Faculty Forum 2011

St. Mark's

F

acultY orum

Spring 2011 • Volume I

About the Faculty forum

The Faculty Forum features academic writing, creative writing, and art composed by the faculty of St. Mark’s School of Texas, an independent preparatory school for boys in Dallas, Texas. The concept of the Forum was sparked by the experience of one faculty member who was writing an academic paper along with her class. She knew that many other St. Mark’s teachers were producing original scholarly and artistic work as well, and she felt that a publication of faculty work could become a platform for colleagues who wanted to share their thinking, writing, and art with one another, the St. Mark’s community, and the students.

An editorial board was created to solicit, evaluate, and edit faculty submissions. Teachers from a broad range of academic areas, including English, history, science, environmental studies, fine arts, humanities, physical education, mathematics, and the library, contributed to this first edition. The editorial board hopes the Forum will inspire teachers to continue producing intellectual and artistic work as part of their daily lives.

~ Lynne Weber Editor-in-Chief

table of contents And On Other Days, I Act ~ Nick Sberna, Humanities____________________________________________ 2 Bradford Pear Blossom ~ John Mead, Science___________________________________________________ 3 The God Has Four Faces ~ Howard Hand, Mathematics___________________________________________ 4 Falling ~ David Brown, English__________________________________________________________________ 6 Sweet Gum Seed Pod ~ John Mead, Science______________________________________________________ 7 The British Empire ~ Dr. Bruce Westrate, History_________________________________________________ 8 Reading Chaucer with Six Eyes ~ Roberta Mailer, English______________________________________ 12 Downy Woodpecker Chick ~ John Mead, Science______________________________________________ 15 Reading Together ~ Marta Napiorkowska, English_______________________________________________ 16 The Jenny Trees ~ Barbara Kinkead, Library_____________________________________________________ 19 The Global Achievement Gap ~ Stephen Houpt, Science________________________________________ 20 Old Icelander ~ Dan Northcut_________________________________________________________________ 23 Ecos de un Pueblo Chileno ~ David Evans, Spanish____________________________________________ 24 wake ~ John Frost, Fine Arts____________________________________________________________________ 25 Science and Religion ~ Stephanie Barta, Science________________________________________________ 26 Waiting Waxwing ~ John Mead, Science_______________________________________________________ 28 Born to Wear Red ~ David Brown, English______________________________________________________ 29 After Troy ~ Dr. John Perryman, History_________________________________________________________ 30 Three of a Kind ~ John Mead, Science___________________________________________________________ 31 Ted ~ Dr. Henry Ploegstra, English_______________________________________________________________ 32 This Is Not a Quest ~ Curtis Smith, English______________________________________________________ 33 That Same Seed of Life ~ Robert Rozelle, Humanities____________________________________________ 35 Moby Dick and the Sublime ~ Lynne Weber, English___________________________________________ 36 Journey to Jefferson ~ David Brown, English___________________________________________________ 42 Teaching Leadership Through Emerson’s Essay “Compensation” ~ Dr. Martin Stegemoeller, English_________________________ 46 Vernon ~ Stephen Houpt, Science_______________________________________________________________ 51 Piccadilly Train Station ~ Byron Lawson, History______________________________________________ 52 A Rainy Day in Montreal ~ Byron Lawson, History_____________________________________________ 53 Foot Posture ~ Matthew Hjertstedt, Physical Education___________________________________________ 54 Preserving the Heritage of African American Filmmakers ~ Tinsley Silcox, Library_____________________________________ 56 Political Tensions in the Early Years of Weimar Germany ~ Johnny Hunter, History__________________________________ 60 higher reaching ~ John Frost, Fine Arts_________________________________________________________ 68

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And On Other Days, I Act

Nick Sberna, humanities

Like the ice will never thaw, never loosen its grey grasp on the soil in my raised beds.

The chard is all but wilted now, leaves hardened, darkened.

Just weeks ago a ruby stem was every reason to believe good things would last till March.

Not so. I pulled the peas out first, ripped back the stubborn tendrils and the roots still ripe with frost.

Last spring I found a brown snake in the half-dead hackberry mulch.

His chest was tinted blue, a shade that made me think of spades, of trowels, of upturned earth.

On some days, I think.

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Bradford Pear blossom john mead, science

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The God Has Four Faces

Howard Hand, Mathematics The Wheel At the beginning the school day all the students and teachers gather for Assembly. They sit on the floor of a covered but open-air space, each class in a line, 3rd grade through 10th grade, like spokes of a wheel. The meeting today began when the Principal sat down in front of the students, on the floor, in lotus position. He instructed them to do the same, and then he asked them to make their backs straight and to try to relax. A minute or so later he suggested that they all put a smile on their face. The students sat silently. After some moments he instructed them to close their eyes. There was the noise of hammers and cement machines due to construction in the building next to us. The Principal remarked that there would always be noise on the outside, so he advised the students not to seek silence in their surroundings, but to look for the silence within. We maintained our silence for another four or five minutes. No one moved. The students, not strangers to meditation, did not fidget. At the end of this time, the Principal, still sitting in front of them, told them to open their eyes slowly. We opened our eyes, but remained peaceful. Then the singing teacher stood up and sang a beautiful song, in Sanskrit, in an ancient style. ~ Sreenidhi School, July 2008

Karma Last night Kaviraj and Rajagopalan took me in Raju’s car — Kavi drove — to the street in Hyderabad where the book stores are. If you want to buy something in Hyderabad — textiles, electrical supplies, books, whatever — then you have to know which street to go to. No Wal-Mart, in other words. It was rush hour, so the traffic was beyond hectic.

You could make an exciting movie by putting a camera on the front of a car and driving in Hyderabad, or any Indian city. Watching this movie, you would be on the edge of your seat every minute. I watched in awe as Kavi maneuvered in and out. He has the skill that all Indian drivers must have of judging the distance from his vehicle to an adjacent one to the nearest inch. Even with such proximity there is seldom contact. Ignoring lane lines, driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street or driving on the wrong side of the street —all are so commonplace that no one even thinks twice.

Red lights and double lines down the middle of the road are not even respected as suggestions. The joke goes that a guy was stopped by a cop who said “Didn’t you see the red light?”

“Yes, sir, I saw the red light, but I did not see YOU!” People, dogs, cows, and water buffaloes cross the street at random.

Auto rickshaws, powered by a small gasoline engine and designed for two passengers on a back seat with the driver in a front seat carry as many as 8 passengers in addition to 4

the driver. It is a wonder how they move with such alacrity.

Motorcycles, generally a 150 cc model, bear at least two passengers, but I have many times seen families of six on one.

Buses, lumbering monsters, are given no more respect than any other moving thing. You will cut them off just as casually as a pedestrian crossing in the middle of the street will tell you to back off. The sign the pedestrian makes is the arm at a 45-degree angle to the body with the palm down. This is accompanied by a stern look. Women who have mastered this art will put even a bus at bay. Everyone uses his horn all the time, but it is not an expression of anger. In India using the horn is a matter of courtesy. It says, “Pay attention, please, I am right behind you, and I don’t want you to get hurt.” On the backs of trucks you will see the words “Honk please” painted in bright letters.

A bookstore, as are most shops, is typically a sort of cave, open to the street in front, 10–12 feet wide and maybe 20 feet deep. There will be a counter along one side and perhaps a display case in the middle, leaving two lanes wide enough for one person to pass. The books are piled up to the ceiling— beyond the reach of even the tallest person — on every wall.

Browsing is barely possible. The only thing to do is to ask the bookseller, and he will know immediately whether or not he has the book you want. If he has it he will go right to it, navigating what to you seems a giant puzzle with several thousand pieces. If he doesn’t have it he might tell you that the store two doors down might (or does) have it. Some stores have only a counter on the street side where maybe two dozen people are trying to get the attention of two salespeople who are calmly fetching books from the maze behind them. Many books can be bought for as little as 25 rupees (about 60 cents). You are splurging if you pay 300 rupees ($7.50) for a giant Telugu-English dictionary (the one that I wanted).

Parking places and parking lots are rare in the city.

Every inch of the street is lined with the open-front shops, and every inch of the street in front of the shops is packed with parked motorcycles, rickshaws, and people sitting or standing, chatting. If you want to stop your car, you have to do it in the middle of the street, which drivers do not hesitate to do. Since we needed to park on or near the bookstore street, we asked advice from a young man sitting on his parked motorcycle. He said to go to the municipal hospital around the corner. For a moment I actually envisioned a parking lot. No way. The hospital was reached by a narrow lane, also lined with motorcycles and with people essentially camping out, sitting on blankets, chatting, maybe having something to eat. At the end of the lane were a gate facu lt y foru m • 20 1 1

The God Has Four Faces Howard Hand, Mathematics

and a uniformed guard. The trick was to stop the car on the street so that Raju could get out and go talk to the guard.

It required a payment (don’t say bribe) of 20 rupees to get the guard to open the gate and let us park inside. The lane continued on inside, but beside the lane there was a pocket of space that might have held four cars at the most. There was one car already parked next to a building, leaving just enough space for our car also next to the building. The rest of this area was occupied by more people sitting and having a meal or standing and chatting in two tiny stores which faced this little courtyard.

In India, living in small spaces with lots of people has become a great art form. ~ Hyderabad, July 2010

Ritual Today one of the 8th grade boys had a birthday. I was invited to his first period class, because someone had brought a cake — a beautiful, gooey chocolate cake. When I came in the boy was sitting in front of the cake and other students were pretending to fan him, as if he were a maharaja.

Pictures were taken, the cake was cut, and the birthday boy was treated by another student to a dab of frosting on his cheek. Then another. Then a stripe of chocolate across his forehead. Then a couple of dots on his chin. He only smiled.

This all happened, somehow, without disorder breaking out.

Ritual keeps chaos at bay. ~ Sreenidhi School, July 2008

Light Kaviraj said that he wanted to visit a temple.

“I used to go there often when I lived nearby. You must come with me.”

We set out in Raju’s car just before dusk. We traveled for no more than 15 minutes and parked next to the highway.

There was no sign of a temple. We ducked through an opening between an apartment building and a small, roadside refreshment stand. Past the buildings was a space like a vacant lot with a narrow path. We turned left and continued walking.

Fifty yards further on our left was a house — a low, one room building, maybe 12 by 12 feet, occupied by a family. It was tucked into a brushy area, invisible from the street. On our right the vacant space continued. There was light in the house, and the door was open. Two people were sitting out in front.

We nodded but said nothing, nor did they. After another 50 yards the path took a slight right. In front of us was a very small building, more like a concrete shed. At the front opening was an iron-barred gate, which was open. Inside I could see what looked like a large stone. As we got close Kavi said, ST. MARK'S SCHOOL OF TE X AS

“Can you see the god?”

“Yes,” I said, even though I couldn’t.

“See, it’s Hanuman. There is his head, his body, his legs.”

Sure enough, as I stared more closely I made out a very rough and much worn carving in bas-relief. No detail was visible except the rough outline. Kavi knelt and took from a paper bag a lantern of clear glass with a brass frame. He also had a candle and matches. I watched as he arranged these small things and finally as he struck the match. The light was not great, but by that time night had fallen, so that Hanuman flickered in light and shade, announcing his presence. I stood in wonder. Such a small temple, such a humble god, and yet I felt such reverence. The concrete floor of the temple, littered with other small offerings and burnt candles, was barely big enough so that a person could lie down in front of the god. By protruding his feet out onto the porch, Kavi prostrated himself. In this remote, dark place, so close to a highway and yet feeling so distant, there was only peace. Kavi got up and said that we must circle the temple five times, which we did. We stood then for a few more moments in front.

“It’s time to go, said Kavi.

We passed the house again on our way back, but it was virtually dark.

“I think they have electricity, Kavi,” I said. “There was light in the house when we passed before.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I think I saw a wire coming down from the pole.”

“No, I’m sure there isn’t.”

“There was light, Kavi.”

We walked back to the car. ~ Hyderabad, July 2010

Epilogue: Renunciation The boy was completely naked. His brown skin had a luster that made him seem like a bronze statue placed there on the pavement at a fork in a busy road emerging from the gate to the old part of town. His head, completely shaved, shone also in the sun. Perhaps eleven years old, he seemed too young to be out there alone. He was pointing at a dog, asleep in this unlikely place, where traffic blared on both sides. The boy was laughing, as if to say that the dog’s behavior was ridiculous. No one, neither truck driver nor cyclist nor rickshaw driver nor pedestrian, seemed to take notice of the dog or of the boy. Neither he nor his nakedness drew any attention. Was he poor? Was he a saddhu? Both?

Traffic sped by. ~Varanasi, July 20, 2008 5

Falling

David Brown, english

The sun rests on the ocean’s rim, a copper coin God dangles above its watery slot.

He drops the token like it’s hot, the proper end to every sin…or so we’re taught: The treading bather sinks unless he swims, the demon falls headlong after he hovers, birds dive for fish, miners descend for gems, and amorous lads lapse into their lovers.

But sinking suns can stoke the blaze of other lights. The height of passion’s love requires burying the self we never thought to smother.

By falling down, the lame man inspires some to run. The miner emerges from the core of darkness holding gold. Flocks break through spray to fly again. And the slumping sun, before it dies, mixes pink with shades of gray.

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sweet gum seed pod john mead, science

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The british empire

Dr. Bruce Westrate, History First of all, I beg your forgiveness, or at the least a chance to explain the unforgivably pretentious title of my senior elective: Multicultural Malaise, for there actually is one. The idea to weave a class around the British imperial legacy occurred to me during a National Endowment of the Humanities Seminar at UT in Austin entitled “Rediscovering the British Empire” in which I participated in the summer of 1996. I was struck by the timeliness of the subject, especially in light of recent dustups over the so-called “culture wars.” Imperial studies are making something of a comeback these days, after decades of Cold War neglect and disdain, often leaving that intriguing question on the table which I am asked most often: was the British Empire a good or bad thing? An important question, that. For within its saga are contained many of the most compelling choices of our time: war or peace, justice or tyranny, law or disorder, freedom or slavery, wealth or poverty, synthesis or heterogeneity. Yet, that question, like most historical queries, eludes the easy answer.

All this emanating from a tiny island in the North Atlantic, and eventually bleeding crimson over one quarter of the globe officially, while controlling another quarter unofficially. At its height, one-third of the world’s population (570 million people) lived under its sway. How many of the world’s greatest cities are outgrowths of the imperial seed: Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Ottawa, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Sydney, Wellington, Melbourne, and Capetown. British engineers dammed the Nile, watered the Punjab, spanned the Zambezi and laced India and Africa, north to south, east to west, with railroads and telegraphs and the seven seas with undersea transmission cables. London became the world’s first financial cynosure. Her merchants and entrepreneurs introduced rubber to Malaya, tea to Sri Lanka, coffee to Kenya, tobacco and cotton to America, sugar to Jamaica and opium to Bengal. And Lloyd’s underwrote them all. Her physicians battled tropical disease and her bureaucrats, endemic famine, while her missionaries spread the gospel worldwide. All of this was, of course, facilitated and protected by the greatest navy the world had ever seen, the exploits of whose captains would become the stuff of legend: Drake, Hawkins, Graves, Hawkes, Jellicoe and Nelson. This was the empire of the three C’s: Christianity, Commerce and Civilization, The

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Empire of Good Intentions, the British Empire. In 1759, after he had ejected France from Canada for good, the great Prime Minister William Pitt was informed that his empire now exceeded in extent those of ancient Greece and Rome combined. The Great Commoner responded with typical lack of humility: “Speak to me not of Greece and Rome,” he replied haughtily, “those are the histories of little peoples.”

Yet when the nineteenth-century historian J.R. Seeley answered the question of how it had come about, he could only respond that the Empire had been acquired “in a fit of absence of mind.”

On its face, that is an unsatisfying explanation to me.

Rather, I am struck by a sense of the Empire’s having “risen to its opportunities;” that far from being the culmination of some sublime altruistic vision, the Empire was a product of the government frequently finding itself rather stuck, perhaps as America currently seems, with its imperial role, usually out of some perceived strategic necessity or other. So although such opportunities were generally unpremeditated and often unbidden, the Empire would be the recipient, whether she wished it or no, of the dynamic movements sweeping over Georgian and Victorian Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Now many have noted, quite rightly, that there was a lot of humbug in this, and that the Empire had as much to do with pence as principles. Ravenous industrialists, after all, had blackened the English midlands and consigned a large section of the formerly rural population to a hybrid admixture of Dante and Dickens. Scottish highlanders emigrated out of desperation, having been largely dispossessed following the Battle of Culloden in 1746, while the Irish chafed under the yoke of delinquent landlords unaware of an even crueler fate which awaited them.

The founders of British India such as Robert Clive were, to many, rapacious scoundrels, bearing as little resemblance to Christians as those they were supplanting. Elsewhere, British sea captains bore away the children of Africa to the horrors of Caribbean sugar mills, while other British mariners carried smallpox and mumps to the remotest recesses of the Pacific. And the present-day bill of particulars against the Empire, perforce, goes on: destruction of native culture, evisceration of basic human rights, outright land

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The british empire

Dr. Bruce Westrate, History grabs that would make Julius Caesar blush. It wasn’t for nothing that Gandhi suggested the reason the sun never set over the British Empire was that “God didn’t trust them in the dark.”

Colonialism, critics allege, intensified and exported class distinctions and racism while warfare became the stock-in-trade of Proconsuls and Viceroys. All the while, an indifferent bureaucracy remained aloof, even obstructive, in the face of recurrent, devastating famine. Not to be outdone, anthropologists pile-on, recounting horrible atrocities committed in Australia, Tasmania, India, and Kenya. Economists lament the British fetish for free trade which made acute shortages, along with the Potato Famine in Ireland, much, much worse than they otherwise would have been. Most hyperbolic of all, postmodern intellectuals chime in, as did one Cambridge scholar recently, concluding that “The British were the Nazis of their time.” Now, in my best “Law and Order” Sam Waterston mode, I will stipulate to many of these crimes, indulgences and missteps, along with many more which I could mention. However, that does not mean that I concur with the final judgment.

Multiculturalism is a specious philosophy which is derivative of the post-modern critiques of writers like Michael Foucoult, Edward Said and Jacque Derrida, and posits the absolute relativity of cross-cultural knowledge.

Under this view, it is objectively impossible for those in one culture to assess another because “all is translation,” colored by the biases and preconceptions inherent in one’s own cultural prism. Consequently, under this worldview, all cultures are morally equivalent, and so impervious to judgment simply because they are incomprehensible to outsiders, whose conclusions are hopelessly clouded by ignorance and the prejudice which stems from it.

As with many intellectual fads, there is just enough truth in the multicultural message to be dangerous, for it strikes at the very guts of history: disciplined scholarship in the pursuit of truth. If there is no truth, then there may be no legitimate pursuit. Conclusions cannot be arrived at and so judgments cannot be made. The very reason we study history, that is to chart our progress as human beings and learn from our mistakes, no longer exists. If all truth is relative and nothing is inherently “right,” then nothing is inherently “wrong.” So “History,” at least in the Western

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sense of the term, simply stops. It is tantamount to flatearthers and astrologers demanding repeal of the scientific method, along with the guarantee of equal time. Students, thereby, are deprived, as the late Alan Bloom pointed out in The Closing of the American Mind, “of the impulse of Odysseus, who, according to Dante, traveled the world to see the virtues and vices of men.” So what better petrie dish within which to test this philosophy, I thought, than the British Empire, the crucible of cultures?

History is a dynamic, not a static, proposition. And the greatest advantage which hindsight affords us, of course, is perspective, but only the kind buttressed by objective knowledge. And I strive for my students to be more reliant on that, than on vague, political taglines or felicitous buzzwords which, however pleasing to the ear, are so nebulous and imprecise as to mean everything…and so nothing.

If empires, at the end of the day, are to be judged as having shed blood, then the British Empire was, without a doubt, guilty. But then so was every other empire in the history of man, as they all are the products of conquest and exploitation. And since antiquity, empires (not nationstates) have been the most popular models by which men have chosen to rule themselves…and others. Yet a fair reading of the evidence, as may be found in the case of India, would find British conquest, owing largely to its swiftness and efficiency, to have been far less bloody than those which had gone on before. And must not we also, in the interest of balance, concede that the relative absence of native discontent during two centuries of British rule (the famous Pax Britannica) in some measure affects the calculus, as India was spared the timeless cycle of conquest and plunder that had long been its lot?

Alternatively, consider British eradication of the slave trade, in which incidentally they were hardly the only participants. Might not the British people be credited for the lives saved by the extension of their rule over land and sea as much as they are condemned for their participation in that awful commerce? It was the Royal Navy, after all, that suppressed a trans-Atlantic trade which had consumed perhaps 10 million souls. Moreover, it has (continued on next page)

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The british empire

Dr. Bruce Westrate, History been conservatively estimated that the lesser-known East African trade of the Omani Arabs took 17 million lives before London put a stop to it. Whither the credit?

Likewise, the Empire is often unfairly criticized by demographers for administrative lapses which failed to prevent major famines, some of which were to some extent aggravated by their own mismanagement. Yet there has been an almost total lack of perspective with respect to analysis of such calamities. All regimes experienced famine. What set the British apart from previous rulers was their chutzpah: their arrogant, typically Victorian, can-do determination to increase food production and transportation infrastructure in order to deal with a problem which many Indian rulers had blithely dismissed as cosmically preordained. I think it is less significant that they failed occasionally, even spectacularly, than that they tried, at the least, to do something! So perhaps, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions after all.

Reluctance by government officials to interfere with market forces seems callous in our time, even inhuman.

But even conceding that, responsible officials fretted earnestly, just as Herbert Hoover would in 1929, that to overdo intervention would disrupt the mechanism of the market and worsen the supply situation. In the face of failure, however, and the impact of humanitarian suffering on the collective conscience of a democratic society, the British soldiered on, eventually achieving significant improvement, even as the population continued to swell, and (along with it) the future likelihood of shortages.

As for cultural destruction, the story is mixed. Muslim and Arab conquerors of India and Africa ravaged the heretical cultural treasures they found with a willful destructiveness the British seldom displayed. In fact, Indian Viceroys like Warren Hastings and Lord Curzon were at the forefront of translating native vernaculars and preserving temples, long before archeology was chic. The Raj also offered some education in English to native elites, an experience that would ultimately spell, as most MOTS (Men on the Spot) knew at the time, their own imperial undoing. Thomas Macaulay spelled it out floridly in his famous Minute: “It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system until it has outgrown that system, that by good government we may educate our

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subjects into a capacity for better government and that having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions.

