Dittohead ...The Folly of Being Phony
—Bayard Taylor
The whole day seemed swallowed up by rain and then, the mist moved in. The leaded windows of my office were opaque. Foggy figures crossed the glass.
All in all, it was a lovely day, not bright and sunny as most prefer but having character, broody and introverted as Hamlet, the Melancholy Dane…
Dark as me.
It suited me well, given my austere temperament. The only moth to trouble the mind’s eye was fleeting glimpses of Gloria Cantwell’s face on the passing watery wraiths.
Gloria is my Muse and colleague as well as my winsome nemesis.
Just last week she invaded my graduate English lecture and surreptitiously entered the room and hid in the back row to escape detection. But I spied her face like a dusky pansy in a sea of daisies.
Ironically, we were studying the Dark Lady sonnets. I read the lines, The better angel is a man right fair, the worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
A scholar delights in nothing more than making connections and I was in my element.
It was in my most professorial manner I sonorously intoned the words. Yep, from God's lips to mine.
Man, was I gifted.
A hundred sweater backs were bent over notebooks furiously taking notes. Gloria, however, was frowning. It was quite off-putting and kept me off-balance the rest of the lecture.
The following afternoon she dropped by my office.
“I caught part of your lecture on sonnet 144 yesterday,” she smiled.
“Really? I’m flattered. So, what do you think?”
Not long ago she was one of my brightest doctoral students. I still fight my lower nature when she’s around, but I’ve learned to sublimate my desires and channel them into witty repartee.
“I wondered why you didn’t comment directly on Shakespeare’s words.”
“You mean explicate the poem?” I huffed.
“Why not? The text is so beautiful and full of passion—it’s one of my favourites.”
No doubt, you ill-coloured wench, I mused.
The thought sprang into my mind but, of course, was not voiced. Instead, I defended my scholarly approach.
“The students can read the poem for themselves—my task is to elucidate the critical dimensions.”
She giggled. “Really, Phillip—sometimes you seem so pompous.”
I coloured again. It was this very quality of hers that unnerved me—both when I taught her and now as a colleague—she always focused on the kinetic aspect.
“I have a responsibility to set the poem in the accepted critical tradition,” I calmly explained.
Again, her seductive smile, as if I amused her.
“But what got left out of that lecture was passion,” she said earnestly, “—the very passion that drove Shakespeare to write it in the first place.”
I defended myself. “But I have to analyze the sonnets in terms of modern textual criticism.”
Her eyes flashed. “You’ve become a mere pedant, Phillip. Who would have thought you’d turn into a hidebound prescriptivist?”
“Me—a prescriptivist?” I sputtered.
“You’re a purist, Professor Hyde—or, should I call you professor Twist?”
“What do you mean?”
She laughed scornfully. “Surely you remember Nash’s poem? The professor’s wife was eaten by an alligator and ‘when he heard the news, he had to smile—you mean, he said, a crocodile’.
That’s what I mean—you’re a dittohead, Phillip.”
“A dittohead?” I was totally taken aback.
“Why can’t you attend to the big things and let the little things go? Yes, a dittohead, Professor Hyde—well that name suits you—hiding from your self by quoting other’s opinions.”
It’s rare when I feel a strong, primitive emotion, but at that moment I wanted to wring her lovely neck.
“You’re just emoting,” I parried.
“Well, at least I don’t have a disappointed intellect,” she sniffed, “and the outlook of a cynic.”
The last words were spat at me as she slammed my office door.
I fell back in my chair thoroughly drained and trembling—with rage, with passion—with god knows what.
All afternoon her darker aspect haunted me—her hair, eyes, the red slash of her mouth and her red ripe lips. My thoughts were as random as a madman’s.
What is the matter with me? I moaned.
She was corrupting me, turning me into a devil with her dark pride. I refused to allow it. I dropped into the University Health Clinic on the way home.
“What seems to ail you, Phillip?” My colleague,Jacob, asked.
He had been my physician for over ten years. If anybody could help me, it would be him.
“I don’t know Jacob—I seem to have lost my mirth—I’m pale, distracted and out of sorts.”
He thoroughly examined me and checked all my vitals.
“You seem fine, but forlorn. Is anything troubling you?”
“Gloria Cantwell, I suppose.”
“Ah,” he said solemnly, “I see.”
“She’s been quite strident lately,” I protested, “accusing me of being rigid and inflexible—called me a purist and said I lacked passion.”
“Hmm, hmm.” He said, noncommittally.
“I’ll write you a scrip to calm your nerves.”
I nodded sagely.
“In the meantime, I’d avoid the lovely Ms. Cantwell, if I were you. She seems to upset you.”
“Good advice,” I murmured and felt a tsunami of depression sweep over me.
I went home and drowned my sorrows in scotch. It didn’t help, but I did sleep and raved all night about Gloria.
The next day, the rain returned, but the dampness didn’t cheer me up—if anything, I became even more melancholy.
As I walked to my lecture, the air smelled like the sea. I entertained thoughts of drowning myself.
I intended to compare the Romantic view of the sonnets with Modern Critical theory, but as soon as I faced the class, my resolve left me.
“What are your responses to this poem?” I asked. I felt I lost my mind.
A hand went up—Bert Jenkins—a conventional, unimaginative dolt offering to give his paltry two cents.
“I don’t know, prof—when I read this I felt the poet was being transformed from an angel to a demon—all because of this Dark Lady. His only way to cope with his conscience was to become a fiend like her.”
“A very interesting insight, Mr. Jenkins.”
Bert beamed, and I had a glimmering insight of my own.
Later that afternoon, I showed up unannounced at Gloria’s office. My unexpected appearance caught her off guard.
“Phillip—I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” I said.
“To what do I owe this honour?”
“I’ve come to apologize and to ask you to dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“Yes, I thought we might discuss how I might be able to implement your approach into my teaching of Shakespeare.”
Her eyes widened and her defences came down.
“I hardly know what to say.”
“Say you’ll accept and dine with me tonight at Three Small Rooms—I’ve taken the liberty of making a reservation.”
“Thank you, “ she beamed. “I accept your gracious invitation.”
Being creative is easy when inspired by your Muse. In my case, it was doubly easy—I happened to be in love with her.
A professor in love with the sound of his own voice is not likely to hear his Muse.
When I finally began to listen to her though, I heard other voices. I heard Shakespeare, I heard my students—I even heard my own authentic voice—the one that other voices had been drowning out.
I came out of hiding and forsook my ‘hidebound prescriptivism’ and pedantic ways.
As a ‘twist’, I’m no longer a purist who would quibble over crocodiles or alligators when it comes to a wife.
Pedantry and dogmatism are the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young.
I intend to avoid this, and to do it, I need to listen to my Muse. She keeps me from being stilted and boring, or as she would say, a mere dittohead.
Thank you!