That’s my review of teachers, except for the best I’ve saved for last. I few good ones more than compensated for a dozen mediocre ones. And the mediocre didn’t bother me that much because I concentrated on the literature, not them. They were like the ushers in a movie theater, showing you to your seat, little more than that, as you could sit in your place and easily ignore their chatter, read the texts, take the tests and move on, with an ‘A’ for a grade.
But the great teachers were rich in life and books, whole libraries of experience and knowledge, which only a few of us had the luck to hear, enriching our minds, admirable examples of what a human being might become, like the great archeologist that Pritchert couldn’t help but speak of sometimes his alter self, much against his rigid regularity, his admiration of it breaking through the clouds of his mind, like a beam of sunshine.
That’s why I took two quarters of ‘Beowulf’ from Alain Renoir. This was the most rewarding course I ever took. It had nothing to do with my Classics major. I’m surprised they let me take it at all as I was in the middle of my Classics curriculum, with so little time to do it in. But just as I discovered with teachers, there was no overview or accountability, so no one said anything, or probably even noticed. I had no knowledge or interest in that epic, (though I did find out its great merits) yet I chanced to hear through the grapevine that he was a fascinating teacher and rare human being, and he was. Most days in our little class of fifteen he’d hardly mention Beowulf. He’d talk about his war experiences in the South Pacific. All the other students were graduates forced to take Beowulf for their M.A. in English, just wishing to get through it with a decent grade, with zero interest in the work itself, something to be completely forgotten as soon as they got the stamp on their transcript. There were too many of these eggheads in all my classes, degree minded fools, heartless, soulless, counting the pages they had to read, and exactly what they had to learn to pass the tests. They were thinking of the jobs such a degree would get them, the status in society, the money, the apartment, possibly even the clever wives that came with this package.
They’d squirm when he got off subject and even interrupt and beg he get back to the text, which was hard and needed quite a lot of explication. He assigned the whole text for us to read as homework, so many lines a week and the tests were all about our comprehension of the Old English, translation tests. But most of class time was stories about his father and grandfather and I loved his lore visibly, the only one in class who did. So he took a great liking to me. We spent many hours in his office, just the two of us, discussing the French authors I read and admired, like Montesquieu and Voltaire and Buffon, whom he hated because they were force-fed to him in France at too young an age. Even though the books I brought up as my favorites weren’t his, it was the glow of enthusiasm for any dead authors that kept us rambling on, as he’d bring up his favorites in turn and I’d listen just as avidly.
The ironic thing was that there was always a row of five or six graduate students waiting outside his closed office door in the hallway as we talked away in delight. They were waiting to see him for the one purpose of gaining a higher grade, with pre-practiced speeches of excuses that had lowered their test scores, lines he’d heard a hundred times before and detested, the pleas and entreaties of weak, petty souls. When that one hour struck, (one to two p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays) he’d step out the door and pull me by the arm into the room, regardless of what place I was in the line. But that door stayed closed the whole time of this twice a week duty and I’d walk out when the hour was up, smiling, to see them shuffle away in disappointment, sometimes throwing me a backward angry glance as they did.
There was one very sexy girl in our class, the only girl, who often arrived late, but always in fancy skirts and tops with frills and perfumed, dressed to the hilt. She was a little on the plump side, but made it up in chic, feminine demeanor with a slow, delicate walk, in high heels. He’d always stop the class mid-sentence as she opened the door, running to it to open it wide for her. She reminded me of a combination of Jean Harlow and May West, and very out of place. But he’d usher her in to her front seat, taking her hand, guiding her to it like a gentleman in love, with eighteenth century courtesy, or better yet, chivalry. And she would play along and sit delicately and slowly at her desk like the most fragile flower, carefully place her large purse on the desk and take out and slowly open the book, while he, still standing beside her, helped her find the page. Once this was done the class resumed where it left off, all of us nodding or heads in disbelief at this repeated show. He never asked her questions like he did the rest of us, to translate a few lines. I wonder what grade he gave her. I strongly suspect that she learned little about Beowulf and flunked many of the tests. But she did make it that far, to graduate school, so she must have had something upstairs, or else a great deal of help in her assignments all along the way. Maybe he did give her a passing grade, out of courtesy, as he was a true Romantic. She might have even accomplished her M.A. on his recommendation. Feminine charm like hers’ has a potent influence over decision making men. It wasn’t just brains that determined the faculty at Berkeley, as I found out many times over.
