Gladly Lerne, and Gladly Teche:
An Introductory Note
I chose the title of this tribute to Tom Garbáty from the epigraph to his own worthy edition of Medieval English Literature (D.C. Heath, 1984), dedicated to Albert C. Baugh, MacEdward Leach and Harold Stine: "Teachers, Scholars, Friends." All readers of course recognize the reference to Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenford, presented in the Canterbury Tales as an ideal of the vita contemplativa (-- at least in the General Prologue; rather a different character emerges when he tells his tale). After years of teaching the Clerk's Tale, I've grown very uncomfortable with what appears to me to be a downright scary capacity for vicarious psychological cruelty. But I learned from Tom, the earliest of my many fine professional mentors, to hold my judgment of Chaucer's characters in suspension, to consider these people -- six centuries dead if they can be said to have lived at all -- as reflections of people as I know them, in their faults as well as their virtues, as individuations of fairly enduring human types, and as typings of the individuals I encounter daily. The Clerk is any bright person, any person dedicated to a discipline, a profession, a craft, always courting the danger of letting that thing, good in itself, come to seem the final good, detached from human needs and concerns. The outpouring of admiration, respect, affection and gratitude in this volume testify to Tom's having evaded that trap, a mistake that seems merely ridiculous until one considers the intellectual, moral and cultural wreckage that the pettier kinds of academic politicking leave behind. For Tom, the work has always been about people.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that academic politics are unusually bitter because the stakes are so small. He might have added that the situation is worsened by the way narrowness of focus in an age of intellectual specialization makes for small spirits. Tom's personal history shouldn't have sweetened anyone's disposition, and the stakes were of epic proportions. He was born in Berlin to a prominent manufacturing family (Garbáty tobacco-cards, a sample of which appears at the top of the page, are among the most collectible). His grandfather Josef, founder of the firm, virtually invented the idea that employers have a moral obligation to the welfare of employees: he offered unemployment compensation a decade before the state saw the need for such provisions, introduced modern assembly lines and an air-cleansing system for the protection of employees' health, as well as a sports club, choir and cafeteria -- novelties at the time, as were the factory's sanitary system, with baths, showers and toilets on every floor. But politics has no memory for virtue; during aryanization, the family was disposessed, exiled, their home confiscated.
The indomitable clan sank fresh roots in the States, and continued their quiet history of philanthropy and service -- cheerful stoicism runs in the family. Tom's distinguishing characteristic has always been amplitude -- broadly educated, open-handed with his time and his learning, generous in his judgments, coaxing and cajoling in his pedagogy. He is quite incapable of narrowness, in his professional or personal interests (look at his "favorite links"), in his publications ("curriculum vitae"), teaching record and syllabi, in the circle of his aquaintance, and consequently in the circle of his influence. Although his vita is long and impressive, it is not his most important or lasting achievement. In the final event, scholars with yet more publications to their credit will, I think, have altered the world less.
Tom's real work is documented by the contributions below, among which there are academic voices -- as is usual for a festschrift -- but also a lawyer, an Olympic athlete and a journalist. This is but the smallest sampling of the lives Tom has touched, and transformed forever -- gifted, social people who will go on to transform many other lives, in their own ways, of course, but in ways too that extend Tom's genial influence. Many other former students and associates were eager to contribute, but for one reason or another were unable -- the most frequently-stated reason: they felt they could not do the subject justice.
This collection is offered in token return on a debt that can never
be discharged, except by making the most of what we have gained from Tom,
and imitating him in the prodigality with which he shared his gifts. For
my own part, it has been a pleasure to share reminiscences and to make
aquaintance with some of Tom's other associates, an impressive group indeed
-- I thank them all for their unflagging enthusiasm, graciousness, generosity
and patience! I wish finally to thank Professor Heinz D. Woehlk,
Head of the Division of Language and Literature at Truman State University,
without whose generous support this publication would not have been possible.