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Nicholas Hayes, Saint John’s University
August 28, 2002
Thank you Dean Knox for that flattering introduction. . . . and thank
you students for the privilege of talking with you. I speak for myself
but also for the entire faculty. It is a privilege to have you as students.
Let me straighten out two things from all that biographical stuff about
me that Dean Knox mentioned.
Behind all of those details on my work, I should make it clear I am simply
a professor. That’s a warning because you know e professors somehow
believe that we always should talk for seventy minutes without interruption
and that all audiences are involuntary and must take down everything you
say. But that’s not for me today; I will ask only for ten minutes
of your time and assume that it’s my job to keep your attention
and your choice if you decide to take home a thing or two from my remarks.
Other things from my biography. For almost twenty years, I have worked
in public television and radio. It has taught me to be humble in a way
that life as a professor did not. Let me share with you the advice I frequently
receive from a colleague and friend, a senior producer at MPTV . . . Moments
before I go on air for a television commentary or appearance, my friend
likes to warn me: Remember Nick. Most of the time you are too boring
even for public TV.
A word or two about me and my ties to St. John’s . . .
I am both old and new to St. John’s. New, only in the sense that
I am now only starting my third year as a faculty member here. Old, in
a more fundamental sense. Thirty-seven years ago, I, like you, and I apologize
to the School of Theology if my remarks pertain only to the students entering
the college, came to St. John’s as a first year student. I already
knew a bit about the place. Two of my older brothers had preceded me here
(My other, third brother, for reasons that still remain unclear had made
the tragic mistake of going to St. Thomas . . . and we have never understood
why. . .)
So, I want to share with you some reflections on how my intellectual
life started here at St. John’s and hope that you too discover much
of the same in your four years.
But, first, a simple anecdote from my morning might best make my point.
My morning began in much the same way I suspect yours had. I had switched
on the computer and went to my email. But thinking ahead of what I would
say to you later this morning, something on my email struck me. The connection
dated back to those days when I was a student here in the sixties. I had
two messages today from two friends, today still among my closest friends
but whose friendship dates from the fall of 1965 when we lived on the
fourth floor of Benet Hall.
But my times are not your times. Your times are so much different from
the times of my student days.
There are three differences I would emphasize (Why only three you might
ask? Well, I deliberately have picked three because it allows me to remember
a joke by a student friend of mine at St. John’s. Sitting together
in a history class of a certain professor (who would leave St. john’s
and I believe today still teaches history at Seton Hall University in
New Jersey) my old friend said, Hey, have you ever noticed Professor
(We will say Prof. X) is the only professor you can dance to; he always
goes “And there were three factors the war, 1, 2, 3, and then again
three factors in the peace, 1,2.3). So, here, I go . . three factors.
. .
1. Gender (A word not in use in those days). My St. John’s was
all male. (It is true that we used to file down from Benet hall to the
Refractory in our pajamas). There’s a lot we should say about this.
But, let me only say that now in a Co-ed learning environment you have
no excuse for making the mistake my generation of guys always made. We,
actually thought we were smarter than the women. . . You will know better.
The women are smarter than the men. . . Learn it sooner rather than later;
it will save you a lot of grief in life.
2. Culture. We were in the throes of a cultural revolution that for
the most part had us all believing that art and politics were the only
subjects worth studying and that we would have a career in rock and roll
as the only career choice with dignity. Those who did take management
classes apologized for it; those who had professional job skills and ambitions
pretty much kept it to themselves. The sober reality is that my generation
was a bit naïve in a way that you cannot afford to be. We did pretty
much believe that if our rock and roll careers did not pan out, we could
always make a living as poets or perhaps running a restaurant serving
brown rice and vegetables. You know better.
3. Politics. Mine was the second generation of a Cold War that would
span three generations and my student years coincided with the height
of the Vietnam War, its casualties and its protests. Your generation,
it seems, may be the first generation of an era of war, the looming war
against terrorism. I would like to warn you, a child of the Cold War Era,
to be wary of a State that projects conflict indefinitely into the future
against an equally indefinite enemy. But, such a warning would add a political
edge to a talk and this is meant to be a sentimental talk.
But what is it that I remember from my time at St. John’s that
I know is still there for you?
First of all, the commitment of a faculty, then and now.
