American Academy of Arts and Letters 1954 Awards Ceremony
This is a recording of the 1954 awards ceremony of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The host, Archibald MacLeish, begins the ceremony with an address about the trial of art-making in America in terms of community, censorship and its complicated relationship to science.
Douglas Moore inducts newly elected Academy members: architect Arthur Brown Jr., poet E.E. Cummings, novelist John Hersey, composer Roger Sessions. Louis Kronenberger inducts new Institute members: artist George Grosz, poet Robert Lowell, architect Eero Saarinen, writer Elizabeth Bishop, composer Carl Ruggles.
Playwright Robert E. Sherwood delivers the Blashfield Address titled "Benjamin Franklin's Country." He discusses the life of Benjamin Franklin, particularly in France at the fall of the Bastille, and relates this to the diminished state of intellectualism in America.
President of the Institute, Marc Connelly presents the award winners with a few words about their work. Next, Léonie Adams presents the Russell Loines Award for poetry to David Jones and reads his acceptance speech. Mark Van Doren presents the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts to J. William Fulbright who delivers an acceptance speech. Archibald MacLeish presents The Award of Merit Medal to Ernest Hemingway who is absent. Isabelle Bishop presents the Gold Medal for Graphic Arts to Reginald Marsh who delivers an acceptance speech. Finally John Mason Brown presents the Gold Medal for Drama to Maxwell Anderson. Robert E. Sherwood reads Anderson's acceptance speech.
Blashfield Address Award:
Robert E. Sherwood
Russell Loines Award:
David Jones
Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts:
J. William Fulbright (Senator)
Gold Medal Awards:
Maxwell Anderson
Reginald Marsh
Award of Merit Medal:
Ernest Hemingway
Arts and Letters Awards:
Hannah Arendt
Ray Bradbury
Virginia Cuthbert
Ingolf Dahl
Koren DerHarootian
Edwin Dickinson
Hazard Durfee
Antonio Frasconi
Richmond Lattimore
Colin McPhee
David Riesman
David K. Rubins
Ruthven Todd
Hugo Weisgall
C. Vann Woodward
Hassam, Speicher, Betts, and Symons Purchase Fund Awards:
Peggy Bacon
Thomas Blagden
Byron Browne
Colleen Browning
Victor Candell
Stephen Etnier
Frederick Franck
David Fredenthal
Sidney Gross
Eric Isenberger
Hazel Janicki
Julian Levi
Ogden M. Pleissner
Daniel Rasmusson
Herbert Saslow
Edward John Jr. Stevens
Rome Fellowship Award:
Richard Wilbur
Recorded at the Academy Auditorium.
Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection
WNYC archives id: 150183
Municipal archives id: LT2835
This is a machine-generated transcript. Text is unformatted and may contain errors.
Good afternoon New York's municipal stations take pleasure in bringing you this special broadcast of the annual ceremony zero of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters here in the academy auditorium are gathered some of the nation's greatest writers musicians and artists who participate in the annual ceremonial program or to be honored today are DAVID JONES Senator J. William Fulbright Ernest Hemingway Reginald Marsh and Maxwell Anderson the opening address will be given by the president of the academy Archibald MacLeish some of the speakers to be heard during the ceremonies are Robert E. sure would Mark Connelly John Mason BROWN Mark Van Doren and many others here now it is Archibald MacLeish. Ladies and gentlemen. Members of the academy and of the Institute. Very welcome guests. Great institutions universities the light or gather at certain the seasons of the year before in their necessary corporate functions. We have no such functions to perform here. We need for two purposes. Do we honor certain men and women whose contributions to the arts seem to us worthy of particular recognition. And. To reassure ourselves as to each other's existence. Others will speak specifically of the honors I shall speak generally I trust briefly of the reassurance. That members of the institute in the academy should travel considerable distances for a glimpse of each other at this ardent season of the year will not I hope strike any of us odd that. It is true that we practice all the arts under heaven and that in ordinary course there is nothing an artist will go farther to avoid then another artist. But it is true also as you must know from the many books and learned articles written on the subject that the life of the artist is a lonely life. And nowhere lonelier than in the United States. And nowhere in the United States more alone than in the present. Whenever the present may happen to be. We get to thinking as the long winters break up in North Carolina or Vermont or farther south or west or north. And we long as Ezra Pound once put it meaning I'm certain nothing of the kind for the look of our own sort. I don't wish to exaggerate it we have as you all know our attentive followers. How many congressional committees there are with their four fourteen or forty which dedicate themselves to our labors I don't know perhaps Senator Fulbright can help me. But whatever the number we are only too aware all of us that we were surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Not only the exhibitions of paintings and the shelving of our books in the staging of our plays and the performance of our music but the charitable foundations which occasionally foetus. And the learned in universities in which we are however occasional eight and. However obliquely mentioned are the objects of a said you list and continuing congressional concern. It's all encouraging enough. At least in the understanding of that term common among the French who spoke of Napoleon's common as bowling the citizens of Paris over a poo or on a laser or. But it does nevertheless and from time to time across our minds do. I wonder whether the congressional investigators are really earnest it really has earnest in their interest in our work because we should like to believe. There have been moments when they seem to some of us at least to be less concerned with the support of the arts in America than with the suppression of the artists. But however attentive and however numerous This company of recent students of the arts. They cannot wholly alleviate our loneliness for the rest of the contemporary world and not in the United States alone is a very different mine the rest of the world stands increasingly with its back to us its eyes fixed upon another quarter of the sky. There are those I know for sure is that it is not really another quarter that science and the arts are the same thing after all. But most of those who'll thus come for this are themselves we notice scientists. And we have linked Lee begun to suspect that when a scientist says that art and science are the same thing he means that they are the same thing as science. It is time we began to feel for a reexamination of these assurances. While we have listened to the soft beguiling talk our flanks have been turned our outposts have been driven back and are impregnable central hedgehogs have been infiltrated. Our loneliness is been exacerbated that is to say by company. A company which leaves us all the more alone. Where once we stood by ourselves as real to rope farther in than anyone has yet been among the eleven breaks in the firelight now the psychologists and the psychiatry's have appeared creeping about in the half dark leaving their finger marks on everything. Like the finger marks of that angel of Cummings whose unforgettable first name was Frederick. And where once we stood alone beside the Muses watching the captains in the field or the king of prayers or the lovers in the palace or the mob in the street there all at once we have been joined by armies of sociologists who go crowding about over the landscape rearranging everything. Transposing the past years into patterns schooling the passionate