" DIES AT 92 LYTLE not ever knew I'm MR. risks than anybody I you are mentor yet sure you know exactly what A think I doing or have done. It is here I " remembered may be of help hyjohn Sullivan And so they ran. Reading those letters river, at a desk looking over the Lee Andrew Lytle entered my life, appro- whose often aloud. I heard a man enough, through a series of priately everyday speech bordered on the poetic. written during the summer and fall letters Incoherent paragraphs would crystallize Sanford McGee had introduced of 1994. without warning into sentences of a few weeks before I flew to anecdote us that May. absolute pith In one rambling open-ended visa. 1 vainly to Ireland on an about an invitation he has tried of these early visits more might remember one decline, he ends in a phrase that Mr. Lytle was is perfectly than the rest. summarize his agrarian career "This " asked if I wouldn't mind absolutely fulilely lired and the way I protest while he took a nap. He lay pages, about a man reading I also read, in those his arms folded mortality down on his couch with acutely aware of his age and draped a moving in neatly across his chest and When we were fixed on my face to block the velvet whiskey bag over his with him in the fall, he hinted at wondering il 1 the light. urgency of the situation, asleep and went early. Later he I left him there might come home for the always looking through his bookshelves reproached himself "There are Lytle's library, me in a letter of July first of countless times. threats," he reminds too hope will be preserved "It's wise never to pay which I can only 1 1, adding in scope, and to such. No man can intact, was Borgesian much attention First editions of what lies in wait." deceptively random. by Dennis Wiles. forestall or evade Lytle, photographed in 1989 inscribed Andrew attitude toward Sartre sat molding next to romantics Lytle's unflinching formality, but in spite of the a chair beside him. when I got Robert Penn Warren. velvet bag. Pulling up without formality death was no less in evidence novels by and their greasy senses, complete collec- the thread of conversa- and moved into the Squeezed in between I tried to follow a perpetual back to Tennessee the arts would recline in Jung of some kind, On my first James, Faulkner, and tion. It was a warning adds "It apartment under his house. tions of Joyce, dream of self-indulgence," and Musil, about "the machinations build him a dog-eared paperbacks by about the future, Joyce's night there, he asked me to were was good to find you in Cork. shared a thought he might be built for summers, John C. Calhoun of the enemy." I sentimental fire. His house was and Mishima; father took him there on a spoke up. beginning to Kafka, Val6ry with Augustine. talking in his sleep, so 1 remember and the nights were already shelf with which I don't well journey, to metaphor I asked him. clumsy attempts what an excellent "Who's the enemy?" writing once a week chill. Directing my I realize now On my end I was bag onto the floor by way of his life, in its With that he flung the finished get a log started, he said, the library made for and sending him poems as 1 those bright sorry that breadth of experience. bolted upright. Fixing was making me feel better. "I'm contradictions and and Mr. Lytle's criticism of them rasped. them. no idea I'd be southerner, a me like nails, he the so poor. son. I had These were the books of a blue eyes on metaphysical than literary, but wood's Then he lay more man who once son. the bourgeoisie." and page classicist, a critic, and a "Why advice he gave me was useful See Lytle. 3 be revised to urged me said that the canon should backdown. .... sometimes eerily precise. He I had writers. 1 about the last words Latin-American Those were art and sil down more include more to think less about Lytle in June when Andrew those shelves, but from him until one moming "The gift itself was in heaven among often at the typewriter. typewritten envelopes started he wrote, thoroughly intimidated. white, have nothing to do with." 1902 with you . Born on Dec. 26, didn't help. under my door in Cork demands." Leafing through the pages sliding rises from the abyss and few weeks of "it annotated. Had regularity. After a unfamiliar with verse, • Graduate of Sewanee Thev were all heavily clocklike He claimed to be that Andrew quite, as I realized with delight winced at my the man read everything? Not this I I'm sure he must have Military Academy the but begun a correspondence, control. Watch was