The Werther Report 002 - The University

in which I reminisce about being a drunk student

Initially I had planned to write a bit about Chekhov for this one, but I was listening to some of my old music the other day and had one of those vivid involuntary memories that jumps you back in time. I was reminded of a day in my second year of university. It was a stunning, warm October day, one of those October days that make it feel like summer hasn’t yet ended. Clear blue skies, shining sun, so hot out that you could wear shorts. I was 19. I was taking a course on the Greeks as an elective. It was just for fun, I had no special interest in them yet beyond having read a few Greek philosophical texts. I had no exposure yet to Homer. The professor for this course was an incredible man. Big, barrel chested, with a ruddy red face, he would shout out Spartan war cries in the original Greek so loudly that students in other classes would come to ours see what all the noise was about. This professor would force us to come up to the front and act out scenes from Greek plays, something I initially avoided, but by the courses end I was volunteering for because it was so fun. What I liked most about the man was his immediate and obvious love for his subject, his absolute passion for it. He seemed always on the edge of laughter, always smiling as he spoke, always full of energy; he always looked mischievous, like he was about to pull a prank. On this particular day we were getting to the end of a discussion about the Iliad. The course was an overview of all of Greek culture, so we hadn't stopped for too long to read the Iliad, only excerpts, because there was so much to cover. On this day he told us about the shield of Achilles, forged by Hephaestus in one of the last books of the Iliad. The shield is famous for the image depicted on it.

On the shield is depicted the sun, the sky, the sea, and then two cities, humming with life. In one there are weddings and wedding-feasts, and fair maidens go from their chambers and young men dance in celebration. There is also a court of law, where a dispute is being decided - two men quarrel, and the wise elders stand to give fair judgment as to who is in the right. Around the other city are two armies, deciding to lay siege or to storm the city. The people of the city are sallying force against the besiegers, clothed in glittering armour, and a battle is depicted on the banks of a river where shepherds and their flocks try to flee to safety. Fate is depicted covered in blood, dragging three men, one living, one wounded, and one dead, each to their various ends. There is depicted great fields of wheat and corn, animals, farmhands sitting to a meal, an ox being slaughtered as divine sacrifice, a vineyard heavy with grapes. A herd of cattle is depicted in gold and tin. Two terrible lions hunt the cattle, and one is gored and bleeds profusely; the herdsmen, afraid of the lions, stay back, and only their dogs are brave enough to approach. Finally on the shield there is a scene of a lovely green glade, where beautiful youths dance, young men and women. The women are garlanded in flowers; the men carry daggers of silver about their waists and try to woo the women. A musician plays a lyre and they dance, each man trying to outdo the others and attract the most beautiful women of all. Finally, around the whole of the shield, the great river, Oceanus, is rendered in blue.

Homer spends many pages describing this shield in stunning detail. Our professor relayed it all to us as it was written and then set the book down. At this point his usually booming voice went quiet. "The shield is a vision of all of life,” he said. “Depicted on it is all of human life as it was to the Homeric Greeks; it is this that Achilles will carry into battle. It is this vision of human life that will protect Achilles in battle, but there is a cost - Achilles must be strong enough to bear it."

These words struck me to the quick. He ended class not long after but the image of the shield repeated itself again and again. The vision of all of life, of the Universal; only the greatest warrior of all the Acheans is strong enough to carry it. Achilles, charging onto the dark battlefield, a shining light, carrying that triumphant vision on his shield, parting the darkness, parting the Trojans. It was then that I understood the Greeks; it was then that I understood Homer. When faced with the horrors of the Trojan war, faced with absolute despair at the death of Patrocles, Achilles did not falter. Instead, he picked up all of life and bore it into battle. In the darkest despair he had said Yes to life, Yes, again and again, Achilles would have life, he would bear it, he could bear it. It was then that I finally understood the Greeks. It was then that I first awoke from the dream. 

I stepped out of the classroom that afternoon in a daze and thought of nothing but the shield the entire walk to my dormroom. I ran into some girls I knew. I remember them inviting me to some party or something, but I was so excited, so engrossed in the image from the classroom that I was barely able to talk to them. I stammered my words and laughed a lot - I think they thought I was drunk The sky was still shining blue, the golden sun bore down and reflected from every window, and everything, everything seemed magical, invigorated, alive. The same sky Achilles would have seen stood over me now; the same scenes, of farmers, of the court, of the beautiful maidens and the dancing youths with their silver knives that existed then also existed now, in my life. These scenes had repeated since time immemorial, since the mythological past. And - to steal a sentiment from Chekhov - if this image could so effect me, so invigorate my own life, it meant it was still alive in me - I had touched one end of the great chain of history, and the other end had moved. Athens lived. The same Universal vision of the world that protected Achilles would protect me also, if only I were strong enough to bear it.

