level, of what is in practice the American “self-made man” (except that freedom from property is hardly a part of the philosophic deal). And the “desire for leveling” (295) describes what seems to be one of the most dangerous of our actual working principles. And I am really making a rather irrational association when I perceive an intellectual attachment between the Americanism suggested by she replies: “Never had none”; and asked where she was born, Topsy says: “Never was born!” Topsy sums up all her answers with the statement that “I spect I grow’d. Don’t think nobody ever made me.” By choosing to address the Homer question of philologists with this reference, Voegelin alludes to an important component in his developing literary theory, viz., that if one interrogates the Homeric texts like her mistress interrogated Topsy, one learns from the texts themselves that the Iliad and the Odyssey indeed do have a progenitor; that a concrete, historical human consciousness created them. This component of an inchoate literary theory prefigures and assumes the specifically articulated principles of literary criticism found in Letters 63 and 65 as well as pointing back to Voegelin’s theory of consciousness (articulated in 1943 but not published until the German edition of Anamnesis in 1966). 58. Voegelin, “Machiavelli’s Prince: Background and Formation,” Review of Politics 13 (1951): 142–68. For an enlarged treatment of Machiavelli from which this essay was drawn, see the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 22, History of Political Ideas: Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 4, ed. David L. Morse and William M. Thompson (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998). 59. Voegelin, “The Formation of the Marxian Revolutionary Idea,” Review of Politics 12 (1950): 275–302.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

95

such passages and the implications of this passage on p. 287: “Since contemporary evil has its origin in the relation between man and nature, it can be overcome only through bringing nature under control of man so that freedom beyond nature can unfold.” No, I guess it is not irrational to see “freedom by control of nature” as an essential American doctrine. When I said “irrational” I had rather in mind the fact that this sentence of yours seems really to define the basis of naturalistic tragedy, and that naturalistic tragedy seems to be the only conception of tragedy available to American liberal democrats. I am not sure whether this is theoretically necessary. As far as I can see, great complacency is inseparable from the professional liberal habit of mind; it lives in a melodrama in which evil is always elsewhere, and we good people are agin’ it; it is an easy jump, when one localizes evil elsewhere, to find it not only in bad people (reactionaries, priests, etc.) but in nature; man is then “good enough,” as [Albert J.] Guérard said in his book on Hardy; and evil is only a kind of bad luck—and maybe he can even beat the bad luck by controlling nature enough to eliminate chance. I suppose something like this must be implied in democracy: you can’t believe in demos unless you do believe it is “good enough”; and then your only way of dealing with evil is to put it in things—or else in a few naughty individuals (who I suppose for technical consistency must be regarded as non- or subhuman). . . . If this is nonsense, the fault is mine; but it is you who set it off. And I am grateful for the setting. We’re sorry that you’ve undertaken summer school, since we had thought you might repeat the Vienna trip of last year. That was a wonderful account of it that you wrote us last December. I have never had another letter which contained so compact an account of so much seen—persons, places, and things; and I hope the next time to have another such diary. Aside from the remarks about people, 60. Albert J. Guérard, Thomas Hardy (New York: New Directions Books, 1964). This was originally published by Harvard University Press in 1949. Heilman is surely referring to the following passage: “The portrait of Jude nevertheless remains impressive as a fully evoked life. And it is a portrait preeminently suited to illustrate Hardy’s last meaning, as a novelist, which in retrospect appears to have been this central one: that no human being, in his doomed pursuit of happiness, deserves less than is given; that things not men are to blame; that everybody is good enough. This sympathetic message and final consoling optimism, diffused as it is through a dozen novels and through the lives of unpretentious, kindly, and rebuffed people, no doubt provides one clue to Hardy’s lasting popularity. For the most popular novelists are also the most charitable ones, except in the very long run; they are those who see man more sinned against than sinning. The message is, as I am compelled to see it, a false one. One must take his stand with the darker moral pessimism of Conrad. But it is difficult to do so; the message, though false, is very nearly irresistible” (156–57).

96

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

etc., two general comments interested me especially: that all the really good people are 40 or over (a propos of the inroads of Hitlerism) and that the Hitler converts (a propos of the Nazi sociologist) are a generation that one must wait to die out because nothing can be done about it. One wonders what its influence will be before it dies out. [left:] (At this point: one hour lost discussing problems with a department member who tells me confidentially he is about to make off for Europe with a colleague’s wife, and what influence do I think it will have on his career here.) I am glad you have got Macmillan to go ahead on a two-volume basis, and I hope the first volume is now, as predicted in December, about ready to go. But since the first volume is to deal with antiquity, perhaps the chapter on Homer is an addition? If you publish that separately (in one of the classical journals? I laugh to think of their astonishment when they see the MS), may I have an offprint for my collection? Your method of analysis is very exciting. Though I have no reports on the Walgreen lectures, I know how well they must have gone off—excellently. Any nibbles from that direction? One reason I am content to have Bob Harris stay at LSU, as long as one of the other universities does not see what it can get in you, is to act curator of your interests (which I assume, and hope, he continues to do well). The first news of the new administration—and almost the only news of it—that came to us was that it had cast a very benevolent eye on the Department of Government. Well, that’s very much to the good. . . . To get back to Bob: I am sure Lissy is right that Bob does want to stay at LSU, I should imagine indefinitely. I had only a very slight hand in Stoke’s coming here. In the past the deanship of the graduate school has generally meant a role tantamount to what is in some places called “academic vice presidency”; for that role he looked considerably better than the line-up of good chemists, psychologists, economists, etc., that one interest or another was putting forward. If I ever get out of the summer hiring mess, and whether I do or not, Ruth and I are heading off over the mountains into the desert by a lake for a few weeks away from the scene of action. Ruth has taken steps to guarantee this: she sublet the house for the second half of summer school. Pete is now in his first week of a summer camp where he has a job for six weeks—a pleasant kind of occupation to which we hope he will take, since it offers a very nice arrangement for summer times. But there is no way of knowing whether he will; the smart young teen-agers from junior high become unexpectedly complicated creatures, and one is astonished to find how little one knows of the human being that one

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

97

has been living with all its life. Pete is big (just about two inches less tall than I now), strong as a horse, having a good time at school without doing very much there, very much disinclined to any kind of work (before going to camp he did have a paper route for a month, and also a number of yard jobs), often witty in a kid way, often inclined to go off into a murky mood which is quite impenetrable. One only hopes. Did Ruth ever write Lissy that we had met a man name Schmied (a psychiatric social worker) who either knew you or knew of you in Vienna? Last week in Los Angeles, also (where I was briefly helping Mr. Ford distribute largesse—a rather entertaining parenthetical employment), I met a Fred Brier who left Vienna in 1938 and now teaches economics at San Francisco U (SJ), and who knew considerable of you. He was also full of tales of poor Weixelgaertner, who I judge was the center of a European saga of which the details all intimate his subsequent maladjustment here. Some time before the summer is over I hope to get some serious work on Othello. I have a lot of notes on the language, which is very interesting, and which I think does some things with the idea of love that have not yet been pointed out. Beyond that I hope to work at some essays on structure of 19thcentury fiction: an interest[ing] recurrent problem there is the aspiration to, and constant failure of, tragedy. This time I will spare you paranoiac outbursts against my colleagues. I am at the moment in the happy mood of one to whom the existence of God has just been demonstrated by the elevation of our head-man in creative writing to a more splendid Hollywoodish opportunity at UCLA, a local boy yet that one wouldn’t have thought would ever leave. But this bliss is qualified by my first conferences with the remainder of the staff, who, as I might well have predicted, I find totally disposed to replace him by somebody safe and simple and of no threat to their own obscure destinies. In the second paragraph of this letter I was talking about leveling. For a long time almost no news of LSU. Were it not for Lissy, we would not yet know of Vera’s I-take-it-very-happy marriage. All our good wishes to both of you. I hope summer school doesn’t kill you, and that you manage a pleasant change afterwards. We will be back in our house August 18, and if we could tempt you to the madness of a quick plane flight (by “coach”; almost cheap), we would love to have a visit from you. Any chances? Sincerely,