Whether such a day will ever come I know not. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English History…

The scepter may fall away from us…but there are triumphs that are followed by no reverse.”

With respect to economic consequences of British imperialism, I turn to Nail Ferguson’s recent work, Empire.

His verdict is that without the British Empire it is hard to believe that the structures of liberal capitalism would have been so successfully established in so many different economies around the world. That the Chinese, Russians or Spanish would have pulled it off is, at the very least, doubtful. Would parliamentary institutions have achieved their currency worldwide? Would India’s democracy, elite schools, civil service, secular courts, the army, free press and universities (all on British models) have ever emerged? Perhaps the best evidence is the proliferation of English itself: one out of every seven speak it as either a first or second language, the closest thing the world has to a lingua franca.

Consider too the role of the British Empire in facilitating capital export to the less developed world, in considerably higher proportion. In 1996 only 28% of foreign direct investment went to developing countries, whereas in 1913 the proportion was 63%. Another, stricter measure shows that in 1997, only around 5% of the world stock of capital was invested in countries with per capita incomes of 20% or less of US per capita GDP. In 1913 the figure was 25%.

A plausible hypothesis is that empire, and particularly the British Empire, encouraged investors to put their money in developing economies. The reasoning here was straightforward. Investing in such economies is risky. They tend to be far away and more prone to economic, social and political crises. But the extension of empire into the less developed world had the effect of reducing such risks by imposing, directly or indirectly, some form of reliable rule. In practice, money invested in an official British colony such as India was a great deal more secure than money invested in a de facto “colony” like Argentina. This constituted an even better “imperial seal of approval” than adherence to the gold standard (which effectively guaranteed investors against inflation) — though most British colonies ultimately had both.

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The british empire

Dr. Bruce Westrate, History Likewise, British institutions facilitated development: law (particularly common law) and administration which protected investors and enforced contracts. This was critical to capital formation. Moreover, both the economy and incorruptibility of British rule was incalculable in encouraging potential investors to go colonial. In fact, a recent newspaper poll in Bombay actually expressed a popular preference for return of the British ICS officers over their current crop of politicians, a choice which, on reflection, we might prefer ourselves.

Yet despite all of these factors, the natural resentment attending foreign control nurtured incipient nationalism across the world, transforming erstwhile empire into myriad nation-states. But the process also left unfinished cultural business, the winds of modernity colliding with the resistance of traditional societies which had been buffeted by them. So in the end, decolonization and nationalism along with the terrorism both have spawned, at least inasmuch as we are experiencing it, is largely the detritus of empire.

Yet aside from all of these things, try to imagine world history with an un-imperial Britain, which doubtless would have meant a far more sedate, ordinary, timid and (dare we say it?) boring land. Arguably, this would have meant no United States, no David Livingstone, no slave trade abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, no James Watt, no Isaac Newton, no Edmund Burke, no Cromwell, no Coleridge, no Shakespeare, no Nelson, no Wellington, no Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt or Churchill, no Gandhi, no King, no freedom. For the British proved not only that Empire could become the servant of democracy, but that its best, as well as its worst, features could be disseminated worldwide — or not, if Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler, or Joseph Stalin had had their way, for they all hankered after the Empire’s destruction. So surely, using such criteria, history without the British Empire is a far more sobering prospect to contemplate than the one which fortune has bequeathed to us. Still and all, it is perhaps best to remember Churchill’s admonition to a friendly crowd once the world had soured on the project: “We must not mention the Empire. It’s naughty.”

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Much of the world today was molded and shaped by Western imperialism. Whether America may be defined as an empire is hotly debated, as is the proposition that our country should either embrace or shrink from that designation. But for better or worse, the United States has inherited Britain’s global status, its opportunities along with its liabilities and responsibilities. If you doubt that, it is well to note that in 1920, British troops were occupying Iraq and combating an insurgency there; that Israel was crafted from British Palestine; that modern India and Pakistan, for better or worse, are legacies of the British Empire, as is Nigeria, Egypt, the Sudan and South Africa. As Britain was compelled to back away, America assumed the mantle, perforce, as leader of the Western world.

And that role, as we are now painfully aware, is a mixed blessing. But knowing the story about how all this came about, while not solving all our present-day problems, may at least impart a measure of coherence and clarity with respect to what works and what doesn’t, what is just and what is not, what is right and what is wrong. At the least, that is my hope, and my expectation. Failure to do so will leave us stranded in our enduring “multicultural malaise,” bereft of the knowledge by which we may avoid committing those same horrible mistakes man is heir to.

Well perhaps not the same mistakes, but similar ones. I am fond of recounting to parents at mini-school each year three quotes which illuminate the irrepressible impact of history on the daily lives of us all: from George Santayana that “those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them,” from Lenin that “history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce,” and lastly, my favorite, from Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain: “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

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REading chaucer with six eyes

roberta mailer, english

Reading a long poem with a narrator who invokes a different god for each book and, sometimes, several gods within a book can disorient a reader. Such casting about suggests a desperate appeal for help from any god who might be listening, an appeal that casts doubt on narrative reliability. So when the narrator of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde implores divine assistance from such disparate sources as Tesiphone, Venus, Calliope, Clio, and Janus, we readers might be well advised to stick with Janus, the god with two faces. At least Janus can watch for trouble coming from several directions at once, helping us in and out of the story without mishap. With Janus, we can stand at the literal doorway of the poem, the great gate in the Trojan wall; watch at a figurative one, the sill between the Greek and Trojan worlds on which Criseyde balances precariously; and float with the narrator in the liminal space between reality and illusion. By using his four and our two eyes, maybe we can avoid falling with Troy.

While we stand in the gateway of the Trojan wall, the growing romance between Criseyde and Troilus pulls our attention inward, while reminders of the relentless fighting waged outside the city turn our attention outward. Criseyde and Troilus seem unconcerned about the Greek threat, but the speaker sends insistent reminders of it. While we watch fascinated to see whether Pandarus’s pandering will succeed with Criseyde, the narrator slips in a reminder of the horrors of warfare from Statius’s account of the siege of Thebes. Soon after, he hints at betrayal and vengeance with references to Procne and Philomela.

Later, we focus on Criseyde blushing as she watches Troilus return from battle, and, although she seems not to recognize his appearance as terrifying, we see his broken shield and his helmet chopped to pieces and hanging by a thread, grim reminders of battle. By naming Deiphobus as Troilus’s favorite brother, the narrator forces us to remember Aeneas’s description of Deiphobus’s betrayal by Helen and mutilation by the Greeks, an image from the Aeneid that would have been familiar to Chaucer’s contemporaries. Other reminders include Hector’s letter about a prisoner of war; Troilus’s promise to let “Achilles with his spere/Myn herte cleve” (3.374–375) and to be “Caytif to cruel kyng Agamenoun” (3.382) should he not maintain the secrecy he promises Criseyde; and personification of the sun, not as the more familiar Trojan ally Apollo, but as a threatening Titan. Finally, in Troilus’s invocation of a whole series of planets, he unwittingly calls up images of

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betrayal and death: Mars draped in a bloody cloak, Adonis slain by a boar, Europa abducted by Jove, Daphne changed into a laurel tree, and Aglauros changed to stone. Mere mention of Troilus hunting or hawking during a truce reminds us that truces are a product of the war in which Troilus is “Save Ector most ydred of any wight” (3.1775). The threat from outside becomes most insistent as the narrator explains that Pandarus’s choice of nights for the clandestine consummation of love, a night of no moon and heavy rain, falls during the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the zodiacal sign of Cancer. According to astrological belief common in Chaucer’s time, this event could signal disasters such as major floods and even the fall of Troy. But the three main characters seem not to notice: their pursuit of romance blinds them to impending danger. Meanwhile, we readers stand in the gateway looking back and forth in horror, wondering when calamity will strike.

Figuratively, Criseyde, too, stands in the gateway looking two ways at once. In one direction, Troilus presses his suit upon her, and in the other, she sees the Greeks advance. Criseyde probably does not need Pandarus to remind her that if she is ungracious to Troilus, her “beaute may not strecche/To make amendes of so cruel a dede/ Avysement is good byfore the nede” (2.341–343). On the other hand, she indicates her awareness of the siege and its dangers by telling Pandarus that she is “of Grekes so fered that I deye” (2.124). Should the Greeks win, as her father’s defection suggests they will, she will have much less to fear as Calkas’s widowed daughter than as Troilus’s lover.

In this independent woman in black, Chaucer creates a complex character in part by giving her speeches which mollify Troilus while they both continue her previous repartee with her uncle and warn Pandarus not to overstep the bounds appropriate for the concerned uncle he purports to be.

This two-sided role, however, leaves her in a Janus-like world of ambiguity. In a scene full of double meanings, Troilus, well-coached by Pandarus, opens his suit with a speech that suggests more than it states.

When Criseyde asks his intentions toward her, he asks that she “deigne me so muchel honoure/Me to comanden aught in any houre/And I to ben youre —.”

While this could be read as a complete sentence, the punctuation suggests a more likely interpretation that he almost concludes with “youre lovere” or

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REading chaucer with six eyes roberta mailer, english

“youre paramour.” Instead, he catches himself just in time, lamely casts about for a safer ending, and stumbles through several: …verry, humble, trewe Secret, and in my paynes pacient And evere mo desiren fresshly newe To serve, and ben ylike diligent, And with good herte…. (3.139–145) His bumbling attempt at urbane suggestiveness ends in a weak anaphora that thinly disguises his real meaning: that he desires “to ben youre lovyere.” His equivocation cannot be lost on Criseyde, nor can Pandarus’s role in promoting a love between the two of them. But Criseyde proves equally able not only to recognize the dissimulation but also to speak out of two mouths herself.

In her predicament, Criseyde becomes a Janus-figure with speeches to Troilus and to Pandarus that are full of double meanings enough to rival the Delphic Oracle that informs her father. On one level, her words encourage Troilus. On another, they can be read as a direct response to Pandarus’s pandering. For example, after Troilus’s professions of loyalty, she concludes, or at least says she does, that her honor is safe and agrees to “Receyven hym fully to my servyse” (3.161) and then to “don him gladnesse” (3.166) and “nought feyne” (3.167). The glossary offers two interpretations for her offer. According to one, “servyse” means devotion and “feyne” means to hold back, suggesting to Troilus that she will not hold back her love. Alternately, “servyse” can mean service, and “feyne” can mean to dissemble or to counterfeit. Interpreted this way, Criseyde indicates to Pandarus that she will accept his knightly service but will not pretend any other feeling for him. Her next line continues the double message: “Now beth al hool; no lenger ye ne pleyne” (3.168). While encouraging Troilus to be “hool,” or healthy, she indicates that Pandarus should be completely true; in other words, she recognizes his interference in “the olde daunce.” As a pun, “pleyne” can refer to pleyn(e) which means to complain or it can refer to pleye(n) which means to act (a part) or to perform. Hence, to Troilus, she says “Please complain no longer;” to Pandarus she says “Please give up this dramatic performance.“ Instead of recognizing both interpretations, Troilus takes her to mean that she receives Troilus into her devotion and hopes his

love complaint is satisfied — a satisfactory beginning for romance. At the same time, an accomplished word player himself, Pandarus is probably fully aware of both messages she sends and, if so, enjoys her flirtatious wittiness as much as the evident success of his pandering.

Criseyde’s word-play continues with her subsequent warning that he “namore han sovereignete/Of me in love, than right in that case is” (3.171–172) which she directs to Pandarus as much as to Troilus. With it she warns Pandarus that she will accede to his manipulations only to the extent she deems right for her and that as long as he serves her, she will “Chericen you right after ye disserve” (3.175). Here, “chericen” might mean hold dear — she will hold Troilus dear as long as he maintains her honor — or, more impersonally, respect — she will respect her uncle as long as Pandarus behaves honorably toward her. Finally, she encourages both to regain their “lustinesse” (3.177) in return for “blisse” (3.181). From one mouth, Troilus hears what he wants to hear, that she will grant him earthly pleasure, and he falls to his knees in praise of God and Cupid, unaware to the end of the other face of the conversation. From the other mouth, Pandarus hears in her concluding sentence an arch warning to regain his luster in her eyes and to desist from the sinful manipulations that could lose him heavenly bliss. At this point, Pandarus stands over the kneeling Troilus and must be smiling at his niece in acknowledgement and approval of her latest rejoinder in their ongoing word play about love. Most impressive, though, is the narrator’s stunning success in creating a single speech that speaks two ways to two people at the same time, keeping our heads spinning in an astonished attempt to figure out what is real and what is illusion.

In addition to swiveling our attention from the romance inside the city walls to the siege outside and between Criseyde’s double meanings, the narrator keeps us glancing back and forth between what we think is reality and what may be illusion in a story that blurs the line between. He accomplishes that feat in a variety of ways while we, even with Janus, struggle see what is real. First, he establishes in Book III an illusory oasis of love that is as much a fantasy as January’s garden in “The Merchant’s Tale.” In his invocation, this time to Venus, the narrator signals the illusion on which his story turns: he describes Venus not as the embodiment of love but more narrowly as (continued on next page)

ST. MARK'S SCHOOL OF TE X AS

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REading chaucer with six eyes

roberta mailer, english

the “Plesance of love, O goodly debonaire,/In gentil hertes ay redy to repaire!” (3.4–5). Not only is love pleasant and ready to enter any heart, but everyone can expect to love because “God loveth, and to love wol nought werne,/And in this world no lyves creature/Withouten love is worth, or may endure” (3.12–14). The narrator creates the illusion that because everyone deserves love, everyone will receive love. Next, he heightens the illusion of certain love by describing Venus’s power to appease Mars, to make lovers reject vices, and to send any man the joys he wants (3.22–28).

He enjoins Venus to protect lovers because “whoso stryveth with yow hath the werse” (3.38). In other words, the narrator creates, against all logic, the illusion of safety for his young lovers amidst the war. This is not completely inconsistent with his Book I invocation of Tesiphone, “goddesse of torment…sorwynge evere in peyne.” He calls on Tesiphone to “Help me, that am the sorwful instrument,/ That helpeth loveres pleyne” (1.10–11) as if, with enough help from enough sources, the narrator can somehow help Troilus out of his love complaints, somehow create a story for Troilus that grants him the happy ending that he wants and that we want. Of course, the narrator and the reader know that Troilus will lose all in the end, but the narrator’s sympathy for Troilus and his appreciation of Criseyde lead the reader to hope irrationally that the narrator will find a way for Troilus and Criseyde to live their love. This tension between what we want to happen and what we know happens creates the suspense that keeps us reading even as our heads spin.

Chaucer further blurs the line between illusion and reality by giving us this narrator, one who looks two ways — to the restraints of literary precedence and to his own desire for a happy ending, leaving us aware that he could choose to satisfy either but not both. In the first place, we know his “authority” Lollius to be the narrator’s own fiction. Since the narrator “translates” an illusory source, we suspect he might end the tale however he wants to end it. He does not have to borrow everything from literary precedent. Like Troilus, we are ready to throw good sense to the wind, to “stele awey, betwixe us tweye” (4.1503), and enjoin the narrator, also, to forsake Troy, as his anguishing over the situation seems to suggest that he might. Finally, the narrator casts doubt upon his own ability to use words effectively and to transcribe the story faithfully. True, he begins Book I as if this will be a tale of “double sorwe” (1.1),

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but he soon reverts to a comic scene of Troilus dying from love and the slapstick comedy of Pandarus throwing Troilus’s (still dying) body onto Criseyde’s bed. Ironically, in the middle of his long and tender love scene between Criseyde and Troilus, he pauses to apologize, “Of hire delit or joies oon the leeste/Were impossible to my wit to seye” (3.1310–1311). He claims he cannot do what he, in fact, is in the middle of doing — an amazing assertion that seems unnecessarily modest. Yet, his verbal gymnastic invites the reader’s imagination to go beyond what mere words can do, to create the illusion that somehow these characters are so much larger than life that perhaps they can do what the rest of us cannot do. Maybe they can transcend the realities of life. And maybe our buffoonish narrator will be clumsy enough and sentimental enough to indulge us, just this once.

Finally, the narrator surrounds and befuddles us with illusions devised by the characters themselves. We see first Troilus’s comic illusion that Criseyde is dead followed by his melodramatic near-suicide and then his impractical fantasy that they really could run off, renounce duty, and live happily ever after. On her side, Criseyde grasps at rumors that the Trojans are considering returning Helen and that the Greeks are willing to accept Helen and return peacefully to Greece. She clings to her belief that her plan to deceive Calkas will work and that she will be able to return to Troy, not to mention her belief that there will be a Troy to return to. As a result of all these suggestions, we buy into the illusions just enough to keep us wondering what is real in this story and what is fantasy.

Eventually, despite all six eyes, we discover that our hopes for the characters are illusions and that these illusions must fall with Troy and Troilus. We mourn with the narrator not only the end of the man and the romance but also the end of the illusion that what happens on earth is important. After employing illusions, the narrator exposes all illusion of earthly importance as vanity, and with Troilus we laugh at ourselves and at our inflated opinion of our own significance. All our head-turning was for naught. Like the histrionic dithering and circular arguments of Troilus, at which we laugh, our own futile weeping and wailing, our own circular arguing, make us laugh not just at Troilus but at ourselves as well. Even the best Janusian reading strategies are not quite enough to keep up with Chaucer, who in the end laughs at the very head-turning he provokes.

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ST. MARK'S SCHOOL OF TE X AS

Downy Woodpecker Chick John Mead, science

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reading together

marta napiorkowska, English What is the role of an English class at the high school level?

The conversation spawned by this question has been going on for a very long time, most recently since the cultural crisis in the West after WWII: what is the purpose of reading any type of representational, let alone nonrepresentational, art at all (literary, visual, dramatic, or otherwise) if doing so doesn’t prevent even the most sophisticated and cultured of us from behaving like selfserving animals in difficult times? As someone new to high school teaching, I have had to rethink what there is in literary studies that really matters to me. I have had to pare down literary studies to its essence. What good is it?

Is it possible to find a way in which it is good for even the most unenthusiastic of readers?

I have heard two answers to the question, “What is English for?” in recent conversations. The first stated that literature teaches us how to live, and the second claimed that literature teaches us good, effective writing. In this essay, I would like to speculate a little and try to answer this question in a different way.

Whether or not literature has any moral or ethical significance at all, or should, is hardly a settled issue. After all, writers and poets are not necessarily moral or ethical experts and rarely claim to be, nor do they write literature or poetry to communicate moral lessons (those who do tend to be bad writers, with socialist realists the worst case example, or writers of children’s fables). Why should we approach our readings with the idea that they have something to teach us about our individual, twenty-first century, historical, contingent, male and female lives and how best to live them? Claiming that a writer, by virtue of her profession and ability to be a master craftsperson of language, has insight into any life not her own — let alone a life separated from her by hundreds of years and cultures of difference — is a highly contestable claim. On the other hand, if a writer has insight into her own life, that is saying something.

The idea of a “human condition” that we all share, and to which writers mysteriously, almost cabalistically, have access, was deconstructed and quickly overturned once non-Western writers earned their right to speak for themselves and, perhaps not surprisingly, claimed that Western writers had not, in fact, represented them correctly and,

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perhaps, could not represent them correctly. Lives in cultures outside of the Western sphere of influence, according to those who lived them, were only superficially related to lives lived in the West. With the exclusion of breastfeeding (which most of us don’t remember but, even if we did, would probably not make for very good stories — well, maybe, one good short story), not even the first experiences of infancy are common to members of different cultures.

Western representations of “universals” were, it turned out, not universal at all. On the other hand, non-Western representations were not easily accessible to Westerners either. A gap opened up — one that has not been closed since. So, if we are to have a “human condition,” it looks like it is going to have to be a fiction that we all collectively, democratically, inclusively create and choose to believe in. But we are very far from coming to a consensus on the “human condition,” even though I firmly believe in the vital importance of such a fiction.

Also, I am fairly certain that writers and poets do not write novels and poems so that their readers will write papers about their work. Literary devices may be neat to note and may be interesting to literary scholars who must know a work inside and out and, for professional reasons, pay attention to minutia, but writing that is chock-full of literary devices only constitutes good writing for readers who care about literary devices. Furthermore, I have never been convinced by anyone that a literary device necessarily has one effect over another. How can anyone prove that anaphora creates a sense of emphasis? Perhaps it causes boredom? Unless we take a poll of all readers of anaphora and then decide that a statistically significant percentage of them experienced emphasis while the outliers did not…but that seems a wrong way to read and understand literature. Statistical analysis of readers’ reactions seems a wrong way to go about judging the validity or value of literary devices or works. It was a surprise to me to learn after high school that the attention paid to devices arose with New Criticism in the forties and fifties in America when certain intellectuals with certain predilections and biases decided that devices were important.

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reading together

marta napiorkowska, English It was equally surprising to learn that like all trends, New Criticism didn’t last: it was replaced, and re-visited, and replaced. Maybe it will return and create its own perduring effect. But my point is that the approach to reading that privileges literary devices is not the “right” or even the “inherent” way to literary study. It is simply one of many approaches.

Neither are novels or poems written to showcase writing styles for their own sake so that students can learn the craft of writing like that particular writer or any other particular writer. Which writer is the better craftsman?

It depends on the mind reading the writer. Not on the writer.

Minds change, thank heaven, but as a result, so do their tastes. Works of literature that are said to stand the test of time nevertheless do not stand it in the same way. Classic works, just like classic writers, fall in and out of the public eye. Frankenstein, one of my favorites, is back in fashion after almost a hundred years of absence. Is it a classic? I am sure that sixty to seventy years ago, teachers would have said no. Today, literary scholars and the public say, absolutely! Two years ago, I was told, the Atlantic Monthly named it among the top ten most important books for our century. In the 1920s, few people were reading it.

Neither does literature exist so that students can write papers about it. Students were not writing papers in high school about fiction books until quite recently in the long history of literary culture. I do not precisely know why teachers jumped on the bandwagon and decided literature should be the proper object of analytical writing and the core of writing pedagogy whereas other disciplines that require writing need not teach it, but there have been books written on the subject. What I do know is that there is nothing inherent about literature that makes it something that people should write analytical essays about.

It is as good a thing to analyze as are films, paintings, essays, history, love letters, hate letters, personal experiences, current events, architecture, political speeches, army tactics — in short, anything that is the product of human minds and that carries meaning. And that is pretty much everything except the physical laws of the universe.

Some poets even argue that poetry should not be written about at all because its very value — the point of it — lies

in its resistance to use-value. According to these poets, poems are for themselves and refer to nothing outside of themselves; poems are, in short, like people. In an overdetermined world, let there be one experience available to us for which we need not give any account or explanation!

