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272 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
August 2, 1949, to the effect that fascists were taking over the
Library of Congress. Throughout the controversy, Luther Evans,
Librarian of Congress, was as unhappy as a trapped bear. His
bureaucratic career depended upon his maintenance of his reputation
as a "liberal", yet he was being accused of being a "fascist".
He wrote a letter to the editors of The Saturday Review, which
appeared in the July 2, 1949 issue. He said, in part,
"That Mr. Paul Mellon has through some diabolical and
perverted motivation tried to influence the decision of the Fellows,
is an insinuation which I believe to have no foundation whatever
. . . I am deeply disturbed by one point of view which you and
Mr. Hillyer seem to share, and that is that poetic quality must
somehow pass a political test."
In The Triple Thinkers (1938), Edmund Wilson has pointed
out that "The leftist critic with no literary competence is always
trying to measure works of literature by tests which have no
validity in that field." 5
On August 19, 1949, Senator Theodore Green of Rhode
Island announced, as Chairman of the Library Committee, that
the Library of Congress would give no more awards of any
kind. He informed a New York Times reporter that "We are
opposed to the Government discriminating between individuals in
the matter of taste. There are no standards to apply, only personal
opinions." (Times, August 19, 1949.)
In blithely dismissing all standards of artistic and literary judgment,
Senator Green announced to the world, as an official of the
United States government, that such standards are never exercised
in this country, and that statements on the merits of a poem or
painting are merely "personal opinion". Luckily, the European
press ignored his remark.
The nation's press had a field day after the Hillyer articles
appeared. Modern poetry, as well as the "crazy traitor" came in
for some rough, if good-natured, jibing. As Ezra once remarked,
"Americans tend to turn everything into a bean feast." The
Bollingen controversy was the greatest American literary bean
feast of all time.
After a sobering interval, some writers began to suspect that