I think I have a very differing opinion about the value of the University, and the “university experience”, than many in the online circles I hang around in. Generally the university is online understood only as a waste of time and a great deal of money, or a means to a degree you don’t care for that at least will get you a job. It is an immensely cynical vision but it isn’t incorrect. For the majority of people I think it is a waste of time. I think you’re better off doing literally anything else than getting a degree in marketing or business or whatever. I was lucky - I went to a small, local school, not nearly as expensive, and got a degree in something that interested me and landed me a job pretty quickly out of school. The decline in the quality of the education received in university is abysmal. It’s been talked about many times and I won’t get into it, but “C’s get degrees” is beyond true now and you can teach yourself far better than most professors can teach you. I agree with all of this, I’ve seen it first hand: in my brief career as an academic a policy was instituted that essentially did not allow us to fail anyone. This was during the corona virus, when the difficulty of the courses had already dropped so dramatically that you barely had to show up to pass. It was ridiculous. It was nearly insulting.

And yet still I have a great romantic love for the university. I think that sentiment is on plain display in much of my writing.

When I was 18 and I first arrived at university I knew immediately that I wanted to change my life. I didn’t want to be who I was in high school, because who I was in high school was a coward. I was afraid to act, afraid to be anyone, unable to look at myself without shame. I couldn’t talk to girls. That was a big one. I was a chickenshit coward who couldn’t talk to girls. A person who was afraid to say and do the things he knew he should do, from - what? fear of the opinions of others? of people I didn’t even like? I couldn’t tell you where this cowardice stemmed from. I wasn’t disliked or unpopular or whatever, it wasn’t so much the incel origin story I would like to have convinced myself it was, I was well liked enough and had many friends and had even been on some dates, I was good at sports and very good at school, but much of what I did I did out of some sort of fear. I lived in the shadow of everyone else. I didn’t know who I wanted to be or who I could be. Narcissus is never allowed to know who he is, he never understands his own boundaries: “you are able to do this, you cannot do this,” he is never able to test himself and so instead he dreams of all the things he could be, limitless, he stares at his reflection and in the end he becomes nothing. There I was, staring into the pool, wishing I knew. I was consumed by feelings of insignificance, weakness, that doglike sense that compels you to bow before those you don’t really believe deserve your respect out of social fear, the sentiment that you cannot take, you must ask and wait politely… the feeling of a slave. I had started reading philosophy, virtue ethics, to try to understand what was wrong with me, how to change, why I couldn’t change myself. Even there I needed to be told how to change, I couldn’t do it myself without permission from someone else. And so entering university there was only one thing I was certain of: I did not know how but I knew I had to change my life.

It was in the university, in moments like I describe above, that another kind of life was revealed to me. I don’t think anywhere else it would have been possible. I began to feel a kind of personal freedom, a dizzying freedom, a sense of power that grew imperceptibly each day. I read and began to lift weights and began to learn more and more, to excel in my field, to write, I started talking to girls, and slowly, slowly I began to wring from my veins every drop of slave blood. Reading about the Greeks was the start - it was astonishing to learn that people like that had lived, that real human beings had lived and walked on this earth, proud, able, free. They weren’t compelled, they chose. The first time I saw a picture of the Doryphoros I could have wept. The gaze of that statue - at once aristocratic, above what it sees, and yet at the same time affirming, looking not down on life but at it, directly, hiding nothing from himself, no longer needing to lie to himself - I saw there the image of what I wished to be, hewn in perfect stone.

The sentiment I had in university cannot be better summarized than Chekhov did in one of his letters, an exerpt I’ve posted many times.

I can’t explain exactly what it was about university that did this for me. I want to say it was freedom: freedom in the sense that for the first time in my life I was able to chart my own course, decide, exactly, who I wanted to be, that I could finally make decisions that would impact my life. I had free time to study what I wanted, to learn, to read, to speak to others who were as excited as me, as hungry to learn. But it was also that growing sense of my own power, that I was able to excel on my own, that through my own work I could become great and worthwhile as a person. There is something to be said about being surrounded by beauty - the broad campus lawns, the big brick buildings covered in ivy, attractive young people, pretty girls. All of it worked together in some kind of magic that made everything meaningful and wonderful.

The entire thing was perfect. I had never experienced anything like it before. Every summer was a slog - I just wanted to go back, I wanted summer to end so I could wander around campus again, get drunk in the student bar and talk stupid philosophy, go to classes, talk to girls, read, write, lift weights in the gym, think. Maybe in the university for the first time all of life stood before me, looking not like a fixed course but a broad, open field, inviting me, demanding that I reach out and take what I wanted. That I take what was to be mine. Or maybe I just miss getting fucking hammered on Wednesday night in the student bar at karaoke and puking on my way to class the next morning. I don’t know. But I miss it.