98

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

33. Baton Rouge, August 1, 1951 Dear Robert: I am in a lull between storms, and I hasten to drop you a line in answer to your charming letter. The interruption in the middle, with the gentleman who wants to run off with a colleague’s wife, was delightful. That is real life! Don’t tell me your job is tedious. Your description of the growing Pete and his impenetrable moods I take to be a reference to what commonly is called puberty. It is an awkward age; and there is not much parents can do about it except preventing the running off on undesirable tangents; it’s one of the first things a boy has to go through alone. And if I remember rightly the impenetrable moods are the pockets in which the gold collects that later may be revealed surprisingly. Thanks for your remarks about the “Marx.” You have seen the parallels with certain American phenomena quite correctly. They exist indeed, and they have a common cause. The Walgreen Lectures will bring an ample exposition of the common origin of various modern attitudes in late medieval sectarianism. Concerning these Lectures, by the way, I have just received news. A pompous manager of the Chicago University Press wrote me a letter informing me that the MS had been elected to be published “under the imprint” of the press; and he expressed himself in a manner as if I were supposed to pat myself on the back for having achieved such honor among mortals. Funny people! I wonder whether I shall send some letters from friends who assure me that this will be the first item in the Walgreen series they are going to read. At the same time, they sent huge blanks to fill in. One of the delightful questions is: “When did the idea for the book occur to you?” Well, it occurred to me, like all my better ideas, while sitting in the bath-tub and smoking a cigar. I contemplate telling them the nauseating truth. The previously mentioned lull is due to two causes. First, the Homer is finished (about 60 pages). It will be a chapter in the History; that was one of the remaining two or three gaps that I still have to fill. It was delayed for so long, though it is one of the earlier chapters, because the technical difficulties of dealing with Homeric gods were considerable; but now all problems are “solved.” On that occasion, I hit on a detail that will interest you, that is, Homer’s very elaborate theory about “blindness” and “seeing.” This is probably the fountainhead for all later developments of the problem. And since there is no literature before Homer it is guaranteed to be the real beginning. Especially interesting is his absorption of actions committed in “blindness” into the responsibility of the personality through later “seeing” (the beginnings of something like a “con-

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

99

science”); and very astute observations that blindness is rarely quite blind, but that a little seeing is going on on the side, etc. You will be duly quoted in a footnote as the great authority on the subject with regard to Shakespeare. The second cause of the lull is the regrettable fact that I have developed a dysentery with temperature. For at least a week I have to slow down. Fortunately it is a harmless variety; nothing like poor Bob Harris’ amoebic specimen. As far as news is concerned, my journalistic education is so low that I am not quite sure what is news. Yet there is a regrettable item of possible interest to you. A gentleman of the English department, by the name of [Aldolphus] Bryan, died a few days ago (I did not know him; I only noticed the announcement in the Reveille). Caroline Durieux is on a sabbatical spree in Europe; we just had an ecstatic postcard from her, from Venice. Bob, as you assume, is really taking care of my interests in the most considerate manner. He lets me work without molesting me with committee work. And he just got a salary raise for me that will boost me by September to $7300. That is not the world, but not so very much worse than what other places have to offer. He did himself also quite well thanks to the offer from Connecticut which he declined. I believe we are now the highest paid professors in A&S, short of Deans. We have this summer in the department Frank Grace from Michigan; what he has to tell about that Harvard of the Middle West creates the impression that our modest swamp establishment might be preferable after all. Heberle who is in Michigan this summer also writes that he is glad he is not permanently nailed to that narrow-minded provincialism. What we shall do after summer school we do not know yet. A plane flight is hardly possible because, for various reasons, we are completely bankrupt until October. Tempting as your offer is, I am afraid we cannot follow the suggestion to come out to the west coast. I haven’t seen any of your work for a long while. When you are approximately through with your Othello, do you think you could let me have a carbon copy for a few days, just to delect myself? Just fortunately I remember a piece of news that happened today. I was member of a commission for a master’s exam in Journalism. Present were [Marcus M.] Wilkerson (as chairman), [Marvin G.] Osborn, [Vernon J.] Parenton and myself. Wilkerson let the candidate tell the contents of his thesis. Parenton 61. Caroline Durieux was a member of the fine arts department, Louisiana State University. 62. Marcus M. Wilkerson was professor of journalism and director of the LSU Press; Marvin G. Osborn was professor of journalism, Louisiana State University; Vernon J. Parenton was associate professor of sociology, Louisiana State University.

100

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

asked him quite solidly about propaganda questions with so-so results. Then it was Osborn’s turn. That fine old gentleman declared that he would not ask questions of the candidate, but he wanted to make a few observations. And then he embarked on a speech concerning his idea of how an editorial should be written. Then I did some quizzing, and the boy surprisingly knew a lot. Then he was passed. Result: he was passed in Journalism as a Master, with questions only asked by the two minor professors; whether he knows anything about his major field is a dark question. Well, I enjoyed the performance.

34. Baton Rouge, October 28, 1951 Dear Robert: Enclosed, there is another one of my misdeeds. Since it touches an important piece of English Renaissance literature, perhaps you will find some points of interest in it. The late summer was rather unpleasant for us. I have been ill for the last three months—a diverticulitis, with infections in neighboring regions. The thing is under control now, and I am back to work; but the healing process will take at least a year; and I am not permitted any physical exertions, like taking an extended walk, in the meantime. Work inevitably has suffered. Still, I just finished an article on Gnostic Politics, in German, that will be published in the Merkur. And I have done a lot of reading—seven comedies of Shakespeare (some of them unbearably poor), Dostoevsky’s Idiot (a careful re-reading in order to understand the intricacies of D’s Christianity), and a lot of literature on ancient Gnosis. There is not much news in LSU—except that we hope the new President will get the appropriations that were denied to his predecessor. In the department, however, we had quite a divertissement. One of our younger members, Ned Taylor, got married in late August, and appeared duly with his bride. Ten days 63. “More’s Utopia,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Öffentliches Recht, n.s., 3 (1951); reprinted in the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 10, Published Essays, 1940–1952, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), chap. 8. 64. “Gnostische Politik,” Merkur 6, no. 4 (1952); translated and reprinted in the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 10, Published Essays, 1940–1952, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), chap. 10. 65. Troy H. Middleton was appointed president of Louisiana State University in February 1951 when Harold Stoke was appointed graduate dean at the University of Washington.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