voices to speak statistics in a footnote. It should surprise no one that under these circumstances we turn for comfort to each other. The Memoirs of famous generals and foremost that Garrison's driven in upon themselves forget the easy animosities of peace and live or die together in affection and respect we share in common our isolation from an overwhelmingly scientific world. And we have no choice but make the best of it and the comfort is a comfort we also share the comfort is that there is a best which can be made. Here perhaps in a safe seclusion from the infiltrators we may even name it. What comforts us. Is the fact that the position we defend. Unlike its counterpart in the world of the dugouts and trenches is in crude impregnable. It can never be occupied by what we know now called science at any time or by any means. The scientific dog not the dog mother that everything. Consumer or later be known in the abstract and discursive sense of that term by spelling it all out by analysis and formulation. As one great triumphs in the past several centuries but even its most brilliant successes. Have not so much as shaken the power of the comic symbols of art over a man's experience of his life. On the contrary the more recent experience of science with its progressive loss of faith in the efficacy of the mere collection and analysis of data and its increasing reliance on the assignment of experimental meanings as a way to knowledge in mathematics or elsewhere is itself a confession of the indestructibility of art. For what ladies and gentlemen is the symbol of art but they form to which the experience of mankind assigns and on prove the meaning. And what is the end of bar but about knowledge of the experience of mankind which these unproved meanings. In these forms Express. Beside the knowledge a boat our lives which science with its analysis and its formulation can give us there is another knowledge oh of our lives which is the knowledge of art. The first can no more replace the second than a formula can replace a man. And for precisely the same reason. There are those of course who were regarded these opinions as obscurantist and ignorant where there are always those to whom knowledge is only knowledge when it can be expressed in abstract terms. The fact is however that the truest human knowledge is not knowledge of the foreign merely for experience but knowledge of experience itself. That certainly is supported artists in difficult days before and can support us Dale. And read James in his reply to that despairing letter which Henry Adams wrote him in the early months of nineteen fourteen took his stand upon it. You see he said. I still in the presence of life. Or what you deny to be such have reactions as many as possible yes I suppose because I am that queer monster the artist an obstinate finality. An inexhaustible sensibility hence the reactions appearances memories many things go on playing upon it with consequences that I know and enjoy Graham were noting. It all takes doing but I do. I believe I should do yet again. It is still an act of life. Forty years have not altered the meaning of these words. Art is still an act of light. Art still takes doing. And the problem for all those who serve the arts is still to do. Thank was one addressed by the president of the academy the well known for what Archibald MacLeish. We will we will take a moment now to permit late comers to take their seats before we vote the doors of the fortress again. You are listening to the ceremonial program of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters it is coming to you from six thirty two West one hundred fifty sixth Street the Academy auditorium. We should like to imagine some of the celebrities in the world of arts and letters seated here on the stage among them are Connelly the way Kronenberger Maxwell Anderson Irwin Edmund Otto learning shot by the sun Carson Ralph Humphreys Philip James Quincy Porter marksman Darren Robert Sherwood who is to speak on man ship names Taylor John Hersey Pearl Buck John Dos Passos Carl Sandburg Walter Lippmann Thornton Wilder and I don't many many other US. We're going to continue in just a moment in the meantime would like to give you the order of procedure. To share with you shortly to speak from a by Douglas Moore who is the secretary of the academy and the way Kronenberger acting as the secretary of the institute will end up to four or five years Robert Sherwood is to address this convention on the topic Ben. And Franklin's country Mark Connelly will then speak and his speech will include a presentation of Arts and Letters and grants and academy in Rome fellowship. We should like to identify ourselves you are tuned to W N Y C F.M. with New York City's own high fidelity station. Where. That big Cademy that is the institute that isn't Jetman I have the honor to present to you at this time the newly elected members of the cademy. I'm going to ask such members as are here to rise at the conclusion of the reading of the citation off the Brown Jr to the fifth set to fill a vacancy created by the death of at all a wine author Brown Jr aka tech to California who after winning distinction at the Echo they pose as a student returned to his native state to become one of the leading architects of the nation probably no city of the United States can offer more convincing proof of the greatness of I think of August than San Francisco where Mr Brough has designed the war memorial Opera House the federal office building the city hall and the quite tough he's also nationally recognized as the architect of the Department of Labor and in the state commerce Bill. Brock. As they're coming. To the fifth to live a c caused by the death of the South will bring economic poet and man. And if that isn't involved there are at the beginning of this to read as a poet of daring originality is because internationally known as a writer of poetry and prose that may be fairly Raghad this passage is remarkable novel of the First World War the enormous room is read in many languages and is an Eric poet is to make things happen and fresh and this poignantly alive as he was at the beginning of this thread I regret to say that Mr Cummings is not with us to say after new. Was. Mr MacLeish and punched me that the reason he is not here is that he is ill. John PERCINET. To the twenty second chat to fill the vacancy created by the death of John Merritt John very soon novelist in Connecticut turning from a highly successful early career this was an editor he has become in a short space of Todd one of America's most provocative and important novelists in this field feels to know the cat scruples and high capacity with which he writes his memorable books each of each one of which has become a classic in its top. One thanks. Roger Sessions. To the third Chad to fill the vacancy created by the death of out Spalding Roger Sessions composer of New Jersey for claimed by Ernest law and Paul Rosenfeld as America's first and Poser of major importance at the very outset of his career yes courageously had hit the highest principles of the composers off with no thought to the achievement of popular success for its seriousness technical brilliance and nobility of conception his music is one thing and lasting evidence in the arts to set. The secretary of the economy Douglas Moore has inducted four new academy members here now as though he Kronenberger was the secretary of the Institute he will induct five new institute members Mr Kronenberger. On this pleasant occasion I have a particularly pleasant duty for welcoming our new members there are five all persons who have distinguished physicians through of whom are present to. You. The. Growth was born in Germany in one thousand nine hundred three and ranks in his drawings and lithographs as one of the most transient social critics of his. Are more as pure