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Gilgamesh
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National Humanities Center Fellows
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Any contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
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This collection includes contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
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<p>I’m Hollis Robbins and the Delta Delta Delta fellow at the National Humanities Center, 2017–18. I was thinking about how I ended up as a scholar of the humanities and the origin would be in 1979. I had gone to college at age 16 under a math program for girls who were gifted at math. I found myself at Johns Hopkins very young and intending to study math and I signed up for a course in humanities, I think called just “Humanities” with the excellent Richard Maxey.</p>
<p>That fall he had a visiting scholar. I had no idea who it was: it was René Girard, who had just finished writing <em>Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World</em>, in which he set forth his theory of mimesis and mimetic desire. I remember walking into the seminar room one day, from fairly rural New Hampshire and for me books were just things that you read. I had no intention in studying literature in college and here comes this man with these—what I remember mostly is his humongous eyebrows—talking about the Gilgamesh epic and his theory of mimetic desire. That our desires do not emerge from us, but our desires emerge from imitating others’ desires, that we see somebody desiring something and that we begin to desire that. He went through the Epic of Gilgamesh to play out this theory.</p>
<p>At 16 years old sitting in this classroom, the seminar room listening to him, I thought he was wrong. I thought, now I don’t know anything but what I know from reading books, from reading <em>Moby-Dick</em>, from reading Dickens, from reading anything I could get my hands on, that people like very strange things. People are self-indulgent, self-defeating, there isn’t a character in anything written by Charles Dickens that I would want to mirror or desire. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately in arguments about—or debates about, or sort of current discourse about—slow attention spans in our students. That our students can’t read whole novels. Can’t sit and digest an epic poem. Couldn’t converse for a two-and-a-half-hour seminar without their smart phone devices.</p>
<p>I think that this is, again, quite wrong. My experience in the classroom—let me just reach for <em>Moby-Dick</em>, which I teach every spring—is that students want something different. They want to reach across centuries. They want to reach across continents. They want not to have what they are familiar with spoon-fed to them. When they are given worlds, continents, thousands of individuals characters, situations, their desires will emerge from the experience of reading literature. I’ve had students in my office who want to talk about poor drowned Pip in <em>Moby-Dick</em> or who want to understand Queequeg’s great dive into the water to save a passenger that has just insulted him.</p>
<p>Literature frees young people from the constant barrage of familiarity that social media is giving them so I’m kind of pleased with myself, actually, at so long ago having my own opinion about René Girard.</p>
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Finding Freedom from the Familiar
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<p>In 1979, at age 16, Hollis Robbins found herself enrolled at John Hopkins University. Though she was there as part of a program for girls who excelled in math, she signed up for a humanities lecture class. In that day’s class, drawing upon the epic of Gilgamesh, a guest lecturer expounded on the theory of “mimetic desire,” or the idea that we borrow our desires from other people. Unbeknownst to her, the speaker was none other than famed anthropological philosopher René Girard. Yet, Hollis disagreed. In her opinion, culled from reading stories such as those of Herman Melville and Charles Dickens, people actually like “very strange things.” They are drawn to things that are different from themselves.</p>
<p>Today, as a professor of literature, her conviction holds strong, supported by experiences such as teaching Melville’s <em>Moby-Dick</em>. She finds that contrary to present-day despair about their “slow attention spans,” students want to reach across centuries to worlds unfamiliar from their own.</p>
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1979
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<a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/meet-the-fellows/hollis-robbins/">Hollis Robbins</a>, Johns Hopkins University
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robbins-finding-freedom-from-familiar
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Epic of Gilgamesh; the philosophy of René Girard; Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Baltimore, Maryland
Books & Reading
Dickens, Charles
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic Poetry
Girard, René
Johns Hopkins University
Literature
Melville, Herman
Mimetic Desire
Moby-Dick
Philosophy
Professors
Teachers & Teaching
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https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/10/165/virginia-woolf.jpg
7bd50b2f8c2710bd3b7952db9a3dad2c
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Virginia Woolf
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National Humanities Center Board Members
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This collection includes contributions from the distinguished board of trustees of the National Humanities Center
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A Lifetime of Humanities Moments
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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 <em>The Deerslayer</em> and <em>The Last of the Mohicans</em>, Alexander Dumas’ <em>The Three Musketeers</em> and Jules Verne’s <em>The Mysterious Island</em> were my fare, followed by Mark Twain’s <em>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer</em>, <em>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court</em> and <em>Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc</em> and Willa Cather’s evocative novels <em>My Antonia</em> and <em>O Pioneers!</em></p>
<p>I also had the good fortune of being taken to theater in my pre-adolescent years, thrilling to the performances of Ethel Barrymore in <em>How Green Was My Valley</em>, Walter Hampton in <em>The Patriots</em> and a bit later, José Ferrer in Edmond Rostand’s romantic masterpiece, <em>Cyrano de Bergerac</em>. In my later adolescence, I experienced unforgettable performances of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in back-to-back performances of Shakespeare’s <em>Anthony and Cleopatra</em> and George Bernard Shaw’s <em>Caesar and Cleopatra</em>. 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.</p>
