Lionel Trilling passed away on this day in 1975, at the age of seventy. He had lived through a lot: World War I, the Lost Generation, women’s suffrage, Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, the Beat Generation, Hippies, and Disco. It’s no wonder his politics, a topic on which he wrote, shifted and swayed and remain up for discussion.
Trilling taught Columbia’s Colloquium on Important Books, where among his students were Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr.
Jack Kerouac has sometimes been accused of being anti-American or of destroying American values, and yet On the Road depicts a young man reveling in America. On the Road is, in many ways, a love letter to the true America. His honest search has inspired countless readers to pack their bags and hit the road, to discover America for themselves instead of relying on what the history books and network news report and the images coming out of Hollywood and glossy magazines.
Burning Furiously Beautiful details Kerouac’s research into American history and what he saw as he traveled throughout this amazing country.
“Devouring history books and Westerns alike, Kerouac lit out after the authentic America, an America that wasn’t mass produced or steeped in fear of atom bombs and Communism but blazed intrepidly, recklessly onward into the horizon, asking:
‘Wither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?'”
~ Burning Furiously Beautiful
Want to know which books Kerouac read and what sort of authentic people he met while on the road? Buy the book from Lulu or Amazon.
Lionel Mordecai Trilling was born in Queens on this day in 1905. At just sixteen years old, he entered Columbia University, where he would go on to become the Edward Woodberry Professor of Literature and Criticism and teach Columbia’s Colloquium on Important Books.
Among his students? Allen Ginsberg.
Trilling was part of the New York Intellectuals and wrote for the politically charged lit mag Partisan Review. He also tackled the controversial topic of Communism in his 1947 novel The Middle of the Journey.
7/7/14: This post has been corrected. I originally wrote that Jack Kerouac (in addition to Allen Ginsberg) was a student of Lionel Trilling’s, but as Joyce Johnson pointed out in the comments section that is not the case. Though they did know each other, Kerouac did not formally study under Trilling at Columbia University.
Burnside published my art post “A Time to Plant and a Time to Uproot” today.
It only occurred to me as I was posting this clip how interesting it is that Xu Beihong’s painting is from 1951. Doesn’t the seemingly traditional shuimohua painting seem much older? Xu is actually known for his Western sensibilities and is considered a forerunner in modern Chinese art.
Xu studied calligraphy with his father before attending the famous École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts — you know, that Parisian school where Degas, Matisse, Monet, and Renoir studied at. In 1917, Xu Beihong went to Japan to study art. During World War II, he sold his paintings in exhibitions throughout Asia, giving the proceeds to the Chinese whose lives had been upturned because of the war. As a teacher and artist, Xu’s policies greatly influenced the way both colleges and the government respond to art in Communist China. He died in 1953.
Meanwhile, over in Oregon at Reed College in the early 1950s, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen (who served Stateside during World War II), and Lew Welch–who are associated with the Beat Generation–were studying with calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds. Snyder and Whalen later spent time in Japan, where they studied zen. The US State Department initially denied Snyder a passport, alleging he was a Communist.
Asian influences can also be seen in the art of the time period, most notably the abstract expressionist art of Franz Kline, Adolph Gottlieb, and Theodoros Stamos. Note this opening paragraph from the Guggenheim’s article “Abstract Art, Calligraphy, and Metaphysics“:
Following World War II New York City became the center of the avant-garde art world. Artists were working in new ways, and some were exploring the energy of the gesture with loose brushwork that reflected the impact of the artist’s bold movements. The calligraphic brushstroke was an approach to abstract painting that focused on the spontaneous gesture of the artist’s hand and was informed by the East Asian art of calligraphy and popular writings on Zen and its principles of direct action.
The article goes on to say:
In Chinese and Japanese calligraphy the brush becomes an extension of the writer’s arm, indeed, his or her entire body. The artist’s stroke not only suggests the movement of the body, but also inner qualities. Abstract as it appears, calligraphy also conveys something about the essence of the individual artist. It is therefore not surprising that 20th-century American Abstract Expressionists who sought to convey emotion through paint were drawn to it.
Because so many soldiers were stationed in the East during World War II, both the West and the East were influenced by each other.
What I personally find fascinating with calligraphy is the collision of art and literature, the visual and the literal, words becoming art, and art becoming words.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and speaker based in New York City.
She is the coauthor, with Paul Maher Jr., of "Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.'"
You can email her at stephanie_701 {@} yahoo.com
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 