Friday, after a long day of work behind the reference desk at the library, my mother and I attended a lecture given by a Cambridge professor. That is to say, after we'd enjoyed a lovely violin with piano accompaniment, and survived an interminably long montage of someone else's holiday snapshots in all the wrong parts of Europe, he finally spoke.
His message was both eloquent and amusing, but it sounded so much like an unnecessary justification for something people will do anyway. The main portion of his lecture was to expand the philosophical role of Poetry (by Classical and Renaissance definition) in the practical world today, which involved an elucidation of the relationships between the humanities and the sciences, and the humanities and politics. He spoke of the necessity of having finer feelings, of having the audacity to question the status quo from a human, a moral, realistic, and idealistic standpoints provided by an education in the humanities.
The humanities are in no danger of dying. There will always be those people who cannot resist; like those who are drawn to cloisters and abbeys. I could as easily choose to turn my back to sunlight as turn my back to Literature. I have tried both, and without them I am a parody of myself. Sitting in a cubicle, making phonecalls and clicking buttons, telling others which buttons to click, I looked as ridiculous as I felt; an intellect dressed for the opera standing in a breadline. I'm mixing my metaphors, and possibly being insulting.
I think that despite my self-doubts I really am an academic, if not a scholar. I can think of nowhere else that someone so odd could fit in.
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