And let that experience be our private relationship with a poem, or a story, with its cast of characters. A quintessentially human thing, let literature be for pleasure and contemplation, or for nothing at all!

The purpose of teaching writing is more obvious.

Writing is a form of expression and communication that reflects a mind at work or the presence of a person. The better the communication, we assume, the better the mind.

Therefore, the better a person is effectively able to express his thoughts, the more likely he will be acknowledged, listened to, respected, obeyed — in short, the greater the likelihood that he will be able to exercise his will and the greater his presence in the world. However, will we always use writing to express our minds? In the near future, yes. In forty years?

I don’t know. We’ve created a technology that enables us to transcend former limitations caused by distance, a pressure that caused writing to develop centuries ago. So, it is possible that ours will become an oral culture once again the more often we interact in real-time, even across great distances.

The importance of expression, however, will never die, as it is our means of representing our inner lives — that we have inner lives at all! — to others. But expression need not happen in writing.

Then why study literature? Why should we continue to teach it and tell young people that they should value it? And why should we use it to teach writing? Here are my answers: First, but least, literature is not a bad thing to write about.

It is as good a thing as any, and I feel fine using it for that purpose, so long as analytical essays are taught in all disciplines and verbal expression is also a component of English.

Second, and more importantly, reading literature (which is almost always about human beings up to something) expands our awareness and understanding of the sheer range of possible experiences and lives that are available to us. The diversity of options of living a human life are astounding! The formalized study of literature, misnamed “English,” is one of the few human institutions where we can find the courage to follow, inspiration to guide, and language to help articulate our dreams and our (continued on next page)

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reading together

marta napiorkowska, English lives. We can realize that we are not alone in having those dreams, those thoughts. And literature and art contain the complexity to help us place our own experiences within the grander human narrative on this planet, rather than reduce them to simple, “happy/sad,” or “good/bad” binaries that any animal can feel. The richer our imaginations, the richer our experience of our lives will be. In its ability to make available to us a rich tapestry of adoptable thoughts and lives, literature is priceless.

But we must also remember that fiction is just that: a fiction. It is a representation, a form of mimicry, a fake. The conditions in which characters live their lives were never true and will never be true. Characters may seem to be like us, but our experiences are infinitely more complex, while theirs are artificial and constructed because they are, ontologically, only representations. Literary characters, no matter how seemingly alive and true, can never substitute for real people, no matter how flawed or shallow we seem to be. I would burn every copy of Othello in existence, and mourn the loss deeply, before I would condemn a living person to suffering.

The most valuable aspect of literature lies, I believe, in reading it together. While extending one’s experience to include Gatsby’s complex experience and to, effectively, live it with him, is extremely enriching, doing so together with a friend or colleague — to both have lived and felt with Gatsby alongside another breathing person — is to commune with another being in a rare way. It is, in essence, to share a mind, for a brief moment. To experience together Gatsby’s life, and then to understand that Gatsby is less complex than the person sitting next to you and, in fact, more complex than any person sitting next to you anywhere, is an epiphany. The empathic extension of one’s compassion and love towards other human beings — not because they are like characters (or, for that matter, like us) but because they are infinitely more complex than even the most complex characters — is the true reward of reading literature. Yet, this kind of extension cannot include everyone if we read only one good novel. It can only happen if we read many novels, and if we repeatedly experience characters’ complexities and then the complexity of other people whose lives, in their complexity, mirror our own. Reading together is a form of deep sociality in

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which we exercise our particularly human capacity to feel for, and feel with, another. In smaller countries with less diversity than America’s melting-pot offers, literature often served as the glue that held people together when catastrophes threatened to tear communities apart. Because everyone had read the same books, a national consciousness had formed, and people understood one another’s meaning. Our empathic extension may never be able to include everyone, but such inclusion is a horizon worth pursuing.

In the high school English class, we can teach students to write well in their native language, and we should.

But we will do our young people a great disservice if we do not call attention to the formative sociability that the act of reading literature makes available to them. Although a subtle and perhaps virtually invisible by-product of our intentional, professional engagement with literature, experiencing together the lives of others and working together to understand the complex intricacies of those lives harmonizes students’ interpretive matrices and creates the foundations of a public sphere. While a nation can sustain diversity in opinions, beliefs, and lifestyles, I am not sure that it can sustain a diversity of approaches to meaning-making. We risk a fissure in our public sphere if, for example, a third of our society makes meaning using intuition, another third uses revelation, while the final thirty-three percent uses logical argument. If we allow our students to read apart — that is, if we promote mere opinion without dialogue, or permit statements such as, “Those are just my beliefs,” to go unquestioned and unchallenged, rather than hold our students accountable to each other — then we are contributing to the weakening of our public sphere. If we instead teach our students to extend together their empathic abilities to a life in a book, then we will be participating not only in the creation of a public sphere, but also exercising our inherent abilities to extend empathy toward one another. And then we are truly teaching literature.

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the jenny trees

barbara kinkead, library

This is a photograph I took of our flags at half-mast on March 16, 2004, the day of Jim Livengood’s death. The Bradford pear trees behind the flags are also significant.

ST. MARK'S SCHOOL OF TE X AS

The Livengoods always called them “The Jenny Trees.”

Jenny is their daughter and those trees are always in bloom on her birthday, the day after her dad’s death.

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The Global Achievement Gap

Stephen Houpt, Science

During the summer of 2009 I read a book by Tony Wagner entitled The Global Achievement Gap. The main premise of the book was that the United States is falling behind other countries in the field of education because we emphasize achievement tests and do not emphasize the two skills most important to success in the real world: the ability to think critically and the ability to work well in groups, often with colleagues of initially unknown strengths and inclinations.

I teach physics at St. Mark’s School of Texas, an independent boys’ school located in Dallas. Our students range in ability from above average to superior in ability and classes range in size from ten to 18 students. Classes meet four days a week for 45 minutes and one day a week for 90 minutes of lab.

In the past I usually allowed the lab groups in my classes to be self-selected, that is, I allowed students to choose their own lab partners and to keep those lab partners for the entire year. While this method usually worked well enough, there were times when students made bad choices, siding with friendship over common sense. Often students grouped themselves by ability, top students in one group, lower ability students in another, mischievous students in another. There were potential difficulties with each of these arrangements if allowed to exist on a long-term basis. The mischievous groups were especially troublesome and required constant intervention or possibly even dissolution to avoid poisoning the entire class.

Another problem with my students’ lab experience were the labs themselves. Too often, my labs were cookbook labs. Students simply read the labs and followed instructions. Procedure and data tables were provided.

Questions to consider in analysis were carefully constructed for their use. Because of this, they rarely had to think while doing the lab. My labs did not follow the scientific method. The need for critical thinking was often avoided. As a result, students often seemed uninterested, even bored. Behavior problems would sometimes result, especially among the self-selected mischievous groups.

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My response to these issues involved fundamental changes in strategy that went beyond the solutions discussed in Mr. Wagner’s book. Self-selected groups would be a thing of the past. Instead, I decided to select groups by using the random list generator www.random.org. If the class contained an even number of students, all groups would be groups of two. If the class contained an odd number of students, one group would be a group of three, the rest groups of two. These groups would be re-formed every two weeks, always using the random list generator.

I required students to sit together in groups in the normal classroom setting as well as in lab. As a result, my seating chart changed every two weeks.

In addition, cookbook labs would, as much as possible, no longer exist. I rewrote almost all my labs in a way that conformed to the scientific method. First, I presented the students with a problem to be solved or a concept to be explored, presented in the form of a question. I also gave them a list of available equipment. Students were then expected to work in their random groups to form a hypothesis, come up with a procedure to test their hypothesis, construct relevant data tables, perform the procedure, take appropriate data, analyze the data, perform calculations, and then form conclusions as to the validity of their hypotheses. We sometimes brainstormed ideas as a class at the beginning of the lab. I also made myself available as a roving lab partner to assist and provide hints when necessary.

Many of our labs involved the use of computer technology using interfaces and sensors provided by Vernier Software. To facilitate student independence, I found it necessary to explain in detail at the beginning of the school year how to use the Vernier system and probes and how to construct an experiment file from scratch.

Armed with this knowledge, students had a much easier time formulating appropriate procedures.

Arranging the class in random lab groups had a number of beneficial effects. For instance, because of the random nature of group selection, students were often forced to work with classmates they did not know well. Because the groups were small and because I constantly circulated throughout the room, work was

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The Global Achievement Gap Stephen Houpt, Science

almost always well distributed among group members.

In some cases, students of high ability were paired with students of lower ability. These groups often produced opportunities for peer tutoring. Sometimes two top students worked together. These groups enjoyed interesting exchanges of ideas and often made rapid progress.

Sometime two students of lower ability worked together.

When this happened, students found themselves with opportunities to take responsibility to work things out without relying on a higher ability student to do all the thinking. As a result, these groups often experienced levels of success that exceeded their own expectations.

Because lab groups changed every two weeks, students never complained about the makeup of the groups, knowing that they had been randomly selected and would soon change.

Because the labs were no longer of the cookbook variety, students became much more invested in their work.

First, they had to consider the problem and come up with a hypothesis. Then they had to think about the available equipment and how it could be used experimentally to test the validity of their hypothesis. They had to decide how to arrange their data tables and then they had to work together to set up the equipment and perform their test. Then they had to decide what calculations should be made and how to analyze the results. They had to decide if their hypotheses were valid and, if not, determine the true conceptual and mathematical relationships involved. All these phases of the lab involved critical thinking. As such, students sometimes experienced temporary setbacks, and labs sometimes took more than one period to complete.

Occasionally, labs lasted several days. Students sometimes complained the labs were too long. Nevertheless, they worked diligently and never appeared to be bored.

The results of these changes in the labs and the random formation of groups were very satisfying for me. In almost all cases students worked together effectively. Instances of disruption or poor behavior were extremely rare. Students looked forward to the lab experience. Because the groups changed every two weeks, students’ experience in lab never became routine. They had to learn to adapt to new group dynamics and make adjustments in their work

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patterns based on the strengths and inclinations of their new partner(s). Although there were instances when one or more groups remained the same for more than two weeks, over the course of the year students generally had the opportunity to work with all members in the class.

Because of this, students tended to bond with classmates outside their usual group of friends, increasing the overall cohesiveness of the junior class.

As I mentioned earlier in this paper, students also sat together in groups in the normal classroom setting, involving lecture, demonstrations, video presentations, class discussion of concepts and of problem-solving strategies, and working through homework problems.

During this portion of the class, I took advantage of the group format when students did class work. I also sometimes gave group quizzes, especially when the quiz problems were challenging. When students took these group quizzes, they sat in groups in the back of the room at lab tables. Isolating the groups at separate tables seemed to facilitate group dynamics, separating them from classmates who were not in their group. When the quiz began, I walked among the tables and reminded students that group communication was mandatory, that they were required to talk, and were not allowed to simply work individually in silence. At the end of the quiz, groups came forward one at a time to explain their solutions. When a group arrived at the front of the room, I flipped a coin to determine which member of the group would explain how they arrived at their solution. Now, this is the thing that made these group quizzes a huge pedagogical success: if the randomly selected student was unable to satisfactorily explain the method of solution, then all students in the group would receive a grade of fifty percent on the quiz. This condition often precipitated significant levels of peer tutoring both during the journey to the solution and also after the arrival. I found that in many cases, students worked very effectively as peer teachers, often explaining their thoughts in ways that were both creative and unique. (continued on next page)

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The Global Achievement Gap

Stephen Houpt, Science

At the end of the year I asked students to fill out an anonymous evaluation that asked two open-ended questions: 1. What are your feelings on the randomly changing groups and the work we did in them this year? 2. How did you feel about the “hypothesis — test your hypothesis, sometimes without much direction or many instructions” format for the lab work we did this year?

Here are a few sample responses to question 1: “Randomly changing groups are a good idea. It forces us to work with people we may not have normally.”

“The group work was very helpful because often the groups match us with people we didn’t interact with, and they could provide a student’s perspective on the material to complement the teacher’s explanation.”

“Even though I had the same student as a partner 70% of the time I thought the changing groups were a good idea. It kept things interesting and improved our teamwork skills.”

“It offered a good chance to work with almost everyone in the class.”

“A great idea — I think doing so helped students who don’t hang out with each other develop lasting friendships.”

“Liked it. It didn’t seem random all the time, but that’s how it works. Glad you required each student to be able to explain the quizzes.”

“I liked the format and experiencing the different challenges of each new partner. It was interesting to adapt to everyone’s styles of work.”

“The quizzes were really fair because it could help us learn doing them.”

Here are a few sample responses to question 2: “At first they were a tad challenging to keep up with, but once I got used to it, it was good.”

“It was very helpful in that it forced class members to interact with each other and the teacher more often than in other science classes. Also, the concepts were better embedded in understanding through the trial and error nature of much of the labs.”

“I could think deeply about the topic and it was helpful to my interest in physics.”

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“It left us to do a lot of work and figuring out but I liked that.”

“It helps people actually understand what is going on and not just blindly follow instructions.”

“I thought it was good that you initially let us try to figure things out ourselves, but you would also help us and answer questions when we got stuck.”

“I liked it because it started us on the path to how an actual lab will function in the real world.”

“It was a little more time consuming than need be, but I guess we learned and were able to physically apply the stuff we were learning in class.”

“As long as we aren’t completely in the dark, it’s nice.

If we have a little creativity room it’s more fun, too.”

Obviously, adopting these ideas in a public school setting with as many as thirty-five students in a class would require thought and modification. Nevertheless, I submit that change is sometimes well worth the effort.

I have been a teacher in a variety of educational settings for 35 years. I have always felt that my teaching was effective, but the changes I implemented last year raised my experience in the classroom to a new level of enjoyment and satisfaction. For the first time, students in my class were consistently engaged in critical thinking in lab, and they were having fun. They actually looked forward to taking quizzes and learned from each other while they worked.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Tony Wagner for the inspiration provided by his insightful book, The Global Achievement Gap. The strategies that were born as a result of that inspiration led to new levels of student engagement and gave me the best and most fulfilling experience in my entire teaching career.

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Old icelander

dan northcut, science

I took this photograph about 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in Iceland, in July of 2008. The old-timer, sitting outside of his three hay barns, is enjoying what was probably one of the most pleasant days of the year.

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The barns are built into the ground to keep some semblance of warmth during the seemingly endless winters. As is true for all of Iceland, the background scenery consists of geologically recent lava flows.

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Ecos de un pueblo chileno

david evans, spanish

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Puerto Aisén, la que me acompaña, cuya figura vislumbrada me contempla desde el fondo del gran puente rojo reflejado en el espejeo del río dormido,

Puerto Aisén, the one who accompanies me, whose glanced figure contemplates me from the depths of the great red bridge reflected in the shimmering of the sleeping river.

con tu niebla que reposa con calma en el cielo suspendida, partiendo tus cerros en medio, enlazando tierra y cielo, conciencia y sueño,

with your fog that rests calmly, suspended in the sky, slicing in half your hills, joining heaven and earth, consciousness and dreams,

con tu humo que sube de las estufas de las madres chilenas, cocinando con esmero tu pan amasado,

with your smoke that rises from the stoves of Chilean mothers, baking with care your kneaded bread,

con tu llovizna delicada que me acaricia dulcemente la cara, indagando acogedora si me quedo en las entrañas tuyas pese a tu frío,

with your delicate drizzle that sweetly caresses my face, warmly inquiring if I will stay in your clutches despite your coldness,

con tus cascadas que precipitan en vetas plateadas desde el alma misma nacidas de los acantilados verde oscuro, los cuales derraman tus aguas de líquido puro…

with your waterfalls that descend in silvery streaks born from the very soul of the dark green cliffs, which shed your water’s pure liquid…

como si fuera sangre de tus propias venas, seductora, me atraes como antiguas amadas. ¿De veras existes? O acaso de un recinto cada vez más profundo, sólo a veces surges furtivamente de la memoria mía susurrando.

as if it was blood from your very own veins, seductively, you beckon me like former lovers.

Do you really exist? Or, by chance, from an increasingly deep corner of my memory, only at times do you furtively emerge whispering.

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wake

john frost, fine arts

wake, 2009 poplar, poplar and oak dowels, plywood 96" x dimensions vary

Artist Statement I approach my work with two intentions — to physically manipulate and transform ordinary materials, and t0 communicate my observations, contemplations, and opinions relating to the human condition, most recently its relationship to the current state of the environment, society, and the economy.

When an object or idea is repeated over and over, it becomes less about the individual object and more about the overall form, texture, and pattern. It loses its singular identity and new associations are created. In the context of this installation, the iconic house form represents the ST. MARK'S SCHOOL OF TE X AS

individual. When multiplied, it becomes the collective and contains broader global implications.

Conceptually, I’m interested in the individual’s role in the current circumstances facing our nation and planet.

Fueled by selfishness and apathy, a state of existence has been created that we must now “clean up,” take responsibility for our actions, and live with the consequences.

Repetition, scale, and the inherent content in materials help to communicate ideas of excessiveness and the magnitude of our predicament. I’m searching for the perfect balance between too much and not enough.

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Science and Religion

Stephanie Barta, Science

Revolutionary developments in both science and theology are moving the relationship between these two far beyond the “warfare” model that characterized them by the midnineteenth century. Some would ask, “What is the place of religion in an age of science? What view of God is consistent with the scientific understanding of the world? How can the search for meaning and purpose in life be fulfilled in the kind of world disclosed by science?” I propose that there is much more in common here than history has led us to anticipate.

Diversity and unity are themes that are important in science as they at least should be in religion. The main tenets of the major religions of the world are basically similar and, once they have been reduced to some basic ideas seem like variations on some really core themes. It is the nature of humans to wonder about the unknown and to search for answers. At the foundation of nearly every culture (and subsequently also associated with their religions) there is a creation myth that explains how the wonders of the earth and the universe came to be. These myths have had an immense influence on peoples’ frames of reference. They influence the way members of different cultures came to think about the world and their place in relation to their surroundings. Despite being separated by numerous geographical barriers, many cultures have developed creation stories with some of the same basic elements. Supreme Beings who triggered chains of events such as the creation of the earth and explanations for the forces of nature. Millennia later we are living in the 21st century and continue to develop theories on how the earth was formed. The “Big Bang” is a theory of earth’s origins which no longer seems objectionable in many religious or scientific realms. In a sense, these theories underlie our new creation stories.

They are based on scientific evidence, for the most part.

The creation myths of the world’s many cultures were based on what their peoples were able to observe in the world around them at the time. As in the familiar story of Genesis, retelling the stories from generation to generation had the effect of ultimately making them seem larger than life (especially regarding the passage of time).

Themes in science which rely on some amazing concept of order, especially given the idea of “randomness” brought to mind by ideas of entropy and the expanding universe, etc., include the elegant design of matter — the unity of structure and design of which provides for its great variety. Water, an amazing substance necessary for all life forms and one of the unique components allowing moderations of earth’s weather, ecosystems and climates. The simultaneous 26

elegance of the diversity of life forms juxtaposed with the same unique building materials, depend on DNA in all instruction sets for both building and maintaining all living organisms. Similarly, the metabolic currency of all those same organisms is the essential ATP molecule.

Life cycles are essential both to organisms and to stars in the expanding universe. All of these things and so many, many more suggest an elaborate, yet deceptively simple underlying unity in the plan of how things live and work.

Randomness and chance combination alone cannot explain the repetition of the classic and essential unities.

Any religious tradition is a way of life for its members; it is not just a set of intellectual beliefs or abstract ideas.

Each religious community, no matter where in the world, has its distinctive forms of individual experience, common ritual and ethical concerns. The goal of religion is to transform human lives from the self-centered and temporal to the more inclusive…during the Middle Ages in Western Europe, the predominantly Christian story of creation and salvation provided an overarching setting in which an individual life had significance in the face of overwhelming odds. It gave a framework for meaning to a person who would have otherwise felt powerless in his or her existence.

Since the early 17th century, there has been a conflict for many. The dominant religious stories seemed inconsistent with the understanding of the world in modern science.

Serious conflict and collision occurred between religion and early science in the Reformation of the Middle Ages. Giant players in the important steps away from the view that all life was according to God’s will; that humans were different than other organisms and the view of the world was very anthropomorphic, were, among others Galileo and Darwin. They, in different ways, helped to take the first big steps away from exclusive deductive reasoning toward what we know as the experimental method.

Observations and then conclusions were drawn from trial and error and measurement. Despite the fact that Galileo’s observations led him to describe the motion of the earth around the sun, and the 17th century was doubting and negative, he himself said that “scientific research and the Christian faith were not mutually exclusive and that the study of the natural world would promote understanding and interpretation of the scriptures.” It was not until 1992 (more than 300 years later) that Pope John Paul II stated that “one of the unfortunate consequences of the condemnation of Galileo was that it has been used to reinforce the myth of an incompatibility between faith and science.” facu lt y foru m • 20 1 1

Science and Religion Stephanie Barta, Science

Sometimes accepting newfound truth is initially painful, no matter what the time in history.

Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, published in 1859, is another collision scene. Biological evolution is about change in the genetic characteristics in a population over time. That this happens is a fact. Biological evolution also refers to the common descent of living organisms from shared ancestors. The evidence for evolution — genetic, fossil, anatomical, etc. is so overwhelming that it is also considered a fact. The theory of evolution describes the mechanisms that cause evolution. So evolution is both a theory and a fact. Remember that you learned that Louis Pasteur, for once and for all, disproved the theory of spontaneous generation (that all living things come from other living things and not from inanimate matter)? At some point in the evolutionary theory, as atoms condensed from simpler particles, as organic molecules accumulated, etc. there was indeed some type of spontaneous generation.

Probably this happened many times. Whatever one wants to call this planet-changing event, some force or happening transformed chemicals from merely complex organic molecules to very primitive cell-like beings — that was first life! Do the many creation accounts have anything in common with this? It is certainly no less amazing and is not at odds with the first cells that biologists are fairly confident were the early ancestors of us all — not just human, but of all living creatures on the planet. So creation happened in several instances after all.

As people turned to a science-based technology for fulfillment and hope, many found that while technology offered control, power and the prospect of overcoming to some extent helplessness and dependence, it has not brought the sense of personal or social well-being that it was expected to. And, of course, as some of the cataclysmic events of our times have shown, technology without ethics and reason has at times been a power almost beyond our control, endangering social patterns and causing harm to the global environment on a scale perhaps not yet even recognizable. I am not going to try to make a case for either science or religion. They are both alive and well in their own right — despite their seemingly long and sometimes painful conflicts; they both have their places and are certainly not mutually exclusive.

