Teacher Testimonials

A Clear Connection Continued

by John Chamberlain, Class of 1980

St. Michael's College teachers can leave a lasting imprint on students' minds and, by extension, are often reason for continuing a connection to our alma mater. I recall many of these teachers fondly. One of them is Dr. Clary, whom I also call Nick.

As an English teacher, I've had ample reason to keep in touch with Dr. Clary. But it wasn't just for professional consults when I was teaching Shakespeare to middle or high schoolers, which certainly have happened. And it wasn't just to get updates on other tennis players on our team, which he memorably coached, or on cohorts from my class, although he certainly has remained in the loop with a lot of alumni, and I do appreciate hearing about their whereabouts, livelihoods and interests. It was also to keep in touch with Nick.

I honestly think he's still very much on top of his game, and I don't mean tennis. My gosh, what a feather he's been in St. Michael's cap, with all of his accomplishments and accolades, including the ongoing Hamlet Variorum project and the www.hamletworks.org electronic database already on the Internet. Dr. Clary is ahead of the curve in adapting to the technological world far better than I have been -- although I'm working on catching up. (In the late 1980's, I recall my father, also, like Nick, an avid writer, admitting to me that the computer, to him, was a mystery -- my father in his 70s had little interest in bridging that gap, preferring to get his exercise whacking, in the manner of Archie the Cockroach, the tall keys of his portable typewriter.)

Perhaps Nick remains a father figure for me and a connection to an earlier stage in my life. This became apparent to me recently as I was emailing him about curriculum I'm developing around introducing Shakespeare's sonnets to my eighth graders. As an aside, he ruefully admitted that he couldn't locate his doctoral dissertation on his shelf, which had focused on Shakespeare among other early English sonnet writers. I hypothesized that he loaned it out in a fit of generosity, and I recalled that I'd once been annoyed when my (now deceased) mother loaned out a book she wrote about her dance mentor Doris Humphrey, my copy actually, which she had personally inscribed. Of course, it was not returned. Then I said something harsh regarding my mom's less-than-thoughtful act of generosity: "The distance between the head and heart can be unfathomable." I felt guilty for putting that line out there about my own mother, but Nick is the kind of teacher who encourages a philosophical or psychological epiphany, and that's what emerged. I always knew I could trust him with things like that, that his mind incisively weaves the personal to the universal.

Anyway, Nick responded to my sonnet activity thoughtfully, copiously, and with encouragement, as ever, and attached, by email, a poem he had written about Hamlet. I liked his poem and, it being summer, a time of greater freedom for teachers, I thought I'd write a poem in return. Inspired by Nick's deft use of the stark imagery from Hamlet, I thought I'd center my poem around Hamlet, too. In writing it, I recalled a theory about Hamlet (Nick has since reminded me that it's Ernest Jones's theory) that suggests that part of the play's hold over us is how we connect with the play on basic, archetypal, even Oedipal levels. Almost on cue, Gertrude's speech became infused the voice of my mother, and therefore I became Hamlet. The play and its imagery became alive with meaning again. I was reminded how much I needed to be important to my mother, the apple of her eye. Even though my mother's life turned out a lot better than Gertrude's, Shakespeare's tender and intense evocation of Hamlet's relationship with Gertrude found a parallel in me. No wonder this play has been called the greatest play in the English language.

So my ongoing interchange with Nick harkens back to my memories of our tennis team and of courses with him, starting with Shakespeare, more than three decades ago, and to my sense of myself as a sincere and enthusiastic young man longing for guidance but still way too insecure to understand himself. The interchange continues with his amused recollection of me as a fan of the Grateful Dead and sprouts. With his signature wit (Nick takes the Shakespearean aside to new levels), he recently asked me: "By the way, do you still think The Grateful Dead is hotter than Shakespeare?" What I know now is that young people are searching for meaning, that they sense it is out there, that they are trying to awaken from Plato's Cave. They know that the shifting shadows on the wall are deceptive and are not the real light, that they long for that light, what we might call God. But they can get scared of its intensity because it demands that they face all their emotions squarely, and that is a daunting thing to do on one's own.

To answer his question, I told him that, for all their star appeal, I doubt in four hundred years, people will remember the likes of Jerry Garcia or Bob Weir. Still, my interest in analyzing literature helps me appreciate the wisdom infused in the lyrics of songs like "Ripple" or "Terrapin Station," back then and still now. I hope young people listen closely enough to themselves and each other and to teachers like Dr. Clary and the meaningful material they share, and to expect that the liberal arts side of their education will guide them in their lives. It should help them make sense of it all, rather than being a tease that can leave them frustrated that going into the depths can leave them stuck emotionally. Then they won't just settle into being "comfortably numb," but will see that the future has always been in their hands and waste little time finding it.

It doesn't surprise me that Nick continues to provide intellectual guidance to alumni thirty years out of the classroom. This time, he helped me with my Shakespeare curriculum, he inadvertantly inspired me to exercise a dormant urge to write poetry, and he reconnected me with Hamlet and my memories of my mother. His encouragement to publish this poem led me to write this piece, to extend myself in realization and expression. All via email. All after thirty plus years of a classroom and campus connection. So I'm happy to give something back to him: besides toasting Shakespeare -- who wouldn't? -- I also toast Dr. F. Nick Clary for his wisdom -- yes, let's call it that, though he'd dismiss that deftly -- and his willingness to share his intellectual passions and considerable creative energies with his myriad students. I'm sure other St. Michael's students have had a mentor turn into colleague and still remain a mentor. It's a good thing to cherish.

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My Dear Hamlet

What I could not say haunts me still.

This castle, dark, mysterious, no longer mine,

fills my lonely mind, as if my mind has become a castle itself,

its ramparts cold stone, winding passageways,

steps worn with time, damp with fear and failure,

warmed by distant fires, fretful ambitions, lofty hopes driven down,

chilled by secret maneuvers I acquiesced --

what mother would turn childhood friend to enemy --

I agreed, to all that, yes. And yes, Hamlet, his sweat was rank,

he was -- yes, I proceeded from Hyperion to satyr,

and my world went dim.

Eavesdropping made my breath tight and still,

brought little knowledge, just weighted worry, despair,

a tapestry turned around. It was not worth it, after all.

I witnessed that heavy tapestry heaving, why allowed I thus?

I had no life to breathe these words, my dear Hamlet,

no life and now no breath, at all.

What else I could not say:

It was not your madness watched, unwatched, festering.

I was the canker-blossom, I felt mad as sea and wind inside.

These were truth and fear in my mind contending,

and already I was but a ghost to reason.

Yes, I lied to you, to him, but never, dear Hamlet, to myself.

Those inward, truthful gnawings, tainted with Ophelia's rue,

these wore me down, until all I could do or say

was follow him, or proceed, while this castle, my mind, grew inward

upon itself, to digest these stones, so Elsinore became a nutshell,

so all those staircases led back to this:

the madness of so little time,

and a final image of bodies strewn across the floor,

of litter and such waste. Were there others?

My dear Hamlet, tell me no.

As I died, you were still alive, ensworded, infuried, bitter,

vain for him whose memory you defended.

Defend mine, too: range and set this castle,

from weighted worry, back to stone.

I will fast in fire until you do.

I drank to you, and my last words were true.

You may find me upon the battlements, a wind inside the rain,

or behind a tapestry, a dim likeness to who I was,

or a dreamscape remembered with regret.

Remember me, Hamlet, as I did know the truth all along.

Remember me for what I could not say,

for what I did not protest nearly enough:

that I knew you to be truthful, Hamlet,

to be my Hamlet, my dear Hamlet, too true.

-- John Chamberlain