The Gadfly, Vol. XXXIV, Issue 13

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In Memoriam

David H. Stephenson 1936-2012

Greenfield Library Archives, 1979

The Gadfly

02 The student newspaper of St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, Maryland 21401 sjca.gadfly@gmail.com www.issuu.com/sjcgadfly www.facebook.com/sjcagadfly Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.

Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine.

The Gadfly meets every Sunday at 7 PM in Room 109 on the first lower level of the Barr-Buchanan Center.

Articles should be submitted by Friday at 11:59 PM to sjca.gadfly@gmail.com.

Staff Nathan Goldman • Editor-in-Chief Ian Tuttle • Editor-in-Chief Hayden Pendergrass • Layout Editor Reza Djalal • Photographer Sasha Welm • Cartoonist Jonathan Barone • Staff Andrew Kriehn • Staff Robert Malka • Staff Sarah Meggison • Staff Kevin Morris • Staff Charles Zug • Staff Contributors Justin Andrews Kimber Richter Steve Edwards Jim Scott Adam Eggers M.W. Sinnett Pamela Kraus Max Socol Chris Nelson Michael Sullivan Chris Olson David Townsend Elizabeth Hennessey Howard Zeiderman

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hank you to everyone who contributed to our commemoraton of the life of Mr. David Stephenson. In order to devote the full issue to Mr. Stephenson, we have chosen to print our other time-sensitive submissions online.

You can read them at issuu.com/ sjcgadfly.

We hope you have a restful holiday vacation. See you in 2013! !

!"#$%&'(%)"(*+,(-& *Editor’s Note: An impromptu commemoration of Mr. Stephenson was held in McDowell Hall on Friday, November 30, 2012. The president delivered the following remarks.

President Christopher B. Nelson

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SF’70

hank you for joining us this afternoon.

We celebrate the life and mourn the death of tutor David Hanford Stephenson, a good, strong, and joyful member of our community, who will be greatly missed by all of us—faculty, staff, and students alike. Mr. Stephenson died yesterday afternoon at the Anne Arundel Medical Center after a struggle with an aggressive form of cancer. This was Mr. Stephenson’s 50th year with the College. In recent years, his seniority earned him the honor of carrying the College’s mace and leading the faculty and students in Convocation and Commencement processionals. I think he took pride in doing this.

David Stephenson came to St. John’s bearing great musical gifts, which were first formally developed during his undergraduate studies at Columbia. Since he joined the faculty in 1963, Mr. Stephenson was active as conductor of the student orchestra and leader of the Freshman Chorus; he displayed a great fondness for the music of Beethoven. He was also fluent in songwriting; most notable, perhaps, are his settings of Heine poems. Most enjoyable, though, might have been his undertaking in the 1990s to write, orchestrate, and star in a musical skit performed by the faculty to Gilbert and Sullivan tunes, as a lesson to students in how to put on a proper and still comical senior skit. Recently, Mr. Stephenson was preparing an April orchestra concert featuring the music of Bach, Mozart, and Mendelssohn. And of course, it was only two weeks ago that we heard a lovely Friday-night lecture from him.

But of course he was well read throughout the work of the Program. Mr. Dylan Knight Rogers, a senior at the College, said of him earlier today: “Mr. Stephenson led our junior laboratory class with the confidence and élan that only come from a great intimacy with the elements of the most difficult sciences. He displayed equal understanding and devotion for the harmonic complexities at work in Beethoven’s symphonic writing. This is easy to understand, for Mr. Stephenson was a great student of nature.”

Mr. Stephenson was a gentle man. He was also a correct man. We saw evidence of his care for the College and for his students in his Committee work, his speech in faculty meetings, and his don rag reports.

In the coming days, we will provide notice of further details of a more formal memorial service for Mr. Stephenson, but we thought it appropriate to gather informally today when we are all together on campus.

We extend our deepest condolences to David’s widow, Helen, and to his family.

Mr. May will share a few words and then will lead us in the singing of “Sicut Cervus.”

Thank you. !

!"#$%&'(%.(/Pamela Kraus

Dean

David Stephenson’s years at St. John’s College were spent persevering in the activity of teaching and learning, which is the life of a tutor. As we know from experience and from other testimonies, he cultivated his many gifts here and made us beneficiaries of them, not only those of music and mathematics, but also of language and art. He did so daily and naturally, without fanfare or sentimentality or drama. In his death he gave us—and especially his students—another gift, that of his example: the simple, deep strength with which he loved and lived teaching and learning right to the end. !

