A TRIBUTE TO TOM GARBATY
UPON HIS RETIREMENT FROM TEACHING
Prof. Ernst Soudek
How does one assess the impact a certain
person has had on one`s own life? How does one arrive at a full appreciation
of the fact that that very person profoundly influenced one`s decision
to make the right turn at the right time in the journey along the forked
road of life? Perhaps a final evaluation of each individual`s impact on
another`s life should be made only as one nears the end of a (hopefully
long) life because there`s always another fork in the road beyond the horizon
and new decisions have to be made that validate or invalidate earlier,
seemingly profound judgments. Spouses, friends, lovers, business partners,
relatives, and others, who at one time seemed to be of utmost importance
to one`s mental and/or physical development, with hindsight no longer appear
that important. Concurrently, however, there are those individuals who
during an earlier assessment might have appeared only peripherally significant
but who later, as one reviews one`s life, take on an incredibly important,
even gargantuan stature. Thus it is with Tom Garbáty and me. As
I am entering the seventh decade of my life I can look back and state with
all honesty that Tom Garbáty was one of the two persons who knowingly
or unknowingly had the most profound impact on my life after I immigrated
to the United States during early adulthood.
The other person I am referring to was
Don Canham, the legendary track coach and athletic director at the University
of Michigan who spotted me attempting to throw the discus at a track meet
in Ann Arbor while I was tramping through the United States. That man,
either with an incredible naiveté or with a keen eye for athletic
talent, immediately (i.e., right there on Ferry Field) offered me a full-ride
athletic scholarship to become the discus thrower on his Big Ten champion
track team.
Looking back now, it seems fair to say
that without Don Canham, who probably did not have any great altruistic
motives in recruiting me, I never would have attended college (I could
not have afforded to) and I certainly never would have attained the athletic
prowess that accompanied me through many of the subsequent years. My participation
in Olympic Games and various European Championships, and the benefits I
reaped from the status of “star athlete“ whenever I returned to my native
Austria, all can be traced back to Don Canham. Without Don Canham, I would
never have met Tom Garbáty.
Athletes aren`t usually expected to
major in English, not even at Michigan. Don Canham, true to a tried and
proven formula, had routinely advised me to major in physical education.
In truth, I didn`t care very much what I was going to major in because
I did not have the faintest notion of how the American educational system
worked. However, as a newcomer to the United States, I also had no understanding
of the major American sports: football, basketball, and especially baseball
-- that make up a large part of the curriculum in physical education. After
snooping around in a few P.E. courses I went to Don Canham and told him,
“Nope (good American slang I had already picked up!), coach, physical education
is not for me. I am going to major in French or something else.“ He was
horrified because he fully expected me not to be able to maintain the C-average
necessary to retain the athletic scholarship if I majored in anything but
Phys.Ed.
To make a potentially long story short:
I did not major in French but in English, primarily because one day I found
myself sitting in a classroom waiting for a course to start that had the
title “Introduction to English Poetry“. This “Introduction“ was conducted
by a spirited, lithe, incredibly vivacious young assistant professor with
a Hungarian name who had just come to Michigan from Clemson. He really
opened my eyes, and the eyes of all the students in the class, to the beauty
and meaningfulness of poetry. I remember very well how he did it. He was
the most amazing , most infectious, and most enthusiastic teacher I ever
had. He led us to discover the intellectual and artistic potentials that
few of us thought we possessed.
Tom Garbáty at first did not
talk about meter or rhyme schemes or other subtleties of poetics; instead,
he had us analyze Blake´s “Tyger“, a poem that has remained one of
my favorite ones until this day. Wow! What an eye-opener it was to discover
what symbolic language could express. Here this poet seemed to be talking
about a wild animal and yet he clearly was expressing much more: he was
voicing doubt in the wisdom of God and Divine Creation. Or was he questioning
the benefits of the Industrial Revolution in England?
Other great poems followed : excerpts
from the Canterbury Tales, one or two Shakespearean sonnets,
Richard
Cory , The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, and Death
Shall Have No Dominion(no, Tom DID NOT have some morbid fascination
with the Nether World though some seven years later he did give me expert
advice on that subject when in my dissertation I tried to prove the other-worldly
character of a knight`s realm in an Arthurian romance!). In short, I, and
several others in that class, became so enchanted by the subject matter
which Professor Garbáty had presented to us that we decided to explore
it a bit more. I would not be surprised if more English majors evolved
from Tom`s introductory course than from any other course offered by the
English Department in those days. In my particular case, my love of literature
in general, and of medieval poetry in particular, has never abated since
its inception in Tom`s class some thirty-seven years ago. Tom later became
my “Doktorvater“ and, ultimately, my life-long friend. With
his profound knowledge of nearly every facet of medieval literature, he
helped me decipher some of the riddles posed by the Old French Lancelot
en prose, the Middle High German
Prosa Lancelot and
Malory`s Morte Darthur.
Even later, after I had become an assistant
professor of comparative literature with a profound interest in medieval
mysticism, Tom helped me with „Rat und Tat“ and he continued
to infuse me with his unswerving enthusiasm and the conviction that in
poetry, as in literature in general, there is contained the wisdom of ages
that can help nearly every member of humanity master “the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune.“ Does this sound like a cliché? Perhaps it
does but I myself, in my present job as chairman of a department in which
English is taught as a foreign language, try to contribute to Tom`s pedagogical
legacy. Ever so often I get an astonished “Wow!“ from a top-notch graduate
student in electronics engineering who on his/her ownwould never have approached
this “other“ universe of understanding that´s contained in some of
the poems to which Tom Garbáty introduced me a long time ago. In
working primarily with engineers, i.e. “real-world movers“ who are at the
very forefront of technological advancement, and noticing practically every
day that they are not nearly as much out of tune with “our“ concerns as
most humanists want to have it, I have become convinced that the theme
of the book and motion picture Dead Poets´Society is
very much with us but that it takes a very inspiring teacher to bring it
to fruition. In my own life, thank God, there was such a teacher.
I do not want to embarrass you, Tom,
especially since I know your personal background and what a modest man
you have always been, but I have to say it again (and again): Thank you,
thank you for being a role model and a friend!
Ernst Soudek
copyright ©2000 by Ernst Soudek