artists yes powerfully projected a vision of life in his oils and watercolors. Through Robert Lowell. The was the old born in Boston Massachusetts in one nine hundred seventy and takes rank by virtue of his technical accomplishment and his individuality of attitude as perhaps the most talented American poet of this particular generation. Those who are not with us today are fortunately our air or sour on them born in Finland and nineteen to him who stands forth as one of the most gifted and expressive of living architects one who with fine Saturday and simplicity has helped formulate a sound contemporary architecture. Was. Elizabeth Bishop born in Worcester Massachusetts in one thousand and eleven as proved particularly in her book north and south to be the creator of poetry that is both distinguished and notably individual. The. Cawing Robles born in Nowra Massachusetts an eight hundred seventy six is it once by the vitality of his pioneering in the perfection of his style one of America's principal living composers. The recently Kronenberger secretary of the Institute now Mr MacLeish. I have the great honor to present to you. As the deliver the thirty third address on the backfield foundation. Robert Sherwood of the academy. Distinguished dramatist. Distinguished biographer. And one of the noblest Americans of my generation it's a show. Mr President ladies and gentlemen. In the last Summer of the extraordinarily fruitful and juicy life of Benjamin Franklin. Iraq to his friend George Washington I should have died two years ago. But though these years have been spent in excruciating pain I am pleased that I have lived them since they have brought me to see off present situation. Franklin was pleased quite naturally that he had lived long enough his age was eighty four to see the ratification of the Constitution and the election and inauguration of George Washington as first president of the United States. These were two historic developments in the further I put the runs of which this old gouty unquenchable philosopher from Boston and Philadelphia had played a considerable part of. It was another historic development and that same summer of seventeen eighty nine the fall of the best deal in the chaotic beginnings of the French Revolution Franklin's part in bringing that about had also been considerable all low supple. He was a dolling of the French aristocracy including the queen herself on that. But in persuading them to support the cause of revolution in America he had helped to fade the fires of revolution in France. At that time the French were looking for a hero who should combine the reason and with the Voltaire with the primitive virtues celebrated by Rousseau and they were sure that they had found their hero in Franklin and there I am quoting from our on AD and lamented colleague in this instant to call a Bandar. On one occasion. In the air when General Washington received the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown Franklin attended a fat show on pit arranged by the contest due to go outside and while he was deluged with laudatory verses composed for the occasion and he was crowned with Laurel by the most beautiful of three hundred women who in addition to the babies kissed him on both of his sagging cheeks. It is suggested then these own writings that he were spotted by kissing the ladies on their necks he was too discreet the bust them on the mouth of fear of some of smearing the lipstick which was in use even then especially in France. On one of the last occasions when he was able to put pen to paper he wrote the convulsions and France are attended with some disagreeable circumstances. But if by the struggle she obtains and secure as for her own nation its future liberty and a good constitution a few years enjoyment of these blessings Well amply repaid repair all the damage their acquisition may have occasion. And then he added some words which provided the consummation of his marvelous career. Those words are. God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the Rights of Man may prevail all the nations of the earth so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say this is my country. It is rather in bettering for us of today to realize that when Benjamin Franklin expressed that noble aspiration the same good cause for confidence that it was not incapable of attainment the agent of reason in the period then quite plausible were quite plausibly the big coming to triumph over the many evil powers of darkness the modern free world was visibly annoyed audibly in process of being boy. But now more than a century and a half after Franklin's death his ideal is so out of tune with the temper of the times as to seem downright subversive. Perhaps we should have been doing one of the dreadful shape of things to come when some forty years ago the Supreme protagonist of the assembly line era Henry Ford delivered himself of the profound pronouncement that history is bunk. In the nineteenth twenties the our going ignorance the boyband has instant incense the tip of the eve of many of our leaders both political and industrial was a source of much of it was much. We could laugh with H.L. Mencken Sinclair Lois Ring Lardner with Mark Connelly and Joe it's as Kaufman. At the pro Posterous high priests of Babbitt. We could even smiled tolerantly when our President Calvin Cooley summed up our entire foreign policy by saying. Allies they hired the money didn't they. In the 1930's in the early nineteen forties the nation was preoccupied with other matters economic catastrophe and World War but I may say I hope without incurring the stigma of partisanship that the Brava going out there in those years was not entirely hostile to intellectual attainment. There were such figures who would take him some measure of political influence as well but cross Graham Robert HUTCHENS like Frank put it out how really I say a bold man ought to bold like bleach Jonathan die in your old elm at Davis Lloyd Bowen's where your mouth on the white. Not to mention others in the world of scholarship such as the Compton brothers than of our boys James Bryan Coleman and Albert Einstein. The day there was even great question of the fitness of Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer the beer up posit Tory of certain secrets many of which he was instrumental in discovering. In the new oppressive climate in which we live and attempt to breathe it seems that Dr up in high Oppenheimer's loyalty must be subjected to what is currently known as an agonizing reappraisal. The Constitution of the United States itself is being subjected to an agonizing reappraisal. And agonizing as a temperate would for us. We now find ourselves in a phase and I hopefully believe it is only a phase in which suspicion automatically attaches itself to the philosopher the poet the artist the scientist the teacher and even the free thinking preacher to any one who was contaminated with that damning word intellectual We seem to be living and then they when it is smart to be illiterate. Benjamin Franklin's can't break in which a philosopher can set what without past what without please a seem father away them of a promise no separated promise by implement distances in space and then time and then so that only. I consider that way of this institute and this academy up at the thoughts on that and being able to have an art company on this occasion one statesman who has proved himself a legitimate and habit them of the Franklin country son of a Fulbright. I'm sorry but my mouth gets caught. And please bear in mind that when I speak of the president phase I am not thinking only of the one rock as manifestation of but that appears with such a high as some frequency in the headlines on the television screens. It is something much more widespread and striking much more deeply than Could anyone congressional committee