age Two

SCARLET AND BLACK

 

IN MEMORlAM

 

 

 

 

 

'Jacquell'ne R. Freeman

November I3, l964

Dear Jackie,

The room is very empty. The bamboo fishing
poles are still standing in the corner, but most of the
other things have been taken down. I remember when
We bought those fishing poles and carried those twelve
foot sticks down the street lunging into every object
in sight, knocking at third floor windows, and trying
tog jump and touch telephone wires, Then we bent
them so they’d fit under the ceiling and left them as
archways'. That was the first week, when decorating
our three cornered room was so important, What dif-
ferent ideas we had! We finally bought bamboo cur—
tains last month, but neither of us ever found that free
moment to dye the muslin orange so that we could line

the drapes. Two stubborn people 9 three pairs ofl

bamboo curtains leaning against a well.
I’m thinking about you‘now as the French girl,
‘ Nicole, the girl you became when “everything in the
world looked orange,” or “the air felt purple and
Wednesdayish.” Nicole seemed to come and go in be—
tween humanities papers of biology exams. Sometimes
she’d stay for days and we’d go for walks or bike rides
and talk about loneliness, or make believe worlds.

But it was with Jackie that I had most of my dis—
cussions. I remember before I went out one evening
how you told me that everyone must believe in him-
self and know that he is just as good as the next man.
‘And I know how you believed in yourself. Sometimes
this belief led us to disagreements, but then it also
patched things up because we both learned that to live
as one requires the strength and effort of two. Our
whole house lived this way since the second night of
school when we became‘ten sisters. Very few people
knew how we lived and I don’t know if many would
have understood it. There was a home, and a family,
and strength in oneness. That’s why you told‘me that
you vilere happier than you had ever been before and
that’s why I agreed and so did we all.

Let the best be for your friends

Seek them with hours to live

For life alone is sleep without dreams
And life with one is whole.

Let the best be for your friends

And in them find the world

For each man mirrors all of mankind
But love makes friends unique. 7'

That is part of the song that Mimi and I were
working on. You never really did get to hear it though
I know you heard me picking out the melody. I remem-
ber once hearing you hum it though you didn’t know
what it was, Though it isn’t a hall song it describes
the development of the relationship of our White
House family: single individuals molded into a group,
developing into a bond of unique individuals.

You had trouble doing things on time, whether it
was finishing papers or getting in by Freshman hours.
I never did understand how you got in forty minutes
late one night when your watch had the right time. I
guess that was just part of you though. When you en—
joyed something or liked someone, time or place meant
nothing. Nothing could persuade you not to go some-

Mriay, November 20. 1954

Harvard Theological Dean Speaks
On Metaphors, Faulkner, Clowns

By Lynn Denzler

Changing Metaphor

Dr. Samuel H. Miller opened this
year’s Gates Lecture Series by
speaking Sunday nighl on “The

‘ Mystery of the Changing Meta-

phor." He explained his topic as an
attempt “to show the way in which

, the changing metaphors Df the his-

torical epochs of the west portray
the nature or reality as it has shiic
ed in the mind and heart of man."

Presenting the first of three ad-
dresses un the “Images of Faith,"
the Dean at Harvard University‘s
Divinity School told his audience of
faculty and students that reality is
not directly describable.

“It is necessary to see reality
from the indirect methods of meta-
phor," he said.

In relating his Views on the na-
ture of man today, Dean Miller
stated that he felt that contempur-
ary man has lost his inwardness
and had lost all sense of transcen-
deuce.

Speaking to the first point he
said, “Man has been extemalized
— there is no longer any inner
core; he has been absorbed by his
world.“

“Man cannot get his finger on
the ultimate realities, on what we
would call God,” he said referring
to the lack of transcendence. “It is
from these realities that all lnean~
ing results.”

Dean Miller, who is a respected
leader in literature and the arts
as well as in theology, used both
ancient and contemporary artists
to illustrate his topic. Discussir‘ig
the eplc, he constrasted the Odys-
sey and the luiei-uo.

“ll'l Homer’s work," he said, "the
hero doesn't change at all over
the years oi hls journey. It is all
geographical: But Dame presents
an entirely different vision of the
universe. His epic is permeated
with Christian redemption — the
purpose or the Universe 15 to re
deem men."

Turning to Goethe and James

 

Joyce, lle slated that Faust was an
individual who emerged from the
Renaissance attempting to fulfill
himself, and the story of Joyce’s
The Traveler concerned "one
man’s attempt to find out What it
is to be a man.”

The Biblical metaphor that God
made men and the New Testament
metaphor that Christ redeemed
man to be a child of God are part
of what Dr. Miller termed the
“central reality."

“Metaphor is the oblique means
of getting a! the meaning of real-
ity,” he said. He went on to ex»
plain that nothing is selﬂsufficient
to itself and that “in the human
realm, there are no merely ob-
jective events."