<p>A life of theater-going has followed. Naturally, the works of the Bard—<em>Henry V</em>, <em>Macbeth</em>, <em>Hamlet</em>, <em>Merchant of Venice</em>, <em>Midsummer Night’s Dream</em>, <em>Othello</em> and <em>King Lear</em>—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 <em>The Visit</em>—a dramatization of greed, revenge and the power of money among people of rectitude.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!!</p>
<ul>
<li>Who can forget Hector’s farewell to his infant son in the <em>Iliad</em>?</li>
<li>Or be struck by George Elliott observing in <em>Middlemarch</em>, “No age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.” Or, “There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our mortality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.”</li>
<li>Who can forget Huck Finn introducing himself on the opening page of the eponymous novel and then later wrestling with his conscience and eschatology whether to report Jim as a runaway slave?</li>
<li>Of a different nature but just as memorable are the exquisite and subtle emotions experienced and described by Virginia Wolff in <em>Mrs. Dalloway</em> and <em>To the Lighthouse</em>.</li>
<li>And, most recently for me, the moment in Proust’s last volume, <em>Le Temps Retrouvé of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu</em> where he describes his epiphany that enables him to be a writer and thus realize his literary ambitions.</li>
<li>Finally, mention must be made of poignant moments so touching to me in Japanese literary gems. To read Shikibu Murasaki’s masterpiece <em>Genji Monogatari</em> is to be transported to another time (11th century), another world (medieval Japan) and sensibilities to be treasured. Love poems two centuries earlier capture the mood and the feeling. Consider these two gems by Ono no Komachi:<br />
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border-bottom: none;"><em>Did he appear<br />because I fell asleep<br />thinking of him?<br />If only I’d known I was dreaming,<br />I’d never have wakened.</em></td>
<td style="border-bottom: none;"><em>I thought to pick<br />the flower of forgetting<br />for myself,<br />but I found it<br />already growing in his heart.</em></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Philosophy I came to in college through the suggestion of my father. What better introduction than Plato’s <em>Apology</em> and <em>Phaedo</em>? 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>Enchiridion</em> of Epictetus to behave in private as one would want to be seen in public, and later the Roman Emperor Aurelius in his <em>Meditations</em> 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>Messiah</em> 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.</p>
<p>Then came opera, with a proliferation of humanities moments:</p>
<ul>
<li>Cherobino’s incomparable profession of adolescent love “Non so pia cosa son” and the Contessa’s “Dove sono I bei momenti” lamenting her lost love—both from Mozart’s <em>Le Nozze di Figaro</em></li>
<li>Wotan’s “Farewell” bringing to a close <em>Die Valkyrie</em>, the second opera of Wagner’s <em>Der Ring des Nibelungen</em></li>
<li>Hans Sachs “Wahn, wahn” monologue from this same composer’s <em>Die Meistersinger</em></li>
<li>Iago’s great aria “Credo in un Dio crudel” from the second act of Verdi’s <em>Otello</em></li>
<li>Schaunard, the philosopher, bidding farewell to his cloak in order to purchase medicines for the dying Mimi in Puccini’s <em>La Bohème</em></li>
<li>The transcendent trio sung by the Marschallin, Octavian and Sophie in the last act of Richard Strauss’s <em>Der Rosenkavalier</em>.</li>
</ul>
<p>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.</p>
<p>How fortunate am I to have lived, from earliest memory to present old age, a life filled with such a richness of Humanities Moments!</p>
Contributor
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Peter A. Benoliel, Chairman Emeritus, Quaker Chemical Corporation
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benoliel-lifetime-humanities-moments
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Antony and Cleopatra
Aurelius, Marcus
Bach, Johann Sebastian
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Books & Reading
Business Leaders
Caesar and Cleopatra
Cather, Willa
Classical Music
Cooper, James Fenimore
Corelli, Arcangelo
Cyrano de Bergerac
Dickens, Charles
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Drama
Dumas, Alexandre
Dürrenmatt, Freidrich
Eliot, George
Epictetus
Film
Goya, Francisco
Handel, George Frideric
Hesse, Herman
Homer, Virgil
Horace, Catullus
How Green Was My Valley
In Search of Lost Time
Literature
Melville, Herman
Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life
Modern Painting
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
Mrs. Dalloway
Murasaki, Shikibu
My Ántonia
O Pioneers!
Performing Arts
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte
Philosophy
Piano Concerto no. 5
Plato
Poetry
Proust, Marcel
Schubert, Franz Peter
Shakespeare, William
Shaw, George Bernard
Socrates
Symphony no. 8 in B Minor
Telemann, Georg Philipp
Thackeray, William Makepeace
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Deerslayer, or the First War-path
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757
The Mysterious Island
The Patriots
The Tale of Genji
The Three Musketeers
The Visit
To the Lighthouse
Tolstoy, Leo
Twain, Mark
Verne, Jules
Vivaldi, Antonio Lucio
Woolf, Virginia
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a9b1d79b175159f4c2ec0ce9b5e428a4
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"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," by Mark Twain
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David Denby
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This collection includes contributors by the author, journalist and film critic David Denby.
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david-denby-humanities-moments
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Transformative Literature
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David Denby discusses works of literature that influenced his thinking as a child and as a teenager. Looking back, these books transformed the reader that he is today.
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David Denby, author, journalist, film critic
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david-denby-transformative-literature
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A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain; Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dovstoyevsky
A Tale of Two Cities
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Books & Reading
Crime and Punishment
Dickens, Charles
Dovstoyevsky, Fyodor
Literature
Oliver Twist
Twain, Mark
Writers