At some point, after looking at commonalities and differences between science and religion, it could be said that science explains the “how” while religion attempts to answer the “why.” Albert Einstein, in 1941, in Science, ST. MARK'S SCHOOL OF TE X AS

Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, wrote “In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect… . {Science is the century-old endeavor to systematically explain the perceptible phenomena of the world} If one conceives of science and religion according to these definitions, then a conflict between them appears to be impossible.” Science ascertains what is, not what should be.

Religion deals with evaluations of human thought and action and does not speak of facts or the relation between facts.

This is the correct context of the quote attributed to Einstein.

Again, quoting, “Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image — science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

The scope of religions has thus moved from the sphere of the unknowns. Religion will then be freed to cultivate what is good, beautiful and worthy. While there is a more difficult task, it is definitely a worthy one. Religion is therefore made more profound by scientific knowledge.

And science is humbled by the awareness of the unknown and the power of religion. Both the theologian and the scientist can agree, at least for a time, with William Blake, from “Auguries of Innocence”: To see the world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wildflower.

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.

If we knew everything, we would be too full of perfectly known things. In the order of the world there is a deep pattern.

You can’t always know it beforehand. If you did, you would be unsurprised and dwarfed and hardened. There are many amazing and awesome mysteries yet to be explored and investigated. Before these mysteries we are silent. And yet we have that hunger for knowledge to satisfy an insatiable curiosity and an excellent intelligence. We have fine minds with which to attempt to work out some of the mechanisms not yet unraveled. But with that knowledge we are still silent—and humbled—by the vast realm of what is not yet understood— and the fact that there is much that we may never comprehend.

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Waiting Waxwing

john mead, science

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Born to wear red david brown, english

Some people are born for red, like Juanita from my third-grade past who wore her sneakers like ruby slippers and outran every boy, or like Charles whose cherry cheeks always betrayed his sotted father’s leather belt, or more recently like the single mother of one of my students, who will one day push past crowded corners a shopping cart that carries everything she owns but still will flash her hot vermilion nails. These survivors wear their will to rise above it all like the banner of blood those French misèrables waved in the faces of their tormentors, or like the whore of Jericho who hid two Hebrew spies within her walls till the walls tumbled down. Joshua tells us Rahab saved her life by hanging red cords in her window. They were a sign to the marauding bands of God that not all who suffer are destined to be victims — Some are born to make children smile, to laugh in their sleep, to measure a star’s worth, to pardon what is unpardonable, to open their ample arms and enfold the world.

Yes, some are born to wear red.

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29

After troy

dr. john perryman, history

Sometimes, I try to picture their passing: the exiled prince and the wandering king — a father, a son — fleeing war.

Would not a night watchman, atop an oak mast, have glimpsed the other’s sails off Dido’s dark coast?

Would not sirens have sung, Calypso let slip, “The other passed by here in a sleek black ship”?

How did each not hear the ghostly breath from the other’s grim fosse while stepping toward death?

Surely they met, their paths crossed.

For their world, though deep, was small.

But of this other, poets past chose not to speak, Their offering to us is silence.

So I am certain that on a dark night, far from shore and years from Troy, two galleys pass, without words For words are no good when worlds are laid waste.

Yes, the two must have met, shared a glance to end wars, a gesture of penance, a dark smile born of sounding out ghosts of gazing out across indifferent seas and finding, in what you hate most, yourself.

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facu lt y foru m • 20 1 1

Three of a kind john mead, science

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ted

Dr. Henry Ploegstra, English Ted was my companion, my inspiration, my playmate, my savior. I was an only child for five years, so Ted became my substitute sibling and real friend.

One day he saved me from near-certain death. We lived far out in the country where our horses ran around wherever they pleased, inside the fences, of course. On the crucial day, I decided that a good place to play was between one of our farm wagons and the fence. One of the horses decided that same corridor would be a great place to run. As the horse galloped toward my unaware self, Ted saw what was about to happen and headed off the horse in some other direction. So, I was saved, while my mother was having hysterics about what could have happened.

I was oblivious.

Ted was my aesthetic inspiration as well. He was an agreeable sort and often served as my pillow. As I lay there, resting against him, I , all of four years of age, remarked to my mother, “Ted is such a comfortable dog!” And so he was.

He also inspired one of my earliest attempts at poetry. Our old farmhouse had an entryway we called “The shed,” to which Ted was sometimes exiled, when my mother tired of him underfoot. Observing Ted’s position, I broke into my first dactyl: “Ted’s in the shed!” I said. Then, in my first effort at literary self-criticism, I pronounced, “That barks!”

Since we lived far out in the country, Ted and the neighbors’ dogs roamed freely, coming home when they felt like it. Inevitably, there were turf wars and genuine dog fights, fights which Ted almost always won. One day in early winter, Ted did not return home at the usual time.

He was always prompt, if for no other reason than that he knew when dinner time was. I called for him and looked for him, but he was not to be found. He never did return home; we had no idea what happened, but we suspected it was nothing good. It was not.

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During the long winters, the road past our farm was not plowed. Instead, the snow was pounded down with huge steel rollers so that the ice was solid enough for horses and sleighs and even cars, if the drivers were most careful.

When spring drew on, the county road commission opened the road for the season, using a Sno-go, a big, noisy rotary plow. About a half-mile from our farm, the plow stopped because it had encountered some kind of obstacle, definitely not snow or ice. It was Ted’s frozen body with a bullet hole in his forehead.

My parents would not let me see what was left of Ted. They wanted me to remember him living, not a frozen corpse. We had a good idea who had murdered him, but had no proof. Some of our neighbors resented the fact that Ted won most of the dogfights and could not stand it — at least, that is and was our theory. It was not possible to do anything about what happened; my father buried Ted someplace he would not tell me.

The next year, we got another dog, but he was not Ted, and therefore I did not like him much, or he me, for that matter. Ted was simply irreplaceable. I remember him well and am happy that I have a photograph of him and me together, looking happy. This photo is viewable by appointment in C204. Come and take a look.

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This is not a quest curtis smith, english

Several years ago, my wife and I chucked our sloshy waterbed for a regular mattress. Along with the bed came a bike, offered as a purchase incentive — a red-and-yellow Taiwanese special called a Firenze. Its name, I always suspected, revealed the state of mind with which the rider advanced (that is, in a frenzy), or else the Taiwanese were borrowing Italian city names (Florence) to convey a sense of Renaissance charm.

At any rate, Florence has successfully caressed the tarmac between Texas and North Carolina, carrying me 821 miles in 16 days. Helping me along the way was my wife Lynne, who followed in our VW bus. The goal was my hometown, Davidson, North Carolina.

Not an addicted cyclist, I’d kept the bike in the garage for more than two years, making only occasional trips like going to the grocery store. I didn’t even train on the bike before the trek. Florence didn’t go around the block more than four or five times before departure, and that was just to test the newly installed speedometer.

The chief impetus for the trip was to sample the biking rage, and more significantly to discover whether a regular $150.00 bike could endure the journey. Any true Thirtysomething Biker has at least one foot still stuck in the anti-material world of the ‘60s. My pet peeve is the excessiveness of fine equipment we Americans buy. Bike stores try to sell you every trendy doodle and gadget at the fanciest prices. The $15.07 price tag on the extra plastic water bottle I bought at the last moment added enough fury to my down-thrust pedaling to make the first day out a numbing breeze.

I also wanted to experiment with a different form of travel. I wasn’t sure about bikes, especially if the physical grind outweighed the pleasures of travel.

Distinguishing between biking essentials and luxuries is difficult for the novice, but my brief pedaling experience told me I had two vulnerable spots: hands and posterior.

To remedy the former I willingly bought the safe-cracking gloves of the Artful Dodger and adapted to them lovingly.

But that rear-end problem! At first, I thought of buying several pieces of chamois cloth and sewing them on a pair of cut-offs. Fortunately, prudence prevailed: I hesitantly squeezed into a pair of riding shorts. Their cocoon-like snugness soon won me over. My only remaining reluctance was looking too sleek. I conjectured that one reason bicyclists sometimes get hassled on the road is their tendency to dress like carefully preened toucans. I wanted to tone it down.

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I also decked my noggin with a lightweight helmet, more to shield me from the sun than for safety, and installed toe clips on the pedals to harness my legs’ pulling power.

I already had a handle-bar pannier for carrying odds and ends, various wrenches and two spare inner tubes. The other essential item was a portable tire pump, purchased more as saber to thwart menacing dogs than to inflate the tires. My one luxury was a speedometer, better known by its more high-tech name of “cycle-computer.”

My younger brother, a biker partly out of necessity because of his impoverished existence as an actor, also suggested carrying an extra water bottle, vitamins, and Vaseline.

His advice came via long distance just as Lynne and I headed out the door. For fear of getting into a long-winded conversation, I let the Vaseline’s exact function go unexplained.

Vaseline strikes me as a product with ambiguous usage. Even the container instructions only caution how not to use it.

Fortunately, my wife understood, and showed me how bikers can use the stuff to prevent chafing. If she hadn’t, some of the blue highways I took would have turned me black and blue.

From Dallas, Texas, Highway 276 bisects the angle formed by Interstates 20 and 30 and makes a pretty good beeline toward Texarkana. East Texas is really more Southern than Western: more trees, more farm land, more courteous drivers who grant you a wide berth as they pass.

But the real line of demarcation between the South and West is designated by the armadillo and possum. You know you’re in the South when you see squashed possums along the road rather than crushed armadillos. And if the wind is blowing in the right direction, a biker on Highway 276 can sniff out cold-cocked possums at 500 yards.

On the second day out, in Pittsburg, I took my first spill. A Doberman came stealthily out from the left rear.

Skittish after a recent bite, I slammed on the brakes and flipped over the handlebars. My landing would have been smoother had I remembered to remove my feet from the toe clips. A woman stopped her car and asked (silently, through the closed window) if I was o.k. From afar, the owner of the dog called his beast. Her name was Lady, although I didn’t see much feminine charm in her.

Stopping at Hall’s Convenience Store at a crossroads between Hughes Springs and Marietta, we slurped on a banana Popsicle, enjoyed Mr. Hall’s banjo picking, and visited his WPA-constructed outhouse.

We also got an earful of local history like, “Armadillos originally came up here from South America… . Lots of (continued on next page)

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This is not a quest

curtis smith, english

people in this area used to farm corn and hay, raise cattle, or work at the steel mill in Hughes Springs until it fell on hard times in ’51. But it’s made a comeback.” Mr. Hall’s store is along the Texas Wildflower Trail, although I have to admit to seeing more wild dogs. If circumstances are right, he will pack you off with a Gideon Bible and a little Godspeed.

In the fall, Sunday morning on a country road is just as good as a Sunday afternoon in Dallas. In the country, the folks have gone to church and in the city, they’ve gone to Texas Stadium. Both include forms of worship, but the result in either case is a whole road to yourself…until an Arkansas German shepherd makes a frontal attack.

Mashing on the brakes, I came to a quick halt and warded off the dog. Much to my dismay, however, the back wheel was so far out of alignment that I had to remove one brake shoe for the wheel to turn. From behind, Florence must have looked more like a wobbly Conestoga wagon than a bike. It limped along so slowly to Little Rock that a deerfly made touch-and-go landings on my rear end and essentially got a free ride for several miles. It wasn’t until an 18-wheeler hauling cattle passed in the opposite direction that I was able to evict my passenger.

While I waited for the wheel to be repaired at Arkansas Schwinn in Little Rock, the sandy-haired mechanic told me how he raced a dog at night as he pedaled to rendezvous with his girl in Conway. The dog was so engrossed in the competition and the bike’s halogen light that it failed to see the telephone pole that immediately took it out of the race.

After nine days, Florence had brought us to Memphis.

The city was sultry, appropriate for Beale Street blues but demoralizing for a bicyclist. Overall, much of Tennessee was uninspiring. You know you’re in the Volunteer State when you see an abundance of signs reading: Fireworks For Sale.

One bright spot on Tennessee Highway 57 is La Grange, an attractive town with a number of antebellum homes and a wonderful place to have lunch and jaw with the local antique dealers.

In Tennessee’s Shiloh National Military Park, I met a biker from Oregon. After 41 days on the trail, he was giving up. It was too hot, and he was spending too much money on liquids. His pannier bulged with Coke bottles. He talked as if he had not communicated with anyone in quite a while: He would pause after each word, as if he were letting it register through his helmet and skull.

The road flattened out after we passed the Natchez Trace, and the weather cooled a bit when the sun disappeared over the horizon.

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Near Davy Crockett State Park we met two bikers who had just cycled 100 miles on the Trace. After the usual conversation about road conditions, temperatures, and civility of automobile drivers, the heavy-set fellow, who must have weighed more than 230 pounds, launched into a complaint about his sore feet. It was an odd problem.

Looking at his looming figure, you had to wonder why his feet were sore instead of his posterior.

By day 12 we were just east of Winchester, Tenn. Here the Appalachians are no longer in the distance; they’re right at your nose. You climb straight up. Once on top, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. It felt like a cool autumn day for a while; then the highway plummeted into the valley again and followed the Tennessee River toward Chattanooga.

The last stretch of Tennessee 64 is extremely scenic. It’s one of the best biking roads I traveled: lots of gentle curves, trees, and streams. But the state allows lots of industrial traffic and 18-wheelers to disrupt the landscape.

The route along the Tennessee-North Carolina border was completely uphill. After 650 miles, my motor started to give out—my legs just didn’t have the zip. Pedaling was a constant chore, with no time to look around. At times I had to dismount and walk. I started to wonder whether I would continue riding.

The final legs of the trip were mountainous, foggy, and rainy. The North Carolina roads from Franklin to Highland were winding and surrounded by waterfalls and rhododendrons, but they were always uphill battles.

On day 16, the trip to Brevard was dog-less and breezy.

As I entered the city, someone in a pickup truck hurled a firecracker at me, which left my ears ringing—the only unpleasant human encounter of the trip.

That night a steady rain further dampened my enthusiasm. I didn’t like the idea of spending another night on the road when my own bed was so close.

I also thought I didn’t need to ride all the way to my hometown in Davidson; I realized I made the trip, in part, so that I would have an experience from which to learn and share. Going another 160 miles wouldn’t affect that goal. The following morning I put the bike in the VW and got a four-wheel perspective of the last stretch.

At home, the real praise and attention rightfully went to Lynne. After all, who can patiently endure traveling only 50 to 80 miles a day by car?

I was frequently asked if I would bike back to Dallas.

My standard reply, “Nope, I don’t believe in re-cycling.” facu lt y foru m • 20 1 1

that same seed of life robert rozelle, humanities

The branches reach upwards like veins in the sky, etched in black in a winter dye.

Their color belies the life within; when spring returns, they’ll leaf again.

Their silhouette shadows remind me of pictures I’ve seen of the heart and its foliated fissures.

The heart is an organ; it works like a pump, serving our body, a human tree trunk.

The power that stretches the tree’s hand in the skies derives from a tap root and the earth where it lies.

The same is true of the body of man, whose heart pumps blood ‘til it returns to the land.

That same seed of life that makes a tree whole, in nature’s disguise, feeds the human soul.

So where does it come from, the pulse from within that beats a man’s heart and extends a tree’s limb?

It’s guided by nature, her gentle hand driven, the sap in the tree, the breath in all men.

It’s the cycle of life echoed in patterns of strife, from the outstretched oak to man’s undying hope.

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35

Moby dick and the sublime

lynne weber, english

Writers and artists throughout the ages have sought ways to transcend the limits of the human condition, seeking encounters with a mysterious yet powerful frontier of experience that Romantic writers term “the sublime.” Not everyone seeks or welcomes these encounters, wonderful and terrible glimpses of the interconnected workings of the vast universe, but for some, they are the objects of the human quest, the goals of reading, thinking, writing; the reason for being. During the 1800s, as the New England Transcendentalists searched for sublime experiences in a number of different ways, Herman Melville, perhaps the greatest of them all, found in the world of whaling a metaphorical landscape in which to set his account of the human encounter with the sublime. In it, he reads the human and natural world as emblems of universal truth. As he says, “some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth” (384). The whaling boat Pequod’s fictional encounter with the White Whale becomes Melville’s exploration of the “significance” of the ways in which human beings experience the sublime.

The Pequod is a concrete representation of the human endeavor; the sea, Melville’s figure of “Being”; and the White Whale, the mighty, ambiguous symbol of the awe, mystery and terror of the universe. In this allegory, Melville suggests a way through which human beings can navigate the sea of Being and endure encounters with the sublime, touching the sacred realm and bringing fire from heaven to illuminate the both the ordinary and the extraordinary tasks and relationships of life.

In the early pages of Moby Dick, Melville hints at the real subject of his novel (which is not whaling). Explaining how dreadful and fearful is the “apparition of the sperm whale’s vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head,” Melville exclaims, “For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God?” (96). In this passage, Melville begins to imprint on the reader his idea that whatever “God” is, it is both wonderful and terrible, both creative and destructive, both beautiful and horrifying. This sublime thing is wayward and splendid and violent and many-faceted and, in the end, ubiquitous, manifesting its many aspects unexpectedly. Edmund Burke, in his Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful, states of this phenomenon:

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The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. (Burke 53) Melville seems to begin his investigation into the nature of the sublime through reason, through “dissection” and logic and fact, but he soon despairs of capturing its essence solely through these means. As he considers the whale’s structure in the chapter titled “The Tail,” the narrator remarks, Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? Much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face. (339) Melville’s commentary on the “dissection” of the whale, his symbolic sublime, suggests that it is not possible to understand it entirely through reason, for reason alone cannot go deep enough to uncover the vast reaches of its nature. In fact, a face-to-face encounter with the sublime could, and likely would, destroy the mind, its vast complexities sizzling the brain’s synapses as lighting strikes the branches of a tree. An indirect encounter, a foggy glimpse, an oblique glance, is the best that mortal beings can expect. A passage from the Old Testament addresses the perilous aspect of the sublime, describing the experience of Moses as he converses with God on Mt. Sinai, receiving the laws of the Jews. As Moses seeks to better understand the God who shapes his being, he desires a clearer look at this mysterious presence whose fearful power is shrouded in smoke and in fire and known only through its voice. Moses begs God to, “Show me your glory.” God’s reply is,

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My face you cannot see, for no mortal may see me and live…here is a place beside me. Take your stand on the rock and, when my glory passes by, I shall put you in a crevice of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I shall take away my hand, and you will see my back, but my face must not be seen. (Exodus 33:18–23) Like the whale, submerged in the shadowy waters of Being and glimpsed in part but not in whole, God’s face is hidden from view, inscrutable because it is both marvelous and terrifying. And Melville will even go so far as to say that that which is sublime has no face, thus suggesting that it cannot be known directly but only through metaphor, indirection, blurred by obscurity and glimpsed only obliquely.

The Pequod’s first encounter with the White Whale comes near the end of the book after hundreds of pages of hints, portents, and signs, and Melville’s description of the whale’s appearance juxtaposes its majesty with the image of a potent divinity: A gentle joyousness — a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale.

Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam. (484) Melville’s references to Jove and “ravished Europa” suggest that the particular manifestation of the sublime that is Moby Dick is Zeus-like, lustful and fecund, seductive and terrifying in its divine omnipotence. It is connected to the indestructible and unconquerable force of physis, that chaotic power of natural growth and generative force that causes the earth to shimmer with life’s energy, shining, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words, “like shook foil.” Hopkins proclaims that “The world is filled with the grandeur of God,” echoing, in a metaphysical sense, Ahab’s idea that all of the physical universe is a “pasteboard mask” giving form to the unknowable divine.

The mutable forms of matter incarnate the unknowable

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energies of the universe. Ahab’s desire is to punch through this mask to determine what is behind it; in contrast, Ishmael becomes content to see it, to marvel at its beauty, power, and terror, and to preserve an inner calm that allows him to float in balanced equilibrium through turbulent seas of Being. Ishmael sees an analogy to his spiritual and intellectual condition in the chapter called the “Grand Armada,” where the whales make love, give birth, and nurture their young while surrounded by the multifarious savagery of the universal war of all against all. He says of his way of being, “But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy” (348). In the internal fecundity of thought and art, in the wonder of beholding the many faces of the sublime as they are manifested in the material world, Ishmael finds that “insular Tahiti” (248) that warms him and supplies him with abiding joy throughout his voyage on the turbulent waters of time and space.

For after all, there is another aspect to this “god” who glides through the mighty waters: “And thus, through the serene tranquilities of the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw” (484).

Moby Dick is godlike in his beauty, but his jaw, that part of him that swallowed Jonah, is ugly and threatening, a reminder of the abyss that awaits all mortal things. Yet this aspect of the mystery and grandeur of the universe also exists; time and eternity swallow all that is created, all that is, and that is the most fearful thing of all to the world of matter and consciousness.

A beetle will run from the stomping foot, a rabbit from the ravening hawk, and all men but Ahab from the inevitable annihilation of form and order that is at the heart of universal necessity. Ahab wishes his encounter with the sublime to reflect not worship, but willful resistance; not adoration, praise, and sacrifice, but rebellion and murderous vengeance. (continued on next page)

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Moby dick and the sublime

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Melville proposes an alternate way of encountering the destructive aspect of the sublime; instead of fighting it, he suggests cultivating an inner “vastness” that can encompass all aspects of experience. The narrator says as he examines the “blanket” or blubber of the whale, …that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong, individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness.

Oh, man! Admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it.

Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own. (277) In this passage, the narrator sees an analogy between the whale and the individual soul and advises the reader to maintain an individual “temperature” or inner state of being that is temperate, glowing with warm and human tranquility despite immersion in the endless chilly waters of Being and encounters with the frozen icebergs of experience. He laments that there are few human beings who are capable of maintaining this inner peace and intimates that those who can do so must have interior spaces that are as “vast” as St. Peter’s dome or the body of a sperm whale, vast inner resources of space and openness in their brains and spirits in which to encompass sublime encounters.

“The world’s a ship on its passage out,” maintains the narrator of Moby Dick in the chapter titled “The Pulpit”(35).

And in the allegory of the Pequod’s voyage, the reader perceives the voyage of that world through time and space in miniature. The eclectic crew, captained and mated by an eccentric collection of leaders, are bound together by their common needs, their common dangers, their care for the boat, their care for one another, their mission to find the light-giving oil of the sperm whale, the specter of looming death and overwhelming loneliness in the immensity of the boundless sea. All are of one congregation: the human one. Ishmael has earlier stated that Queequeg, the pagan cannibal from Kokovo, is “a born member of the First Congregational Church,” and he goes on to explain, “…the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that…in that we all join hands” (79).

