Under-Appreciated

The recent death, at 33, of Jonathan R. Grandine '70, Assistant Professor of English, is the sort of tragedy that, in the nature of things, will be under-appreciated. He died too young to evoke the praise of colleagues for his work, and because two years have gone by since he was forced to give up teaching in the College, there will be few undergraduates who remember him. This letter is an attempt to indicate how great Harvard's loss is.

Jonathan was born to teach English. To the extent Harvard gave him the opportunity, it worked in conformity with Nature; to the extent Harvard frustrated him, it sinned against Providence and human potential. After a first meeting Jonathan might not have seemed suited to the role of lecturer. He had a habitual slight stammer. But this disappeared when he lapsed, as he did frequently and nearly unconsciously, from his own words into a quotation from a poem. It then became clear which was his native language, his real voice.

He was not one of those teachers who are great because teaching is the most important thing in their life. Poetry was the most important thing in his life, and this was a palpable fact. I knew him during all four of my years as an undergraduate, and I could never identify a set of critical principles that could claim his allegiance. So far as I could tell he did not need any. Literature was his element, and he no more needed an academic theory to deal with it than a dolphin needs swimming lessons. With the greatest sympathy and delicately discerning judgement he simply read the great poets. Of course, one reason he could be so persuasively dismissive of what he called "lit. crit." was that he had mastered the arcana of his own field before relegating them to his own critical lumber-room. And in talking with him you were always conscious of his irony, a quality so highly developed and anarchic in Jonathan that at times you could see it threatening to break its chains and devastate an entire poet or critical perspective.

I suppose there were young professors more popular with students. Jonathan had high standards and could be unbending about them. He disciplined himself to work within the sometimes strait-jacketing rules of his department. And there was no doubt a layer of reserve to be penetrated before easy conversation with him was possible. He did not have a personality that flourished at sherry parties or doughnut-and-cider klatches. Socially, he was in Harvard, but not of it. Once his shyness was breached, however, no one holding a Harvard appointment could have been more helpful, and self-effacingly so. In the last week I worked on my thesis with him, for example, he rearranged his schedule so that I could drop off a chapter with him in the evenings, and pick it up the next morning at 9 a.m. with his comments. I felt like my crudely drawn icon had been labored on overnight by an ego-less angel liberal with light and gold-leaf.

Finally, in the nearly two years since Jonathan's illness was first diagnosed his courage in the face of a painful, hopeless, debilitating condition was extraordinary. He went on teaching (in the Extension division) until it was literally physically impossible for him to do so. On the eve of a critical operation he busied himself grading exams so that students would not be inconvenienced by delay. He never lost his humor, self-knowledge or consideration for others.

The loss of those who knew him is great. The loss of those who would have known him, but will not have the chance, is as great. Paul K. Rowe '76