A very early memory: perhaps at the age of six or seven, I became mesmerized by Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” and repeatedly played it on the phonograph (several 78 discs), deeply affected by the contrast between the brooding, dark and the happier, lighter themes.
Quite obviously, I was drawn to classical music. Some five or six years later, I had my heart set to hear Rudolph Serkin perform Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. An ear infection, quite painful, almost prevented the experience. Against doctor’s orders, my aunt took me. I clearly recall how thrilled I was by the crescendo-decrescendo passage in the last movement—leaving the concert hall pain-free with the infection gone!
During these early years, I was somewhat of a bookworm, transported to different times and places by books which provided delight, wonderment and a number of deeply poignant moments. Initially, adventure stories such as James Fennimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans, Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island were my fare, followed by Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and Willa Cather’s evocative novels My Antonia and O Pioneers!
I also had the good fortune of being taken to theater in my pre-adolescent years, thrilling to the performances of Ethel Barrymore in How Green Was My Valley, Walter Hampton in The Patriots and a bit later, José Ferrer in Edmond Rostand’s romantic masterpiece, Cyrano de Bergerac. In my later adolescence, I experienced unforgettable performances of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in back-to-back performances of Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra. I was bowled over by Vivien Leigh playing Cleopatra as the young, adoring female in awe of Julius Caesar in the Shaw play and her brilliantly played, contrasting characterization as a mature and majestic woman facing her demise in Shakespeare.
A life of theater-going has followed. Naturally, the works of the Bard—Henry V, Macbeth, Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello and King Lear—have been at the core. Perhaps one of my most memorable nights of theater-going was a performance by the great husband-wife team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit—a dramatization of greed, revenge and the power of money among people of rectitude.
The visual arts, particularly painting, was an important part of my childhood, which continues to be nurtured by museum-going in my own city and around the world. Collecting has also been a joyous endeavor, centered on prints with a focus on Ukiyo-e. Two most memorable moments were encountering Goya’s paintings and prints in the Prado Museum in Madrid. These works riveted me, and I spent a whole day with them alone. Some years apart on a visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, I found myself in a small gallery, just five paintings by Rembrandt—four self-portraits and one of his mother. I was overcome and could not contain tears—they spoke so deeply of the human condition.
Coming back to adolescent years and literature, Dickens, Thackeray, Melville, O’Henry, Herman Hesse, again Twain, were sources of adventure and insights to the human condition and heart. College years introduced me to Homer, the Greek playwrights, and the Roman poets, particularly Virgil, Horace and Catullus. A lifetime of reading followed—English and American novelists and essayists, German, Italian, French, Japanese and Russian authors, particularly Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Pages and pages of humanities moments!!
Did he appear because I fell asleep thinking of him? If only I’d known I was dreaming, I’d never have wakened. |
I thought to pick the flower of forgetting for myself, but I found it already growing in his heart. |
Philosophy I came to in college through the suggestion of my father. What better introduction than Plato’s Apology and Phaedo? Socrates’ acceptance of the Athenian Assembly’s death sentence and later his refusal to delay drinking the hemlock spoke to me of transcendent self-possession and wisdom.
These stoic strains were fully developed over the ensuing five hundred years and come full-blown with the appearance of the stoic philosophers—Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. How can one forget the admonishment in the Enchiridion of Epictetus to behave in private as one would want to be seen in public, and later the Roman Emperor Aurelius in his Meditations advising, “No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.” These words speak deeply to such as myself who has been so greatly privileged. I went on to major in philosophy and have continued my interest over a lifetime, initially with special focus on Spinoza and Schopenhauer, and in later life centered on political and moral questions.
As can be surmised, music—orchestral, chamber, vocal and opera—has been my greatest passion. As I entered my adolescent years, my musical horizons were expanding, particularly with my introduction to Baroque music—J.S. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Corelli and Telemann. Handel’s Messiah was an early favorite, and the joy I felt on hearing the aria and chorus “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion” is indescribable. This lead to Bach cantatas, his Passions, the Mass in B minor and the Christmas Oratorio with its joyful and triumphant opening chorus. No Christmas is complete without that ringing in my ears, and who cannot be moved by the opening aria, “Ich habe Genug” from the Cantata of the same name.