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The ship’s mission in the ordinary way of things is to catch whales, whales whose oil lights the homely lamps of ordinary men. But at the helm of the Pequod is no ordinary man: he seeks the great and terrifying white whale, a being of mystery, threat, and wonder that swims submerged and deadly beneath the surface of a deceptive, mirror-like sea. And Ishmael follows him blindly, caught up in the sweep of emotion generated by Ahab’s challenge.

He, too, sees something grand and noble in the search to encounter and engage with the monstrous White Whale.

But will he, or any in the Pequod, survive it? In the same manner, Melville himself searches for sublime experiences as he guides his fictional ship further and further from the “Lee Shore.” He reflects that “to have one’s hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing…but I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try” (118). For Melville, this is the human endeavor: to push boldly into the waters of Being, far from the safe shore of the known, and to find what there is to be found in terms of the meaning of existence. This, and no other, will he have as his purpose. It is a mighty purpose; it is a precarious quest, fraught with danger and delight.

Having gone to sea, ventured himself upon the unknown, Ishmael encounters a perilous aspect of the sublime as he stands on the mast-head, looking out on the immensity of the ocean. In this passage, he is dangerously close to losing his individuality and being sucked into Nietzsche’s “primal oneness” as he does so. With “the problem of the universe revolving in me” (140), Melville’s avatar, Ishmael, “loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature” (141). In that mystic loss of identity, the speaker becomes one with the sea of being, his form merged with the Dionysian formlessness and chaos of physis. Ishmael resists the madness that crouches at the heart of this Dionysian abyss; he “draws back his foot” in time, as Charlie Marlow says of himself in Heart of Darkness, and re-asserts himself in the world of form, space, time. But in that timeless experience on the masthead, Ishmael has for a moment encountered the limitlessness of the sublime. He learns not to lose himself in these encounters, how to keep his balance on that dizzying masthead, by watching and learning from the others around him.

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Queequeg, that kindest of pagan cannibals, teaches Ishmael much about life, showing him agape love by uniting with him as though by marriage in the bonds of friendship, sharing all he has with him, and imparting to his friend the islander’s conception of life as an eternal continuum of connectedness with the universe. Even at the point of death, Queequeg’s wondrous acceptance of death and trust in immortality illuminates Ishmael’s understanding of how to unite with the sublimity of Being. Queequeg’s behavior in the face of death was a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened.

And like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of this waning savage. (425) Queequeg’s people “believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way” (426).

This pagan view of the interconnectedness of all worlds forms a bridge into the realm of the sublime for wondering Ishmael, just as Queequeg’s empty and watertight coffin becomes Ishmael’s life raft at the end of the novel.

Knowing that the universe is in some mysterious way bound together in a wild and unknowable pattern of connectedness becomes Ishmael’s way of surviving the wreck of his life and the loss of his companions. So in times of disaster and despair, the interconnectedness of matter in the world of being, Walt Whitman’s conviction that “every atom that belongs to me as much as belongs to you” is a salvific philosophical consolation in a universe in which creation and destruction are the two undeniable and inalienable constants. To Melville’s way of thinking, “Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored” (432). This willingness to venture into the waters of eternity without bitterness, despair, or loss of connection, this all-encompassing and accepting joy in spiritual adventure, is one way that human beings of noble soul transcend the boundaries of the material world and the

chains of mortality. And Melville himself wishes that he “could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight” (246).

Ishmael learns a useful lesson about sublime experiences from Pip, the Pequod’s cabin boy. Pip makes the signal error of ignoring Stubb’s (the mate’s) advice: “Never jump from a boat… Stick to the boat” (370). Pip panics when he feels the whale bump against the bottom of the whaling boat and, not comprehending that the only possible safety lies in staying in the boat with the other whalers and relying on their companionship, he jumps into the sea, where he is left behind. Though he does not drown physically, his encounter with the immensity and loneliness of the universe, this ultimate alienation from all that is human and friendly, takes away his reason. Melville says of his experience: “…the awful lonesomeness is intolerable.

The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it?” (371). While Pip does have a wondrous and terrifying encounter with universal reality, it unhinges him and makes him unfit for anything except wild prophecy and lamentation.

In his unwise and precipitous plunge into the depths of being, he is carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, everjuvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omni-present, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom… (371–72).

Anyone who has ever gone snorkeling or scuba diving in some place like the Fiji Islands can relate to this experience; alone in the tumultuous blue-green waves of an endless ocean, submerged and confronted with the glowing, evil-toothed green eels and gigantic blue manta rays that look like vast angels flying through the corridors of the unfathomable deep, confronted by the fragile, fractile-like coral and the fairylike anemones, one seems transported to a strange new field of being that transcends the familiar structures and grids of experience, suddenly (continued on next page)

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Moby dick and the sublime

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glimpsing a gigantic and hidden dimension of reality that hitherto has been unrevealed, unknown, unthought-of.

Yet here it is, enormous as the reaches of outer space, and more strange, unearthly, and multifarious than the imagination could fathom. After half an hour, the mind has had all it can tolerate, and the swimmer in the unknown deeps gladly doffs his flippers and climbs back into the homely boat, rejoicing in the sight of even the most unsavory and boring of acquaintances, be they only human. The vision of that other world lives on in the deep, uneasy reaches of the brain, however, haunting the sleeping soul with intermittent intimations of the “joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities.” Stick to the boat, indeed! Sage advice from jolly Stubb, wise Stubb, that ultimate realist.

Working together with one’s fellow human beings, living with them, performing the human endeavor with them, secure in our care of one another and conscious of the mortality of all material things, we are “in the boat,” anchored in the universe. As Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly put it in All Things Shining, Perhaps this is a lesson about the sacred that we are now in a position to appreciate: when things are going at their best, when we are the most excellent version of ourselves that we can be, when we are, for instance, working together with others as one, then our activity seems to be drawn out of us by an external force. These are shining moments in life, wondrous moments that require our gratitude. (81) Dreyfus and Kelly continue this idea when they state, “Rather than searching for some reasoning thing behind the mask as Ahab insists on doing, Ishmael thinks we should nurture the moods of everyday existence — the moods of the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, and any others we can learn about or discover — for the meanings they already offer” (164).

Ahab, instead of forming human relationships, practicing the care of others, and responding with gratitude to the gifts of Being, succumbs to rage and blind vengeance against a universe that he perceives one-dimensionally, that he takes too personally, that he seeks to confront as an equal and not as an “other.” Ahab is like that “Catskill eagle” (380) that dares the peaks and the dark gorges and

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flies gloriously and dangerously in the high places of the realm of Being; his plunges into despair and bitterness and hatred of the universe and the love of destruction bring him to a tragic end.

Ahab’s defiance and ultimate hubris is catastrophic and tragic, in contrast to the way in which Queequeg and Ishmael maintain a personal and existential balance characterized by deeply enmeshed human connections, wonder and awe in the face of the natural world, and humorous, good-natured acceptance of the universal necessity of things. The human humility that allows things to be what they are, to sail admiringly and worshipfully through the awe-inspiring seas of life and death, this precarious balance on the “tornadoed Atlantic” of being is the true miracle of existence and in it consists skill in living. “Thy life’s a miracle,” Shakespeare’s Edgar (in Lear) shouts admonishingly to his blind, despairing father, who seeks to throw himself into the abyss. And a miracle it is, that consciousness exists, that the show of the universe is on display to the human viewer, that we are invited to the dance. To be Ahab is to “hand back your ticket” to life, as the defiant, ironic Ivan Karamazov (of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov) says he wishes to do. And yet even Ivan loves many things about life and feels a yearning desire to understand what his brother Alyosha and the sage Father Zossima understand: the connection among all worlds through love. Father Zossima advises us to Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals; love the plants; love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love…Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it. (Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor 75) Ahab rejects his last chance to make this active response to life when he rejects Starbuck’s plea to return home to his (Ahab’s) wife and child, to the home and hearth of Nantucket. Though for a moment Ahab consents and even seeks to “look into a human eye” to maintain his connection with his fellow man, his pride, rage, and

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inexorable will lead him to reject connection and to meet his own destruction and that of his craft and crew in a catastrophic final immersion into the maelstrom of sublime wonder and terror.

Melville’s own search for the sublime ends, like Ishmael’s, mysteriously, resting precariously on a paradox of life buoyed up by the certainty of death. He sees the progression of the human search for truth in the following process: “…through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’s doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If” (437). Melville rests content in the great “pondering repose of If,” like Wordsworth, alert to the “intimations of immortality” implicit in the world’s being. In his letters to Hawthorne, he ponders, with some skepticism, Goethe’s injunction “Live in the all.” He says of this maxim, “…your separate identity is but a wretched one — good; but get out of yourself, spread and expand yourself, and bring to yourself the tinglings of life that are felt in the flowers and the woods, that are felt in the planets Saturn and Venus, and the Fixed Stars” (Melville Appendix 513). Though he later remarks “What nonsense!” to this idea, he adds a postscript to his letter in which he says, “This ‘all’ feeling, though, there is some truth in.

You must often have felt it, lying on the grass on a warm summer’s day. Your legs seem to send out shoots into the earth. Your hair feels like leaves upon your head. This is the all feeling” (Melville appendix 513). In later letters to Hawthorne, Melville continues to reflect on his own way of navigating the complex waters of being, on what he has learned through his search.

He says he has found “Content — that is it; and irresponsibility, but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling” (Melville appendix 515).

He speaks of his deepest sense of human kinship with the sublime: “I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces” (Melville Appendix 515). In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s character Alyosha, meditating over the body of Father Zossima and reflecting on the Marriage at Cana, feels that “he, too, had been called to the feast” (339). Melville,

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too, feels “called to the feast,” invited to the party, so to speak. And if you are invited to the party, you have the choice of attending it, drinking the holy wine, dancing with the guests, and feeling the rapture of human and divine communion, or staying home alone and sulking about the meaninglessness of life. Alyosha’s vision mirrors the threads of the loom of God that Melville has perceived, as well: “There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over ‘in contact with other worlds’”(Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 340). To live in the great “If,” to love, to work, to create, to dance at the party, to be alert to those unexpected glimpses of the sublime, to admit dimensions of Being not defined by fact alone — this is Melville’s way of enduring and celebrating a universe that is both terrifying and wonderful, bounded by death but also unbound by it, connected to all of Being with a polysemous consciousness of the interpenetration of matter and spirit.

Works Cited Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Ed. Adam Philips. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov, Norton Critical Edition, Ed. Ralph E. Matlaw.

New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1976.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Grand Inquisitor, Ed.Charles B. Guignon. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993.

Dreyfus, Hubert and Sean Dorrance Kelly. All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. New York: Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, 2011.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick, Ed. Tony Tanner. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1988.

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Journey to jefferson

david brown, english A Door to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying

By now anyone who is even a half-way serious reader of the western literary canon knows enough about William Faulkner (1897–1962) to make an introductory biography superfluous. His Mississippi saturation is well documented, as are his bouts with alcoholism, his Nobel Prize and acceptance speech, and those novels steeped in his Southern mythology of Yoknapatawpha County. One anecdote, however, may serve to summarize best the man and the life. It begins with a 1918 photograph celebrating the return of the wounded war hero. Faulkner wears his First World War flying officer’s uniform with his American Expeditionary Force cap. His letters home have already recounted the hours of training, the incidents and hazards, including a crash landing encountered during his missions and a metal plate lodged in his skull. The trouble is, the details are all a complete fabrication. The Armistice was in fact signed before he’d had the chance to board a combat aircraft. So by the age of twenty-one, well before he dreamt up the hero of his first major novel, John Sartoris, who was killed in air battle, this man who would become one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers, began by creating his own legend. Such reworking of real life lies at the origin of all his work. William Faulkner was himself the first Faulknerian character.

What then are we to make of his claim that he finished As I Lay Dying in six weeks without changing a word and that he did so in the semi-darkness of a coal furnace he shoveled, writing on a wheelbarrow turned upside down as he worked the graveyard shift? Is the story just another one of his fabrications? It doesn’t really matter that much.

If the claim is true, it is an astounding accomplishment.

If it isn’t, the novel is still remarkable by any comparison.

According to Faulkner himself, “I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first words, I knew what the last word would be.

Before I began I said, ‘I am going to write a book by which I can stand or fall if I never touch ink again.’” He accomplished his goal, though it didn’t hurt that his reputation could also by that time have rested upon the colossal achievement of The Sound and the Fury, published just one year before in 1929.

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As I Lay Dying is difficult for obvious reasons: fifteen first-person narrators; non-sequential plot progression; diction you can find in no standard dictionary; arbitrary use of italics; placement of pronouns that makes matching them with clear antecedents an exercise leading to Darlish insanity; dense, Faulknerian syntax, nearly yonic in its fecund ripeness and a deliberate antithesis to contemporary Hemingway’s crisply priapic, pointed prose; and on top of all that, Faulkner’s continued experimentation with stream of consciousness, the technique he borrowed from James Joyce, whose Portrait of the Artist (1916) and Ulysses (1922) had been published just a few short years before Faulkner began his own two early masterpieces.

Add to these difficulties some of the darkest of comedic situations, all of them macabre, hilarious, and sad, and you emerge with a work both ominous and irresistible.

A sign should hang from its book jacket: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” as it then simultaneously charges for admission. Thirty years after I first read it, I’m still waiting for the movie.

Some aspects of As I Lay Dying are almost as well known as is Faulkner’s larger-than-life life: the title taken from Agamemnon’s speech to Odysseus in Book XI of the Odyssey; the cartoon-like Southern names; Dewey Dell’s excuse for copulating with Lafe just beyond the cotton patch; Addie’s scrutiny from her deathbed of her coffin’s construction; Anse’s decision to put a cement cast on his son’s broken leg; Vardaman’s piscine confusion, resulting in literature’s most famous five-word chapter (“My mother is a fish”); and a conclusion that gives the last word to the most worthless human in the novel, his introduction of his new wife, coming ironically at the conclusion, eliciting howls of anger and laughter and raising questions that even Aristotle couldn’t answer about what makes for tragedy and what makes for comedy.

The main characters of this novel are the Bundrens, often more bestial than human: father, Anse, as symbolically castrated as the steers to which he is compared; mother, Addie, so inhumanly cruel and hateful that in the one chapter she narrates —one of the most chillingly creepy and scary that any Southerner has written —she has to leave a blank between two words because the truth is too ugly to write or maybe because we have no word for its equivalent; oldest son, Cash, who at twentynine is as simple, literal-minded, and consumed with

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balance as are his carpenter’s tools; second son, Darl, who at twenty-eight is the introspective and articulate one; third son, Jewel, who at eighteen is as incapable of showing human emotion as is the horse he beats; lone daughter, Dewey Dell, who at seventeen is as plodding and deliberate as the cow her brother mistakes her for; and the youngest, Vardaman, fishier than his mother, whose age is never given but no matter the years cannot mentally be much above six. The Bundrens collectively, parallel the buzzards that hover above them as they mosey toward town. At the center of all this nonsense is a family in the first quarter of the twentieth century intent on honoring its matriarch’s dying wish that she be buried in Jefferson, Faulkner’s fictitious name for Oxford, Mississippi. The forty-mile journey from their farm to the city should take only a full day’s ride, even by a mule-drawn wagon; instead, because of trials by fire and rain, it takes nine days. Of course, by then Addie’s decaying corpse in that Mississippi summer sun has begun to rot and stink so badly that down-wind towns through which they pass can smell them coming from miles away.

At the center of this journey story lies Addie Bundren, holding the novel tightly together in spite of the fact that she is dead of an unnamed disease by page fifty. Addie takes up most of the novel’s space and the characters’ thoughts, just as she takes up most of the wagon’s space while it creaks toward Jefferson. She is hub of the wheel that turns the wagon and the novel. Most of the Bundrens have ulterior motives for getting to Jefferson, though they claim to be motivated by the purity of Addie’s death wish.

Regardless of their motivations, the strength of Addie’s personality, even in death, sees to it that each of the Bundren family members attends her burial in Jefferson. She has exacted this promise of burial, however, not because of any love for Jefferson or for extended family she held dear before marrying Anse. She has secured the promise from Anse because of the pure hatred that rages quietly inside her, most of all because of her hatred for Anse, and she has secured the promise, it seems, because she knows that fulfilling it will require of her family the kind of agony and pain that will rip their souls, and in one case the skin, from their bodies. In this way she will have her revenge on all of them, but mainly on her husband without his even knowing it: “…my revenge would be that he would never

know I was taking revenge.” The beauty of it all is that Addie gets to watch firsthand her revenge enacted, albeit from the disadvantage of death but also from the advantage of feeling none of the pain herself.

One of the several ironies to surface is that the one child of Addie who genuinely loves her and deserves none of her spleen is Darl, the brightest star in the novel’s buzzard-filled sky. Darl’s presence makes the strongest case for the truly tragic stature of As I Lay Dying. If the novel is tragic, Darl is its tragic hero, at least by Aristotle’s standards.

His intelligence and apparent prescience elevate him above his peers. He displays a hubristic flaw that rallies his family against him and brings about his fall. He experiences an epiphany of laughter near the novel’s end as he begins to see his family for what it is. And finally he is cast from his home, carrying with him not only Oedipal exile but that nagging complex as well. Darl is the only Bundren who sees things for what they are. In both the flood and the fire, Darl alone tries to do what is right: let Addie’s fetid corpse go and stop the madness of revenge.

Instead, Vardaman, who has wandered outside to watch the buzzards, sees Darl set fire to the barn where Addie lies in state. Vardaman tells Dewey Dell, who tells Jewel, who tells the men in white coats. Darl, who could not stop the madness, continues that madness by literally going to it.

At least he has escaped the Bundrens. Can life be any worse in a padded cell than it has been on the Bundren farm?

Along with Darl, Jewel is the only other Bundren without an ulterior motive for going to Jefferson. Both brothers begin the trip wanting only to honor their mother’s burial wish. They both have one other thing in common: a fierce love for mother Addie. Though Jewel, Darl’s opposite and therefore laconic and detached, cannot speak or show it, Darl knows his brother’s love for Addie is there. More than that, Darl knows that Addie loves only one of her children, Jewel. Further, somehow, he knows the reason: Jewel is Addie’s only child not sired by Anse.

Because Darl loves without being loved, he conspires to rob Jewel of the one thing Jewel wants before his mother dies: to be with her when she dies. Knowing this desire, Darl takes Jewel with him to pick up lumber and stays away till Jewel with him to pick up lumber and stays away till he knows that Addie is dead and that both mother and son have missed a last goodbye. The already palpable tension between the brothers hits a new high and sets the (continued on next page)

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tone for the novel’s journey. By the end, it is Jewel who has jumped his brother, subduing him so that he can be hauled away by the white coats.

It is not Jewel’s betrayal of Darl, however, that most hurts him. It is Cash’s. Darl and Cash are not only closest in age; they are also close in an unspoken friendship.

When Darl is about to be taken away by the men in white coats, he turns to Cash, saying, “I thought you would have told me…. I never thought you wouldn’t have.” Darl is as crushed by the betrayal as he is by his mother’s ignoring him while she lies dying: “He just stood and looked at his dying mother, his heart too full for words.” While his mother offers Darl no words of comfort, at least Cash looks sadly at his brother, simply saying his name. Cash’s ulterior motives for going to Jefferson are his desire to get a graphophone and his desire to be dropped off on the way back to pick up another carpentering job. He gets neither. In fact, it will be at least a year before Cash gets to work again. His debacle with the cement cast is one of the novel’s sickest jokes. Having broken his leg in the effort to cross the swollen river, Cash suffers the greatest physical pain the novel offers. Because Anse has spent a few cents on cement, he is determined to use it on Cash’s broken leg rather than waste it by taking him to a doctor and spending more money. As the cement hardens and adheres to his leg, Cash cements his position as standard-bearer for silent suffering. By journey’s end, without one word of complaint, he has lost his brother, his tools, his livelihood, and sixty square inches of skin to get the cement ripped from his leg. It is little consolation that he gets to narrate the last chapter in the novel.

The last brother is Vardaman. The Bundren with the least ability to clearly articulate meaning is surprisingly vocal. While Darl is obviously the most loquacious, narrating more chapters than any other character (19), it may come as a surprise that Vardaman easily comes in second (10 —Tull, the Bundren’s neighbor, is third with six). Vardaman’s reason for going to Jefferson is to get the promised toy train that his sister has told him shines from a storefront window. Needless to say, he never gets it.

Stunted mentally, ignored by his family, content to fish on the day his mother dies, ill prepared to understand Addie’s death, and therefore confused enough, once he sees the fish he has caught flopping to death in the dusty road, to make the transfer in his mind of mother for fish, his main

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contribution to the plot’s development is reporting Darl’s barn-burning to Dewey Dell. On the comic level, and my favorite gesture, is Vardaman’s decision to help his mother breathe after she has been nailed inside her coffin by drilling holes in its top. Unfortunately, he bores on through into her face so that Addie goes to her grave more holey than she ever expected she would be.

Dewey Dell’s motivation for going to Jefferson may make the most sense. She wants an abortion. She fails but not for lack of trying. Her two attempts to rid her body of the fetus are almost as sadly comical as her story of conception. As she picks cotton alongside Lafe, the horny teen talks Dewey Dell into following him on into the woods at the end of a row of cotton by putting the cotton he picks into her bag so that she will have no reason to continue picking down the next row. Dewey Dell acquiesces in one of the greatest excuses ever for succumbing to pre-marital teen sex: a full bag of cotton. By the end of that afternoon, Dewey Dell’s cotton bag is not the only thing of hers now stuffed: Her belly holds a baby. Such passive dismissal of responsibility is topped in the novel by only one character, Anse Bundren.

Were vengeance not so despicable, we could almost validate Addie’s death wish against her husband. Anse is the poorest excuse for a man that I have ever read in any of Faulkner’s fiction. At least the writer provides us with Dr. Peabody’s second narration toward the novel’s end that allows us a literary “Amen.” Peabody is preparing to remove the cement cast from Cash’s leg when we read the following exchange between him and Cash: “Dont you lie there and try to tell me you rode six days on a wagon without springs, with a broken leg and it never bothered you.”

“It never bothered me much,” [Cash] said.

“You mean, it never bothered Anse much,” I said. … “And dont tell me it aint going to bother you to have to limp around on one short leg for the balance of your life —if you walk at all again.

Concrete,” I said.

“God Almighty, why didnt Anse carry you to t he nearest sawmill and stick your leg in the saw? That would have cured it. Then you all could have stuck his head into the saw and cured a whole family.”

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Nothing in the novel is as satisfying as reading Peabody’s darkly comical, spot-on assessment. The good doctor finally voices our building frustration.

