Mark Van Doren

When Mark Van Doren delivered his first lecture at Harvard last February a capacity crowd jammed the hall. They filled every seat, every inch of floor space, window ledge and platform until the man at the lectern was practically engulfed Looking somewhat bewildered by the crush of humanity Van Doren stood quietly, hand touched lightly to his chin in a characteristic gesture.

He began to talk--lightly and humorously about his course, writing, life and letters. He smiled at his own stories and the class laughed with him. His eyes flashed around the room, and drew all his listeners into his presence. When he finished the assembled multitude roared their approval, and trundled off to classes, lunch, the library.

Almost four hundred students signed up the next week for Humanities 119--The Narrative Art--a course Van Doren devised in his last years at Columbia. Some say it is the best course they've ever taken, others that it is the loudest of the roaring guts. Whatever the consensus, the style and content of the course tell a great deal about this man who taught at Morningside Heights for almost 40 years and published close to 30 volumes of poetry, fiction, and criticism.

To Read Carefully

In simple terms Van Doren wants his students not only to read carefully but to think about the four masterpieces--The Odyssey, portions of the Old Testament, The Castle, Don Quixote--assigned in the course. He is a teacher. And like the best of teachers he knows that no student will fully grasp an idea or story until he has made it his own through active, even enthusiastic concern.

Of his lectures Van Doren said last week "I talk about the books professionally, like one writer to another. I try to tell the students how I have read the books. That's what criticism is." He tells the students to enjoy the books, to enjoy writing the short papers he requires on each reading assignment. One does not hear that around here often, but fun is a very important thing to Van Doren.

He believes deeply in the value of reading original work, and from the beginning was involved in the Great Books course at Columbia started by John Erskine. Two of his closest friends--Scott Buchanan at St. John's College and Mortimer Adler at Chicago--were leaders of the resurgent educational theory that all students should read certain books that form the core of a society's culture.

Living Masterpieces

When asked what he hoped a student would derive from his course Van Doren answered it all depended on "what is left in the mind of a student. If he is left with four masterpieces living in his mind, that's a hell of a lot."

In large part Van Doren has probably failed. Most students of Harvard measure the amount of effort they should put into a course by the number of books on the reading list or difficulty of the final exam. Maybe it is too much to expect more, and many people actually feel guilty for enjoying, or for reading only four books.

Perhaps that tells more about Harvard than about Van Doren. His vision of reading, and of education in general remains a noble one. For the few who understand it is a real and tremendously exciting one.

Van Doren's other life, his life away from teaching and criticism, is that of a poet. "The art of poetry I conceived to be the art of telling stories or otherwise rendering account of the single world all men inhabit" he writes in The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren. Thus his verse becomes a record of his life, both physical and mental. He wrote often of the war, of his family, of children, of love. Perhaps his richest subject matter is the country. He was born on a farm in Hope, Illinois and has spent much of his later life on a farm in Cornwall, Conn.

His poetry, like his Autobiography contains little blatant philosophizing. Both are journals of places seen, emotions felt, people known. If they carry one message it is the celebration of life itself, sensitivity to the simple things of this "single world."

Writing is one of his favorite topics of conversation. His amazing prolificness is testimony to his first statement about the subject that needn't be articulated: "I have no sympathy for people who say they have no time to writer. We don't have to do anything." He related how Shakespeare had left his wife and children to go to London to write. "It is absurd to say he shouldn't have done that" Van Doren said.

Approach to Teaching

His approach to the teaching of writing is different from most others: "I teach reading, not writing." In the opening lecture of Humanities 119 he said that by searching for the sources of power in a story "I might be able to help you write better novels someday." Thus he talks not of style to his students, but of "themes, visions, fables, wisdom."

He tells the story of Herman Wouk (for whom he makes no claims as a novelist) who decided to be a writer, and spent three years just reading the great stories of the world. This is close to what Van Doren believes one should do and modern novelists do not.

One senses that he believes certain stories are true, and have meaning for all men in all ages. These are the stories that endure, and the ones that should serve as models for young writers. Today, he says, "Writers choose mediocre models--last year's novel, not Homer."

If Van Doren has one consistent point to make about style it is that the writer must be completely drenched with his subject before writing. Otherwise his creation lacks unity and wholeness. He relates the story of how he wrote his play, The Last Days of Lincoln. For three years he prowled around New York bookstores, buying and reading everything he could find about Lincoln. One day he was on a lecture tour in North Caroline. Although he had left all his notes home Van Doren says "I heard Lincoln talking to me." He took out the hardbound black notebook he always keeps with him and began to write. Within a week the play was virtually complete.

An incipient writer remembers some advice given him by a newspaper editor for whom he worked during high school. "This piece sounds like you have been writing from notes. Chew everything up and spit it out in one stream" he said. If the metaphor is a bit inelegant the advice is sound, and it is not an accident that the editor was one of Van Doren's most devoted and fondly remembered students at Columbia.

Van Doren and his wife now reside in the apartment on the top floor of Leverett House's F tower once occupied by his old friend, Archibald MacLeish. After talking for more than an hour one morning last week Van Doren arose and went over to the window, which overlooks the Charles, the Business School, and other local phenomena.

With an excited grin he embraced the vista, and started asking questions of his visitor: "What is the name of that hill in the background, I haven't found anyone who can tell me? What are those small boats (the answer was sculls)?" Then he pointed to two small ducks swimming blithely past an onrushing shell. "Look at that pair" he said, "my wife and I have noticed they are always together, and are never bothered by the boats."

Perhaps all that Van Doren had been trying to say about the course, literature, and life came clear in those reactions. He lives with a great sense of personal discovery. He becomes excited about books, horses, about sunshine as if it were all new to him, even new to the world. His poems and his Autobiography are about his discovery of the world, neither more nor less. His criticism, like his lectures, are primarily records of his response to particular books.

He is simply a very happy man, finding joy in the perpetual newness of the world and the imaginations of men. He teaches us, above all, to seek this joy.