Burt addresses new honorees
n Seventy-five seniors and six juniors were inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honors society Saturday.
by Harry Shipps
Senior Writer
News | 5/25/10
Posted online at 5:35 PM EST on 5/24/10
Prof. John Burt (ENG) gave the Phi Beta Kappa address to this year's inductees into the Brandeis chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at the induction ceremony held last Saturday in the Spingold Theater Center.
This year, 75 members of the senior class and six members of the junior class were elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest honors organization in the United States, according to information given to attendees of the ceremony. According to the official Phi Beta Kappa website, "The ideal Phi Beta Kappa has demonstrated intellectual integrity, tolerance for other views, and a broad range of academic interests." Each year, about 1 percent of college students are invited to join Phi Beta Kappa, according to the website.
Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe welcomed initiates after a brief introduction from Prof. Andreas Teuber, chair of the Philosophy department and president of Brandeis' chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the Mu chapter of Massachusetts.
"This group of students are our most outstanding academic accomplishers," Jaffe said.
After Jaffe's welcome, Prof. Patricia Johnston (CLAS) called the initiates up one by one, and Jaffe presented them with their awards and honor cords
During his address, titled "Suffering and the Old Masters," Burt read the W.H. Auden poem "Musée des Beaux Arts." He suggested that the "ostensible subject" of the painting upon which Auden based the poem, Pieter Breughel's "'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," appears only as a single part of a much larger story. According to Burt, Dutch artists during Breughel's time widely embraced the idea of depicting the world as it appears in the here and now-what Burt deemed the "thisness" of the world. This was important to Auden, suggested Burt, because Auden wrote this poem as he was realizing that no idea, no matter how large, can substitute for the "here and now … of actually, worldly experience."
The lesson to be learned from this poem is not only that people must "refrain from brutalizing the world, this world, in the name of big ideas that transcend that world," said Burt, but also that one should not entertain an idea unless one holds it with a "certain skeptical detachment." Burt said that poet John Keats' term for this sort of stance toward ideas is negative capability.
This year, 75 members of the senior class and six members of the junior class were elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest honors organization in the United States, according to information given to attendees of the ceremony. According to the official Phi Beta Kappa website, "The ideal Phi Beta Kappa has demonstrated intellectual integrity, tolerance for other views, and a broad range of academic interests." Each year, about 1 percent of college students are invited to join Phi Beta Kappa, according to the website.
Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe welcomed initiates after a brief introduction from Prof. Andreas Teuber, chair of the Philosophy department and president of Brandeis' chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the Mu chapter of Massachusetts.
"This group of students are our most outstanding academic accomplishers," Jaffe said.
After Jaffe's welcome, Prof. Patricia Johnston (CLAS) called the initiates up one by one, and Jaffe presented them with their awards and honor cords
During his address, titled "Suffering and the Old Masters," Burt read the W.H. Auden poem "Musée des Beaux Arts." He suggested that the "ostensible subject" of the painting upon which Auden based the poem, Pieter Breughel's "'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," appears only as a single part of a much larger story. According to Burt, Dutch artists during Breughel's time widely embraced the idea of depicting the world as it appears in the here and now-what Burt deemed the "thisness" of the world. This was important to Auden, suggested Burt, because Auden wrote this poem as he was realizing that no idea, no matter how large, can substitute for the "here and now … of actually, worldly experience."
The lesson to be learned from this poem is not only that people must "refrain from brutalizing the world, this world, in the name of big ideas that transcend that world," said Burt, but also that one should not entertain an idea unless one holds it with a "certain skeptical detachment." Burt said that poet John Keats' term for this sort of stance toward ideas is negative capability.
Be the first to comment on this story