Haverford College - Record Yearbook (Haverford, PA)

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PAUL J. R. DESJARDINS In Paul Dfsjardins. Haverford has its arrh enemv of s(i{)hists. past and present. Pliili)S(iphv for him is a life commitment, a |)as- sionate search for meaning: on hoth the intellectual and practical levels of existence, and not just another academic discipline. Paul was l)orn and raised on a farm in u|)state New York. He entered ale College, where he majored in English during his undergraduate days. During the war ears he served in China as a lieutenant in the army. For one ear after the war he was a novice in a monastic order. Then he re- turned to Yale and studied philos- ophv. writing his Ph.D. on the Platonic dialogues. At Haverford we have known Paul as amateur ps chologist. familv man. con- firmed Platonist. sophisticated Catholic, and a good guy who could use the King ' s English with the best or worst of us. There are some who would say of Paul Desjardins that of all the professors at Haverford he knew the most students but understood the least. But those of us who have benefited so greatly from his friendship realize with apprecia- tion that Paul set for himself a hard task: to understand us at the deepest levels of our complex and often confused natures, and not at the level of appearance. To this task he brought a live- ly and sometimes baffling method of teaching. He was fond of classi- fying us. for purposes of argu- ment, into certain Platonic per- sonality categories. Every class at Haverford has one or two Charm- ides or Cephalus figures, an oc- casional Phaedrus or Thrasv- machus. and sometimes a potent- ial Socrates. Paul ' s hope for all of us. as we advanced from Phil- osophy 11 and Ethics to Plato. Aristotle and Kant seminars, was that we put off the old Charmides or Cephalus figures and become more and more like Socrates in de eliiping the philosophical view of life. Truth is never one-sided, accord- ing to Paul, but steers its way through opposites. The reconcil- iation of these opposites is the aim of philosophy, to rediscover the original harmony which man. in his alienation, sees in terms of polarities. Paul sought to teach us all to be good charioteers, harness- ing the appetites in service of the rational elements of the soul, and good helmsmen, steering our in- dividual courses upon troubled seas of warring appetites and motivations. Even if most of us did not ful] achieve this harmoin in our own lives, most of us will agree with Paul that a life should be led from rotnicliiin and iml from |)er- sonal whim or inclination. Paul taught us to hold in contempt the liberal arts relali isl who knows a lot about ever thing but has no convictions about anything. He al- so encouraged us to revitalize our often moribund religious heritage in the service of the philosophical life. By his own example he show- ed us that this life is not easy, for it involves constant self-over- coming and sacrifice. Yet with Paul we were all proud to climb Plato ' s ladder in search of a truth which would ultimately harmonize in a kingdom of ends — a kingdom within us, but not of this world. fA nm ptv I B iiV ' . ' a ' ji.i 1 ' r ' iP j - HBr gj fl L fid n. ■ ' ■ 1 • mm mm » -4- h C Page 15

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JOHN ASHMEAD, JR. During his student days at Harvard University, John Ash- mead worked at one time or an- other as a salt tablet dropper in a tomato cannery, a music critic and reporter for the Hartford Times, a translator of German, and a cowboy and piano player at a Colorado dude ranch. The diversity of Ashmead ' s activities has stuck with him as Associate Professor of English at Haver- ford. Most of us know him as a teach- er of literature and creative writ- ing, areas to which Ashmead brings a wide knowledge encom- passing many of the arts. He be- lieves that literature should be seen in a context which is not strictly chronological or isolated but which spreads into other areas of aesthetic endeavor. Thus Ash- mead was a pioneer force in bring- ing to Haverford the Carnegie Study o f the Arts of the United States — a collection of three thousand color slides of American architecture, painting, and sculp- ture which he uses to broaden the student ' s (conception of literature as a work of art. Similarly. Ashmead brings his knowledge of music to bear on the style and structure of literature. He frequently reads -aloud to the class to give students a feeling for pitch and harmony in langu- age, in the belief that ' nobody is tone deaf. Interpreting a book, he may associate certain motifs with a character, or note an ope- ratic effect, where three char- acters are singing at once. Perhaps Ashmead ' s most valu- able experience as a teacher, in preparation for his second role as a writer, has been simply in meet- ing people. Having a wide variety of acquaintances is invaluable, he feels, and his various foreign teaching assignments in Athens, Japan, Burma, the Philippines, Korea. Formosa and Hong Kong have added greatly to this circle of friends. Out of those years of teaching and travel, and out of his experience in World War H. came The Mountain and the Feather. Ashmead worked on the novel on and off from 1944 un- til November. 1960. when it was accepted for publication. The book was written mainly from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. or from 4 to 8 a.m.. the only times available with a busy teaching schedule. Future plans include another novel (completed but not yet published) and a third in the drawing-board stage. In his third role as critic. Ash- mead has not confined himself to literature alone. He also has some rather provocative opinions about Haverford College. He com- plains of a desperately over- worked faculty and student body dominated bv the Puritan idea that work is the first thing in life. Such conditions, he claims, produce an atmosphere where study is 95% analytical and 5% creative and acts as a stim- ulus to grinding out plodders. As a remedy for this situation. Ash- mead suggests the possibility of abandoning compulsory classwork in the senior year. Students need some time to reflect, even though the ' goof-offs ' will take advantage of this free time . . . they will under any circum- stances. Commenting on the new two million dollar science build- ing. Ashmead half-humorously wondered about the possibility of buying 100 dollars ' worth of re- flection. Some of the points John Ashmead has raised in this ac- count of his diverse career would certainly bear such reflection. Page 14

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MARCEL GUTWIRTH Officially Professor of Ro- mance Languages and head of the French Department. Marcel Gul- wirth has taught both French and Humanities 21-22. A command of French remains a sign of culture, and an understanding of literature remains in this scientific age es- sential to the well educated man; by leading his students to these faculties Professor Gutwirth serves most sijrnificantlv to fulfill Haver- ford ' s ideals of liberal education. The coldness and reserve with which he first meets the student may be due to his European back- ground or his desire to maintain academic distance and discipline. But through his thin smile and clipped phrases there clearlv ap- pears, in his careful analvsis of literature, a man committed warm- ly and deeply to the humanities and ultimately to man. His in- terpretations of literature have inevitaldy seemed so convincing- ly right as to admit of little con- tradiction. The students in his seminars come away with a know- ledge of the material discussed but thev also gain the immeasur- ably more valuable insight into the philosophy which motivates Professor Gutwirths intellect. Fundamental in his approach to every work of art is a deep un- derstanding and sympathy with the human condition, and the stu- dent nia learn something of this whether the work is Proust. Mo- liere. Dostoievsky or the Book of Job. . ' V . . In teaching for the first time this y«ar a course in the Enlight- enment, he has been able to in- dulge his interest in both litera- ture and ])liilosoph . The course bridges the provincial barriers of language and academic discipline and as an ambitious innovation indicates Professor Gutwirth s committment to his role as a teacher. This function he has carried out of the classroom and into his home, where he has con- ducted informal discussions of literature with interested students in the best tradition of the salon. It is the willingness to teach those students who wish to learn, evi- dent in these evenings of Human- ities Zero , which has made his classes sought after by the know- ing, and made him one of the most highly respected members of the faculty. Page 16