Since 1903, members of Arts and Letters have delivered commemorative tributes to fellow members who have passed away. These remarks celebrate and reflect on the lives and work of the members being honored and acknowledge their contribution to the arts. A selection of tributes is now available in the digital archive below. As we prepared this archive, we were reminded that these tributes reflect their times, and, in some instances, include terminology and social and moral judgments we do not endorse.
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Conrad Richter was one of those artists who really begin to live after their demise. The joy of receiving full recognition is seldom granted to those who are destined to last. At a time of flimsy literary experimentation, and of attempting to combine journalism with literature—a passing fad—Conrad Richter created literary works which will endure. He had all the qualities of a classic: deep roots in life, a great sense for language and folklore, an insatiable thirst to observe and record and the assurance of those who know that time is with them, not against them. He also possessed the moral strength which is so rare in our epoch. Conrad Richter had the courage to love and to praise goodness, patience, and decency when many around him extolled anger, rebellion, and crime. He dared to love his country when hatred of America was the rampant fashion. He had the firmness to be a writer of the nineteenth century even though he lived and created in the twentieth. It was not because of his conservatism but because he realized that this century had not surpassed the previous one in any way from a literary point of view. His trilogy, The Trees, The Fields, and The Town could have been written by Turgenev if he were an American. In this work Conrad Richter takes the reader into the virgin forest of America and makes him enjoy its majestic beauty and its divine peace. I don't know of a single writer in world literature who knew nature better than he.
As to character, Conrad Richter succeeded best in portraying the primitive. The complications and the tensions of the big city dweller were not his theme. It is not by accident that the first part of his trilogy, The Trees, is the strongest.
Modest as Conrad Richter was, he must certainly have known his value and he must have been astounded at the fact that mediocrity was exalted whereas he, a pillar of American literature, was neglected. However, Richter was basically a religious person. He surely believed that there was sense and order in what appears senseless and chaotic. The story which Conrad Richter told is unique and because of this America will have to go back to him as it went back to Herman Melville.