The Gadfly

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!"##"$%&'()$&)"#*&+,-&!#./*.$0($ *Editor’s Note: This interview was first published in Issue 7 of last year’s Gadfly. Because many students did not have the opportunity to get to know Mr. Stephenson, we reprint it here and hope that it serves as the smallest of introductions to a great Johnnie.

How did you come to be a tutor at St. John’s?

My advent at St. John’s was extremely conventional: I sent a few hundred job search letters from graduate school and received half a dozen replies, among them one from the dean of St. John’s (John Kieffer at that time). I had little idea of what the school meant until I visited some classes, but, as soon as I did I was caught. Hard to say exactly why, but certainly a major attraction was my glimpse of a place in which I could spend a lifetime learning in the company of others, sharing and debating ideas and insights, helping and being helped to indulge in all the historical and literary and scientific and philosophical curiosity I had thought I would have to abandon after graduation once the need to earn a living demanded my full attention.

What was the biggest adventure you’ve ever had?

That’s really a hard one. Living a few years in Austria, with excursions into Italy and France, was certainly an adventure linguistically and culturally. To conduct an orchestra or compose music often seems to me equivalent to exploring a foreign land; likewise reading a good book. Sailing, swimming, rock climbing, skiing: all adventures on a small scale. But if you forced me to single out a single occasion involving travel, I suppose I would point to a trip to the Pacific coast or a drive up the St. Lawrence seaway or a cruise in the North Sea and the Baltic...or a search through Beethoven’s original sketchbooks in the Viennese library now situated above the concert hall where many of his works were first performed or...

What is the single most important piece of advice you would like to give to freshmen (or upperclassmen)?

This is heretical, I suppose, but I would say, “Don’t believe any of the authors we read.” They’re just there to make you stronger if you wrestle with them and argue with them, and even if you end up in agreement, it will be your agreement and your understanding that persuades you, not their authority.

What is your favorite seminar book and why?

Montaigne, of course! (At least this year.) And something al-

ways draws me back to the Iliad every other year.

What is your least favorite seminar book and why?

It’s hard not to become impatient with Descartes when he begins to preach and preach philosophy in particular, even though one can’t help admiring his mathematical ingenuity and insight. In his defense, however, I would have to admit that without Descartes I don’t see how Kant would ever have been born.

What is your favorite non-Program book and why?

A few of the moderns keep beckoning me, especially when they shed new light on music or on the fine arts. I’m thinking of philosophers like Merleau-Ponty and Suzanne Langer. But I have to insist that Schopenhauer, for all his pessimism, explained the crucial importance of the arts—and especially music—long before the moderns. He has been too much neglected in this respect.

What is your biggest pet peeve (that students do) in class?

Apologizing. If a student misses a class or an assignment it does maybe do some harm to the class as a whole, but that student suffers more than the rest of us. An absence is rarely blameworthy, or so I hope and believe; failure to prepare for a class, on the other hand, can hardly ever be excused.

What is your favorite St. John’s tradition and why?

There are probably few tutors left who remember the “sophistry contest” that used to launch Reality Weekend. It was an occasion when tutors could join in the fun without entirely ruining their reputation. But that was in the Golden Age, when one tutor could tell a joke [that] would take ten [tutors] to mount nowadays.

What is your favorite class to be a tutor for and why?

The Dean and Instruction Committee try to make it possible for tutors to teach what they want to teach each year, so my favorite class is usually the one I’m teaching right now. But a lot depends on the students. An active and enthusiastic class on a difficult book or topic is much more rewarding than a dutiful but pedestrian class on a nominally more exciting subject. !

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avid Stephenson was a delightful person with a visionary understanding of the possibilities of St. John’s’ mission. I will miss him deeply and the many warm and enlightening conversations we shared. The wonder and power of music, the epiphanies and brilliant sensuality of Proust, the striking immediacy of poetry, profound insights into philosophical investigations, the joy of mathematics, all came richly to David in a seamless garment of unending learning. How fortunate we are to have had David among us for so many years.

— David Townsend, Tutor

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IN MEMORIAM

The Gadfly

am, to begin with, an unreconstructed modernist. Always have been and (probably) always will be. Wrote a dissertation on Eric Voegelin (“fundamental experience of the cosmos”); read and reread all the Aristotle (the order of the world is consummated in its intelligibility to man); Euclid Book XIII (Glory! Hallelujah!); Apollonius (Yay!)— Descartes (Boo!); even read the word of the Prophet Jacob Klein, Praised Be His Name!