however facile any of its members might be in the arts of slander and distortion the Sept courage and blade Garraty. I would call to your attention to recent comments on the prevailing climate. As from Walter Lippmann or James Reston or even from that odd egghead Adelaide Stevenson. They are both from leaders of the business community. The first is from Richard L. Bob H. president of the United States Chamber of Commerce. Who felt called upon recently to remind his associates of certain essential oils that some of them may have forgotten he said this nation was conceived and rose to world leadership on the ideas of non-conformists and three wheelers of individuals with bold far reaching minds who insisted on crossing the front tiers of the unknown. They dared to disagree on many things but I've come for you in our culture are infinitely richer and stronger for their challenge. I think it will agree that such inflammatory talk as that is dangerous but ily and the United States Chamber of Commerce. The other recent quotation is from a lady who has had a most unusual success in business Miss Dorothy Shavit the president of Lord and Taylor Miss Michel said in industry among both executives and staff I see a growing unwillingness to exercise independent judgment the question company. Who of people are willing to voice original ideas which contradict accepted policy in showing you up people will risk their judgement in support of what they believe yet what if not personal in initiative has sparked the whole growth of American industry some of you may be wondering what all this has to do with the terms of the blast but you old fun which made provision for this annual address. The purpose of that fund as stated is to assist the American Academy of Arts and Letters to the term on its duty regarding both the preservation of the English language in its beauty and in its integrity and its cautious in Richmond by such terms as grow out of modern conditions. I would emphasize those words beauty and preservation and integrity and I would propose the obvious question for our consideration what remains of the integrity of language when many people including some in high and when chilled places are afraid to use it let alone the wood to enrich it with terms suggestive of new ideas we have not reached the state of total intellectual bankruptcy and we never shall unless the theory that history is bunk becomes state dog and causes us to wipe out the record of the past. But whenever we find ourselves as I believe we do now. In a phase which involves even the the suspicion of a threat and when to lecture what freedom intellectual integrity then it is time for the members of this academy and this institute to make themselves heard and protest loud protest we don't need to look far off already a nation that is powerfully available in the original documents of our country the Declaration of Independence the Federalist Papers the Constitution. These were the works of those Supreme or you literate gentleman whom we were a bear as our founding fathers Jefferson Franklin Hamilton Madison John Adams James Monroe Yes And Tom Paine but when he first emigrated from England to America war with them letters of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin. It is said in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence that the framing and the issuance of this document. Is impelled by a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. That is a basic statement which no government of the United States should ever forget it is the opposite of the isolationist Dr against which the present administration like the two preceding administrations have contended the doctrine that we should go it alone I'm not worried what those foreigners may think of us. Benjamin Franklin's country is the future world thought which are civilized and sensible and farseeing forefathers were looking when animated by a decent respect to the opinions of mankind they created this durable Republic. We have still looking forward to such a world may we now by what was faith in its attainment. Famous playwright Robert E. fair would have broken on the subject Benjamin Franklin's conference. There will now be the presentation of Arts and Letters grandson Academy and fellowship by the president of the Institute kind of the first day applause from Mr Farrow. Now Archibald MacLeish. After those cleansing words cruelly directed to the intelligence and conscience. This institute in this academy and this audience. Mark Connelly as president of the institute will present the Arts and Letters grants. And the ground of The Fellowship of the academy in the American Academy in Rome to come. Perhaps. Annually it is the happy duty here of the academy and the institute to recognize fifteen artists writers and composer. Whose matured talents have been demonstrated in outstanding works. And the recognition become a substantial in the form of grants of one thousand dollars each. That is now my privilege when produced to your will all work to move this year's Grand team use and present them with the material encouragements toward for their creative efforts. And it would make the individual presentations easier if each grantee would be good enough to come to the stayed on hearing his or her name. RIDGEON Cuthbert. Were her for her to Virginia cost birth born in the West New Pennsylvania in recognition of the contribution made to American painting by her strong well constructed picture with the romantic overtones. Of this and thank you very. Cory dare her booty and the one in. Armenia were something for her in recognition of a distinguished osseous who sculptures in stone and wood that reveals strong spiritual and emotional debt. For her. And women Dickinson. Were her Dickinson was born in the Senate and Falls New York. And we recognize it's a distinguished artist whose creative work and painting is inspired by the wedding vision and a mastery of his medium. For one. And Tonio fresco need. Just for us going there was born in one of the day I. May recognize in him a sensitive Aussie who is able to distill the essential design of life out of the happenings of the world around him thank you very much for him. David Kay Rubens. Perhaps. Rubens was born in Minneapolis Minnesota and we recognize the sculptor whose work is emotionally expressive the fine feeling for clarity of design and the treat of form that is broad and forceful. For him. And in the department of literature art. And bike first hour and. Perhaps. This hour and it was born in Hanover Germany and we recognize her studies toward the understanding of the nature of modern society and in particular her book The origins of totalitarianism thank you for her Ray Bradbury. One thing for her Mr Bradbury was born in Waukegan Illinois. And in several volumes notably The Martian Chronicles and the golden apples of the sun. Has brought to the honor of popular weird tales especially that new sought known as space fiction is broad of complexity and intensity and the strange beauty that lift much of his work to a level very close to that of poetry Thanks for having. Us to Richard at last I'm off. For him. Mr Latham on was born in our old thing fool China. And we recognise his translations from the Greek into English verse by his fine scholar for this really judgement and poetically informed a sense of the life of his own language. Find that he makes available to modern readers a deep and awareness of the substance and the formal qualities of the original Thank you for he. Said David's response. Perhaps. Mr Rhys man was born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. We recognize the originality of his observation of American life the cogency of his reflections upon the problems of personal existence in America. And in particular his books The Lonely Crowd and individual ism reconsider Thank you Mr