Then came opera, with a proliferation of humanities moments:
Finally, in my more adult years, I am blessed to hear and play (violin) chamber music—string quartets, piano trios, various combinations of strings, winds and keyboard. The list of profound and touching moments is endless. I have only to mention Mozart’s Viola Quintets K.415 & 416, Beethoven’s late string quartets Op. 127-135; and Schubert’s quintessential Cello Quintet in C major as examples.
How fortunate am I to have lived, from earliest memory to present old age, a life filled with such a richness of Humanities Moments!
]]>Some years ago, I was asked to give a lecture to students enrolled in a small university’s humanities program describing the personal epiphany I experienced which led to my passion for the humanities. Try as I might, I could not think of an isolated, single experience but rather a series of moments that stretch back to my childhood and have “stuck to my ribs” over a lifetime.
A very early memory: perhaps at the age of six or seven, I became mesmerized by Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” and repeatedly played it on the phonograph (several 78 discs), deeply affected by the contrast between the brooding, dark and the happier, lighter themes.
Quite obviously, I was drawn to classical music. Some five or six years later, I had my heart set to hear Rudolph Serkin perform Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. An ear infection, quite painful, almost prevented the experience. Against doctor’s orders, my aunt took me. I clearly recall how thrilled I was by the crescendo-decrescendo passage in the last movement—leaving the concert hall pain-free with the infection gone!
During these early years, I was somewhat of a bookworm, transported to different times and places by books which provided delight, wonderment and a number of deeply poignant moments. Initially, adventure stories such as James Fennimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans, Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island were my fare, followed by Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and Willa Cather’s evocative novels My Antonia and O Pioneers!
I also had the good fortune of being taken to theater in my pre-adolescent years, thrilling to the performances of Ethel Barrymore in How Green Was My Valley, Walter Hampton in The Patriots and a bit later, José Ferrer in Edmond Rostand’s romantic masterpiece, Cyrano de Bergerac. In my later adolescence, I experienced unforgettable performances of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in back-to-back performances of Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra. I was bowled over by Vivien Leigh playing Cleopatra as the young, adoring female in awe of Julius Caesar in the Shaw play and her brilliantly played, contrasting characterization as a mature and majestic woman facing her demise in Shakespeare.
A life of theater-going has followed. Naturally, the works of the Bard—Henry V, Macbeth, Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello and King Lear—have been at the core. Perhaps one of my most memorable nights of theater-going was a performance by the great husband-wife team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit—a dramatization of greed, revenge and the power of money among people of rectitude.
The visual arts, particularly painting, was an important part of my childhood, which continues to be nurtured by museum-going in my own city and around the world. Collecting has also been a joyous endeavor, centered on prints with a focus on Ukiyo-e. Two most memorable moments were encountering Goya’s paintings and prints in the Prado Museum in Madrid. These works riveted me, and I spent a whole day with them alone. Some years apart on a visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, I found myself in a small gallery, just five paintings by Rembrandt—four self-portraits and one of his mother. I was overcome and could not contain tears—they spoke so deeply of the human condition.
Coming back to adolescent years and literature, Dickens, Thackeray, Melville, O’Henry, Herman Hesse, again Twain, were sources of adventure and insights to the human condition and heart. College years introduced me to Homer, the Greek playwrights, and the Roman poets, particularly Virgil, Horace and Catullus. A lifetime of reading followed—English and American novelists and essayists, German, Italian, French, Japanese and Russian authors, particularly Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Pages and pages of humanities moments!!
Did he appear because I fell asleep thinking of him? If only I’d known I was dreaming, I’d never have wakened. |
I thought to pick the flower of forgetting for myself, but I found it already growing in his heart. |
Philosophy I came to in college through the suggestion of my father. What better introduction than Plato’s Apology and Phaedo? Socrates’ acceptance of the Athenian Assembly’s death sentence and later his refusal to delay drinking the hemlock spoke to me of transcendent self-possession and wisdom.
These stoic strains were fully developed over the ensuing five hundred years and come full-blown with the appearance of the stoic philosophers—Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. How can one forget the admonishment in the Enchiridion of Epictetus to behave in private as one would want to be seen in public, and later the Roman Emperor Aurelius in his Meditations advising, “No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.” These words speak deeply to such as myself who has been so greatly privileged. I went on to major in philosophy and have continued my interest over a lifetime, initially with special focus on Spinoza and Schopenhauer, and in later life centered on political and moral questions.