Water off a duck’s back, every bit of it. The world may fit comfortably in your mind (since the “world” is, by definition, whatever fits comfortably in your mind?), but it does not fit in mine. I have no experience of the world as cosmos, but rather as a somewhat motley collection of sequential intimations of an order which will always—and rather spectacularly—elude me.

The process for me “is essentially infinite”; my world “is a world still to be composed and never finished.”

The phrases I have quoted are taken from David Stephenson’s lecture “Ptolemy’s Truth,” delivered on 4 April 1997, five years before I joined the faculty of the College, and published in the St. John’s Review in the following year. The central focus of David’s lecture was his comparison of the epicycles of Ptolemy with individual terms in a Fourier series; its main achievement, a luminous connection between two seemingly disparate approaches to the order of the world; its importance for me, a beautiful illustration of the sort of deep, calm reflection that is the means of all genuine interpretation and the basis of all fruitful conversation.

I once suggested to David that he could just as easily have entitled it “Fourier’s Truth”—the circular functions, after all, are a vast mathematical generalization of Ptolemy’s circles. He smiled his crinkly little smile and said, “We don’t read Fourier, do we?” Gentle, non-combative, and, as I later realized, ironic. Keep thinking, he was saying, and keep your eye on the needs of the College.

Keep your eye, in particular, on “Ptolemy’s Truth.” It was for me a turning point. It has made all the difference. — M. W. Sinnett, Tutor

y most vivid memory and impression stems from my sophomore year when I and my classmate and dorm neighbor Jim Carey were both in David’s nine o’clock music tutorial.

Every evening at around midnight Jim and I would wander over to West Street for a sub sandwich, and then return to our rooms in West Pinkney to settle in at Jim’s ancient and deteriorating phonograph to listen to Brahms and Schubert till 3, or 4, or even sometimes 5 in the morning. Though each had vowed to be the alarm for both of us, we were invariably late. Years later, in a don rag, David was berating a student who, though serious, was always late to his early music tutorial. As he described the negative effect on others, he looked across the table and saw Jim and me waiting our turn to report. His jaw literally dropped, and then a few moments later, after he seemed to puff on his by then imaginary pipe, he said perhaps he was being too harsh on this young man. For who knew, he continued, but perhaps this student would someday become a tutor. He knew that had certainly happened before and therefore could happen again. He offered this to the committee chair to record as he looked across to the two of us and shook his head with an amused or perhaps even more pointed smile. Of course, Jim and I turned every shade in the longer wavelengths of shame and embarrassment as David gave the two of us together the don rag report he probably wished he had been able to deliver years before.

— Howard Zeiderman, Tutor

The Gadfly

IN MEMORIAM

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Greenfield Library Archives, ca. 1983

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had Mr. Stephenson in junior seminar (co-leader Leo Raditsa), in 1982-83. Also, he was my preceptorial tutor that year on Leibniz’s New Essays on Human Understanding. I had much respect for Mr. Stephenson’s intelligence and relaxed manner. He was confident without needing to impress others about how smart he was, and curious, without trying to show that the things he was interested in were obviously the most important aspect of the work being discussed. I thought we dealt with the Leibniz book in great depth. Liebniz wrote it as a response to Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In many respects it was a Platonist’s response to an Aristotelian. Mr. Stephenson had a great grasp of the subject. The seminar that year was an occasion of great growth for me intellectually. I wrote my best essay of the four years in there, on Paradise Lost. I always felt I owed a lot to Mr. Raditsa and Mr. Stephenson. — Jim Scott A’84

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was in Mr. Stephenson’s freshman Greek class, 197980. I believe it was the first time he taught Greek, and we had lively, productive classes, even though he would frequently point out his lack of expertise in the language. He created a supportive place to learn together.

I find myself wondering why he made such a big impression on me. As the first person in my family to attend college, coming from the South, St. John’s was a real stretch for me—just as teaching Greek was for him.

And I think he showed me that humility, humor, work, curiosity, and kindness are fine tools for learning and leadership. When I think of him, I remember his silvery baritone singing voice, the amused look in his eyes and the way a corner of his mouth would twitch a bit when he thought of something funny, and a very bright green velvet sportcoat he sometimes wore. Thank you so much, Mr. Stephenson, for helping me through my first year at St. John’s. — Kimber Paschall Richter, A’84

r. Stephenson was my tutor for sophomore music, 2004-05. He’s the first tutor who was there when I was who has passed, and I do not look forward to hearing of more. The following are a few things that I fondly remember of him.

