'Greatness Is Difficult'

“It is dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins for our own out of admiration for his genius; and when the inevitable reaction occurs, the great man’s reputation is likely to suffer unduly.” 

Among writers, Dr. Johnson is the first fallible great man who comes to mind. He could be a bully, bludgeoning opponents in conversation and print, among other failings. Boswell often indulges Johnson’s sins – as anyone would a friend -- sometimes encouraging them for the sake of a good story. We can put that aside and recall his more essential accomplishments – the Dictionary, periodical essays and “The Vanity of Human Wishes.” Many of us are lazy Manicheans when evaluating others, but human personalities are complicated, contradictory things. Understanding and accepting them takes work. What we want is moral balance – sometimes ruthlessly honest or forgiving -- not hagiography or blanket condemnation. Other great writers who resist simple-minded evaluation are Jonathan Swift and George Santayana.

 

The author of the passage at the top is Yvor Winters and his subject is Edwin Arlington Robinson. Winters might as well be writing about himself. He could be headstrong and abrasive, and attracted many followers. He’s well-known for harsh, eccentric judgments. The contemporary aversion to negative reviews and advocacy for “trigger warnings” would make him laugh -- rightly. I know a blogger who judges Winters a “fanatic.” What distinguishes Winters as critic is that readers can be certain he always writes honestly. There are no histrionics, no sense of performance. He is sometimes wrong, but even his errors in judgment are interesting. He means what he writes and expects the same of others.

Foremost, Winters was a poet, one of our best. His finest poems include “A Summer Commentary,” “To the Holy Spirit,” “Time and the Garden” and “To a Young Writer.” Not so well-known is “To Edwin V. McKenzie.” In 1933, David Lamson, a member of the Stanford University faculty, was accused of murdering his wife. Lamson and McKenzie, his attorney, argued that Allene Lamson had fallen in the bathtub and bled to death. Winters, a professor at Stanford, co-authored a 103-page pamphlet in defense of Lamson, signed by twenty other professors at the university. [I have a copy. The penultimate paragraph: "Such are the processes of law, of scholarship, and of friendship."] After lengthy appeals and four retrials, the prosecution dropped the case against Lamson. Here’s Winters’ poem, subtitled On his defense of David Lamson:

    

“The concept lives, but few men fill the frame;

Greatness is difficult: the certain aim,

The powerful body, and the nervous skill,

The acquiring mind, and the untiring will,

The just man’s fury and uplifted arm,

And the strong heart, to keep the weak from harm.

This is the great man of tradition, one

To point out justice when the wrong is done;

To outwit rogue and craven; represent

Mankind in the eternal sacrament--

Odysseus, with the giant weapon bent.

 

“When those who guard tradition in the schools

Proved to be weaklings and half-learned fools,

You took the burden, saved the intellect.

Combatting treason, mastering each defect,

You fought your battle, inch by inch of ground.

When Justice had become an angry sound,

When Judgment dwindled to an angry man,

You named the limits of the civil span:

I saw you, mantled in tradition, tower;

You filled the courtroom with historic power;

Yourself the concept in the final hour.”

 

“Greatness is difficult,” Winters reminds us. Born on this date, October 17, in 1900, he died in 1968 at age sixty-seven.

 

[The passage quoted at the top is taken from an essay, “Religious and Social Ideas in the Didactic Work of E.A. Robinson,” published by Winters in 1945 in Arizona Quarterly. It is included in Yvor Winters: Uncollected Essays and Reviews (ed. Francis Murphy, Swallow Press, 1973). New Directions published Winters’ monograph dedicated to Robinson in 1946.]