learn. Rather than reading Lytle had and lack of to my most earnestness • Bachelor's Degree From which are now among June 19. he he read regularly and fruits of gently, in a letter of voraciously, were how University Lytle read possessions. His letters on one Vanderbilt sensitively (Tate once said that treasured prepares to drop the bomb non-sequitur and if he had works of art, getting a little taught at Flaubert's Us Trois Contes as little mad misguided effort. "I'm • From 1942-44, he Rereading them this age years of devotion brilliant in turns. not sure if it is all old written it), but ninety garrulous I'm University of the South year. I am the first time. n a is I was for the seized me That to books left quite a collection. moming Possibly words have spontaneous editor of the heard a at how open and devoting a life to • Was managing ready out a title when 1 amazed one of the dangers of to pick he apolo- one dated June 9. and risks ol Mr. Lytle began they are. In seizure, understanding Sewanee Review voice in the front hall. ' the I don t elaborate salutation: take greater I wasn't for an 1 do say it. you to talk to (or to himself, gizes language. If me in such I am writing by the why it is that sure), his voice slightly muffled know NEWS SPORTS ARTS Tiger Talk, p. 9 Utilities District, p. 5 8 Sewanee scoring water felines, p. Sewanee, p. 10 High Quartet plays in house burglaries, p. 4 Days, 10 Kronos Wheat sport of surviving Shake p. exhibition, p. 2 14 The Geof Bowie's gallery Sewanee's Shakin' Days, p. Fever, p. u CD: "Saturday Morning ) November 16, 1995 The Sewanee Purple Page 16 BACK PAGE ANTIPOP by Rev. Popped-Art The Imitation of the February^ 1996 The Sewanee Purple Page 2 NEWS Lytle's many lives: Treaty of Fontainebleau to be Mr. Agrarian shown in duPont Library tor, author, 193 signatures, and His Critter Company" ( 1 Wall pages of ratifications, h\ Chad" ick taught at the Univer- contain the From 1942-44 he lis. These five pages in Sewanee, TN, and men famous world leaders sity of the South From Monday, February 12 to Count was managing editor of the "Sewanee as Alexander I. Tsar of Russia; February 17. the duPont Library " In 1948 Mr. Lylle founded the Friday, Nesselrode. the Russian Foreign Minis- Review Treaty of University of will host an exhibition ol the of writing program at the ter, Frederick William III. King Fontainebleau. Thi ias been Florida. He has also served on the Prussia. Francis 1. Emperor of Ru loaned by a generous collector Ol famous faculties at Southwestern in Memphis Prince Metlernich, the Austrian Foreign " memorabilia currently living in (now Rhodes College), the University of historical Minister; Caulaincourt. Minister of gentleman, who asked not College, the University of Sewanee This the Duke of Bassano. Iowa, Kenyon 1 oieign Affairs; be named, will soon sell the document and Vanderbilt University. He to Minister of the French State; and, of Kentucky, The exhibition editor of the 11 Christie's in London. served a second term as course. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. depart- ill sponsored by the history Review," America's oldest w be Each nation represented sealed his "Sewanee ment. continuously published literary quarterly ratification with wax. In the Treaty of Fontainebleau, until 1973, and was a profes- All Sewanee students are encour- from 1961 French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte English on Sewanee's faculty until aged to come and view the exhibit. sor of himself removes the French throne from 1973. Among his students were many "I think it would be a great family The treaty also estab- writers, including Flannery and his opportunity for Sewanee students to see prominent Elba as his sovereign state and Madison Jones, Harry Crews, lishes such an amazing piece of history O'Connor, residence. The document secures Joan Gerber. firsthand," the loaner said. and Merrill family. payment to Napoleon and to his Mr. Lytle contributed an essay to the to the terms of should the Emperor agree Agrarian work, "I'll Take My Stand" Napoleon ihe treaty. (Ironically, (1930). His first novel. "The Long with the treaty, breached his accordance $25 Night." appeared in 1936. He published I WILL PAY unsuccessfully, to as he attempted, FOR YOUR "At The Moon's Inn" in 1941 and "A secure domination of Europe some years 1947. Ten years later. PHONE BOOK In Monteagle. Name for Evil" in Also, since the treaty ended the enduring later ) Mr Lytle's most important and Nelson Lytle, the last of the extremely valuable.