Mr. Stephenson was a fine gentleman who, like me, wore a straw summer hat (though mine did not have the clear, green plastic visor that his did). He once spoke to me about where Plato mentions how some people have the ability to make money—and then, with a smirk and a smile in his eye, quickly added that he was not one of those people.

Once, while a few of us were drinking in the Quad late one night, Mr. Stephenson came walking through. I stopped him to ask a question, then thought better of it. In response to my saying that it’s foolish for a student to speak to a tutor while drunk, he responded, “Well, it’s too late for that, so why don’t you just ask your question.”

One of my favorite memories of Mr. Stephenson was when he assigned an essay for sophomore music, requiring that the paper must focus on music, that is, as he said, “it must use musical terms.” Well, I, like Socrates, know that I know nothing (especially about music, at any rate). So I set out to write a fine essay. The paper discussed music in terms of sounds, including vocals—especially foreign words. Since I didn’t know the language, I merely associated the vocals with all the other instruments. I used musical terms, just like he asked. But I was far from satisfied with the paper, so I took it to my trusty writing assistant to get his thoughts. Though his words were kind and constructive, the assistant basically told me the essay was bunk. I agreed. But I also didn’t know how to fix it, so, of course, I handed it in. Mr. Stephenson had nothing but good things to say about the paper! The full extent of the “musical terms” that I used (a mere one time each, just as they are listed here) were: “soprano,” “mezzo,” “tenor,” and “bass.”

Mr. David Hanford Stephenson met the student where the student was to pull the student further upward and forward. — Michael Sullivan, A‘07

IN MEMORIAM

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was lucky enough to study music and seminar with Mr. Stephenson, and blessed along the way by his mentorship and friendship. He was such a kind, thoughtful, and funny man. I remember how easy he was to talk to and how I much I enjoyed the chats we had when I caught up with him walking his dog along Prince George Street. He had a quiet eloquence and great generosity. He inspired in me a love for opera and choral music; you couldn’t help but be drawn in by his passion for great music and his desire that you share that passion. And wow was he smart.

Working with him on my senior essay was a master class in how to support the search for meaning and illuminate the way toward understanding—all with great patience and humor. Mr. Stephenson made a tremendous difference in my life, and I am truly grateful for his many gifts so generously bestowed on me and many many others.

I send sincere condolences to Helen and Jennie Stephenson. — Elizabeth M. Hennessey, A’77

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r. Stephenson was my tutor for junior lab 1978-79. The class was small, maybe a little too small, because some of the members were the least loquacious members of the class of 1980. For the last day of the spring semester class, Sandy Dornich proposed to me that we bring wine and cheese to celebrate.

When she told Mr. Stephenson of her plan, he said, “But can we still have class, too?” And indeed we did. — Steve Edwards, A’80

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r. Stephenson was a kind and gentle man with a wry smile. I used to talk with him of a summer evening, 37 years ago, when he would appear on front campus in the cool of the darkness, taking his little dog for a walk.

He invited the summer freshmen, then called Febbies, to his home for a cocktail, and I was lucky to go along with them, being the “Febbie Father” in their dormitory that summer.

Mr. Stephenson was a cordial host to us. Thanks to him for the memory of his virtue. — Chris Olson, A’78

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The Gadfly

r. Stephenson was the friendly, enthusiastic, slightly mad leader of our sophomore music program. I struggled with the material, and for a while made the mistake of blaming the tutor. I doubt I ever really got a handle on music, either as theory or expression, but by year’s end Mr. Stephenson had won me over. I remember watching in stupefaction as he played one of his own atonal compositions at a small concert in McDowell; or the unconfirmed rumors that flew around our class that he was the pseudonymous author of multiple pulp sci-fi novels.

His preceptorial on Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way—a book that really ought to be part of the Program—was a revelation for me. As much as I enjoyed seminar, and as much as I savored it in the final months of my senior year, I don’t think I ever felt so much anticipation for conversation as I did during that precept. But the experience would have been so much less without Mr. Stephenson’s patience, good humor, taste, and depth of knowledge, particularly of art. I believe he felt the interplay of art and memory on a deep level, and through him we had a glimpse of it.

