Emerson College - Emersonian Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 9 text:

dedication e is a quiet man with a strangely imp- ish strength. His voice is hot or cold, smooth or slashing, dark or light, adapted always to resist the various forms of the various resistances, and his thought is sharply pimctu- ated by the movement of his body. He poses, flicks dust in your eyes, to make you “scratch your head, take a chance on a few slivers”, to make you participate posi- tively in the examination of whatever must be examined, so that when the veil has been pierced you may feel the joy of having helped in the piercing. The search for truth is part of his and your constabulary duties to be done, to be done, but the labor is not cold and forbid- ding; it is warm and welcoming as well as serious and difficult, and he indicates the existence of this seeming paradox with the “methodology of the pim” and by stretching the tension into the realm of the grotesque, where the brittle atmosphere is liglitly splin- ered into loosening laughter. When he speaks, he introduces the shape of Trtitli like a chairman presenting the president of the corporation to the stock- holders or rescues it like a man hacking entrance into the blasted home of his friend or constructs it like a contractor assembling his many materials into a com- pleted structure. If, there is anything of the Ivory Tower about him, it is one built in the center of the world, with large, opened windows on all sides. Each of his courses is in reality two. One is the academic, on the successful com- pletion of which the student has earned credits toward his degree; the other might be called Lifemanship, on the successful completion of which the student has realized himself, has recognized truly the value of a personal integrity. Fundamentally, this is all “words, words, words”. Words caimot carry it; words can ony hint at any delineation of his meaning to us, and we can only hope that these hints suggest it as clearly as it can be suggested. Possibly even the act this introduces is inadequate, but here too, we can offer only tlie best we have, hoping tJiat our tribute is accurately suggestive of what we would like to give. With respect and love, we dedicate the 1952 Emersonian to DR. WILLIAM S. KNICKERBOCKER page five