I remember a faculty of a warm humanism, intelligence and, above all
else, a deep concern for me. Over the years, I came to suspect that my
memory of the faculty was simply sentimental or nostalgic. Then, I returned
three years ago and realized that I had not simply been nostalgic. From
my days, there are many faculty members who gave me the gift of a special
insight, a way of looking at the intellectual world, or simply the ability
to know and appreciate a singular work of art, literature or historical
issues. It was a long time ago and with sadness most of those professors
have since passed on. There were two legendary old bachelor professors.
They inspired what would become my life-long passion and obsession with
European literature and history. One left for you only his name on an
Auditorium. Another, an old professor of history, I am certain still haunts
St. Mary’s Hall where he kept a room. Others left me with special
gifts that are still with me. Any time I enter a library, for example,
I remember how one of the monks and also the Chair of the English Department
introduced me to a poem that crosses my mind to this day whenever I enter
a library. I am referring to Fr. Alfred Deutsch and the poem was Randall
Jarrell’s “The Girl in a Library”. . . Look up the poem.
The next time you enter a library, you’ll get it.
One of those professors is still here, still teaching and with us I
believe this morning. Today, he teaches other things but in my day he
taught me Chaucer. It was the spring semester. At the end of the class,
on a warm day not unlike the spring days of Chaucer’s pilgrims,
the class met outside of what is today Simons Hall. It was our last class.
Hilary Thimmesch took advantage of the afternoon sun so that it cast shadows
on the class and it seemed that we too were like Chaucer’s pilgrims
now heading westward on our journey. Chaucer had been but one chapter
in the journey; and we would continue on to others.
Fr. Hilary probably has his own memory and interpretation and may quietly
thinking to himself right now, No, Nick, you still didn’t get
Chaucer right! But I will stick to my point. Whether I speak of Hilary
Thimmesch who gave me a life-long love of Chaucer, Alfred Deutsch and
a poem, or others too numerous to mention now, each gave certain joy in
learning and their own unique equipment for life as an intellectual journey.
A world of unforgettable friends.
I refer to the friends made here, our late night conversations in Benet,
Tommy or old St. Joseph Hall. Here, I have in mind, not just the male
bonding and the usual B.S. – although there is much to be said for
all of that – but how each of us dared to admit that we had taken
an idea from class, from philosophy, a work of literature a political/historical
problem, seriously. We dared to take an idea seriously. From
one, then an English major and a would-be poet, he introduced me to a
play eh had encountered in an American lit class from Patrick McDarby.
The play is In the Time of Your Life by William Saroyan. It would
become both his and my philosophy of life. It’s all in the last
line of the play, In the time of your life, life it! Saroyan
gave the advice to Patrick McDarby, he to my friend, my friend to me,
and I now pass it on to you. Recently, one of those friends with whom
I still communicate, he wrote me and spoke of our late-night conversations
(including by the way my certain know-it-all arrogance I always displayed)
he wrote about our late-night conversations and arguments. (And Abbott
John, I must apologize for somehow we didn’t get things right with
him; he became a Jesuit). He ended his letter, God, how I miss those
late-night arguments! And, by the way, so do I.
Well, my time is about out and I will close with an attempt to make some
sense of the title I gave to this talk. I was not trying to encourage
you to transfer from St. John’s to Cornell University in Ithaca,
N.Y.. I wanted you to read a poem. My theme comes from the modern Greek
poet, a Greek and native of Alexandria, Egypt Cavafy and his poem entitled
Ithaca.
Ithaca
Cavafy
When you start on your journey to Ithaca,
Then pray that the road is long,
Full of adventure, full of knowledge.
. . .
Then pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many,
That you will enter ports seen for the first time
With such pleasure, with such joy!
Stop at Phoenician markets,
And purchase fine merchandise,
Mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony,
And pleasurable perfumes of all kinds,
. . .
Visit hosts of Egyptian cities,
To learn and learn from those who have knowledge.
Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for long years;
And even to anchor at the isle when you are old,
Rich with all that you have gained on the way,
Not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have taken the road.
But she has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not defrauded you.
With the great wisdom you have gained, with so much experience,
You must surely have understood by then what Ithacas mean.
And the poem helps me to say what above all else I want to say to you
and wish for you in your four years at St. John’s. If we do our
job right, in your four years here, starting your road to Ithaca, you
will have taken time to visit philosophy, theology, history, literature
and the arts, taken time for long conversations with friends for life.
. . This is a place designed to give you two things – a mind equipped
for a life of intellectual searching; and, secondly, the experience of
the true meaning of community.
If we do this right, if we enable your minds to start this intellectual
journey, if your spirit bonds with this unique place, then, four years
from now, you will truly understand not just what Ithacas mean, but what
community means.
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