One thing. Riven taught did. The thought brought in Edinburgh Scotland. Recognises scholarly illuminating study of early romantic written. And his loving devotion and history. To see that good with. The right word was born in. Arkansas off recognize his services in the delineation of the period of Southern history tended to much neglect by object discomfort. With Curry inside and great labor among previously unconsulted forces he has remained and pop notably in here our lives in this of the new south the teen seventh of the one nine hundred thirteen faith and. We come through the Department. And I invite Mr column feed through. The mic feed born in Montreal Canada he's been a citizen of the United States since nineteen or three. We recognize is Lionel imagination and skill was a composer he is unprecedented combination of traditional Indonesian and music with Western or just perfect meat fish produce original music a great distinction thank you and. If you go vice. Device guy was born in Czechoslovakia he came to the United States in one nine hundred twenty eight games citizen in one thousand nine hundred six we recognize the theater sense imagination and scope of his operatic compositions which are characterized by mature craftsmanship Thank you. The grantees of whom we must recognize in absentia. And congratulate our recipients in the department of our Mr Hazard the who was born into Britain Rhode Island the recognising him a gifted office whose awareness of the many facets revealed by nature. Gives him it's painting and the original expression of a high order. And in music. Mr engulfed dolls born in Germany who came to the United States in one thousand nine hundred five in a sense become a citizen of the leading composers of California Rupe we recognize clarity formal logic and brilliant instrumental colorings of this chamber and walk us through music. To conclude my present task is the recognition of another unusual talent the annual presentation of the American Academy of Arts and Letters fellowship in the American Academy enrolled. Will Mr Richard Wilbur join me on the platform the. Store Wilbur was born in New York City in nineteen twenty one. He is the author of ceremonies and the beautiful changes. It was early record is one of the very first of our young poets. Is parlous at being distinguished for Lyric Grace versatility of imagination and serious whipped. This talent developing in range and subtlety has been steadily engaged with the concerns of a law and learned sensibility thank you for her. Presentation of Arts and Letters grants an economy in Rome fellowship was made by the president of the Institute Mark Connelly now once again Archibald MacLeish president of the kept me. The only out of this will present to David Jones the lawyers award for foot set. Of. The law and civil war I set up in memory of Russell the violence is bestowed periodically not as a prize but in recognition of value to a poet in England or America this year for the first time choice has been made of a British court. Whose name Mr MacLeish has given you Mr David Jones born in broccoli can't England and luckily for us Mr Jones is in London. And is another part of my task to present him and his poetic work in a very few words to this audience. Mr Jones longest reputation is as a painter his first literary work a novel of the Great War in parenthesis. Is in the profound sense a poetical work but the body of poetry to which the award is tribute is a single call him on a thing which are first published in the one nine hundred fifty two and the fruit Surely of many years. On a famous is an epic poem of great originality not of their own in its modulation its a rhythm and its versatility of tons. Biased title The poet intends he tells us the blasted things that have taken on what is cursed and the profane things that are somehow read deeds and things made over to the gods. Essentially implicitly the action of this epic is information by the word by Spirit. And apprehension of this. In. What for us is patient of being actually logged and known for that last phrase as Mr Jones' own. More explicitly the matter of the poem is whatever might come into his mind during and seek relation there during the celebration of the mass. Yet while the Granted point is determinedly personal and the poem has no one matter perhaps except the concretion of the poet's experience in this respect for his sense of man's and and history oblige him very far. He recognizes as well the necessary limits of the artist of his love. And the poet it appears in this poem only as devotion. Within this limit he feels bidden to recall and his subject is all four times as with pecial of light shines upon them. The land of nurture. Conferred upon him as well by geologist paleontologist folklorist the earth before the beating hills in changing order stood. For the sailing so it sees the breaking of the signs especially this produce a deeply humanist work something he says must be made by us before it can become his sign who made us feel past the bones in the barrel of that handle the people in wrong. And the shapes and crossings of myths and folkways especially since he is of wealth origin in Wales. To despoil dump at the was where the high flyer stalled out his accent and his consent trick and exact recognizance flitch becomes a question of the achieved Secretary Rice. The work has that modern humility which must recognize that while a spirit is one it's showing score even as impingements upon one moderately informed and experienced consciousness. Bewilderingly various For most of us this context is a severe strain or altogether disheartening to the impulsion of order. And the imagination Clegg's in its instruction by all the appearances of fact it is to this that his art addresses itself through finding the tangible forms and the subtle relations that bring in his own race as he calls it that concretion of experience within the phone of of one understanding and perhaps the final quality of this point is the animation of all this thought long and attachment by what Mr Orton who first proposed the work but this recognition because of his profound and learned reverence for the traditions of Western man. I am honored to announce the presentation of the law into war in poetry for nine hundred fifty four to David Jones for his beautiful epic poem on in play Mr. Mr Jones though you could not come to receive the award has sent us an acceptance which I will now read to the president and members of the National Institute of Arts and Letters it would seem a straightforward and simple matter to express thanks for something received it would appear easy enough to say thank you yet in actuality it is sometimes quite hard to do so in an adequate manner and in appropriate terms in trying to write this brief acceptance speech I am particularly aware of these difficulties it is not very often that I receive mail from the United States so that when I got Mr Mark Connelly's letter one morning in March I opened it wondering what it might contain my surprise was total and as Rio as my pleasure it is with very considerable pleasure indeed that I accept from you the rest of Lloyd's of Ward one thousand nine hundred fifty four I noted in Mr Connelly's letter that this ward is referred to not a surprise but as signifying a recognition there was something about that definition which I very much liked. When one's work chances to be of such a nature that it cannot easily find an immediate response and may never find a wide one it is reassuring to be granted a recognition such as this which you unexpectedly extend to me from over the Gannett spat I want then most of all to assure you we're responsible for voting me this award that this sign of your recognition affords me a real encouragement it would seem that the works which on previous occasions have gained this recognition