101

later said bride had left him in the direction of mother, for good. Legal proceedings have begun. The bride was one of our former graduate students, a sulky, hefty girl, who never opened her mouth when I had her in class. I got acquainted with her more closely on an evening when the graduate students had invited the department for a party, which consisted in the consumption of liquor in a low-class dive. The lady in question loaded up heavily on the free beverage, and was unsteady when we left; later, we learned she collapsed and had to be brought home unconsciously. It’s interesting, in a way, as a study of mores. In February, it seems, I shall deliver a couple of lectures in Johns Hopkins and St. John’s College. And possibilities arise on the horizon for a free trip to Europe next summer. We hope that all is well with you, and that you had a pleasant vacation. Cordially yours,

35. Seattle, February 6, 1952 Dear Eric, The More offprint which came from you in November I read on the train going to Detroit in late December, and now in February I write to acknowledge the letter and the offprint. I hope you will keep me on your mailing list, however slow I am in making apparent that I am still at the other end of the line, and happy to receive. Reading you on the Utopia I not only am made to see the work in context, as always, but to see clearly that [sic] implications that, if I know the work, I feel that [sic] I have been fumbling for but not pinned down. It comes as a shock—the kind that makes one say, “Why didn’t I see that before?” (except that, alas, one knows the answer to that one)—and yet with great inevitability that More is a predecessor of the modern habit of substituting the social ideal for the realm of the spirit. And then aside from the main point all those shrewd hard observations which help work up the whole—such as some of the epigrams on superbia (does it, by the way, literally translate hubris?), the wonderful little passage on those of the “Pelagian persuasion” (p. 464) which so well describes the liberals, and the insight of the second paragraph on 456. Always these connections are made. As a slight return I include an Othello essay, one of several which I hope may add up to a study. 66. Probably Heilman, “More Fair Than Black: Light and Dark in Othello,” Essays in Criticism, 1 (1951): 315–35.

102

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

I keep toying with ways of getting around the positivist boys that the world seems largely made up of. I wonder what one could do with a concept which one might label, somewhat grandiosely, the “higher pragmatism” or “transcendental pragmatism,” in which one identifies truth not by what is clinically demonstrable but by what seems to be required by the nature of the human animal, by what “works” for him, so to speak. What appears to work—and what he seems absolutely to need in order to work at any other than a mechanistic level—is what is comprised in the whole realm of belief, of the undemonstrable; ironically, he seems bent on insisting on demonstration, and yet seems quite unable to live on it. The trouble with this, I acknowledge, is that it is so susceptible of vulgarization, so that any idiotic credo (e.g., “I believe that Kansas City is the finest city in the world”) can be comprehended. But I should argue that the problem is not, as it seems today, to distinguish the demonstrable from the un-demonstrable and then kick out the latter, but to distinguish qualities of beliefs, i.e., between those which are constricting and even destructive, and those which are enlarging, civilizing, and spiritualizing (the last word makes one feel a little apologetic, but I hope my use won’t be taken in the wrong sense). In this connection I keep recalling your quotation—with approval, if I remember aright—of someone to the effect that, “There are no gods, but it is essential to believe in them.” That is, that that kind of belief is the kind that is most likely to evoke the capacity for acting as spirit. I toy with an amplification: that man can invent sciences, logics, and other modes of knowledge or being—such as gods, and that the test of him is the quality of the inventing [left:] process, and not the laboratory-testability of the invented. Does this sort of approach make sense? Or is it trite or untenable? In our field there is presently a frightful uproar against the new critics. (I object to the name but use it as a convenience.) All the entrenched scholars, most of whom have never had a serious literary idea in their lives, are defending the probity and essentiality of their works, denouncing the arid intellectuality of formalist criticism, etc. All this is depressing. But then the profession is depressing generally. I am more and more convinced that American faculties generally are more concerned with protecting themselves than with anything else in the world, and since they operate largely by “democratic” procedures, the definitions employed naturally tend as far as possible to make life comfortable for mediocrities. If they had half the passion for professional excellence as they have for righting wrongs or pseudo-wrongs or imagined wrongs, there would be—well, maybe there’d be more excellence.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

103

the passion for being good takes more genes than the passion for doing good. You are now, I guess, lecturing at Hopkins and St. John’s. The subjects you did not state. Parts of the book? I rather hope the Idiot section will be published separately so that I can hope for a private copy. (Speaking of mediocrity: I found half my colleagues greeting with enthusiasm a recent article, a pretty vulgar one I thought, in College English in which somebody at Illinois was attacking the James vogue, really James that is, because James isn’t vigorous enough and doesn’t deal with real problems and people don’t talk like that, etc. It was the literary view of someone brought up on Cooper and comics. One man who is often rather sharp in his judgments attacked Turn of the Screw as a “dull,” “put-up” job. Godamighty.) Next week I go to San Francisco to take part in a “panel” on how the humanities may utilize television. Everyone has this incredibly naïve expectation that the technical completion of a new medium of “communication” is in some way going to be a great intellectual horizon extender or bender, and all we gotta do is show ’em how. My own contribution is on what might be said about literature; nearly all of my paper is what should not be said about literature. Ruth’s mother is now with us for a while. Pete is taking to Latin pretty well, though idleness is his favorite field. Some weeks ago I pushed over our old Pisatower garage with an impressive whummppff, and a graduate student who is pretty good with a hammer and saw has replaced it with a carport at the suburban beauty of which we wonder daily. We have lapsed into a life almost without a social dimension. Have occasionally seen something of the Stokes and have found them very interesting. Have been reading Conrad pretty completely with an honors student; he has a great range, from a kind of almost one-dimensional adventure—though nearly always with a detached method of narration that alters one from participant to spectator—to a thoroughly good sense of the complexities of motivation. Have you ever looked at Under Western Eyes, one of his rare comments on the political personality? (It goes rather interestingly with James’s Princess Cassamassima, a very interesting book on which I also hope to hear you hold forth.) I hope the trip to Europe materializes. And from both of you we hope to hear 67. Voegelin lectured on “Political Gnosis” and “The Discovery of the Soul—in Ancient and Modern Philosophy” February 13–14, 1952, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and on “The Wrath of Achilles” and “The Nature of Modernity,” February 15 and 17, 1952, at St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland. 68. Arthur L. Scott, “A Protest against the James Vogue,” College English 13 (1952): 194–201.