To me, Mr. Stephenson embodied certain peculiar qualities of the ideal tutor: openness, breadth of learning, interest in students, and patience for the painstaking process of educating those who are only just arriving to the world of books. I’ll never forget our final Proust seminar in his home, where the walls were covered in beautiful art, any more than I will forget a Saturday afternoon weeding his garden and being paid in beer. I admire and even envy his life and the joy he took in it. — Max Socol, A’08

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r. Stephenson was a serious scholar, and his intensity set the tone for not only freshman seminar, but also acted as a model for how we were to approach our studies for the next four years. — Adam Eggers, A’91

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!"#$%&'(%)*+,#-,./0,1(2342*+)* Librarian Cara Sabolcik has graciously compiled the following list of publications by Mr. Stephenson available in our very own Greenfield Library. The list is a testament to the breadth of Mr. Stephenson’s academic interests—it includes studies in philosophy, music, mathematics, and more. We hope this list will serve to help the Polity continue to engage with Mr. Stephenson’s life and work.

Articles • “Introduction to ‘The Tuning Fork.’” St. John’s Review 48.2 (2005). 27-28. Print.

• “Is Nature a Republic?” St. John’s Review 35.2 (Spring 1984): 34-39. Print.

• “Muthos and Logos.” St. John’s Review 48.3 (2005) 41-55. Print.

• “Ptolemy’s Truth.” St. John’s Review 44.3 (1998): 73-96. Print.

Faculty File • “Humanistic Education and Scientific Literacy.” Hood College. 31 Mar. 1979. Lecture. Print. (Call Number: FaFi-StephensonD001) Lectures (Audio) • “Beauty alone has looked on Euclid bare.” St. John’s College. 24 Jan. 1974. Audiocassette. (Call Number: Tape 261) • “Ion’s Art.” St. John’s College. 30 Mar. 1990. Audiocassette. (Call Number: Tape 344) • “Is Nature a Republic?” St. John’s College. 6 May 1983. Audiocassette. (Call Number: Tape 630) • “The ‘oceanic feeling’: whole and part: a lecture.” St. John’s College. 18 Jan. 1979. Audiocassette. (Call Number: Tape 438) • “The Sin of Learning, ‘in Faust we Trust.’” St. John’s College. 26 Mar. 1993. Audiocassette. (Call Number: Tape 297) • “Talk on L. Carnot.” St. John’s College. 13 Jan. 1982. Audiocassette. (Call Number: Tape 635) Lectures (Print) • “The Novel’s Moral Playground.” St. John’s College. 15 Jan 2010. Lecture. Print. (Call Number: Lec-STE 2010 Jan 15) • “The ‘oceanic feeling.’” St. John’s College. 18 Jan. 1979. Lecture. Print. (Call Number: Lec-STE 1979 Jan 18) • “Ptolemy’s Truth.” St. John’s College. n.d. Lecture. Print. (Call Number: Lec-STE n.d.)

• “Refraction under Least Action.” St. John’s College. 1987. Lecture. Print. (Call Number: Lec-STE 1987) • “The Sin of Learning.” St John’s College. 26 Mar. 1993. Lecture. Print. (Call Number: Lec-STE 1993 Mar 26) Manuals • “Freshman Music.” Annapolis, MD: St. John’s College, 1996.

• “Readings on Differential and Integral Calculus and Related Subjects.” Annapolis, MD: St. John’s College, 1971. (Call Number: Oversize QA303.R43 1971) Video • Twelfth Night. Dir. Elise Berg. Music: David Stephenson. St. John’s College 30 Apr. 2000. Videocassette.

(Call Number: Archives VHS 682a)

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!"#$"%%&'()*)+%#*,')"-)./0,1 Justin Andrews

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for Mr. Stephenson, in memoriam

Standing on a chair barely remembered the lock of hair falling and brushed back and falling it was all so hard to pay attention to the anachronistic spectacles always sliding his conducting our being conducted on the Fridays of fifteen years ago seer-sucker a squint eye as exasperated measure all of us there waiting to drink.

And death cuffs my stomach the way once when, alone, with a voice which, as one then said, was not the best, he stood on his chair with his spectacles sliding and sang for us Hinei Mah Tov cracked and joyous and full of life and everyone for once shut up.

I had forgotten that, on days of unexpected warmth in early spring when I sing the same song to myself and catch myself happy, I am remembering him.

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