have been the works of persons native to the United States I cannot but be moved that on this present occasion your choice should have fallen on the work of one who is native to Britain and it would be against nature where I to feel no pleasure in the fact that that choice involved myself I had no reason to suppose that my work was known outside this island and I realize also that whatever the universe ality of the theme my images and I are in a particular way into a catered with a complex deposit of this island and that that might constitute a possible difficulty for those whose background is other from this. The artist has no choice but to use for it is his to use. By this or that inheritance. But in using what is he is he cannot know to what extent his particular use of it would be of significance to others if then in any work of MA You have followed sufficient significance to confer upon me this is what I can but say again that your recognition is a reassurance and a support to me I would express a GED my break great pleasure in receiving this American award David Jones. Thanks. I only Adams has given the lines award for Pride Parade to David Jones in absentia. Once again Mr MacLeish wishes you must that. David Jones had heard they only items. You read her beautiful words but I wish you'd heard them. Mark and the Chancellor of the Academy will present to Senator William Fulbright the award for distinguished service to the arts Mr Bandar. Thank. Senator Fulbright. Your name is busted every year for more than a thousand American students who through the bounty of your act are privileged to go abroad and improve themselves by living thinking talking in a working in the circumstances suitable to their needs. They go to as many as twenty eight countries and as they go they pass ships and planes which are bringing students of those countries to live and think and talk and work in the United States. So as your name bus that goes from here. And by extension to numbers of persons impossible to calculate across the world. And David of the world that may have the long run most clearly benefit by your program of Electrolux a. Just as you were one of the first members of Congress to see the necessity of the United Nations So you are now the member most devoted to the idea that free minds are in themselves and vested. Without portfolio or directive but no less powerful for that and sometimes more so in the international community that still waits to be built. If it is ever to be built it will rise in large part out of the thousands upon thousands of small and obscure communities which you and your students have continued to create small and obscure but only the seeds are small and that. Our newborn infants are works of intellect and are in the silent process of coming into existence for their sakes alone. Senator Fulbright that is my pleasure to be in Fayetteville Arkansas three weeks ago. That is your home and it is where you were president of the State University for two years. And it is for your former students organized the political movement which first put you in Congress. It may be news to a modest man that I heard there nothing but words of affection and respect for you. You will not mind I trust if I say that everything I witnessed there or elsewhere in your charming state proves how wrong you were when you want without it in a moment of political despair that it would ever be possible I'm quoting from you that it would ever be possible to elect leaders in whom the people had confidence leaders who deserve their respect you have their respect and you deserve it. So have you hours in this institute unaccountably or else you would not have been invited to come here today to accept as we hope you will they award for distinguished service to the IT raids to Sen J. William Fulbright for having originated the Fulbright at one of the most constructive steps taken in the history of the United States to promote international cultural relations. Was. Men. And ladies and gentlemen. It's very embarrassing for the assets things said about. Them. In May I at the outset of first thank the members of the Institute of Arts and that is far and I honor which they have conferred upon me this afternoon I do appreciate is evidence. Of their approval more than I can say. Especially am I these that this award is given for a contribution to the R.. Probably one reason for their special gratification. Is the fact that Never have I had any talent for the art. And always have I had great admiration tenderized within the V.A. for those who could saying or paint or write. I share the common weakness. Of desiring very much that which I have not had and cannot have. A further reason and in truth the principal reason for my pleasure in this award is its recognition of the exchange of persons program to which I have devoted so much of my time and. Since the introduction of the original bill in September of one thousand nine hundred forty five. A few days have passed during which I have not given some major attention to this on the take. Any personal sense it is the justification. And it is the compensation if you like of the trials and tribulations of public office. Perhaps a few words about the program maybe even. The first grants were made in one hundred forty eight since that year through nine hundred fifty three just short of sixteen thousand persons from some twenty eight countries have received the point. Approximately one fourth of these are studied are taught to good men. Including some five hundred not an architect and more than six hundred in music and the dramatic are. More than six thousand Americans and nine thousand foreigners at this update. Of these more than thirty three hundred have been women. The significance of this last item is not yet like it. I don't normally this amount of labor and care is given to the administration of this program by the board of foreign scholarships in this country and by national commissions in each of the foreign countries involved. The members of these commissions and of the board. Of Fire and scholarships are distinguished citizens with heavy responsibilities in their private lives. They give of their time and of their out without public notice or compensation. Other than the awareness that they are can be doing to the welfare of their fellow man. Recognition of the labor of these devoted people is I'm sure implicit in the purpose of this award this afternoon. Basically this program is simply another way to educate people. It is not necessary for me to point out to this audience the urgent need for better education in this country not only in the arts but in all branches of Lang. Long ago as a teacher I became convinced that improvement in the quality. Of Education was the most urgent and most indispensable need of this kind. I may add that my experience in the Senate has not weakened that conviction. Was. Ever since Thomas Jefferson and George Washington did admonish their fellow countrymen to give primary importance to education Americans have approved the idea here. That they have neglected to follow the advice in fact is obvious to a casual observer. Recently we have seen the House of Representatives reduced the appropriations for the exchange program by forty percent. Slashed the meagre support of the Library of Congress and instigate an attack. Upon the great private foundations which have done so much for education. Over sat shadowing and stimulating these specific examples of flight from reason is of course the benign figure of the junior senator from Wisconsin. I do not know whether the concept of self-government in vision by our founding fathers can withstand the test to which it is presently being subjected. More on faith than on reason I happened through did to take the optimistic view. I believe self-government will survive primarily because I have faith