104

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

some account, primarily of yourselves, and after that of the world of gossip on which you always comment with such careless incisiveness. Sincerely,

36. Baton Rouge, February 25, 1952 Dear Robert: That was a pleasure to have your long letter as well as the fine study on Othello. I very much hope that others will follow soon and that you will let me have them. If I understand your essay correctly, you use the same method as in the Lear study and with the same effectiveness for elucidating the connection between content and poetical form, especially the pattern of metaphors. It was a sheer pleasure to read it and, of course, I checked a bit in Othello; and everything clicked as it might be expected in a study coming from you. There is no criticism I have to offer with regard to the substantive core of the study—here I can only learn ‘-’- [sic]; if I may suggest a point, it concerns the fringes rather of your presentation. I am a little disturbed by a detail which, if I remember rightly, I also mentioned on occasion of the Lear: You are very apologetic about doing the right thing, and you defend yourself for treating a poem as a poem, apparently against people who never hit on that bright idea. This defensive attitude, in my opinion, detracts from the quality of the analysis itself; its brilliance inevitably will be sprayed a bit by the dirt to which you give so much space. To be sure, you have to justify every word you say but: before the throne of Shakespeare, not before the bank on which are mounted the more obtuse of your colleagues. I am taking the liberty of pointing out this detail, because I have suffered from the same desire of polemical justification for years, and I think I can understand the genuine humility (and not perhaps only political caution) behind this attitude. But, with the years, one must get accustomed to one’s own qualities and assume the authority one actually has; remember Goethe’s dictum: “only the rascals are modest.” Your idea of a “transcendental pragmatism” is most intriguing. If I have understood what you are after, it is neither trite nor untenable, but a somewhat 69. Walter H. C. Laves was a member of the Mutual Security Agency.

Delightful Acquisition, 1944–1952

105

Americanized version of the classic tradition. When you speak of “the nature of the human animal” you probably mean simply the Aristotelian “nature of man.” And when you consider what is “required” by this nature, or what will “work” for it, you probably mean the “actualization of the potentialities” contained in this nature. And when you speak of “beliefs which are enlarging, civilizing and spiritualizing” you probably mean the symbols in which is expressed the actual life of the spirit, the bios theoretikos. And by “undemonstrable” you probably mean the transcendental term in the experiences of transcendence; what succinctly is formulated in Hebrews 11:1 as: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the proof of things unseen. The “things unseen” is already the Solonic and Heraclitean word for what just now I called the transcendental term of the experience (of faith, hope, love, etc.). And the “indemonstrability” of the propositions with regard to that term is probably the Thomistic analogia entis. In the “capacity for acting as spirit,” finally, I believe to recognize nothing less than the Aristotelian dianoetic virtues (among them: science). All these are strictly problems of ontology, and more especially of philosophical anthropology; to call them a “higher pragmatism” certainly is not inapposite; but I should hate to make even a terminological concession to the enemy. Locally we are making an experiment that you would enjoy. The Dean [Cecil G. Taylor] has organized, with the assistance of two younger men, a Colloquium on Humanities. Every two weeks a group of fifteen students meets with two faculty members and the organizers of the show to discuss some great books, as for instance Machiavelli, Locke, Mill, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, St. Augustine, etc. It is a small scale imitation of greater experiments that you know well. On our smaller scale, however, there comes more clearly into view the essence of the situation: The A&S College does not give the liberal education which it is supposed to give, for the good reason that the faculty is not too liberally educated itself. Hence, [the] next step, a special enterprise is made to supply this education at least in homeopathic form. And this diluted dose is to be administered by the same faculty which cannot administer it in the ordinary course of their activity. This situation became painfully obvious when the choice of personnel had to be made. The Dean agrees now, in private, that the best result of the enterprise will be that at least some of the faculty members will be compelled to read the books which they are supposed to discuss with the students. Under this aspect, perhaps, the effort is not entirely wasted. The difficulty became rather clear to me recently when I delivered two lectures 70. Cecil G. Taylor was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Louisiana State University.

106

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

at St. John’s College. They selected from various titles offered the one on “The Wrath of Achilles.” That impressed me deeply, considering that you probably could not find many colleges in the country who would make that selection. I was somewhat less impressed when I found that Dean Jacob Klein, who made the selection, is a Russian Jew who received his philosophical education at Marburg. Still, the College is a miracle; and the students participated in masses in a long discussion showing that they had their Homer at the fingertips. Nevertheless, the earthy touch was not quite missing. I had explained the parallel in the construction between the wrath of Achilles and the eros of Helen. And when we walked out, I heard a bass voice in the background: Why didn’t we talk about love and Helen all the time? Incidentally, the wife of the aforementioned Dean Klein is the former wife of a professor in Kiel and knows the Heberles quite well. We established that soon at dinner; and she said, full of sweet remembrance: “he is so very charming, and so very boring.” I have received an offer of a professorship in Munich, in the Philosophical Faculty. It would be a dream of a position—unless the Russians were [not] so near. That is quite an excitement at the moment. But I doubt that I can accept it, even if [I] were more inclined than I am, considering that Lissy is in open rebellion and insists that an American woman would never demean herself by leaving the wonderful home country and go[ing] among the barbarians.

 W I T H A H U M B L E R E QU E S T Letters 37–57, 1952–1955

 37. [Baton Rouge,] May 3, 1952 Dear Robert: I am coming with a humble request today. Enclosed you will find the MS of the first chapter of the History of Political Ideas, which [is] supposed to develop the principles of interpretation for the whole subsequent study. The chapter, thus, has a certain importance, both as the first one and as the statement of principles. Hence, I should like to have it written as well as my inevitable shortcomings will allow. I wonder whether you would read it (it has only thirteen pages), and while reading it mark on the margin any awkwardness that still will need ironing out. Of course, I know that you are busy and that my request smacks of impertinence; and I shall not be surprised if you tell me flatly that you just don’t have the time for it. Nevertheless, you will see that this is not the sort of thing that I could give to just anybody for correction; and you are simply my last resort. There is still some unrest with us because the Munich affair is not yet settled. It is a very interesting position they offer me. And in addition I have now received a similar offer from Freiburg. I want to drag these offers out for two years, if I can, in order to see whether the book on the New Science of Politics that comes out in September will have any effect in this country. If not, I shall perhaps better go where people go to the extreme of promising to build a house for me, just to get me there. Meanwhile, I have received at this great university a somewhat quaint honor: I was elected to membership in the famous order of O.D.K. I was flabbergasted when the students came to tell me, because I had assumed that was only for “leaders” like Dean Frey or [Arden O.] French; and since I am neither french nor fried, how did I come by it? The puzzle was solved when I learned that in 1. See note 11 of the introduction to this book. 2. Omicron Delta Kappa. The LSU yearbook, Gumbo, for 1948 identifies Omicron Delta Kappa as a national honorary leadership fraternity that “recognizes men who attain a high degree of efficiency in collegiate activities on both the faculty and student level” (330). 3. Arden O. French was Dean of Men, Louisiana State University.

