Williams College - Gulielmensian Yearbook (Williamstown, MA)

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CII Q of the Ending By RICHARD B. SEVVALI, '29 Pngfessor ry' lfngfzislz, Tale L'n1've151'Q' HE last time' I appcart-d on this stagt- was in a minor part in a Cap and Bclls prodntttion ol' .llmll .lain .lbfml Ynilzffzg. I was Friar Francis, I had nint- spccrlit-s '- six ont'-lincrs and two hit iuifw' ont-s. Tht- two hiff 5 , , 5 ones wcrc full of wisdom and sound atlvirt-, as hvfits a friar-f or, indt-vd, a ronvoration spcakcr. I rtfad tht- I riar's part through tht- otht-r day. to gct ntyst-ll' in thc Spirit of this platform again and pvrhaps to rcfall a littlt' bit of thc- old undcrgraduatc glory. As a mattvr of fart, for mc, it was anything but glorious. My timing was had on thc one-lincrs, and tht- hig spot-vllt-s lt-ll curiously flat. Frankly, I don't think I undt-rstood tht-m tht-n. But I know mort' ahottt Sliakvspcarc' Cand a lbw othcr thingsl now1 and, as I read thosc' lint-s on-r, tht-5' hit mc at 67 as thcy nc'vt-r did at l7. Listcn to lfria r Vranrtis trying to gc-t his listcnt-rs to ac't't-pt somt-thing ht- lit-vls

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. . .It was a moving experience that bound the whole College community. . . a very special moment in which all robes came off the distinctions of age blurred, and a work of art enthralled a united body.

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deeply ff in this case, his belief in the innocence of a slandered young lady. One can feel his frustration in every word: Call me a foolg Trust not my reading nor my observations, Which with experimental seal doth warrant The tenour of my book: trust not my age, lNIy reverence, calling, nor divinity, If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here lfnder some biting error. Fifty years tbetween l7 and 67j make a lot of differ- ence, and now at last I know what the Friar felt: the frustration of trying to convey something you feel deeply to an audience that is either skeptical or uninvolved. The Friar put my dilliculty plainly, even if it is not quite the same as his. I want to talk to you today about matters which cannot be to you as intensely personal as they are to meg I'm involved as you cannot be, and I cannot bridge the gap by the triumphant march of logic, by statistics, by hard evidence. I want to share with you, simply, a bit of experience I've picked up on the way. Oh, there are lots of ubiting errorsw I could expose, were my mood so inclined: educational fallacies ram- pant in my own beloved New Haven and right here in IVilliamstowng the sinister drift of our national culture and politics and economyg the global threats to our en- vironment and our peace. I could scare you to death! Ur, changing the tune, as appropriate to this day, I could talk about the library as the beating heart of this or any other educational institution. I could talk about Jack Sawyer and all he did for this college. But although all these possibilities are close to my mind and heart, they are not closest, and I decided I must talk about what is closest or I'd better not talk at all. XYhat is closest? just two things, intimately bound, almost in- separable: love and death. Shortly after I came to this decision, I ran across a remark by VVilliam Butler Yeats. MI am still of the opinion, he wrote, Hthat only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mind - sex and death? My first thought was: VVhat a stuffy way to put it! And my second was: IYhy be so glandular? Why sex and death? I prefer my way of putting it, and Woody Allen's: love and death. I don't intend to be clinical about either, and I am not addressing the serious and studious mind. I am talking' to you as fel- low pilgrims -- old, iniddle-aged and young- in this vale of tears and laughter. And I want to share with you a little of what I've learned this past year-I would say the most educational year of my life, the high-water mark of my experience as a human being, I guess you'll have to know the facts: My wife, Ma- thilde, died of cancer of the pancreas last November, and my brother john fYYilliams 'QED was killed in a car accident last Nfarch. YVith all the tragedy in the world, you may wonder at my bringing up these two personal losses. It may seem a little impudent of me, even a little embarrassing. 'fThey talk of hallowed things,', said Emily Dickinson, trying to explain her aversion to so- ciety, hand embarrass my dog. But she was young when she said that. She clainmed up, and she was wrong. She was too easily embarrassed. So here's the first and perhaps simplest thing Iave learned this past year: Never be embarrassed to talk about hallowed things, like love and death. XVe Amer- icans are a little finicky about both. IVe reduce love to sex and talk about it clinically as in Kinsey and the sex books, or grossly as in Plqrboy and Penthouse, or senti- mentally as in the popular songs. Thcre,s very little talk about the tragic side of love, the comic side of love, love as a discipline, love as a means of education, love as the end and aim of education, the very reason weire here today. And as for death, we hide from it, pretty it up, pack it away in hospitals, spend millions every year on lavish funerals, or get so glutted with it over the media that we hear or read, with hardly a tremor, about hundreds of thousands dying in Vietnam, or Africa, or Bangla- desh. The result is that death is hardly real at all to us. It's a forbidden subject except at funerals and in sermons that aim to take away its sting. I think we'd be better able to cope with it if we talked about it more, if we shared our experience of it more frankly. And so I'm facing you with itx ironically, on this festive oc- casion, this day of a new beginning when the last thing you want to hear about is the old, old ending. Which leads me to the second thing I've learned this past year: Itis a sense of the ending that makes the be- ginning, and all that follows therefrom, so much more meaningful. Why deny a reality that, paradoxieally, can be so life-giving, so enriching? I heard the other day of a great-great-grandinother who- this was generations ago-amazed her family by announcing one morning: I want to die in that rocking chair, and I'm going to close my own eyes. She did both. Her name was Experience Bardwell Lyman. The young people called her 'fAunt Speedie, and a hundred years later her descendants are still talk- ing and laughing about her and living a little more fully because of her. I wonder if this is what Wallace Stevens had in mind when he wrote, Death is the mother of beautyf, Her great-grandchildren still point to that rocker. Aunt Speedie knew how to die and how to talk about it. She had a sense of her ending - clear-eyed, frank, unabashed, humorous. Nfy friend Emily Dickinson knew how to talk about it, too: By a departing light We see acuter, quite, Than by a wick that stays. Thert-'s something in the flight That clarifies the sight And decks the rays. 'fThere's something in the Hightf That clarifies the sight . . or, in the words of the old hymn, takes