that a weird way will be found to restart education as a primary objective of our society. In conclusion I again express my sincere appreciation of your recognition and approval of this exchange program it is a hopeful project it lists more and more people in the ranks of those who believe there is a better future for the human race. They believe and I believe that in time the serenity and the sense of perspective which artistic and intellectual endeavor induces will enable us to find our way out of the confusion which presently afflicts us. Is there not reason to believe that the friendly association of the youth of many lands may gradually. Erase the ancient myths inherited from I travel and c'est and enable them to adjust their differences by reason rather than by force. Is it naive to believe that man is capable of achieving a rational existence and that the idiocy which presently possesses him is not inherent and inevitable. The capacity of the human mind has yet to be explode. If a means can be found to free man's intellect from the shackles of calculus superstition and prejudice who can foresee the limits of his achieve. Thank you over Thanks Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas has accepted the award for distinguished service to the our I. I. Now once again your presiding officer. The award of merit medal with its cash prize of dollars. That's come to be considered one of the highest honors the American Academy and first. It is given over cycles of five years for achievement in each of the five arts and. This year achievement in the art of the novel is recognized. The recipient as you know is Ernest Hemingway who was injuries the result of an accident in Africa prevent his being present in person to accept the award as he had planned. There can be no member of. My generation in this room. Regardless of his opinions about the art of letters but will not vividly remember the day and perhaps even the place of his first encounter with that small tremendous book called prophetic play in our time. Prophetically because our time found in those pages not only a new voice. But a new voice which was its own. From age to age in the long and always living tradition of this English tongue of ours writers have appeared in whose work the language was fresh calling and freshly spoken. Arnest Hemingway has been such a speaker in the time we live in. Has been called Great stylings. Is far more than that. Is one of the cruel shapers of the language which shapes us. Beset by imitators as was inevitable and but doubled as much by is admirers as by his detractors. Anyway is purity but nevertheless remains beyond the reach of either praise or blame. Or it has been accomplished in the most enduring of all living things. In the nerve and fiber of the land. And very simple truth and nothing tall in record. We are ourselves in the purposes for which we exist and conferring this award for merit on the in the novel on a master of that craft but with also something more much more a man a bar. A maker. Thanks to. The gold medal for the graphic arts. Will be presented to Reginald Marsh. Very appropriately by Isabelle bishop. Thank you thank you Mr Knightley ladies and gentlemen. Reginald month I'm glad you are here. You are the first to receive the gold medal for graphic art given by the institute in the name of the American Academy. Dictionary definitions of the word graphic show this is war to be most suitable. The word is said to pertain to painting to drawing to an grading to the vivid expression of an idea. The institute and academy on of themselves in choosing for this war an artist whose work fulfills all the meaning of graphic relevant to visual art. You are painted in tempera oil and water cut you are in Europe they infest go and drive Pesca you are educated and engraver and advancement with Chinese and pin brass and quick. Your sketches are innumerable your drawings have appeared as cartoons in daily papers and weekly papers in monthly papers and there's going to stations for more than a dozen books your etchings and engravings are encountered in collections throughout the country as are your large drawings on the scale of paintings which hang and museums galleries and houses and do your paintings I have heard you say that you are not a man of this time which I take to mean that you disavow this decades new academic attitude of disconnection from tradition use words so strongly contemporary show that you connect yourself with the great past through the large concept of form developed in the sixteenth century to its present attitude toward man as the route which unfortunately we in our century cannot share. Yet for this you have found you for the present the persons you present in your pictures are little people in on heroic situations a shop girl or is she at another for growth before high school rooming house and casual groups seen in street or a drunken man. And young people die from the North River here they are nobody anybody agglomerations of them crowd or Coney Island big things and there are a number of us in this testifies to their individual important. But they are never in the grand manner the form in which they are presented are bursting with energy expressed in the rendering of the turmoil of grotesque persons on the beach by the growing in the rippling skirt of the striding girl. In the modeling of the on a house. Even by the design of the grouping leaning against an elevated post. There is an ambiguity that counts for. The other pretty insignificant small seemingly selected my hundred sixty million people with a very left but important given without distortion of aggrandizement important form and energy of present patients suggesting the heroic. The tremendous response to your work Mr Marsh implies I think that in this apparent contradiction you say something about America something not obvious to tell. We are not an artistic people. Not searching for beauty not believing there are much individual important but believing in our energy feeling its presence. And expressing this difficult concept you fulfill the fourth meaning of the word graphic the vivid expression of an idea. Thanks. Like the revolver to Mr MacLeish Mr CONWAY members guests. I feel highly honored and different right for there to be the recipient of the gold medal for rough and dark. It's that I'm saying a few words to my own I can think of nothing better than to approach in respect to the present state of affairs in the world vox. The words of Leonardo da Vinci on three steps of the page or as president in my courtesy. This is translated in into English being notes these days is not it rather for free so bear with me I'll try my best how from a through a the art of painting continually decline. And deteriorates when papers have no other stand than. A moment where the then work already done. The paper will produce pictures of that will merit if he takes the works of others as the standard. If he will apply himself to learn from the objects of nature he will produce good results. This we see was the case with the painters who came to the. Psychosomatic. Time of the Romans. For they continually imitated each other and from a two way are steadily declining. After these came the October Florentine. And he retired in mountains only to inhabited only by goats and such like beasts. Turning straight from nature to is art. Began to draw on the rocks and movements. In the movement of the goats which he was renting. And so began to draw all the figures of all the animals which were to be found in the country in such a way that after much study he not only surpassed the masters of his own time but all those of many preceding centuries. After him. Again declining art anything because all were imitating paintings already done. And so no for centuries are continued to decline until such time as the muscle of the