Anse’s frequent insistence that he wouldn’t be beholden to any man or that he “mislikes undecision” more than any man are maddening statements confirming just the opposite. In fact, he makes only three decisions in the entire novel, and all three are hard to watch. First is his decision to apply the cement cast to his son’s broken leg. Second is his decision to steal from his daughter the ten dollars she intends to use for her back-alley abortion. But it’s his last decision that takes the novel by storm and perhaps makes of the novel something we didn’t think it was.

Anse’s motivation for going to Jefferson is two-fold. He wants a set of false teeth, which he gets with the money he steals from Dewey Dell. But it’s his second ulterior motive that remakes the novel. He wants a second wife before he leaves Jefferson. Having just buried Addie with a shovel he borrows from the woman who will be that wife, Anse, after cleaning up and getting his new teeth, approaches his remaining children on the last page (Darl having been carted away) and introduces the pop-eyed, duckshaped woman as the new Mrs. Bundren. Anse is the only Bundren to get what he came for in Jefferson. Yes, Addie gets her burial, but does she get her revenge on Anse? Not exactly. Yes, her children pay for her hatred, but Anse? He watches safely from the bank while his children rescue the wagon and coffin from the river. He watches again from a safe distance while Jewel suffers severe burns rescuing Addie from the burning barn. In fact, Anse has not worked in years, using the excuse that if he sweats, he will die. Once in Jefferson, Anse alone of the remaining Bundrens gets what he wants. He buries a hateful wife, gets his false teeth, and marries a woman who apparently will bring more materially to the marriage than he has ever had. In fact, by ending the novel with a wedding, Faulkner has perhaps moved the novel from tragedy to comedy if Shakespeare’s formula holds any weight. It’s almost as if Faulkner is affirming King Arthur’s insistence that vengeance is the least worthy of all motivations.

Shame on Addie! In the end, “love” wins the day.

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Certainly, though, the complexities of As I Lay Dying cannot be so neatly tied with the nuptial bow. Darl is tragic, Cora and Whitfield are hypocritical, Tull hits dead center on women and marriage, Addie is a fish, and everyone is both sad and funny. Maybe we’ll call this a tragicomedy and leave it at that. Or maybe we won’t call it anything but great. Certainly what it is is vintage Faulkner.

And no quality more quickly tags this writer than his unique rhetoric. Two last passages serve as support. On pages ten and eleven we have the typical delay deux Faulkner. He opens with a question from Anse to Darl: “Where’s Jewel?” We then have a digressive reminiscence, followed by a tendentious aphorism, followed by a recollection of sexual stimulation in solitude, followed by a description of Anse’s feet and shoes, followed by random observations about Tull and his wife, finally followed, a full page later and with no transition to make the connection easy, an answer to the by-now forgotten question about Jewel: “Down to the barn harnessing the team.”

Following Faulkner’s periphrasis requires devoted concentration. He allows himself to wander but punishes us for doing the same. The second passage is an example of the second main reason I read Faulkner (the first is, of course, because he is Southern): He writes some of the most splendid prose ever churned from an American brain: Dewey Dell rises, heaving to her feet. She looks down at the face. It is like a casting of fading bronze upon the pillow, the hands alone still with any semblance of life: a curled, gnarled inertness; a spent yet alert quality from which weariness, exhaustion, travail has not yet departed, as though they doubted even yet the actuality of rest, guarding with horned and penurious alertness the cessation which they know cannot last.

Faulkner considered himself a failed poet. But one has only to read such prose to realize that the man wrote better poems in his novels than many attempt in verse.

Note: Page numbers and works cited omitted due to space limitations.

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teaching leadership through...

dr. martin stegemoeller, english In this essay, perhaps his most important writing on ethics, Emerson attacks widely held senses of goodness, justice, and compensation that, he thinks, are overly abstract, misguided, and ultimately pernicious. Targeting the commonly preached appropriate motives for ethical action and leadership — altruism, sacrifice, and selflessness — he finds an implicit curse against life in our common hope that people who do good works for others will be rewarded somehow later for their sacrifice now. His critique of this view and his articulation of a more intrinsic understanding of the value in service to others are central to our understanding of the leader’s life as being the best life here and now.

Emerson begins the essay by describing a sermon he recently heard: The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed, that judgment is not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the next life.

No offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. As far as I could observe, when the meeting broke up, they separated without remark on the sermon.

Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifications another day, — bank-stock and doubloons, venison and champagne? This must be the compensation intended; for what else? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the disciple would draw was, — ’We are to have such a good time as the sinners have now’; — or, to push it to its extreme import, — ’You sin now; we shall sin by and by; we would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we expect our revenge to-morrow.’

The fallacy lay in the immense concession, that the bad are successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base

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estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will: and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood.”

Emerson claims here that understanding service to others as a sacrifice implies that serving others is not in itself good, because why then would the server need some other reward later? And if hoarding and consuming material wealth is horrible, why would those doing so need to be punished in addition to the horrors of their materialism? The people making this claim seem unaware that they value the exact opposite of what they claim: “The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will: and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood.” Such attempts as the preacher’s to educate people in the goodness of care and love fail because the implicit message contradicts the ostensible message. The preacher is, in Emerson’s eyes, an appalling, dangerous hypocrite. The consequences of this “education” are dire: the listeners will not only remain materialists, but they will not really be able to enjoy consuming material goods because now their conscience is bad. This message educates people to be reactionary in their morality: material wealth is evil, and goodness rises in denouncing the evil.

We might ask at this point if we make any similar “mistake” when we try to educate our boys at school about their responsibility to serve. It seems that we do. When we tell the boys, age six through nineteen, that they are “privileged” and “have been given much” and need “to give back” what do we primarily mean? Or, at least, what do the boys hear? Having spoken with boys about this for some time, I can safely say that they hear that their privilege and gifts are their material possessions. The boys are baffled by the question and wonder what else the answer could be. And how could they not wonder? Have they ever been given a different positive account of “what constitutes a manly success?” If so, they have missed it. As we critique what we have been doing in leadership and ethics education and ponder what we could do, it might help us to ask ourselves if we ever “confront and convict the world

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from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will: and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood.” Do we ever give a positive, rich, compelling account of why care, concern, leadership, and living ethically are good in themselves? As Emerson asks when listing the possible divine gratifications, “Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that they can do now.” If praying and praising and loving and serving men are the best things our boys can be doing, then let’s explain why. If the boys’ greatest privilege is the privilege to positively, effectively, imaginatively serve their communities, then let’s not muddy the conceptual waters by calling such service a sacrifice.

Emerson’s primary goal in “Compensation” is to replace a profit-centered model of living with a creativity-virtuegenerosity-centered model. But first, he explains why we tend to try to live by the profit model: Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates itself, in a twofold manner; first, in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly, in the circumstance, or in apparent nature.

Men call the circumstance the retribution.

The causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the understanding; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a long time, and so does not become distinct until after many years.

Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know; that they do not touch him; — but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part, they attack him in another more vital part. If he has escaped them in form, and in the appearance, it is because he has resisted his life, and fled from himself, and the retribution is so much death.

Persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement.”

The distinction between “in the thing” and “in the circumstance” does most of the work here. An unjust act harms the actor “in the thing,” in his soul. He becomes unjust in his being through his action. We might think that such a realization would be enough to curb unjust

actions, but Emerson thinks we look rather in the wrong place, “in the circumstance,” to make our judgment. The mortgage derivative trader acts in ways that punish his own clients and contribute to the meltdown of $50 trillion of global wealth, but he gets out of the market at the right time, and there he sails on his yacht, eating oysters and sipping champagne with his third trophy wife. We are inclined to think, “He has profited unjustly. He must be punished. Otherwise he is ‘getting away with it.’” Emerson would respond first and most importantly that the man has in fact become an unjust man in his soul, which will negatively affect his ability to relate to and to enjoy everything in his life: “the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul.” His very choice of his job, the yacht, the wife, all contain appropriate internal punishments for such a man. Second, the justice of circumstance takes time to play itself out. Will such a man be as lucky with his market timing next time? Can he go on screwing his clients? Will he continue to be able to enjoy the yacht? Will he stay with the wife? Is the man capable of being a good friend? Things look peachy out on the yacht now, “but it is only a postponement.” (Crime and Punishment reads as the ultimate surfacing of the ugly thing of alienation in Raskolnikov’s soul into the circumstance of his life as his subconscious works so hard to get him caught in circumstance so that he may heal in thing.)

Emerson goes on to link the attempt to split the thing and the circumstance with the attempt of an individual to calculate his own good separately from the good of the communities of which he is part. With this move, he brings us to the front lines in the leadership and ethics war against ethical apathy, and we need to pay heightened attention: The soul strives amain to live and work through all things. It would be the only fact. All things shall be added unto it power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The particular man aims to be somebody; to set up for himself; to truck and higgle for a private good; and, in particulars, to ride, that he may ride; to dress, that he may be dressed; to eat, that he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame.

They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature, — the sweet, without the other side, — the bitter. (continued on next page)

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teaching leadership through...

dr. martin stegemoeller, english This passage articulates the essence of the main barrier the majority of our boys face in developing as leaders and men. They are searching for a bargain in life, and they won’t act until they find one. They want to do something that will lead to a pleasant circumstance for themselves right now; possibilities that don’t achieve that prospect are neglected. As an adolescent, video games, Facebook, music, and alcohol fit the bill nicely for the summer; as a man, pursuing a life of getting and spending appears the goal.

But, the world sees to it that this strategy doesn’t work: This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day, it must be owned, no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as soon as we seek to separate them from the whole.

The boys who spend their summers without purpose do not look happy and do not self-report as such, even though they have spent almost every instant trying to please themselves. And those boys who have not come to understand service as the substance of their lives seem unable to find either motivation or satisfaction during the school year when the yoke of assigned school work has been removed from them. They haven’t yet owned a symbiotic responsibility with their world. And, as men, if they choose to pursue a life like that of the corrupt mortgage trader, then Emerson warns them: You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.

‘No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him,’ said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it… . Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own.

Emerson thinks that our yacht-owning friend who obtained his money by hustling his clients and who in general pursues his narrow self-interest without regard to the communities that support him will lose his ability to care for and to enjoy anything because of his failure to include others in his considerations. His argument seems

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to be as if even narrow self-care requires a kind of empathy, and if the faculty for empathy has withered from lack of exercise in the world, then we lose our ability even to care narrowly for our selves. At some important level, we feel that we are enmeshed in the world, and attempts to override this fact by the intellect or the will ultimately lead to alienation.

Emerson goes after not only criminals, but also — more importantly for our students — the free-rider as well. He too is punished in the thing, his soul, even though he may escape in the circumstance: The borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained any thing who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? Has he gained by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbour’s wares, or horses, or money? There arises on the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part, and of debt on the other; that is, of superiority and inferiority. The transaction remains in the memory of himself and his neighbour; and every new transaction alters, according to its nature, their relation to each other. He may soon come to see that he had better have broken his own bones than to have ridden in his neighbour’s coach, and that ‘the highest price he can pay for a thing is to ask for it.’

We might add, “the highest price he can pay for his identity is to take it for granted.” A danger looms, especially in North Dallas, that a boy comes to feel social superiority by the experience of being perennially tended to. The enjoyment of this feeling of power is, however, a Trojan horse, out of which pop the opiates of complacency that spread throughout his being. Contrast such a neutral boy with a leader that habitually serves. Each time he engages and leads, he learns how to serve, expanding his powers to be positively effective, expanding the world’s need for him and his need of it, weaving himself more into his world.

Over time, the emerging leader develops virtues and confidence that help him see and actualize opportunities that the neutral boy doesn’t see, because he couldn’t actualize them anyway. As Emerson puts it with astonishing efficiency, “The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power; but they who do not the thing have not the power.” We learn to lead by leading. Those who don’t fall further behind those who do. facu lt y foru m • 20 1 1

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Interestingly, because universities do in fact want kids who have the habitual attitude of entrepreneurial service, the college preparatory experience has grown “naturally” toward encouraging considerable community engagement and service. As Emerson predicted, “We aim at a petty end quite aside from the public good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of the world.” And the more engagement and service, the better. But there are ten to twenty boys in each graduating class who have somehow learned to own and to enjoy their communal engagement and ownership in ways that others don’t. They have come to crave it so that they don’t find themselves sleeping through summers and vacation; when the external yoke of enforced responsibility is removed, they don’t fall into apathy, but rather seek out other ways to engage and serve. Which brings us to the crisis point of decision that we want the boys to face: What is the substance of your life going to be? Why are you choosing apathy? Why are you choosing not to care? What do you misunderstand that makes you feel that not caring elevates you?

Emerson substitutes an understanding of life as generous-creative-abundance for life as profiteering. Most boys have a default understanding that they have inherited in which life is like a business: you put in as little as possible to get out as much as possible: Profit (net happiness) = Revenue (gross happiness) – Cost (work). This metaphor runs deep in them and in our culture. Engagement and leadership are not “worth it” to these boys, and they usually show an uncomfortable cockiness in saying so; they are nobody’s fools, and back to Facebook or video games they go. They have not yet learned to love their care and work. Emerson realizes that without the profit motive, many people will not see a reason to engage in life at all: But the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing these representations, —What boots it to do well? There is one event to good and evil; if I gain any good, I must pay for it; if I lose any good, I gain some other; all actions are indifferent.

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That word indifferency fits some of our boys well, especially those who have tremendous ability but who never take passionate delight in or find deep meaning in owning the success of their communities. But a good answer to the question, “If there is no profit in it, why should we do it?” awaits. If we can get the boys to ask this question, we definitely need a good answer.

Emerson ultimately treats concerns about compensation so that such concerns can be left behind: There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul is.

The soul is neither a subjective, ghostly feeler nor a profiteer, but a life, life living and growing toward a complete sense of itself. It may help to try to imagine God having a profit motive, as if God created the world to sell it for more than he put into it. We can’t really affirm a God whose care is not for his world in his very being. He cares so that there can be a world, and he cares much and skillfully so that his world can be extraordinary. Emerson is asking men to treat their own worlds as God treats his, as the space of care, love, meaning, and achievement. In Emerson’s world Revenue and Cost are equal and inseparable and find their overlap in creative, imaginative, entrepreneurial care. Because R = C, then we can stop worrying about getting cheated or getting a bargain. If profit is not possible, then the focus moves to simply having more life and world rather than less. And why is it bad to have less world? “It is harm inasmuch as it is worse not to be than to be.” At this point, we come to end of the educational road, a place where will meets fate, and in some boys there just may not be energy that wants to actualize itself. All we can do for such a boy is keep bringing him to this place of decision. If they are going to turn down the opportunity to self-actualize through imaginative, courageous, entrepreneurial service, then they need to know that they are turning it down, and they need to be given as many chances as possible to choose leadership and more world over apathy and less world. (continued on next page)

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teaching leadership through...

dr. martin stegemoeller, english Some boys seem to decline leadership and the habitual attitude of entrepreneurial service toward their fellows because they feel that they are already on the losing side of a competition for recognition and power, so it seems illogical to them to try to help peers who may already be ahead of them: In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequalities of condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction of More and Less. How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel indignation or malevolence towards More? Look at those who have less faculty, and one feels sad, and knows not well what to make of it. He almost shuns their eye; he fears they will upbraid God. What should they do? It seems a great injustice. But see the facts nearly, and these mountainous inequalities vanish.

Love reduces them, as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my brother, and my brother is me.

If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbours, I can yet love; I can still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and envied is my own. It is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue, — is not that mine? His wit, — if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.

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This passage describes well the attitude of our Noah Brickers, Whit Shaws, and Stewart McDonalds toward the successes of their peers. They incorporate them and enjoy them as their own. For reasons too complex for us here, people tend to be able to affirm and to incorporate the success of others much better when they are successful in their own right. But it can’t hurt to remind ourselves and the boys about the eloquent truth expressed here: “he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves.”

We can, through decision and empathy and habit, experience the success of a group as our own; by owning it, we own it. Emerson’s lessons all come together here. By seeing that life isn’t a compensation but a life, we may learn to own and affirm the growth of life all around us without fear of yielding competitive advantage; those who do this owning receive the power that comes from this owning; and, wonderfully paradoxically, they are compensated for their giving up of narrow selflessness by a tremendous expansion of selfhood. And the best thing is: he’s right! Ha! Engage — Own — Lead — Enjoy — Engage More — Own More — Lead More — Enjoy More… Our best, happiest student-leaders approach life this way. But why just the top fifteen or so per year? Why not more? Has all of this ever been explained to the students? And could there ever be a more concise explanation of the method for and possibilities of reading great literature for ethical education than his: “Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtu — is not that mine? His wit — if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.” Why read, if not to learn to discern and to incorporate into ourselves what is best about the most interesting characters ever conceived?

But the boys do not understand their education as such a process of discernment and incorporation. Have they ever had this explained to them clearly enough that it sticks?

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vernon

stephen houpt, science He’d been sitting in that choir chair for more than fifty years, Wednesdays and Sundays seemingly without end, filling the chancel with his deep rumbling voice, the earthy wisdom of his prayers.

When I saw him the week before he died, he looked bad, his eyelids rimmed with red, his movements creaky, like the doors on a million mile Olds ’88.

But when I looked past all that into the clarity of his eyes, I saw that it was all still there: the guts he had repeatedly shown, enduring the pain, the encouragement he had given me as I sat beside him through the years, the rough edges of his wit, the little movements of his soft, weathered hands.

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piccadilly train station

byron lawson, history

Piccadilly Train Station, London, Wednesday, July 16, 2008, 3 p.m., Tracks 7 and 8 Desperate, Tesla searched the crowd for Zach. “All I have to do is spot his hat. I hate that hat. I can’t believe I’m late.”

“Sir, do you have the time? My watch has stopped working.” Incensed, the stranger turned, stared in her direction, and hurled the time at her, “3:15! It’s 3:15! How does a woman in a train station not know what time it is? Do you want to know what day it is also?” Crippled by his verbal assault, but not for long, she snapped back, “How rude! Simple questions require simple answers. There’s no need for hysterics.”

As she tried to walk away, he shouted, “Why don’t you just check the clock overhead. It’s only six feet tall.” Glancing upwards, she walked away, confident of the time, confused by the force of the encounter. She thought to herself, “So, I didn’t look up at the clock. Is that a deal breaker?”

It was Wednesday. She had been shopping in Harrods at Knightsbridge, visiting the S.T. Dupont counter, her favorite in the entire store. Every thing an English woman needed to feel French was there, and in spades. Most of all, she loved looking at S.T. Dupont lighters, and she loved to smoke. Besides the nicotine, she loved to perform the role of the smoker; a French smoker. Every morning, she’d load four cigarettes into her leather-encased, six-cigarette carrier, knowing that she would smoke just two of them that day; one at lunch, and the other while waiting for her train home. While Tesla fancied the S.T. Dupont Medici Line 2 lighter, Betti, the saleswoman, offered her an S.T. Dupont fountain pen to write with. She celebrated the offer with a mischievous, longing smile. She had coveted the Orpheo for some time; marveling openly at the lacquer finish, and the geometric orientation, which seemed to direct her to nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. And the write, “It’s so smooth, like guiding ice across crystal. I bet this pen could write my life’s story without me.” But the pen didn’t write without her, and before either of them realized what had transpired, Tesla had written for twenty minutes in her suede-bound, unlined moleskin journal, making it impossible to catch her train on time. Lighter in her right hand, pen in her left, elbows on the counter, gravity overtook her. She placed her head on the countertop, and her back, previously in a near-plank position, curved like a fisheye lens on a 35 mm camera. Dismayed by the convergence of simple mistake after simple mistake, she checked her watch, left no commission for the saleswoman, dashed from the store to the Knightsbridge station, and traveled four tube stops to Piccadilly.

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The crowd thinned as the trains on tracks 7 and 8 disembarked within moments of each other. She caught a glimpse of Zach, right knee over left, and the Times in hands as he was carried off in his comfy, first class seat.

She couldn’t see his expression, but she knew he wasn’t happy. She wouldn’t get to the flat until two hours after him, giving him far too much time to mull over their state of affairs. “This is going to hurt,” she thought.

Slowly, chin perched upon her chest, Tesla wrestled her blonde hair into a bun of sorts and loosely pinned the creation with a silver, Harlequin-detailed clasp. When properly reorganized, she glanced up, and found herself face-to-face with the Piccadilly Station’s linear world clock.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m well aware that it is now 3:27 p.m.

Greenwich Mean Time. Thank you.” Openly conversing with the clock brought about a stare or two, but she was unmoved. The Piccadilly clock repeatedly initiated an unresolved internal conversation: “If the entire world agreed to set its time based around a clock in Greenwich, why can’t I generate the same agreement from Zach?”

She switched from the Piccadilly to the Bakerloo line and headed to her flat in Regent’s Park. Once home, she prepared for the evening’s battle in her newest weapons of choice. Dressed for the evening in a sleeveless black dress, red-soled, black Loubouton heels, and adorned simply, yet gracefully in a triple-stranded pearl necklace, she punched his name, “Z-A-C-H” into her cell. The call went to voicemail immediately, “I’ll be there as soon as possible.” She didn’t apologize and did not explain. She glanced around her open flat and took in the expansive view of the park just to the south of her building. “I love this place,” she thought. “I can always breathe deeply here.”

Makeup, hair, perfume, and jewelry in place, Tesla secured the entry gate to her old building and merged stepin-stride with the other black-suited, heeled vagabonds of the London commuter scene. For Tesla, there were just too many of them; too many people headed their own way; simply too distinct. “Are you alone? Are you lonely?” She wondered both, nearly aloud. While she was walking, “Love Me Today” rang in her ears, a playlist that manufactured vignettes of romance, joy, and sheer happiness. Even trepiditiously late to meet Zach, the combination of glisten, glam, and music ratcheted up her confidence. After briskly walking from the train station, with warm blood coursing to her extremities and pride in hand, she said to a patron exiting the restaurant, “If he gives me any grief, I’ll just return it ten-fold.” facu lt y foru m • 20 1 1

A Rainy day in montreal byron lawson, history

ST. MARK'S SCHOOL OF TE X AS

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foot posture

matthew hjertstedt, p.e.