107

108

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

the noble fraternity a revolt had occurred, the students of Sigma Chi insisting on my election, while the faculty did not like at all the idea of an outsider like myself joining the charmed circle. Well, now I am an accredited Führer. I just have read T. S. Eliot’s Sacred Wood. Though these brief essays at many points rather touch the problems than penetrate them, I was greatly impressed by the astute observation and characterization in such instances as Blake or Swinburne. Dante seems to have been a bit too much for him. But there are a few remarks about Aristotle which prove that Eliot has a better understanding of his method of philosophizing than almost all professional philosophers who have expatiated on the question. With all good wishes for you and your family, Cordially yours,

38. Seattle, May 13, 1952 Dear Eric, That you ask me to read the MS is of course only an honor. I am a little slow because we have a little rush of business of ejecting our own PhD’s and injecting others to keep the shop going, and because I put in a couple of days in bed with flu (the first of the winter; lucky). You know how much I relish getting each piece of the opus that comes along. Once again this time the usual experience, within my own limits, of feeling let in on a complete new world, of having it organized, of seeing some of the time how it can be used, and of having here and there the excitement of finding a correspondence—so it seems—to some little idea of my own. The last page, on the “compromise with the conditions of existence,” as it develops from early Plato to late Plato, seemed to describe exactly the development, which I have been fumbling about for an account of, in Eliot from Family Reunion to Cocktail Party. In the former, if I read him correctly, he appears to allow validity only to spirit (being?) and gives world (existence?) a hearty kick in the pants. In the latter he suddenly feels remorseful about what he has done to the world, dramatized as family, in the Reunion; so he goes back to the family again, rehabilitates it even with all its imperfections, and says in effect it has its own kind of claim and justification. Or in the literary terms which I find useful, he is putting the comic and tragic side by side with equal claims to tolerance. Well, sometime you will tell me whether this is an unseemliness of symbolization. As for reading the MS, that I have done with tireless literalness, putting down—and often at what length!—every measly little question or uncertainty

With a Humble Request, 1952–1955

109

or ignorance or stupidity that came to me, on the theory that the business here was to try to be helpful, and that it was better to risk being a bonehead and raise the issues than to look brighter, perhaps, and let them go unraised. You will have to labor through my notes, of course, but it won’t take you very long to decide whether they are idiotic or really have [a] point. I am selfish enough to hope that a few of them do have a point, but realistic enough not to have too many illusions about it. I decided that you know me well enough so that in asking me to read the MS you knew precisely how much risk you took of getting a wellmeaning incomprehension that would have to be taken as the bale of chaff amid the few grains of positive assistance. One thing I realized was that a sense of style is not only a function of personality but a symbol of an intellectual So when one says “Do it this way instead of that way” one is, except in the most minor matters, actually trying to impose a different set of intellectual habits upon a verbal system, and that if this is carried far enough it is in effect trying to sneak a conversion in the back door. This is very bad manners. The only possible justification for it is the expedient one—and the correctee would have to accept the expediency—that the intellectual-verbal habits of the corrector are nearer than those of the correctee to the general audience at which the correctee aims, and that by some concessions the correctee might gain auditors and even converts more readily. But even though he may formally think that, the corrector feels that most of his proposals can fail of presumption only thru the good nature of the correctee. It is fine to have the magnets tuned up at both Munich and Freiburg, but I do hope you can stretch it for two years to see what comes up here, if anything. I don’t feel any too hopeful about it, but I’ll at least hope to be wrong. You know the climate better than I. I’m afraid that climate is best represented in the PhD thesis of the man who is by everybody’s consent our best graduate student in years: he proves that James’s novels are in the main modeled on his brother’s pragmatism, that James was a true “liberal,” that his attitude was “scientific,” and that fortunately for him he was always against all those naughty words absolute, idea, ideal, concept, authority (to this kind of mind all these words mean about the same thing), and he realized that truth was in passion and flux, etc., etc. Reading all of this worked me up into a futile lather which led me to write the writer a reasonably long letter, which led him to give me a brief and obviously ironic thank-you in the corridor; for by his directors, who regard this work as one of our most brilliant dissertations, he had been told that I was a harmless “reactionary” who needn’t be taken seriously as long as I would show no disposition not to help him get a job. I will not open my mouth again. It is no use making naughty faces at the climate.

110

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

I would like to have a movie of you attending an ODK meeting, with the french fries as you so beautifully describe them. Do not put too much salt on them. I repeat, stay here as long as you can. But I’m not sure that I can think up any better argument for it than the wonderful anticlimax that while you’re here we hear from you now and then, and then we see a little light. From both of us, best wishes to Lissy and you. Sincerely,

39. May 22, 1952 Dear Robert: Your kindness has caused me considerable pangs of conscience. Such attention to detail must have cost you much more time than I had anticipated it would. I feel deeply in debt to you, and especially because the explanations attached to your corrections are a course in style that will be of value far beyond the crimes I committed in this section of the MS. For an appreciable part of my mistakes are “typical,” that is to say, I make them repeatedly; and your bringing them to my attention will help me to correct other sections. Unless I were already hardened, and resigned to the fate that I never shall write decent English, the survey of the battlefield would be an excellent reason to commit hara kiri. As to the detail, most of your corrections were so thoroughly justified that I could do nothing but transferring [sic] them to my clean copy of the MS while biting my nails that I still do not know which prepositions to use after certain verbs. There were, however, a few emendations which I hesitated to accept, and I should like to explain one [or] two of the hesitations—partly in order to justify my rebellious conduct, partly because the illumination which I received from your correction might also be of interest to you. For, even though I did not accept the emendation, it stirred up extremely interesting problems in a philosophy of language. Let me give you an example: “This horror induced Plato . . . to make the true order of society dependent on the rule of men whose proper attunement to divine being manifests itself in their true theology.”

You suggest to change the end of the sentence to: “. . . in their possessing (or mastering) the true theology.” I did not follow your suggestion, though I am fully

With a Humble Request, 1952–1955

111

aware that it would bring a substantial improvement in style, for the following reason: In the history of philosophy, from Plato to Schelling, there rages the great debate on the question: who possesses whom? Does man possess a theology or does a theology possess man? The issue was most strikingly brought into focus when Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum provoked [Franz Xavier von] Baader’s counter-formula Cogitor ergo sum. The immanentist “I think” as the source of self-assertive being is countered by the transcendentalist “I am thought” (by God) as the source of dependent being. If I insert the verb possess into the passage in question I prejudge a theoretical issue that is a major topic in the work— and besides I would prejudge it in the wrong direction. The only permissible solution would be [a] cumbersome dialectical formula (“possess, while being possessed by” or something of the sort) that would divert attention from the main purpose of the sentence. So I left it, though with regrets. One more example, of somewhat different complexion: “In existence we act our role in the greater play of the divine being that enters passing existence in order to redeem precarious being for eternity.”

You remark: [“]accidentally misleading, since ‘divine being’ so often[=]God![”] Again, I left the sentence as it is. In this case, the suggestion of “God” by means of “divine being” is deliberate. The sentence is supposed to express in metaphysical language the mystery of Incarnation. Later, in the sections on Christianity, this sentence will serve in the unraveling of the symbolism of the God who becomes man. One of the philosophical purposes of the whole study is the demonstration of the metaphysical rationality of classic and Christian symbols; and the dependence of the maximum of rationality on mysticism (in the most strict, religious sense) is a thesis that will serve in explaining the social victory of Christianity over rival pagan mysteries in the Roman Empire, as well as in explaining the irrationality of modern, secularist thinking. There are altogether three or four instances of this kind. They cause me considerable sorrow because obviously they originate in a conflict between literary conventions and philosophical language. And in this conflict quite frequently I do not know which side to take. In German, naturally, I know what I can do and what not; but what the traffic will bear in English by way of adapting the linguistic instrument (which is basically created to express relations of the external world) to the intricacies of the dialectics of being, still escapes me. I am afraid I shall never find a way out of this mess. The Munich pot is boiling higher. They want me to come this fall for a visitingprofessorship and to make up my mind on the spot (that is in Munich) whether I want to go on with the job or not. After the visiting year, I could come back

112

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

here for a year in order to wind up my affairs, and then I should take the position for good. Fortunately the good people do not have the money to pay for the expenses for traveling, my obligations for maintaining the house here, etc., which amount to about $4000. The next move will be to get a foundation to pay this amount. We’ll see. Lissy would like the year in Europe—with the understanding that, of course, we won’t take the job permanently. These women. Let me thank you again for this conscientious piece of helping work. I wish I could do something in return—if ever, I hope you will let me know.