Florentine nick named such the old shell invited protection of these work of the bones through took their standard anything other than nature the supreme guide of all the masters were wearing themselves in vain on what. Might I say that the artist to live today in an environment mocked like that and eventually must study not only objects of nature but work already done well and. I Reginald Marsh has accepted the gold medal for graphic art. It was presented by Isabel the chef with the award. Archibald MacLeish once again. I suppose there's no man in America by home those who work in the theater would rather be commended than John Mason and brown. Is therefore both fitting and proper that John Mason should present the Maxwell Anderson the gold medal for drum. To John Mason Brown. Thank you. Mr President Junior. Members of the academy and institute and they did and gentleman without meaning and they invidious distinction. Happy and though I am to present in the name of the academy and the institute the gold medal for drama to Maxwell Anderson I trust by doing so well not to embarrass him I am a dramatic critter. If you will forgive me for using so soiled that word in public. And Mr Anderson in a wounded but inspired moment once described the New York Drama Critics as the jukes family of journalism. I have always treasure that phrase. Counting it among Mr Anderson's contributions to the theater. And these have been many very good and genuine if of course Mr Anderson would accuse me of being a cute for saying so. Mr Anderson is a career playwright and a career playwright is different from an occasional playwright meaning a one or two script dramatist as a career diplomat is from an ambassador who gets his temporary job for services rendered in a particular campaign. The whole life of a career Plowright playwright is built on certainties during the past thirty one years Mr Anderson Anderson has written more than twenty eight plays it is he has had his triumphs and his failures but his failures like in successes have been the works of a brave man unwilling to be bound by Broadway standards passionate in his devotion to freedom no less passionate in the result to write as he chooses and animated by a vision of the theater singular in its dignity and beauty. George Bernard Shaw with characteristic Shavian modesty one spoke of the apt past Dolly succession a great playwright from East get us to him self. Although Mr Anderson is far too modest to think of himself in these terms he has always shared the show was high conviction that the other should take itself seriously and I will as a fact live thought a problem to a conscience and the elucidate of social conduct and armory against this and on this and that temple of The Ascent of Man. Such a vision of the fair that has been missed and just in years refused to be the slave of reality some to mistake journalism for literature and to think that in the writing of dialogue a dramatist work is done if he has merely to use a word that unfortunately familiar just now monitor our conversation. In. Such plays of his as part price growth or a written collaboration with our starlings sad it is children and both your houses have demonstrated how no nourishing how basting with vitamins and and protein dialogue in good prose candy but fortunately Mr Anderson has responded to a strong and consistent in the need to say things and written in dramatic fall which cannot be said in prose. Long before TS Eliot and Christopher frog began to write for the theater Mr Anderson had rebelled against what he called a starvation diet of proteins and was tempted to restore it at this stage are welcome to use it by daring to write in verse he turned the various as far back as nineteen twenty three in a quite desolate his very first place because already he was as he said we're a of plays that never lifted from the ground lifting the theatre from the ground it has been Mr Anderson's life work he has lifted it again and again he has done it in terms of both the past and the present when writing about Henry V eight and but when England's first unphotographed Elizabeth Scotland's marriage to arrange Joe or in the idiom and agonise of our own times in Winterset in addition to hearing and enabling us to hear a melody beyond the daily speech Mr Anderson has shared with us. His insights into the torment and grand gestures of the tested human spirit no dramatist of our day has written more understanding they are ever meant to be than he'd about the eggs over Taishan of tragedy. He know that contrary to the popular belief a tragedy is not a plate with an at the ending because the death of its hero and telling is irrelevant compared to this. And a deed by them before that die gadget is sustaining message the cutting to Mr Anderson is simply that men are better than they think they offer a rare show and never more needed than today in theory and in practice he has said this a bit and in the process also put us in his death by proving how much better the fifth act can be than many of his contemporaries have frozen to make it that isn't gentlemen I had planned at this point rather inevitably to say Mr Anderson and to tend to him but as that empty chair testifies I am distressed report that he is not here and the most press reports and I know you will to be distressed for the good that yesterday we received the following telegram and in California I met the Cedars of Lebanon Lebanon Hospital for an emergency operation most unhappy enough to be on hand for the medal and show would accept for me Robert Ethiope would recipient of the same gold medal for Drama in one thousand nine hundred forty one not only half but with Mr Shepley. I can't presume to. From my friend and colleague Maxwell Anderson. I suspect that. With what John Mason Brown just said he has permanently the juiced of so. But there is this message which Mr Anderson asked me to read to you. I want to thank all of those who when anything to do with the choice of my name for this award. I am sure that if I could be present at this ceremony I should say so many faces of old friends that I would suspect must of been some collusion in the matter. Yet if the word I can't disapprove too much for a playwright or any other right then needs praise. While he is writing a novel a play the A Sometimes a lated momentarily sometimes convinced momentarily that he has done something really excellent. But if he is a man of any sense this conviction doesn't last. A right as day to day attitude toward his work at least when he's alone is a doubt that it's any good at all adopt temper it only once in awhile by a realisation that the public is the court of last resort and if the public like some of these things they may be granted some quality at least until a new audience comes along to reject them and applaud something else. None of us in this world that looks is fatuous enough to expect very much and we are all the more grateful for the Ben the goodwill the capital record the marks we have made in the saying well a way out that the ocean will race all we have done before us all very long and leave the beats of the next group of children or the next race or the next Fall of A.T.O.S.. Thanks. Bringing this ceremony of to a conclusion Robert Sherwood has accepted for months well Anderson always unable to be here the gold medal for drama you have been listening to the ceremonial program of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters during this program new members were inducted into the academy and the institute and honors were presented for outstanding achievement in arts and letters and this broadcast came to you directly from the academy auditorium as a special feature of New York's municipal stations the following station identification We'll return you now to our studios. This is W. N.Y.C. F.M. The High Fidelity boys of New York City.