As can be surmised, music—orchestral, chamber, vocal and opera—has been my greatest passion. As I entered my adolescent years, my musical horizons were expanding, particularly with my introduction to Baroque music—J.S. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Corelli and Telemann. Handel’s Messiah was an early favorite, and the joy I felt on hearing the aria and chorus “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion” is indescribable. This lead to Bach cantatas, his Passions, the Mass in B minor and the Christmas Oratorio with its joyful and triumphant opening chorus. No Christmas is complete without that ringing in my ears, and who cannot be moved by the opening aria, “Ich habe Genug” from the Cantata of the same name.
Then came opera, with a proliferation of humanities moments:
Finally, in my more adult years, I am blessed to hear and play (violin) chamber music—string quartets, piano trios, various combinations of strings, winds and keyboard. The list of profound and touching moments is endless. I have only to mention Mozart’s Viola Quintets K.415 & 416, Beethoven’s late string quartets Op. 127-135; and Schubert’s quintessential Cello Quintet in C major as examples.
How fortunate am I to have lived, from earliest memory to present old age, a life filled with such a richness of Humanities Moments!
It seems from my early consciousness, the humanities were an ever-present part of my being. The son of sharecropper's children, neither which possessed a high school education, they crafted a deeply humanistic perch from which I could view the world. From Durham and Salzburg, North Carolina, respectfully, the search for what Isabel Wilkerson has called the "light of the suns" resided in the conscious and unconscious recesses of their mind.
Possessing none of the benefits of class, race, and gender privilege, my mother harnessed the power of a book. A small library composed of encyclopedias, great books, contemporary literature and magazines, nestled in the study between the living room and master bedroom.
In the den, this middle space, where I did my homework daily, was where dreams were made and humanistic visions forged. It seems that all that would come was previewed there. A close reading of the Bible, deep droughts from the wells of encyclopedia Britannica, the great books and great performances, from Bach to Berlin.
My father cultivated in me his love of politics and sport. In the basement, he regaled us with Isaac Hayes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and the Whisperers on 8-track tapes. As we basked in the melodic cadences of the songs, Mohammed Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, James Foreman, or Tommy Hickman Herms, or Leonard Spinx could be seen on the console television, weaving their pugilistic magic in the ring.
If the basement and study, upper and lower rooms, represented two distinct poles of reality, then the kitchen served as the temple to politics. There my father read the newspaper and watched the nightly news. It was his insistence that politics mattered, which fueled my subsequent interest in political conventions. I watched my first political convention in 1976, and I continue to do so up to the present day.
Convinced that being humanistic entailed civic engagement, my parents always took my brother and I with them to vote in local, state and national elections. It was a ritual of sorts. We obligingly piled into our old 1968 Pontiac Bonneville, arriving at Campville Elementary School, our neighborhood polling place in Baltimore County, Maryland. Once there, they would park the car on the road, and we would watch them make their way through a gauntlet of poll workers, who showered them with campaign literature of one sort or another. Undaunted, they proceeded into the polling place, and stayed for what seemed an eternity. Emerging together as if they had crossed the finish line of a marathon, we could see the exhilaration and the importance of this act.
It was a logical extension of the humanistic constructs in our home. Contact in eventful and uneventful ways, my upbringing among organic intellectuals, a Gramscian designation would surely apply to my parents, shaped my interests in direct and indirect ways.
By the mid-80s, armed with a deeper and more informed sense of my racial sense and my humanistic responsibility, I too became involved in political campaign. As election day approached, we received our poll assignments. My assignment was none other than Campville Elementary School. I arrived early to my post on election day. A lean, lanky boy of 17, I was wise in the arts of politics, canvassing and poll work. The voters came slowly, and then steadily, through the gauntlet of poll workers who handed them literature, and generally cajoled and prodded them to vote for one candidate or the other. All the faces seemed to blur, until I looked across the yard and saw my parents, parking in their familiar place and proceeding to the gauntlet. As my parents proceeded, I felt the weight of the years passing before me, remembering my passive position watching my parents, and present one as an active participant. Now, in our reverse roles, all was clear. As they approached, I beamed with pride. I hugged them, and gleefully announced and introduced them to the assembled throng as my parents.
I knew in that moment all the years of watching, listening, engaging, thinking in our den and basement and kitchen had prepared me for this moment. A moment electric with the preparation of the past, the participatory urgency of the present, and the humanistic possibilities of the future.