40. Seattle, October 14, 1952 Dear Eric, Today’s mail brought from Chicago a copy of The New Science of Politics “With the Compliments of the Author.” The author is both very complimentary and very generous, and I am pleased to have a copy of the book. I have read the foreword and the last page, wondering, as soon as my eye caught the words “American and English democracies,” what sort of envoi you had hit upon. Obviously it depends on what has gone before, in terms of which, I take it, the immediate tact is joined to a warning clear enough to all who will read. The complimented-and-subscribed will read what goes in between with his usual care, and as usual with profit to the limit of his abilities. Thank you very much for including him on the list of honorees. And if I may say so, I hope that some of the other honorees are properly moved, so that the politics of the world of political scientists may take a turn for the better. Which reminds me that at a meeting at Mills College, California—a symposium on “Reason and Values” (which sounded to me in many of its details like the annual meeting of the Village Society for the Propagation of Atheism)—I met a Viennese woman who knew something of you and perhaps knew you personally. She is now Else or Ilse Brunswick; she told me her maiden name, but at the moment it has completely slipped my memory. She took her doctorate aged 21, I would judge about 20 years ago; she was in philosophy and was strongly under [the] influence of the then leader of logical positivism at Vienna. As she put it, “I was in his circle.” She is of medium height, plump, not pretty, roundfaced, genial, obviously a person of cultivation, has a very heavy accent but ex-

With a Humble Request, 1952–1955

113

cellent vocabulary and on the whole great competence of expression. She regarded you as one of the three Viennese intellectuals of her day who would “achieve great recognition” in America. But it is clear that her respect for your erudition and intellectual quality are tempered with [a] certain suspicion, not very explicitly put, that in the realm of ideas you have unfortunate and dubious predilections. I suppose the American term “fellow traveler of the Catholic church” would somewhat express the sort of thing implied by her shoulder-and-eyebrow hesitancies. To philosophy she eventually added psychology as a field, went into psychoanalysis, and is now engaged in either analysis or a sort of advisory psychiatry among students at the U of California at Berkeley. Her husband is in the Department of Psychology there—Egon Brunswick, I believe. From a luncheon conversation I gathered that she is a somewhat mixed relativist, that although she is inclined to regard value judgments as having only a preferential status, there are certain permanent human truths and choices that have universal validity. A week or two later came to town one Bobek, also from Vienna, and of Vienna now. He is professionally a geographer and personally—in Ruth’s and my unsupported and I fear unevidenced impression—a phony. You may know of him, and if you do, you will know whether this evaluation is unjust. And I think we mentioned earlier meeting the Schmiedls. So much for newsy notes on ex-Viennese. In the interstices between earning a living I work on Othello; I printed another section in the Virginia Quarterly, out this fall. No reprints, I regret. Whether anything good will come of the Othello work I don’t know, but I keep moving ahead on the conviction that I’ve seen some things not yet pointed out. I shudder at venturing again into the fire of the professional Shakespearians (The Committee on Un-Elizabethan Activities, as one of my colleagues has put it). Incidentally, the Lear book has just evoked eight pages of abuse from one Wolfgang Clemen in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch. The presidential campaign seems to us to be even lower than usual, and I feel as though some of your predictions are on the verge of coming true much too soon. I am probably incorrect in this, or in my recollection, but it seems now to be politically adequate simply to scream “Communist” at the opposition, as it was in Germany 20 years ago. I would not be surprised if one of these days we had a fire in the White House, traceable, though never traced, to McCarthy. 4. Heilman, “Dr. Iago and His Potions,” Virginia Quarterly Review 38 (1952): 568–84. 5. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R), Wisconsin. The 1952 presidential election was being contested by Dwight D. Eisenhower for the Republican Party and Adlai E. Stevenson for the Democratic Party.

114

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

Will you say hello to Bob Harris for me? Ruth and I send all best wishes to Lissie and you. Sincerely,



41. Baton Rouge, October 21, 1952 Dear Bob: That was the first profit I had from the book: the rare joy of a letter from you. But with regret I notice that your administrative chores seem to be rather burdensome, and sometimes even distressing. It must be exasperating indeed to haggle with assorted hicks about who is a communist and who not. About [Kenneth] Burke I know nothing—I have only a dim memory of having once run into his name in connection with the Southern Review? Speaking of communists: the last New York Times Book Magazine [sic] brings a letter from Paris with details about the existentialist fight that has broken out 6. President Henry Schmitz, University of Washington, withdrew the appointment of Kenneth Burke as Walker-Ames Professor of English prior to the August 16, 1952, Board of Regents meeting. This action was provoked by communications to the president that Burke had belonged to certain groups alleged to be fronts for the Communist Party and/or had published in certain leftist periodicals. The documents relevant to this case may be found in the Heilman Papers, accession 1000–7–71–16, box 11, folder 7 in the Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives of the University of Washington Libraries. The minutes of the University of Washington Board of Regents include no record of Heilman ever appearing before it, even though in this postscript Heilman seems to say that he appeared twice before the Board. Newspaper accounts may be found in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 10, 1952, pp. 1 and 6 (“U. Withdraws Lecture Bid to Noted Critic: Fear of Burke’s ‘Fringe’ Association Is Told” and “Burke Tells of Events Leading to Ban as U.W. Lecturer”), and November 14, 1952, p. 6 (“Burke Letter to Be Private: Schmitz Won’t Disclose Content to Faculty”). See also Heilman, “Burke as Political Threat: A Chronicle of the 1950s” (Horns of Plenty: Malcolm Cowley and His Generation, 2, no. 1 [spring 1989]: 19–26); and Heilman, “Cowley as University Professor: Episodes in a Societal Neurosis” (Horns of Plenty: Malcolm Cowley and His Generation, 1, no. 3 [fall 1988]: 12–25).

