Two students in the back were whispering to each other.
What are they saying to each other? he wondered.
He stood at the podium, 45 years of teaching English literature to college students behind him. Although past retirement age, he kept going. It was what he lived for.
At this point in his career, distractions or not, everything was spoken with automatic recall, a memorized script. Word for word. Carved in stone.
Amazingly, however, he could still capture an audience. These kids were listening. Listening attentively. Except for these two in the back row.
Sometimes progress is good. Times had changed. There were almost no required courses anymore. When he’d first started, literature courses had been required of all students. Two semesters. Now students could choose. And these two had chosen to study literature. So . . .
Who knows, he thought, maybe they’d heard good things about my class. That would be wonderful.
He watched the secret conversation of the two in the back, while he spoke about Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
“So you see,” he said, “Keats is reading a story on the urn as if the scenes depicted were words written in a book.”
He saw the two smile, their heads momentarily coming closer together.
Maybe they’re boyfriend and girlfriend? he speculated.
“Keats is imagining the possibilities. And in those imaginings, he animates the depictions through his interpretation of them. This creates a tension between the activity he imagines taking place and the fact that everything depicted is static. Silent. It is his speculation that gives life to what he sees.”
The young woman put her hand on the young man’s shoulder, touching it briefly, and they both smiled.
So if they’re in love, he thought, I wonder how much? How long have they been together? How long will their love last?
“And it’s that tension between what may be happening, what Keats may wish is happening, and what is not happening, that gives the poem much of its vibrancy.”
If I were younger, he thought, I’d have stopped my lecture and asked them to please be quiet. My old dour glare accompanying the request was a sure sign on my part in those days that it was not a request at all, but a command. Ah, time and age have done something to me.
He smiled. “And it is this tension that takes Keats to a nearly unbearable position. A heartbreaking dichotomy. For us humans, life is a good thing. Living is good. Experience is welcome.
“These figures on the vase are only lifeless representations of living. No matter what story Keats tries to tell of their activities, no matter how hard he tries to animate them, to breathe life into them, they will never experience living, never experience any experience at all. However – and this is the hell of it for Keats – because they do not live, they will also never die.
“All of us will die, as Keats very well knows he must.”
Maybe they’ll get married, he thought, have kids, have that happy life and a happy ending? I wonder if they met here in my class? That would be wonderful. That I was in some way responsible for bringing them together, for getting them started on the road to a life of wedded bliss. I wonder . . .
He stopped speaking. “You two in the back row there,” he said, pointing to them, “I just have to ask you, what is it you’re talking about?”
The rest of the students turned around to look at the back row. The two had stopped talking, sat there silent.
“Well,” the young woman said, “we were talking about how you bring literature to life. We’ve kind of bonded in our appreciation of your class.”
“Yeah,” said the young man. “You make all this old literature live for us.”
This was not anywhere near what he assumed they might have been whispering about. The surprising compliments warmed him.
“Well thank you very much,” he said. “And just now, when you were smiling, that’s what you were talking about?”
He saw that all the other students were staring at him. A young man in the front row raised his hand. “Professor, sir, what are you talking about?”
He turned his attention from the couple to the student in front. “I’m sorry?”
“Are you okay, professor?” he asked.
He looked askance at the young man. “Okay? What do you mean?”
“Who are you talking to?”
He laughed. “Why them, those two people in the back row.”
He pointed to the couple again.
Everyone turned once more to survey the last row of the classroom. There were murmurs.
“Sir,” said a young woman, “what people in the last row?”
He had to chuckle. Looking back toward the couple, he perceived that they’d moved. The row was empty. He searched for the two lovers.
“Ah, well, it appears they’ve . . . they’ve left.”
He did a quick scan again. The two were gone, no question about it. And in disappearing, they were no longer there to share their love of literature with him, headed off now to who knew where.
Lanning Lee 