At various points in his lecture,
Dean Miller termed reality "dy-
namic," “complex," and "inces-
santly moving” and said that there
is no final way to fix it.

Man today, according to Dr. Mil-
ler, is not metamorphically admit-
therefore he resorts to fiction.
“Both religion and fiction strive to
celebrate the truth they lihd in dra-
matic terms — as life," he con~
tinued. .

Dr. Miller used the term “plural-
ism" to deflne the dilemma of man
today, who sees so much of the
technical and specialism of life. He
referred to such a position as
“nearer to schizophrenia."

“Almost all our World has been
factuallzed, and we are more and
more competent in rational de-
scription," he said.

“Science can afford to be pre»
cise, but lt is inadequate,“ he con-
tinued. “Science abstracts one fact
to describe ll. yet ignores all the
others."

Expanding the idea at central
reality and the modern specializa-
tion of man, he said that man has
the tendency to rebel 1“ this revo-
lutionary society. “But at the apex
of man in the rebel metaphor, he
is unable to sustain llis individuals
ity and falls down, Such it was with
the Nazi and the Fascist," he said.

This Is What We face in art and

 

 

place you really wanted to go. You were so easily ex-
cited and so easily satisfied that people were happy
when they were with you and you too were very
happy. No tomorrows held you back; living was busy
and full.

There were so many things we did, like trying to
figure out at 2:00 am. how to make paper mache for a
homecoming float, making up games for the kids at
Uncle Sam’s Club, painting light bulbs red, doing
crash exercises to get through that physical fitness
test, trying to hide Goldberg, the “damn cat” that was
also part of our family for a while, making caramel
apples, short sheeting people’s beds, sitting up all night
singing folk songs, planning surprise birthday parties,
putting on skits like the Freud farce last week when
Leslie made Phi Beta Kappa, or the one for our “Stop
the World” houseparty, and arguing over who gets to
do Dar’s French homework. ‘

Soon I'll go into the room and notice how every—
thing is gone, the drawing of the plump bunny, your
trolls, the Peanut’s calendar, the cigar box stuffed
with letters, the yellow headed moccasins, and your
little red pillow, everything that was you. No, not
everything — part of you is me.

Love, Bobbi

This letter was written by Barbara eriser, room-
mate of Jacqueline Freeman.

 

literature today according to Dr.
Miller. "The human image is being
tortured and threatened — the
artists are shouting at us — Why?
Because there is a possibility that
man may lose his humanity.“

But, said Dean Miller, we have
authors who are trying to rediscuv~
er that humanity in the novel and
the drama. He listed Camus, Kai
ka, Boll, and Arthur Miller here
and concluded.

“These are seeking to draw new
metaphors, for reality is always
elusive in light of which it Shall al-
ways be redeemed.“

Fiction, Faith
Faulkner

On Monday morning Deal-l Mll-
ler took his audience through an
examination of "The Fiction of
Faith in Faulkner." Mentioning
briefly the weakening of symbol in
religious realms that he had noted
so fully in his first lecture, the
theologian said that “it is no acci-
dent that faith has turned to fiction
"to attempt to reconstruct Its an-
swers."

He spoke of writers today who
have the urgency to penetrate the
order of symbol-less epoch naming
D. H. Lawrence's attempt to’ get
at reality through sex and the
“sports-heroic” of Ernest Heming-
way as examples;

“The nature or religious litera-
ture concerns a diligent search of
normal existence with some” evl<
dence of the transcendent reality
of God,” he said. ‘

He further termed the Works of
Lloyd c. Douglas and other seem-
ingly religious authors who only
present the external without under-
standing the internal as “rakery
of the worst sort."

Dean Miller then turned to the
work of modem American author,
William Faulkner as an example
a! “fiction as a large scale meta~
phor and thus a way of looking at
reality.” He placed particular em-
phasls On two of Faulkner’s novels,
Sound and the Fury and As I lay
Dying.

“Life abounds in Faulkner," he
said. “He works in such a compact
report. of human experience. He
has respect for existence and a wil-
lingness to see as much as can
be seen by the human worl .”

Miller sees the Work of Faulkner
rising from the religious decadence
of the south as u transposition of
the Calvinism characteristics of
impending judgment, a past and
inevitable late, and the will tn act
and endure.

“Faulkner sees life In its abso-
lute fitness, how it hangs together
with all of its outrages. tragedy,
and humor — caught in a frame
of Calvinistic lnevltableness," l'lI
said. "He is Working at the level
of experiences with Christian pm
cepts.”

Dr. Miller termed Sound Ind (ht
Fury a "novel of damnation," ser-
iously couceived, oi the profoundest
moral." He compared the tragedy
of this work to the journey through
hell creazed by ounce.

“Each person in this novel lie.
comes the others he“; each is
alienated from life in its fullest"

MILLER— V
Continued on Page II

 