A Digital Photographic Measurement Method for Quantifying Foot Posture: Validity, Reliability, and Descriptive Data Stephen C. Cobb, Ph.D., A.T.C.*; C. Roger James, Ph.D.; Matthew Hjertstedt, M.A.T., A.T.C.; James Kruk, M.A.T., A.T.C. *Department of Human Movement Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Center for Rehabilitation Research, Lubbock

Abstract Abstract Context: Although abnormal foot posture long has been associated with lower extremity injury risk, the evidence is equivocal. Poor intertester reliability of traditional foot measures might contribute to the inconsistency. Objectives: To investigate the validity and reliability of a digital photographic measurement method (DPMM) technology, the reliability of DPMM-quantified foot measures, and the concurrent validity of the DPMM with clinical-measurement methods (CMMs) and to report descriptive data for DPMM measures with moderate to high intratester and intertester reliability. Design: Descriptive laboratory study. Setting: Biomechanics research laboratory. Patients or Other Participants: A total of 159 people participated in three groups. Twentyeight people (11 men, 17 women; age = 25 ± 5 years, height = 1.71 ± 0.10 m, mass = 77.6 ± 17.3 kg) were recruited for investigation of intratester and intertester reliability of the DPMM technology; 20 (10 men, 10 women; age = 24 ± 2 years, height = 1.71 ± 0.09 m, mass = 76 ± 16 kg) for investigation of DPMM and CMM reliability and concurrent validity; and 111 (42 men, 69 women; age = 22.8 ± 4.7 years, height = 168.5 ± 10.4 cm, mass = 69.8 ± 13.3 kg) for development of a descriptive data set of the DPMM foot measurements with moderate to high intratester and intertester

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reliabilities. Intervention(s): The dimensions of 10 model rectangles and the 28 participants’ feet were measured, and DPMM foot posture was measured in the 111 participants.

Two clinicians assessed the DPMM and CMM foot measures of the 20 participants. Main Outcome Measure(s): Validity and reliability were evaluated using mean absolute and percentage errors and intraclass correlation coefficients. Descriptive data were computed from the DPMM foot posture measures. Results: The DPMM technology intratester and intertester reliability intraclass correlation coefficients were 1.0 for each tester and variable.

Mean absolute errors were equal to or less than 0.2 mm for the bottom and right-side variables and 0.1° for the calculated angle variable. Mean percentage errors between the DPMM and criterion reference values were equal to or less than 0.4%. Intratester and intertester reliabilities of DPMM-computed structural measures of arch and navicular indices were moderate to high (>0.78), and concurrent validity was moderate to strong. Conclusions: The DPMM is a valid and reliable clinical and research tool for quantifying foot structure. The DPMM and the descriptive data might be used to define groups in future studies in which the relationship between foot posture and function or injury risk is investigated.

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foot posture

matthew hjertstedt, p.e.

Journal of Athletic Training: Jan/Feb 2011, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 20–30.

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preserving the heritage...

tinsley silcox, library

“Our children do not know our past. History is no longer a topic that excites their interest. They never even heard of Malcolm X.” (Ossie Davis, in his foreword to Black Cinema Treasures Lost and Found [Jones, 1991]).

In August of 1983, Dr. G. William Jones, Professor and Director of the Southwest Film and Video Archives at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas received a telephone call that would change the focus and direction of the fledgling film collection in the Meadows School of the Arts over which he presided. Dr. Jones was summoned to a warehouse in Tyler, Texas to rid it of unwanted film canisters destined for the dumpster. The treasure of African-American film history languishing in that old dusty warehouse and rescued by Dr. Jones is now known as the Tyler, Texas Black Film Collection. The film archives at Southern Methodist University is the repository of this collection of “race films” from the 1930s and 1940s — films which were either lost or intentionally forgotten and yet which stand as a testimony to the determination and ingenuity of a people marginalized by the pervading thought of their day.

In his book Slow Fade to Black, film historian Thomas Cripps quotes African-American Oscar winning actress Hattie McDaniel saying, “I can make more money playing a maid than I can being a maid” (Cripps, 1977). Film historians such as Thomas Cripps and Donald Bogle posit that, since writers and directors of the 20s, 30s, and 40s had little social involvement with African-Americans other than as maids, cooks and chauffeurs, those were the parts they wrote for these actors — writing experientially. The exaggerated stereotypical behaviors portrayed in Hollywood films, such as being afraid of ghosts and the constant malapropos, were appropriated directly from the minstrel tradition — a tradition based on an idealized plantation life that sprang up in the South after the Civil War. With the abolition of slavery, African-Americans were more than eager to leave the plantations — even with the promise of land for sharecropping — and migrate north. This migration left the black population segregated from whites in schools, jobs, and entertainments, but still an existence far preferable to the antebellum south. In a brief time, AfricanAmericans had their own schools and were learning

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skills, trades, and professions; they became master craftsmen, doctors, teachers, and nurses. A burgeoning middle class was developing in the community. This was a class of people craving a more accurate portrayal of their lives in print, on stage, and later on film. Black films — black stories that spoke to the heart of their religious convictions, family ties, and a strong connection to their churches were in high demand. These stories found their way into the hands of black and white entrepreneurs, and black films for black audiences, starring black actors were created.

The films discovered in the Tyler warehouse, on miraculously well preserved nitrate stock, were transferred to safety film in 1985. With the advent of digital technology, it became in essence a moral imperative to further preserve and conserve this important piece of film history. To quote the late Dr. Jones from his book Black Cinema Treasures Lost and Found: Most of the film-going public, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds, seem to think that all-black-cast films began in the 1930s with Hallelujah!, Cabin in the Sky, Stormy Weather, or Green Pastures. Although these titles were technically sound and were enjoyed by both white and black audiences of the time, they were Hollywood films, made by white studio filmmakers, and meant to be seen by white audiences.

Most of the film-going public, white or black, also seem to think that black filmmaking began in 1969 when Gordon Parks, already a Pulitzer Prize winner for his work as a photographer for Life magazine, wrote, produced, and directed The Learning Tree for Warner Brothers-Seven Arts. Although this film was a milestone in terms of black artists gaining control of the Hollywood filmmaking process, it was produced a full half-century after the first black independent filmmakers began making films for segregated theatres in the south and de facto segregated theaters in the north. For four decades, there were as many as 1,200 theaters across the nation showing black audience films either exclusively or on a regular basis. 1921 was

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a peak year for distribution within this highly organized production/distribution/exhibition system, which operated until its demise in 1950.

During the 40-year span when black audience films were in their heyday, few black artists other than the legendary Oscar Micheaux had their own production companies. Most of the companies were owned by white entrepreneurs who used white technicians behind the scenes.

Fortunately, a host of black producers, directors and screenwriters — not to mention a number of black actors and actresses — had the opportunity to work on films which white audiences were never meant to see. Therefore, these films could be more realistic and indicative of life as experienced by African-Americans living through that difficult period. Although there is some stereotyping in the films they made, it was not the racial stereotyping which marred many of the Hollywood studio films of that era. There was no need for such pandering to white prejudices because audience and cast were AfricanAmerican. (Jones 1991) It is significant not only to view these films in light of their honesty in relation to the African-American community of the day, but to consider the making of these films as a precursor to desegregation. For example, in 1941 Spencer Williams, the actor/writer/director/composer who went on to star in many Hollywood productions, was working in close collaboration with Alfred Sack of Dallas, Texas. Sack, a white Dallas entrepreneur partnered with Williams in the production of these films, which Sack then distributed.

As director of Juke Joint (shot in Dallas), Williams was giving direction to white cameramen — unheard of for Dallas (or Hollywood) in 1941. Interestingly, white cameramen and technicians were employed for the making of these films because there was no other choice — the unions excluded African-Americans. What they knew about filmmaking was from watching and imitating white directors — like all pioneers, they had a vision, but mastering the techniques of filmmaking would take time.

ST. MARK'S SCHOOL OF TE X AS

The significance of race films becomes evident when one views these films for the first time. They stand as a testimony to the longer than supposed history of black independent filmmakers in the United States. These films provide a rare, undistorted glimpse into black life in the early part of the 20th Century — a perspective which is void of the typical Hollywood interpretation, and representative of the black self-consciousness which existed during that time.

Believed to be lost, or perhaps even deliberately forgotten, the films which make up this collection became the core collection of the SMU film archives, renamed for the late Dr. Jones in 1995. Since the time of their rescue and preservation, these films have been shown occasionally to scholars of film history, through film study courses at the university, and on several occasions screened for groups interested in black film history, such as the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in Galveston, Texas. Until the awarding of the digitization and preservation grant in 2002, the screening of these prints involved transporting multiple, heavy reels of 35 mm film and hiring a professional projectionist — a serious barrier to dissemination of this important historical material.

In August 2002, the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection at Southern Methodist University was the recipient of a $65,000 grant to digitize and produce a three-DVD boxed set of this collection of rare African-American films.

These boxed sets (1,000) were made available free of charge to under-funded school districts in the state of Texas, and the archives now stores for preservation purposes digital video discs (DVD) and Digibeta tape of these films.

The short film Broken Earth from the collection provides a dramatic example of the digital restoration process. Broken Earth (1939) is perhaps the most important short film ever produced for the segregated theaters of the 1930s and 1940s. Directed by Roman Freulich and starring the famous African-American actor Clarence Muse, Broken Earth depicts Muse as a widower and hard-working farmer who ekes out a meager existence for himself, his son, and (continued on next page)

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preserving the heritage...

tinsley silcox, library

their dog Coffee plowing his rocky fields. When his little son is stricken with a fever, Muse prays fervently that his son will be healed. According to Donald Bogle in his book Blacks in American Film and Television: An Encyclopedia, Clarence Muse is best remembered today as an actor who repeatedly sought to invest his servant roles in the 1930s with a semblance of dignity and a degree of seriousness. The fact that he played tom characters in scores of films cannot be denied. The fact that he played those figures with great intelligence and thoughtfulness has often been overlooked.

His were never the shamelessly flamboyant figures that someone like the gifted Stepin Fetchit played. (Bogle 1988) Referring to these servant roles, Bogle continues, “His performances crack the glossy artificiality of his films, injecting them with a healthy dose of unassimilated realism” (Bogle 1988). In his lengthy list of film credits for Muse, Bogle fails to mention Broken Earth, a film in which Muse’s abilities as an actor are allowed to flow freely from a piece of work devoid of the white Hollywood stereotypical portrayal of blacks in 1930s American cinema. As Bogle’s work was published in 1988, one must wonder whether or not Bogle was aware of this important film for Muse. Fortunately, this film, and others of equal importance, are now preserved within the digital realm of easy access for all to watch and study. Thanks to the restorative capabilities of digital processing, the image we see in the example is dramatically improved: not only can the actor’s features now be clearly distinguished, background in the scene leaps to life, much as if an unseen figure has flipped on a light switch in the room. We now see a make-shift curtain covering a window, a ceramic stove for heating the tiny sharecropper’s home in winter, and the bent and aging wrought-iron headboard. When one considers that the conservation and preservation process is represented here by what can be accomplished in a single frame, and

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that the Davinci Renaissance system used for this project tracked and corrected this entire film collection — 11 films/40 reels/43,000 feet/573 minutes of footage total — the value of this project cannot be underestimated.

Dr. Jones’ remembrances of his childhood in East Texas best summarize the importance of the project which will ultimately reside in the archives which now bear his name: We had three movie theaters in the town of my childhood. The Arlene was the ‘new’ one, and it gave me my first experience of genuine air conditioning. I did not get to go there very often because it was more expensive than the other two theaters and there was also a parental suspicion that cold air in the middle of the summer might be one of the causes of the dread new disease, infantile paralysis.

Then, there was the Rita, a much smaller theater, and—finally—the Rembert. The Rembert was old and had a musty smell compounded of dusty curtains, stale popcorn oil and the dirty tennis shoes of generations of kids. The Rembert was the only theater which had a balcony, and this was where the black people of our town came to watch the movies. Sooner or later—the Rembert was a second- or third-run house— they saw all the same movies the white folk saw. Although I cannot remember ever hearing them laughing or cheering or shouting at the screen like we boys did down below, I knew they were there, because I could occasionally hear them, before the show started, moving around the backless benches they had to sit on while we sat in the comparative comfort of wooden, bolted-to-the-floor rows of folding seats which curved to fit the body.

On rare occasions, black people would also come to see movies at the Rita. This was only on ‘Juneteenth,’ the anniversary of the date when the Emancipation Proclamation finally took effect in Texas. Or, when the theater manager decided to throw a ‘Midnight Jamboree.’ I think

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...of african american filmmakers tinsley silcox, library

that the beginning of the concept of ‘midnight movies’ was with this kind of event, when a (usually white) theater owner decided he could make some extra money from an entirely black audience by choosing a time when no white patron would be interested in coming to the theater, and then programming one of ‘their’ movies, maybe two.

I can remember coming out of the Rita Theater with my parents, it must have been very late one night, and seeing a wonderful sign on the sidewalk. It screamed ‘Midnight Jamboree — Tonight!!’ and — in red and black — beautiful women danced, dressed only in banners. I was immediately interested, not only in scantilyclad red-and-black ladies but even more in staying up later than I had ever done before.

‘Why don’t we go see that?’ I asked.

‘Ssssssh!’ was my parents’ embarrassed warning.

‘What’s wrong?’ I whispered back, blushing for having broken some rule and wanting to know which one it was.

‘It’s only for black people. It’s one of those black movies.’

Although I knew I was not to be allowed to see it — not just by my parents but by the theater people, and maybe even by the black people themselves — I was, nevertheless, even more fascinated with the prospect.

‘What could they be like?’ I wondered. I had seen Stymie in the Our Gang series up on the screen. I had seen Stepin Fetchit and Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, too, in some of the Shirley

Temple movies. I genuinely enjoyed Fetchit and Robinson, but Shirley tried to act so grownup and cute that she embarrassed me. I always shrank down into my seat, my face burning with shame, when I saw her up there. Maybe I was worried that she would make everyone in the theater think that all kids her age, including me, were that way. It took a lapse of many precious years before I was to realize that this could be precisely how many black people felt when they saw themselves represented upon the screen only by buffoons and servants, even while they were glad to see at least some representation of their group.

But what could those ‘black movies’ be like? I really wanted to know.

That must have been around 1939. I was not to find out what those movies were like until almost half a century later” (Jones 1991).

Thanks to Dr. Jones and his early vision, to Southern Methodist University for its support, and to the efforts of all those involved in this endeavor, these films are now preserved for the enjoyment and study of future generations of film scholars, film lovers, and for students in disciplines from minority film studies to American history to sociology and beyond. They stand as a monument to the determination and resilience of some of our finest creative artists of the early 20th century.

Works Cited Bogle, Donald. 1988, Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia, Garland Publishing, Inc., New York.

Cripps, Thomas. 1977, Slow Fade to Black, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England.

Jones, G. William. 1991, Black Cinema Treasures Lost and Found, University of North Texas Press, Denton, Texas.

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Political tensions in The...

johnny hunter, history

The Weimar Republic was a period of intense political tension and chaos in Germany following World War I. Numerous, ideologically-diverse political parties came into constant conflict with one another during this period of German history. Frequently, these conflicts turned violent and many people were murdered, imprisoned, or exiled because of their beliefs. Protection of workers’ rights, business interests, religious freedoms, and monarchal loyalties were among the most prominent reasons why these political parties formed. Another major goal of these parties was to secure high levels of influence and power at local and national levels. Coalitions between these political parties repeatedly emerged and disbanded due to the unstable conditions of Germany during this time period.

Although there were many other relevant political parties which existed during the Weimar Republic, the purpose of this essay will be to focus on the two most important political groups of the early years of the Weimar Republic era: the Social Democrats and the Communists.

In order to gain a better understanding of the inherent nature of these two important political parties, a look into how and why the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and German Communist Party (KPD) were formed is needed. Historically, the SPD claims its roots in the tiny, General German Workers’ Association (ADAV) formed by Ferdinand Lasalle in 1863 (Herwig, 120). As party membership increased, the ADAV merged in 1869 with the Social Democratic Workers Party (SDAP), a Marxist organization formed by August Bebel and Karl Liebknecht. The newlyformed Social Democratic Party stood in stark opposition to Otto von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor,” over the monarchal, parliamentary-style of Prussian government (Carr, 111). Along with the National Liberal Party, the SPD pushed for a “constitutional system in which parliament and the executive had equal rights” (Carr, 111).

However, Bismarck and other conservative supporters of the monarchy vehemently disagreed and sought to further restrict their rights and participation in the Prussian parliament. Consequently, this would be a battle that the liberal parties of Germany fought with the conservative loyalists for the next 50 years.

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By 1912, the Social Democratic Party became the strongest party in the Reichstag and gained a majority in the House for the first time since its inception. In fact, an overwhelming number of workers and one out of every three adult males had recently voted for the Social Democratic Party (Bookbinder, 22). A Social Democrat, Philipp Scheidemann, was elected Vice-President of the Reichstag, “only to resign rather than be presented at court” (Pulzer, 70). Although the SPD dominated the Reichstag, it was still rendered virtually powerless by the chancellor and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nevertheless, the SPD and other liberal parties in the Reichstag continued to voice the concerns and criticisms of a large majority of the German public against the monarchy.

Two years later, Germany entered World War I on the side of its ally and neighbor, Austria-Hungary. According to some scholars, Germany had initially entered into a “defensive war” to protect itself from other imposing European powers but soon drew up plans for expansion and the conquest of the European continent (Contze, 77).

For the first few years, the war went very well for Germany as it single-handedly dominated almost the entire continent of Europe. However, with the entrance of the United States into the war in 1917, the tide began to shift and Germany found itself fighting an “un-winnable” war against the powerful coalition of Allied forces.

At the onset of World War I, most political parties in Germany had supported the war effort. Nevertheless, resistance to the war “appeared first in the ranks of the Social Democratic Party and then spread to parts of the centrist middle-class political parties” (Bookbinder, 22). As early as 1917, a majority of Reichstag deputies supported a “Peace without Annexations Resolution” introduced by Matthias Erzberger, the leader of the liberal wing of the catholic Center Party, (Bookbinder, 22–23). Naturally, members of the Conservative party which were loyal to Kaiser Wilhelm II used this parliamentary resolution against the liberal parties by labeling them as traitors to Germany.

Many Social Democrats now resented their initial support of the monarchy’s call to war in 1914. However, internal disagreements between leading members of the SPD had caused a splintering in the party into several distinct factions (Bookbinder, 23). In April 1917 a growing radical leadership base of the Social Democratic

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Party broke away and formed the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD). On the left of the USPD there stood an even more radical splinter group of Social Democrats called the Gruppe Internationale, or the Spartakists (Nicholls, 2). No other political group wished to see the demise and the deemed necessary removal of the defunct Imperial monarchy more than the Spartakists.

In fact, its two most prominent leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, spent the last years of World War I in prison for both their radical views and their intense criticisms of the Kaiser and chancellor.

Another glaring yet external issue faced by the government was the widespread dissension of large numbers of German soldiers. Even before the spring offensive of 1918, reports of deteriorating morale, insubordination, and desertion plagued the German army, especially on the Eastern front (Nicholls, 3). Many of these disillusioned soldiers felt that they had already done their job by defeating the Russians and had absolutely no desire to join General Erich Ludendorff’s forces on the Western front (Nicholls, 3). With an end to the war in sight, many of these disgruntled troops returned home to Germany to find the government without a monarch and the country in total disarray. No longer could the army be counted on to protect the Imperial regime which seemed intent on continuing the war at all costs.

Clearly, tensions were ripe for revolution in Germany.

Despite their differences, democrats, socialists, soldiers and their families, pacifists, and Utopians all looked to a revolution as the promise of a new life (Gay, 9). On September 29, 1918, Field-Marshall Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff implored their emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, to sue for peace with the Allies after a final, massive offensive on the Western front failed (Nicholls, 1). When the Kaiser still refused the requests of an armistice by the German High Command, Prince Max von Baden suggested that the Kaiser abdicate his throne immediately and flee to Holland in exile until time was right for him to be restored as the supreme ruler of Germany (Dorpalen, 16). However, the Kaiser rejected the pleas of Prince Max, the new German chancellor, and stubbornly stayed put in Berlin.

Soon after, a mutiny broke out at the naval base at Kiel. The then freshly-appointed General of the High Command, Wilhelm Groener (Ludendorff’s replacement), convinced Hindenburg that the army no longer stood by the Kaiser (Dorpalen, 16). When news of this leaked out to the German parliament, the moderate Socialists made it known that they were ready to join forces with the more radical Independent Socialists and that they would forcibly remove the Kaiser from power if he did not abdicate his thrown (Dorpalen, 17). Of course, the Spartakists who had been calling for these very actions for over a year pledged their support to the revolution, but, it should be noted that they clearly had a much different concept of how the new German government should be run than their counterparts.

On the morning of November 9, Admiral von Hintze, an emissary of Prince Max, arrived at Field-Marshall Hindenburg’s office and informed him of the gravity of the looming revolution. Admiral von Hintze relayed the threats posited by the Social Democrats at the capital and warned Hindenburg that “a revolution would sweep him and the monarch away if their demands were not met” (Dorpalen, 17). Hindenburg and Groener then went to see the Kaiser to present their acceptance of this dire predicament.

In a surprise move, Field-Marshall Hindenburg asked Kaiser Wilhelm II to be allowed to resign from his post as Hindenburg explained to him the inevitable prospect of a Socialist revolution if the Kaiser did not abdicate his throne immediately. Several of the Kaiser’s aides believed that this would not be necessary as they could use what little military force they had left to suppress the insurrections (Dorpalen, 17). Also, a new plan hatched by Count von der Schulenburg, the Crown Prince’s chief of staff, emerged to maintain the Kaiser’s authority. Schulenburg stated that the monarch should resign merely as German Emperor and remain King of Prussia since he would still be seen as a unifying symbol for the strong Prussian forces and to help prevent their disintegration (Dorpalen, 18–19).

Only General Groener questioned the validity of these actions as he knew that the Social Democrats and Spartakists would never accept such a proposal.

However, Schulenburg forged ahead with this last ditch effort to save the monarchy. When the chancellor called again to ask of the decision of the Kaiser, he was (continued on next page)

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informed that an abdication statement was being prepared and would soon be transmitted to him (Dorpalen, 19).

Obviously, there was some level of miscommunication between the Emperor’s council and Prince Max as the chancellor hastily announced in a communiqué that the Kaiser had abdicated both thrones as German Emperor and King of Prussia (Dorpalen, 19). Despite the miscommunication, there was nothing that the monarchy could do to save itself. Upon news of this communiqué, Karl Liebknecht, an influential Spartakist leader who had just been released from prison, led an impassioned demonstration to the Berliner Schloss where he proclaimed a new German Socialist Republic (Childs, 13). Within the hour, Socialist leader Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the establishment of a democratic republic in Germany out of fear of a takeover by the Spartakists. Historians would later call these series of events the November revolution.