But Alain Renoir was a teacher of the same caliber as the best books I read. He was the son of the movie director who made “Grand Illusions”, just before W.W.2, (one of the best anti-war movies ever made), and the grandson of the painter, Jean Renoir. His recommendations had me accepted into two Graduate schools. He wrote this letter to me, after I sent him a short one in Latin.
Feb 3rd, 1977: Alanus Roberto suo: Had I but world enough and time (or were I forty years younger and still doing Latin at the ‘Lycée’) I should have answered your letter ‘tit for tat’. Anyways, I enjoyed receiving your wonderful epistle and the recommendation is on its way to Toronto. If you go there give my best to John Leyerlee who teaches Old English. This must do for now since I’m in a hurry. Best of luck and keep me posted from time to time. Cordially, Alain Renoir.
I took one other course on this principle in my last year at Berkeley. The class was on St. Augustine, an author furthest from my thoughts. We read his ‘Confessions’, his best book and in very clear, readable, almost Ciceronian prose but a fanatic’s story, not sane, just someone who found Christianity, condemned his entire past life, (the pleasures of the flesh), and dove off the deep end into spiritualism. But it was taught by an eighty-four-year-old emeritus professor, Mr. McKay, still in fine form, perhaps even better each year, still improving with age, like a fine wine. He moved gracefully and spoke slowly but his storytelling was perfectly fluid and rich, each word carefully chosen from the fullest vocabulary, for the most point and poignancy. And he shared with us with his fondest memories, in our class of six, reminiscing about his days traipsing the hills of Greece in the early twenties, (when much of the countryside was still unchanged, and had the same look as it had two thousand years before) as an archeologist, and of going to Oxford, pre-war, pre-women students, when a degree in Classics had one simple requirement, read every author extent in Latin and Greek. And this he did, along with most English, French and German literature.
He was my exemplar, my model of literary perfection. I never achieved a quarter of what he accomplished in the true Classics, though I did read many modern books below his notice. He breathed and lived the different air of a bygone era. I’d read about this Classical purity and polymath wisdom in the best pages of Pico and Politian, passing the torch to Muret and Lipsius, to Bentley and Rhunken and Mommsen. These were his models, the perfect philologist. The purity of his soul shone out in all his conversation, one of the last of a dying breed, the end of a long tradition of a very few, a slender thread of enlightened ones who guided the Renaissance and carried it forward for five centuries, with the same glow in their faces, the light of enlightenment, and I felt myself blessed to have caught a glimpse of his sun just before it set.
There was a small get together of faculty and students at that time, in the last week of classes before Christmas and my final departure from the university, and I was invited. Five or six of my other professors were there, but I made it a point after I taking a glass of punch to sit beside Mr. McKay, who was sitting on a couch alone, which I thought odd as he was by far the most conversable person of the group. Within minutes I got him going on the wonderful richness of the language of Froissart, a middle age French historian who wrote and was witness to the ‘Hundred Years War’, ‘La guerre de Cent Ans’. I’d just dipped into that book and mentioned to him how much I liked it. This brought a light to his eyes and he began describing the beauty of that prose as if in a reverie of delightful recollection, eloquently describing its merits. He went on and on about it, and I noticed the other professors looking at us, a bit disconcerted that he wasn’t discussing some Latin classic in that fine glow. Others gathered round as he went on, equally surprised, but listening. I hung on his every word, and in my optics, Froissart was as good as any Cicero to place upon a pedestal. I hope the glow in my face listening reflected the glow in his as he spoke.
The mind is the only organ we have that can improve with age, to the very end. Cicero says this in his ‘Pro Archia’. It can continue to improve in knowledge, wisdom and the ability to communicate more succinctly, more elegantly, with grace of gesture and intonation of voice to complement the story it wishes to tell, perhaps told a thousand times, but with each iteration growing better. I think this only happens to one in fifty of us. Most ruin their minds with bad habits, or disease, or just negligence, letting it fall into disuse and decrepitude, shutting off the lights, one by one, in the many rooms of its mansion, for a better sleep. And once they are turned off so many times, they stay off forever, just like any muscle not used will atrophy over time. The proportion of such fine intellects may even be much rarer, like one in a thousand. But he was certainly in that rare, ‘lucky’ class. I hope I can join that small set of the truly wise, or at least sit on a couch beside one of them, on occasion.