With a Humble Request, 1952–1955

115

since Sartre confessed himself a communist. First he made his confession, in the course of which he characterized himself as a “slimy rat”; then he answered some disrespectful remarks of Camus concerning his conversion with a vituperative article on the latter; and the Figaro did not hesitate to pick up the affair and had with joy on its front page an article under the giant headline “The slimy rat.” Thus a quip of Camus, several years ago, proved to be an astute diagnosis; Camus said at the time: “When the Communists come to power, Sartre will be one of them, and I shall go to jail.” I myself wondered all the time where that sort of atheistic existentialism would end; for the attitude of “engagement” without being concretely engaged could not be maintained forever. To my pleasure it ended where according to my analysis of Gnosis it should end. The Sartre case is one more illuminating item in the breakdown of intellectualism. Your information about Else Fraenkel-Brunswick was delightful. I cannot say that I knew her well in Vienna; but we were once on a panel together, each delivering a speech—I have forgotten on what. The “circle” to which she refers is the Schlick-Kreis, a group of theorists who admired the [Moritz] Schlick type of positivism and forgathered at Seminars with him. [Rudolf ] Carnap also was a member of the group. When she describes me as a sort of “Catholic fellow traveler” that is about as close to the truth as her, in such matters, somewhat limited intellectual capacities might be expected to come. Schlick, by the way, was murdered by a mentally deranged individual (a real Catholic, not a fellow traveler) because in the opinion of said individual Schlick was a nefarious influence and besides had detracted the affections of his girl to himself (that is, to Schlick). How much of the story was true nobody knows; certain is only that a man must be deranged, if he thinks that the problems presented by the existence of a Schlick can be solved by murder. —The name of Bobek I have never heard. We are still in a state of mild unrest because the Munich affair is not yet quite over. I have declined the directorship at the America Institute in Munich because it is in such a mess that the Rockefeller Foundation has not yet made up its mind whether it will continue support beginning with the next summer. For the present academic year they stopped the subvention. But the mess is indeed so great that the State Department thinks of sending me over there next spring for a few months in order to straighten things out if possible, for they seem to be interested in getting the thing going. Hence, we are now in some insecurity concerning 7. Patricia Blake, “A Literary Letter from Paris,” New York Times Book Review, October 19, 1952, 40. 8. Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap were members of a group of positivists known as the Vienna Circle.

116

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

what will happen by February. At present a man of the Rockefeller Foundation is over there in order to see whether they will resume their support if other conditions are fulfilled. If that report is positive, then I shall perhaps go into action. Don’t take the adverse responses to your Lear too seriously. Consider yourself a martyr for the truth. Just think of what the positivists will do to me in the near future, unless they consider me beneath contempt. With all good wishes, Yours sincerely,

42. Seattle, March 12, 1953 Dear Eric, I not only owe you more of a letter than this will be, I want to write it. I will not go into explanations about why I am not writing it now; I will leave that dull tale to powers of inference which need not themselves be very acute. This is an interim greeting, then, and there’s a specific occasion for it, as always. Two–three weeks ago my colleague in comparative literature told me he had just learned one Herbert Steiner was coming to the coast (from Pennsylvania State College, where he teaches regularly) to spend a quarter at Berkeley and would be available for a lecture here. Would I go into action? So I go into action, and after all the usual redtape, mucking around, and administrative obstinacy, we get Steiner, and today he arrives in town, and eventually comes into the office here, and we chat, four of us. Somehow the name of Voegelin comes up, and Steiner promptly bounces in with, “Do you know him?” I claim him with customary avidity. Steiner wants to know where he is. I divulge the address. Steiner says, “I have a MS of his I want to return.” And on he goes into this tale of receiving from you, in Zurich in 1939, a MS of a German translation of a ballet by Valéry, meant for Corona, and that after that you promptly disappear in the wilds of America. [Left:] Only today—as he has it—and in this office are you returned, by my willing hand, into a civilization which Steiner inhabits, and in which he proposes to return a MS held 14 years. He says he never loses a MS, that he has a suitcaseful of same, that he knows just where yours is, and that when he returns to Penn State in June he will mail it to you. The real reason why Jackson Mathews wanted Steiner here is that Steiner apparently knew Valéry well: Mathews seems to have corralled the editorship of the Valéry papers, letters, etc., and is making a life work of it.

With a Humble Request, 1952–1955

117

How did the name of Voegelin come into the conversation? Thru a remark by Mathews, who had often heard me mention you, to the effect that your Chicago book has been treated at great length in the last Time. I haven’t seen it yet but will get a copy. The Nation review was virtually friendly, compared with what I had been led, by your anticipatory comment on the liberals, to expect. I do hope that Lissy is not having too much trouble disciplining you into taking care of yourself. The account of your last reconstructive experience in New Orleans is fantastic. May the fantasy, and the follow-up which I suppose will be equally fantastic, be reduced, eventually, to the pleasant fact of good health. Now I go shopping for Ruth, who has a birthday today. She’s been a little “puny” this year, but some minor surgery may have had a pretty good effect on what the imperishable ads call “female troubles.” Our best to both of you,

Over for another “small world” note. [Typed on back of page:] At dinner at a physicist’s several weeks ago we met the guest of honor, one [Victor Friedrich] Weisskopf, concerning whom it soon gets around that he is Viennese. So I dash up with my lead, and it pays off. Yes he does know Voegelin and recalls that Voegelin had visited at their home in Vienna. He himself does not claim a personal acquaintance but says that a brother, once a lawyer, now a teacher at Roosevelt College in Chicago, knows you well and admires you. (If he didn’t, I would challenge the brother, of course.)

43. March 30, 1953 Dear Robert, Thanks for the pleasure of your letter. I am just out of the hospital and practically of one piece again. In the last four weeks the obnoxious piece of colon was removed, the hole in the bladder was sewn up, and the colostomy was closed and sewn up. The doctors swear that I am as good as new. Let’s hope that at least the technical line of our civilization is working. But it will take at least a month until the various wounds have healed completely and the corresponding discomforts have disappeared. At present I have the feeling that the skin over the abdomen is too short for my length. 9. “Journalism and Joachim’s Children,” Time Magazine 61 (1953): 57–61; Hans Kohn, review of The New Science of Politics, by Eric Voegelin, The Nation 176 (January 17, 1953): 57.

118

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

That is a lot of coincidence that a whole batch of former Viennese show up in Seattle. I know Steiner quite well; and I knew that he was in America, but not exactly where. The translation of Valéry’s Semiramis I did in the spring of 1938, after I was fired by the Nazis, and had to twiddle my thumbs until the emigration was prepared. It was an unforgettable period. I saw Steiner in Zurich in June 1938; but he did not care about the Semiramis because, after all, it is one of Valéry’s minor works. But Steiner need not worry about the MS; I have saved a copy. —Weisskopf, the physicist[,] I do not remember ever having met; but his brother, the lawyer, was a good friend, and still is. Unfortunately his position in Roosevelt College is precarious and unsatisfactory. He is principally a psychologist and economist now. The article in Time was quite a surprise. The general malaise must be profounder than I thought it is, or nobody would pay attention to the book. I appreciate the splurge because of its nuisance value; all the fakes in the profession who never would read a work of theory get it crammed down their throats by such an article; and if they don’t read the book, at least they have to be aware of its existence. But there is a special reason why I write today. I just received an offer for a short summer-school period, in the first half of July, at the University of Southern California; I think the confirmation will come through in a few days. And I wondered whether at that time you will be somewhere in the vicinity, Los Angeles or San Francisco, as sometimes in the past you were in summer. It would be nice if we could meet again. But I doubt that we could come all the way up to Seattle. We are sorry to hear about Ruth’s troubles and hope they will be relieved soon. Lissy by the way is in a similar predicament; and probably will have an operation in August. All good wishes to you and the family from both of us, Cordially yours,

44. [Postcard] [OH] Cortland, New York, June 30, 1953 Dear Lissie and Eric—We had been on Canal Street just one week and four hours when we took off at 5:30 a.m. last Friday, after a most pleasant week. The Gulf man had come & killed the Deerfield [?], & we tried to cut off everything 10. Walter A. Weisskopf.