A new republican coalition government was formed shortly after the abdication of the Kaiser. This coalition was made up of three Majority Social Democrats; Friedrich Ebert, Philipp Scheidemann, and Otto Landsberg, and three Independent Social Democrats; Wilhelm Dittmann, Emil Barth, and Hugo Haase (Childs, 13). Friedrich Ebert was elected chairman. As could be expected, the new coalition government was faced with many difficult choices and responsibilities. The Social Democrats were now charged with keeping order and setting the tone for the new republic. Obviously, strong leadership and decisive measures would be needed to hold Germany together during this turbulent period.

Meanwhile, the French and the Germans were meeting in the forest of Compiegne to discuss an armistice.

Marshall Foch served as the Allies representative, and he handed over the Allies’ conditions to Matthias Erzberger, the chief German delegate. To the discredit of all participating members, the Germans signed the armistice on November 11, 1918, without any high-ranking German officer’s signature (Childs, 13). Thus, German militarists claimed that this armistice was not an official acceptance of terms, and it was clearly not the “work of the German armed forces, who had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the politicians” (Childs, 14). This prevailing attitude would also infect civilian life in Germany as well and cause intense criticism and eventual hatred of the Versailles treaty and the Social Democrat coalition council.

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According to German historian Helmut Heiber, the psychological effect on German society of the news that an armistice had been signed with the Allies was enormous (5). Following President Woodrow Wilson’s lead, the Social Democrats along with the German High Command sought a quick resolution in order to prevent more German soldiers and civilians from dying in what they deemed as a losing cause. Many Germans felt that they had not lost the war and that the coalition government had “sold them out” to their enemies (Heiber, 5). The “stab-in-theback” theory became a popular rallying call for resurging German nationalistic political parties such as the rightleaning Patriotic Leagues (Nicholls, 86). In Bavaria, local authorities refused to accept the authority of the new Social Democratic leadership due to their strong regional traditions and their disgust with the signing of the hated Versailles treaty.

Clearly, there were several pressing issues concerning Friedrich Ebert. Above all, Ebert believed that order must be maintained at all cost. If the new coalition government allowed the country to plunge into anarchy, then the people, especially the working class, would suffer tremendously (Childs, 14). The chairman also feared that if the government degenerated into a “small, revolutionary junta, it would be forced to take ever more repressive steps to maintain itself” (Childs, 14). Furthermore, Ebert was worried that if Germany appeared incapable of maintaining order, then the Allies would occupy the whole country.

The coalition of the Majority Social Democrats and Independent Socialists sought to alleviate these imminent threats in two ways. First, Ebert secured the support of General Groener of the Army High Command for his government (Childs, 14). With the real danger of internal and external violence, Friedrich Ebert was wise to solicit the German army for aid against potential foes.

Consequently, a Bolshevist revolution was taking place in Russia that would soon change the world forever.

Groener admitted that the purpose of his alliance with the coalition was “the total putting down of revolution, the re-establishment of ordered government power, the support of such government power by an armed force, and the soonest possible summoning of a national assembly”

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(Childs, 14). Chairman Ebert and General Groener agreed that they must work together to fight against the revolution and to fight Bolshevism before it spread into Germany.

Ebert’s second aim to form a stable government for the new democratic republic was the indeed the summoning of a National Assembly. However, there was disagreement between the Majority Socialist Democrats and the more left-leaning Independents over how best to manage the National Assembly. Although both sides agreed in principle that a National Assembly should be formed, the Independents thought that the “Council should get on with the job of transforming the power structure and thus prevent the re-emergence of those capitalist-imperialist forces which were responsible for Germany’s present plight” (Childs, 14).

The Spartakists, who had maintained a very weak alliance with the Independents for the past months, were keeping a sharp eye on the events and outcome of the Russian revolution. In Germany, they desired immediate action by the coalition council to establish a proletarian dictatorship based on the soldiers’ and workers’ councils.

Furthermore, the Spartakists felt betrayed by the council and were leery of professional politicians like Ebert “who, by working class standards, had long since secured a good life based on a career in the Socialist movement” (Childs, 14).

Borrowing a slogan, Die Rote Fahne, which had been used by the Russian Bolshevist leader V.I. Lenin, the Spartakists demanded that all power be given over to the workers’ and soldiers’ councils (Childs, 15). At this point, Germany was facing the serious threat of a government shutdown and possibly a civil war as compromise seemed out of the question between its major political parties.

On December 20, 1918, the first all-German congress of these councils rejected the demand for a government based on the claims of the Spartakists and agreed that elections should take place for a national assembly on January 19, 1919. The German economy was suffering horribly due to an Allied blockade, a shortage of raw materials, poor import/ export exchange rates, and high levels of unemployment (Nicholls, 17). Angry over the Majority Social Democrats’ “treachery,” the Spartakists and radical Independents did their best to mobilize support among the many unemployed workers in the big cities, especially in Munich and Berlin (Nicholls, 17). Both of these groups were now totally opposed

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to Ebert’s government and became determined to undermine its authority through the medium of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils.

On December 31, 1918, the Spartakists broke ties with the USPD and formed a separate German Communist Party (KPD). At their meetings, the German Communists used very violent language and seemed to encourage an immediate insurrection (Nicholls, 17). The KPD’s intent of overthrowing the SPD coalition and setting up a proletarian dictatorship in Germany was encouraged by many party members, but, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht saw the need to first “educate the German masses by demonstrating the conservative nature of the Ebert government” (Nicholls, 17). According to Luxemburg and Liebknecht, the KPD needed to gain more members and votes before the time would be right for their Bolshevist revolution.

However, these visionary leaders of the KPD were viciously murdered on January 15 by Captain Waldemar Pabst, General Ludendorff’s former assistant.

On February 6, 1919, the delegates to the National Assembly of the new German republic met in Weimar to discuss the future of German political leadership. After months of intense debate, a somewhat democratic form of government had been founded with Friedrich Ebert named President (Heiber, 1). Finally, the Weimar Republic was officially announced and recognized as the ruling authority in Germany.

However, all was not well for the leadership of the newly-proclaimed Weimar Republic. On February 21, 1919, the prime minister of Bavaria, Kurt Eisner, was assassinated by Count Arco-Valley, a young army officer and aristocrat. Following Eisner’s death, the unthinkable happened on April 7 in Munich: radicals declared a Soviet Republic in Bavaria (Feuchtwanger, 60). Within the week, the German Communist Party took over the leadership of the Bavarian Soviet and became part of the Comintern, a new international organization formed by the victorious Bolshevist revolutionaries in Moscow (Nicholls, 34). At the head of the KPD leadership in Bavaria stood Eugen Levine, a dedicated young Russian revolutionary. Levine received the blessing of Lenin in Moscow and quickly created a (Bavarian) Red Army. (continued on next page)

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But, the Bavarian Soviet would last only three weeks.

On May 1, 1919, pro-republican troops from northern Germany and some of the Bavarian Freikorps fought their way into Munich and brutally crushed the established Bavarian Soviet (Nicholls, 35). Many of the Communist revolutionaries received terms of imprisonment while others were shot without facing a trial (Nicholls, 35). After courageously defending himself before a special court, Eugen Levine was condemned to death and executed for treason.

Within months of the Weimar Republic’s creation, a plot for an attempted putsch in Berlin by members of the conservative National Association (Nationale Vereinigung) had been discovered. The displaced yet still powerful General Ludendorff had been a patron of this association which had “wide ramifications among Freikorps and Junker landowners and which received financial support from industry” (Feuchtwanger, 73). On March 12, President Ebert and defense minister Gustav Noske then called for the arrests of several key members of the putsch which included Wolfgang Kapp, Colonel Max Bauer, and Captain Waldemar Pabst.

However, several officials who were sympathetic to the putsch tipped off Bauer and Pabst about their impending arrest. In the early hours of March 13, the putsch began as the Marine Brigade Ehrhardt moved into Berlin and occupied the government quarter. Defense minister Noske met with key members of the armed forces and demanded that “force be met with force” but was over-ruled by several generals of the Reichswehr (Feuchtwanger, 73).

General Hans von Seeckt, head of the troop office, is said to have made the following famous remark at this meeting: “Reichswehr does not shoot on Reichswehr” (Feuchtwanger, 73). Clearly, von Seeckt and the other generals who opposed the defense minister’s position on this crisis as unrealistic because they did not believe that German soldiers would open fire on each other in the name of the republic. In fact, these generals asserted that the Reichswehr would eventually be needed in case of a more dangerous threat, the defense against a Bolshevist revolution in Germany.

With the notion of a violent response to the putsch squelched, Ebert decided that he and other important ministers of the Weimar Republic would leave Berlin in order to “retain their freedom of action” (Feuchtwanger, 74).

It was agreed that former finance minister and now vicechancellor Eugen Schiffer would stay behind to act on

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their behalf. As the president and his companions fled to Dresden, the press secretary of the chancellery drafted a proclamation calling for a general strike against Kapp and his right-wing guard. Although the proclamation carried the signatures of the Social Democratic members of the government, it was never clear if Ebert and the other leaders of the SPD sanctioned this proclamation (Feuchtwanger, 74).

As leader of the putsch, Wolfgang Kapp found it increasingly difficult to establish legitimacy for the coup. He did not have the support of the high ministerial bureaucracy who refused to “collaborate with a venture so lacking in legal veneer” (Feuchtwanger, 75). Also, there was wide support in Berlin for a general strike against him.

It soon became evident to Kapp that he and his associates would not receive the desired support needed to effectively govern. In a face-saving venture, Kapp and his right-hand man, General Walther von Luttwitz, negotiated a settlement with Schiffer to end the putsch and abruptly fled the country (Feuchtwanger, 75).

Although the Kapp Putsch was over in Berlin, more political unrest was in store for the Weimar Republic leadership. Blamed for the largest amount of negligence in dealing with the Kapp Putsch, defense minister Noske handed in his resignation to President Ebert (Feuchtwanger, 77). President Ebert also considered resigning, but the SPD had difficulty in finding a replacement for Noske and eventually let his post pass to a member of the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP), Otto Gessler. Even though the general strikes never materialized in Berlin, the failure of the Kapp Putsch did little to curb the future development of right-wing elements throughout various areas of Germany.

Other areas of Germany were directly affected by the outcome of the Kapp Putsch. In the western industrial section of Germany called the Ruhr, a much different scenario was taking place during the spring of 1919.

As Berlin had just previously faced a potential political takeover by right-wing elements, the Ruhr authorities were now facing a takeover of power from the extreme left. It should be noted that there was a “residue of bitterness among the Ruhr proletariat from the brutal Freikorps of the previous year” (Feuchtwanger, 78). With the lingering effects of the failed right-wing coup fresh on the minds

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of the SPD leadership, the government had no choice but to impose repressive tactics against the left-wing Ruhr agitators.

Continued repression by the pro-republican Freikorps caused a huge uproar among the Bolshevist sections of the Ruhr proletariat who had fought in the so-called Red Army. Nearly 50,000 members of the Ruhr Red Army were so outraged over their treatment by the Berlin government that they were “prepared to die in a fruitless enterprise” against the hated Freikorps (Feuchtwanger, 78). General strikes ran rampant throughout the Ruhr valley because of the Versailles Treaty’s requirement of the thinning out of German security forces in the area. Although it was eventually suppressed, the Ruhr uprising caused a major panic in Germany and all three members of the left-wing parties, the SPD, the USPD, and the KPD, became involved in it in some form or fashion.

Actions taken by the USPD, the KPD, and the SPD over the Kapp Putsch and the Ruhr uprising were quite different from each other. Despite its doubling of party membership between March and December of 1919, the USPD’s wavering line over the Kapp Putsch had served to only aggravate its internal divisions (Feuchtwanger, 79). The KPD had originally refused to join the potential general strike against Wolfgang Kapp to “save the murderers of Liebknecht and Luxemburg”, but then changed its mind and “jumped on the bandwagon” (Feuchtwanger, 79). However, the KPD was in a weak position to do anything because they had lost about half of its 100,000 members in early 1920 due to its attempt to stifle “putschism (sic) and adventurism” (Feuchtwanger, 79). Many of these disenchanted members turned to an alternative, ultra-leftist party called the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (KAPD). Alas, the Kapp Putsch had also hit the SPD especially hard and they were now in a position to just go along with the Ruhr uprising without any major involvement of its own.

Bavaria also encountered major fallouts from the Kapp Putsch. Located in southern Germany near the border with Austria, Bavaria had a long history of independent, traditional monarchal rule. It had also frequently resented any type of national German government interfering in its right of self-government. Thus, right-wing elements repeatedly took advantage of the weakened Weimar Republic government in the months that followed the Kapp Putsch.

Shortly following the Kapp Putsch, the local Bavarian Reichswehr commander, General Arnold von Mohl, took

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the opportunity to “remove the Hoffmann Government from office and to install Gustav von Kahr, a senior official with conservative-monarchist leanings, as commissioner” (Feuchtwanger, 77). A few days later, these moves initiated by von Mohl were legalized by the election of Kahr as prime minister in a government run by the BVP, also known as the Bavarian People’s Party. It should be noted that the main support for this move came from the Bavarian civil guards who were recruited from the middle classes which made it very difficult for the SPD to join them.

General von Mohl had not openly supported the Kapp Putsch in Berlin, but he certainly benefited from the attempt of right-wing insurgents to overthrow the leftleaning national government in Berlin. Indeed, the success of the “local version of the Kapp Putsch turned Bavaria henceforth into a stronghold of the right, often prepared to defy efforts of the Berlin government to protect the republic” (Feuchtwanger, 78). Furthermore, nationalist parties would continue to form in Bavaria in opposition to the tumultuous leadership of the Weimar government in Berlin.

To make matters worse for the SPD led government in Berlin, the terms of the Versailles Treaty were finally revealed to the German public in May of 1919. Many Germans now believed that the German foreign minister, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, had mishandled the whole negotiation of the armistice with the Allied powers (Hughes, 186). Acting independently, von Brockdorff-Rantzau had “refused to be bound by the instructions of his government, thus effectively depriving Berlin of any say in the matter” with his signing of the treaty (Hughes, 186). Finger pointing and growing resentment against von BrockdorffRantzau and his accomplices temporarily united many Germans of different political persuasions as a rising fever of intense German nationalism spread throughout the land.

Additionally, the leading members of the Social Democratic Party were viewed with great hostility and incredulity by the unsuspecting public. One might suggest that the SPD was in the wrong place at the wrong time as they were consistently blamed for accepting the detested Versailles Treaty by an assortment of their political foes.

Especially damaging to the psyche of the German people was the infamous “war-guilt clause.” It now appeared to many that the “German dead had fallen for nothing and many Germans were convinced that their country had not lost the war” (Hughes, 186). This growing sentiment would (continued on next page)

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contribute to the relatively high levels of ineffectiveness and animosity toward the current and future SPD leadership in the Weimar Republic government.

Another serious criticism of the peace settlement was that it led to the “further balkanization of south-eastern Europe and left 12 million Germans outside the Reich, many living under foreign rule in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Hungary, Rumania (sic) and Italy” (Hughes, 186).

This partitioning of German areas outside the Reich caused a serious shortage of raw materials, industry, and food supplies that would affect Germany throughout the next decade. Also, Germany’s most important ally, AustriaHungary, was replaced by “a collection of small, weak, mutually hostile and mainly economically unviable states, all with national minorities and all with claims on one another’s territory” (Hughes, 187). Therefore, Germany’s position in the world community had been greatly reduced, and it had been left bitter and isolated due to the predominantly French opposition of its inclusion into the League of Nations.

The German economy also took a major hit when it was revealed that Germany would be required to pay exorbitantly high war reparations to the Allied Powers.

Although this was not the only cause for future depressions and strains on the German economy, the scheduled payments set by the Allies for their World War I losses were astronomical and unmanageable by German standards. Inflation, the devaluation of the German mark, and tremendous levels of unemployment devastated Germany for years. Dissatisfied with the leadership of the Social Democratic Party and the current conditions in which they lived, many young unemployed workers joined the German Communist Party.

Clearly, the provisions of the Versailles Treaty accompanied with events of intense political chaos and turmoil deeply affected the SPD, USPD, and KPD. The Majority Social Democrats were seen as scapegoats for the deteriorating conditions of the German economy. Having taken the responsibility of leading the Weimar Republic, the Social Democrats faced intense criticism by the USPD and the KPD from the left and unchecked hatred by nationalist and religious parties of the center and right. Consequently, the internal leadership of the SPD would change hands many times over the next decade.

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The USPD never fully adjusted to the post-war situation. Party members became confused as the leadership of the Independent Socialists supported a strange combination of social revolution and democracy for the German republic (Nicholls, 35). Consistently, prominent leaders of this political party had rejected the concept of a Soviet dictatorship which cost the USPD both votes and membership from their historic, radical roots. Although the Independent Socialists had quadrupled their representation and more than doubled its vote in the Republic’s first Reichstag elections in June 1920, it became evident that this was a “hollow victory” and the USPD soon became isolated and ineffective in the parliament (Nicholls, 35).

Internal divisions occurred due to the party’s joining of the Third Communist International which led to one-third of its members joining the more radical KPD. Finally, the demise of the USPD as a political party came to fruition in 1922 as “the rump of the party voted to rejoin the Majority Social Democrats” (Nicholls, 35).

With the collapse of the USPD, left-leaning Germans had two major political party choices left to support: the Social Democrats or the KPD. For all of its initial weakness due to low party membership, the German Communist Party “possessed certain long-term advantages in the battle for the allegiance of the left” (Nicholls, 36). Revolutionary martyrs such as Liebknecht, Luxemburg, and Levine had achieved high-levels of notoriety and sympathy from liberal voters who did not think that the SPD went far enough to fulfill socialist agendas. The KPD also gained from the “sinister prestige of its Bolshevist patrons in Soviet Russia” (Nicholls, 36). Since the SPD-led government placed most of the blame of violence and insurrection on the “Reds” or Communists, the KPD was perceived as the “only effective champion of proletarian dictatorship in Germany” (Nicholls, 36). During the next decade, the KPD would continue to increase its membership and become an easy target for the SPD, liberals, moderates, conservatives, and nationalists.

Although the German Communist Party had its roots in the Social Democratic Party, it was clear that these groups had evolved into fundamentally different political parties with entirely different agendas. These parties would continue to fight each other (often violently) over control of the Weimar Republic. However, both parties failed to take into account or deal with the growing menace of right-wing nationalism, especially in Bavaria. Inevitably, this would be extremely harmful for both parties. facu lt y foru m • 20 1 1

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Munich, the capital of Bavaria, was a particularly troublesome spot for moderates and liberals. For many, Bavaria had become a “haven for Bavarian separatists and volkische nationalists who were fundamentally opposed to the Weimar Republic which had emerged from the defeat of Germany in the First World War and the Revolution of 1918–1919” (Broszat, 1). This vocal Bavarian opposition rejected the republicanism of Berlin and “nourished in its wake a militant paramilitarism (sic) as well as a small anti-Semitic party which, starting from even more modest beginnings, had renamed itself the National Socialist German Workers’ Party” (Broszat, 1). Neither the SPD nor the KPD took the development of or the alarming actions of the National Socialists against the Weimar Republic seriously enough as these groups continued their persecution of each other throughout the 1920s.

The National Socialists found in Adolf Hitler a charismatic leader who gave voice to the mounting frustrations of some Germans with the Weimar government. Hitler, a failed student of architecture from Austria and a former front-line soldier in World War I, took over the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and made himself the virtual “King of Munich” in 1922 (Broszat, 1).

Although the NSDAP started off with few members, the party gained support and momentum throughout the 1920s under the tyrannical and sadistic leadership of Adolf Hitler.

Seizing on both the rising dissatisfaction with the Weimar Republic and the universal hatred of the Versailles Treaty, Hitler vowed to “make Germany great again” by establishing a fascist dictatorship in place of the republican form of government in Berlin (Broszat, 1). The KPD was especially hated and targeted by Hitler who eventually blamed them for the burning of the Reichstag building in February 1933 (Nicholls, 139). Hitler’s violent rhetoric against Germany’s “enemies,” his call for a new, strong German Empire, and his growing support amongst the German masses coalesced in 1933 when he was appointed Chancellor of the Reich by President Hindenburg. A short time later, Hitler would fulfill his vision of a fascist dictatorship by installing himself as the unquestionable Führer (leader) of Germany.

The Nazi Party’s rise to power under the leadership of Adolf Hitler would spell doom for the SPD and KPD. Immediately following the burning of the Reichstag, Hitler outlawed all other political parties for the “Protection of the People and the State” (Nicholls, 139).

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The SPD left the government in exile and resettled in Paris during World War II. In 1946, the party was recreated and admitted into all four occupation zones in Germany.

Although many of its party leaders had been imprisoned or executed by the Nazis, several members of the KPD, including Walter Ulbricht, escaped and went into exile in the Soviet Union. On April 21, 1946, the KPD was renamed the Socialist Unity Party (SED) and became the ruling party of Soviet-controlled East Germany until 1990.

Works Cited Bookbinder, Paul. Weimar Germany: The Republic of the Reasonable. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996.

Broszat, Martin. Hitler and the Collapse of Weimar Germany.

Trans. V.R. Berghahn. Leaming ton Spa: Berg, 1987.

Carr, William. A History of Germany: 1815–1945. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979.

Childs, David. Germany Since 1918. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Conze, Werner. The Shaping of the German Nation: A Historical Analysis. Trans. Neville Mellon.

New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979.

Dorpalen, Andreas. Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic.

Princeton: Princeton UP, 1964.

Feuchtwanger, E.J. From Weimar to Hitler: Germany, 1918–33.

New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.

Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider.

New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

Heiber, Helmut. The Weimar Republic. Trans. W.E. Yuill.

Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.

Herwig, Holger H. Hammer or Anvil? Modern Germany 1648–Present. Lexington: D.C. Heath, 1994.

Hughes, Michael. Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800–1945. London: Edward Arnold, 1988.

Nicholls, A.J. Weimar and the Rise of Hitler. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

Pulzer, Peter. Germany, 1870 –1945: Politics, State Formation, and War. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.

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higher reaching

john frost, fine arts

higher reaching, 2011 plywood, exterior enamel, hardware 168" x 60" x 72" Windlands Park, Midland, Texas

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editorial board

Howard Hand___________________________________ Mathematics Stephen Houpt_______________________________________ Science Byron Lawson________________________________________ History Claire Strange___________________________________ History/Latin Dr. Henry Ploegstra__________________________________ English Marta Napiorkowska_________________________________ English Lynne Weber______________________________ English/Humanities

Special thanks to Dr. Henry Ploegstra for suggesting the name of the Forum and to Spencer Heim ’11 and the Office of Development and Alumni Relations for help with its layout and publication.