Dear Professor Shutt,
It has been a while. I am sorry for not writing sooner, but
I have to admit I was a little intimidated.
Actually, this is not accurate. I was very intimidated. The first time you
came into our classroom and spoke you quoted the opening lines of Beowulf in the
original Old English. You then talked about the alliterative verse, the hard
Anglo-Saxon sounds, and the incredibly compressed poetry of naming the ocean a
‘whale road’.
But it was more than that. You have the ability to speak in the
kinds of well-rounded sentences that few who are living (or perhaps have lived)
can articulate. Without so much as a note, it seems, you can conjure the nouns
verbs and objects into an extraordinary mix of sound and sense that has a beginning,
middle, and an end. Sentence after sentence. If I had to guess, I would say your
training in Classics helped you develop the rhetorical tools that the great
thinkers from the past had to employ to sway others the only they way
could—with a voice steeped deeply in learning while reaching toward linguistic
heights with the use of every figure of speech we have, as a species, ever
invented. My guess is you would call this hyperbole.
Since then, I have heard you speak literally hundreds of
times. You didn’t know this of course, but it is the truth. (And in this
particular case the word ‘literally’ is used correctly; unlike Joyce’s
description of Lily in the opening sentence of The Dead, "Lily, the caretaker's
daughter, was literally run off her feet." --an instance in which a
great writer deliberately misuses a word to signify the limited consciousness
of a character.) But I digress.
I have to admit I was captivated by your use of quotes. When
you chant the opening lines of The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeniad to
demonstrated how they are all composed in the same metrical form, I realized
that you cross linguistic borders fluidly and in the interest of providing a
great teachable moment. With such economy you demonstrate the difference
between an oral and a second level epic that consciously imitates its
progenitors. Whether your are speaking of TS Eliot or Milton you never lose the
thread that makes the words we live by the words we have heard and learn to use
in new contexts and eras.
But I do have a confession. I am still one who believes The
Inferno is the best part of Dante’s Commedia.
It may be that I do not have the Scholastic training to appreciate all the ways
the poet uses to create a multifoliate rose of heavenly beauty that exceeds the
limits of description. Or it may be that I don’t speak Italian. Or, it may be I
just want to hang out with Keith Richards and Charles Baudelaire and the unending
streams of others who will be in the nether world that awaits. Mea Culpa.
Perhaps it is time that I tell you my point of view.
Literally. I am sitting on a mountaintop in Afton, Virginia. I can see Orion
through a light fog that has settled after the freezing rain slowly dissipated
when the sun showed up to save the day toward sundown. Earlier, I listened to
you speak. You were talking about the ways the different authors of Genesis stitched together myths and
stories to create the most important book in Western Civilization. I know it is
not politically correct to say such a thing. But I learned from you that the
importance of our sacred texts, in several senses of the term, should not be
downplayed if we hope to provide what one of your colleagues called ‘cultural
literacy’. The exile of the bible as a source of study from a literary
perspective in our public school systems means that many students today are
ill-equipped to appreciate the vast majority of literature, art, architecture
and a whole lot more that was written or created for nearly two millennia. It
means that colleges now must take much time to do basic training. But again I
digress.
As I said, it has been a while since I have actually seen
you speak. It has been nearly 35 years. You were a graduate student back then
and I was a skinny guy who thought the great American epic was yet to be
written. The latter part I still think is true. Since that time, however, I
have heard you speak many times. I have a vast collection of recorded books and
lectures on my Kindle. Even before the Kindle I had most of your CDs. Your courses on the
epic, your long series on the great works of Western Civilization, and yes, even
your course on Dante have been close acquaintances of mine for many years. I
have read more than a few books in my life, and had some of the best professors in the
world as teachers, mentors, and friends. I am very lucky.
But your words inspired me at a young age, a time when
growth and impressions come easier than they do now. Had it not been for your words back then I
certainly would be a different person today. I am writing a very late thank you
letter. I know you have been one of the most honored teachers that Kenyon, a
great and hallowed school, has ever had. You have given people the chance to
hear the words you have leaned from others and set to your own musical scores.
Or, to change the metaphor, you have woven a beautiful tapestry. Each year you
teach you have woven it again. It has changed no doubt, much as Penelope’s did
perhaps, but the result is still art by anyone’s definition. Teachers are
mentors who change lives. And though you cannot remember me, or a number of the
thousands you have taught over the years, you have still become a part of your admirers.
There is much more I have to tell, but I have written too
much already. But in the coming months I will be citing you again as one who
was a pioneer in what you might call a Kuhnian paradigm shift. The current acronym
is not poetic unless you like rural echoes, but MOOCs will change the way we learn.
The words that reached across the country to me are proof enough to me that
great teachers do not need to be in the same room or the same continent to
alter the way we think. Mirabile Dictu. You are a wonderful teacher and a
pioneer. Thank you again.
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