With a Humble Request, 1952–1955

119

else. Bob Harris was to get keys & also to nursemaid a batch of laundry chastely reposing in front room. In the kitchen you will find remnants of undrunk beer & coca cola which you may wish only to contribute to garbage. In lower part of kitchen corner cabinet should be found a more presentable potable. —Heat waves follow us around the country, even when we are now out of the nostalgia belt. —We’ll add later to this note from en route (at my mother’s in Easton, Pa.), but let me charge you now to report any damages, etc., in your house. We used the various cooling machines—how good they are!—very freely. We can think of no more perilous and forbearing business than turning your fine house [over] to three west coasters for a week. We are much in your debt. Robert [Down the left:] We hope to hear about your own transcontinental travels, and we would love to have EV’s Travels in Southern California.

45. Baton Rouge, July 17, 1953 Dear Robert: Thanks for your two post-cards, duly received. It was a pity we could not get together. And it is all the more a pity, because I could not elicit much either from Bob Harris or Rudolph Heberle. According to their accounts you seem to be well satisfied, on the whole, with Seattle, though there are the inevitable troubles that beset an administrator wherever he is situated. Unfortunately, nobody could tell me, what interests me quite a bit, how your Othello studies are progressing—apparently you did not divulge the secret. We also could learn very little about Pete, except that he is tall—which certainly is pleasant to be but not all-important. The trip to California was pleasant in every respect. Above all I got some money that permitted me to reduce my mortgage substantially. The lectures, furthermore, were quite a success; and I received an urgent inquiry whether I could not come there for a year, or at least a semester. The sojourn itself was most agreeable, in one of those very elegant, new girls’ dormitories; and a further pleasantness was the fact that I was refused a bill even for Lissy—so we had free room and board for two weeks. Los Angeles itself is a ghastly place, but the surroundings are beautiful. We saw several of the Missions—Santa Barbara, San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Rey—which I take it, you know quite well from your 11. Voegelin taught a course with Frank H. Knight and Ludwig von Mises, “Theory of the Capitalist Economy,” at the University of Southern California, June–July 1953; see Eric Voegelin Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, box 90, folder 11.

120

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

own summer-schools in the region. Overwhelming was the botanical garden of the Huntington Library. Beverly Hills, on the other hand, was rather an apocalyptic spectacle. There you can really see the end of our world—miles and miles of expensive pig-sties for the swine who destroy our civilization; one can compare the horror only to such places as Buchenwald. On the way back we saw Las Vegas, because everybody admonished us that one must see it. Well, in a sense that was true—it is a shabby place, full of shabby people, engaged in shabby activities—truly on a mass-scale. No shred of elegance or glamour. It is the perfect illustration of the British Laborite’s quip that ours is a civilization where the income of entirely too many people is higher than their moral stature. But at least nature is not yet completely destroyed—the desert was hot but most impressive. And in Arizona, in Williams, at the height of 6700 ft., we found a delightfully cool place to stay for several days. In recent weeks I had two letters from [Marshall] McLuhan. Rather touching—because apparently he too has found out about the all-pervasive Gnosis in literature, and runs into the difficulty that the vast majority of his colleagues does not care in the least about his discovery. He seems to be rather isolated; and has not yet adjusted himself to the consequences of being more intelligent than other people. He wails about the twenty years of his life that he has wasted in the pursuit of wrong ideas. I must write him a comforting letter that he is not the only one to whom it happens; and that a life is not wasted if one sees the light in the end. Thanks for the generous stocking of our “cellar.” Especially the array of cans in the refrigerator was overwhelming. When I find a deplorable end as a beertippler, you know whom to blame. Today we tasted the excellent claret, remembering you and Ruth. With all good wishes for a pleasant summer, Yours cordially,

46. Baton Rouge, December 29, 1953 Dear Bob: Thanks for your wonderful X-mas gift. These candies are really excellent. I am not so sure that I should eat them considering my girth, but I eat them anyway. 12. These letters may be found in the Eric Voegelin Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, box 25, folder 3.

With a Humble Request, 1952–1955

121

A somewhat handicapped year is drawing to its end. Just before Christmas I had my fourth, and it seems last, operation this year. And I am still in the process of recovering. But in a month or so, this also will, we hope, belong to the past. Meanwhile new disturbances have occurred, as you may know already from a letter of Lissy to Ruth, insofar as Bob Harris is leaving us for Vanderbilt with the end of this academic year. It is a rather unfortunate affair in every respect. The crisis has been broiling for more than a year, when Bob expected a salary raise of $200 as promised (or as he believed it to be promised) and did not get it. Considering the agreement, I have the impression that the administration acted foolishly on the occasion, though they had arguments on their side. But now, I think, Bob is acting foolishly when, in the spirit of a hillbilly vendetta, he is coming back at them, by accepting the first offer that he can obtain. The department in Vanderbilt, as of now, is a sorry establishment. There is a chairman by the name of [Avery] Leiserson, so fanatical a positivist that he will not even discuss a theoretical issue; then there is a man in international relations by the name of [D. F.] Fleming, who reminds me of nothing so much as a wooden Indian; and then they have there a genial creature, by the name of [H. C.] Nixon, who writes folksy political studies about “Old Possum,” a sort of backwoods Tennessee village of his imaginative creation. Bob has great hopes that the Department will greatly improve in the future, when Fleming and Nixon will disappear through retirement in the course of the next four to eight years. But if I estimate Leiserson rightly, Bob will be in for a big surprise; there will be rather a new paradise for rigorous method and similar claptrap. The salary also seems to be unattractive—and from Bob’s reticence on the point I gather that he will get less than he gets here, and has it made up by a research grant of $700 for studies in the summer, which means that he cannot teach summer-school and thereby occasionally increase his income. —And then there is of course a personal point. At the moment Bob pretends he would have [a] wonderful opportunity in Vanderbilt at last to come around to his own work, being free of the chairmanship and having only six hours to teach in the field of constitutional law. Well, I doubt that much will come of it. He could have had the same opportunity here. When he started talking in that vein last year, I offered to take over the headship for two years, so that he would be free for his own work, though that would have been quite a sacrifice to me; and now, when the Vanderbilt affair broke, I offered it again, and the Dean supported it, but he does not want that solution. I rather think that the move now will supply him with an excuse for the next two years that he could not finish the case-book in constitutional law on which he is working. Then, perhaps, he will finish it after

122

Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin

all in another two years. And then he will be stuck—for these administrative affairs, which now he pretends to detest, are just what he can do best and likes to do; and I shall believe in the grandiose work that he will do in the future as soon as I see it done. In brief: he worked himself up emotionally and got himself into a mess. It is a mess for me, too. For most probably, whatever the final solution will be, I shall have to take over the headship at least for a year. And you know how I like such things. Otherwise, things are perking up a bit. The terrible history shows signs of coming to an end. It will now be entitled Order and Symbols. The first volume[,] Myth, History, and Philosophy[,] is supposed to be finished by March, and will come out about next October. The second and third volumes will be finished at distances of about a year-and-a-half. The first volume goes down to c. 300 B.C. At present I am still working on the section on Israel, that will run into about 300 pages MS. The New Science of Politics sold well. The Chicago Press is preparing a reprint. The oddest things happen. I should never have thought that a strictly theoretical work of this kind would sell at all beyond library copies. I wonder what sort of people buy the book. But unfortunately there is no way of finding out.