The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics) (64 page)

Near the end of his life, Gustave Flaubert wrote in one of his remarkable letters to his dear friend Ivan Turgenev a little phrase that could beautifully summarise my topic: “I have always tried to live in an ivory tower; but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it.” These are indeed the two poles of our predicament: on one side, the need for an “ivory tower,” and on the other side, the threat of the “tide of shit.”

Let us consider first the ivory tower. C.S. Lewis observed that, to assess the value of anything—be it a cathedral or a corkscrew—one should first know its purpose. Intellectual impostures always require convoluted jargon, whereas fundamental values can normally be defined in clear and simple language. Thus, the commonly accepted definition of the university is fairly straightforward:
a university is a place where scholars seek truth, pursue and transmit knowledge for knowledge’s sake—irrespective of the consequences, implications and utility of the endeavour
.

In order to function, a university requires basically four things—two of these are absolutely essential and necessary; the other two are important, but not always indispensable.

First, a community of scholars. Sir Zelman Cowen told this anecdote: some years ago in England, a bright and smart politician gave a speech to the dons at Oxford. He addressed them as “employees of the university.” One don immediately stood up and corrected him: “We are not employees of the university,
we are the university
.” And one could not have put it better: the only employees of the university are the professional managers and administrators—and they do not direct or control the scholars, they are at the service of the scholars.

The second essential thing, a good library for the humanities and well-equipped laboratories for the scientists. This is self-evident and requires no further comment.

Third, the students. The students constitute, of course, an important
part of the university. It is good and fruitful to educate students; but students should not be recruited at any cost, by all means, or without discrimination. (Note: in this country, foreign students who pay fees bring every year nearly $2 billion to our universities. In the university where I last taught, in a written communication addressed to all staff, the vice-chancellor once instructed us to consider our students not as students but as
customers
. On that day, I knew that it was time for me to go.)

I dream of an ideal university that would deliver no degrees, nor give access to any specific occupation, nor award any professional qualifications. The students would be motivated by one thing only: a strong personal desire for knowledge—the acquisition of knowledge would be their only reward. In fact, this is no mere utopian dream of mine. Examples of this model actually operate; the most illustrious one was established in the sixteenth century and is still the highest seat of learning in Paris: the Collège de France.

The fourth requirement for operating a university: money. It would be foolish to deny the importance of money, and yet remember that one has seen great universities performing their task in conditions of extreme deprivation. But this is certainly not the time or place to pursue this particular line of thought.

Having thus sketched out the “ivory tower,” let us examine now the “tide of shit” that is beating at its walls.

Two points are particularly under attack. First, the
elitist character
of the ivory tower (which results from its very nature) is denounced in the name of equality and democracy. The demand for equality is noble and must be fully supported, but only within its own sphere, which is that of social justice. It has no place anywhere else. Democracy is the only acceptable political system; yet it pertains to politics exclusively, and has no application in any other domain. When applied anywhere else, it is death—for truth is not democratic, intelligence and talent are not democratic, nor is beauty, nor love—nor God’s grace. A truly democratic education is an education that equips people intellectually to defend and promote democracy within the political world; but in its own field, education must be ruthlessly aristocratic and high-brow, shamelessly geared towards excellence.

The second aspect of the ivory tower that is constantly under attack is its
non-utilitarian character
. The heart of the problem is memorably expressed in the paradox of Zhuang Zi, a Daoist philosopher of the third century BC and one of the most profound minds of all time: “People all know the usefulness of what is useful, but they do not know the usefulness of the useless.” The superior utility of the university—what enables it to perform its function—rests entirely upon what the world deems to be its uselessness.

Vocational schools and technical colleges are very useful—people all understand that. As they cannot see the usefulness of the useless universities, they have decided to turn the universities into bad imitations of technical colleges. Thus the fundamental distinction between liberal education and vocational training has become blurred, and the very survival of the university is put in question.

The university is now under increasing pressure to justify its existence in utilitarian and quantitative terms. Such pressure is deeply corrupting. I have no time now to examine all aspects of this corruption; let me give you just one example—only one, but it has ominous significance. In Europe, not long ago, a respected university hit hard by funding cuts felt compelled to wind up some of its courses. An entire department had to be closed down—the most vulnerable, the least economically viable, a department which had more lecturers than students, which offered no future to its graduates, which performed no visible service to society and the state. The department that was abolished was the Department of Pure Philosophy—ivory tower within the ivory tower, historical heart and origin of the university itself.

When a university yields to the utilitarian temptation, it betrays its vocation and sells its soul. Five centuries ago, the great Renaissance scholar Erasmus defined with one phrase the essence of the humanist endeavour:
Homo fit, non nascitur
—One is not born a man, one becomes it. A university is not a factory producing graduates, as a sausage factory produces sausages. It is a place where a chance is given to men to become what they truly are.

*
Address to the Campion Foundation Inaugural Dinner, Sydney, 23 March 2006.

T
HERE
was in Timbuctoo a great university that was the cultural pride of the entire country. A very old scholar called Hutudan was lecturing in the Department of Applied Pataphysics of that university. Pataphysics (as you surely know) is the science by which movements of the tails of cows are observed in the morning in order to forecast whether it will rain in the afternoon. It is a very subtle discipline that requires exceptionally sharp eyesight, as the slightest twitching of the tails must be individually recorded and interpreted. Hutudan was blessed with good eyes and even though he was quite a fool in many other respects, his unique pataphysical expertise had won him great international fame; he was professionally sought out and consulted from all over the world, and the post office had to use two camels to bring his incoming mail every day. Disciples flocked to him. His days were busy and happy.

In the Department of Applied Pataphysics there was another scholar called Galosh. No one could remember exactly when, how or why Galosh had become a member of the department. The poor man was born blind, and his infirmity naturally prevented him from taking part in regular pataphysical work. However, it was eventually
found that Galosh had a few
talents de société
—for instance, he could juggle three telephones while simultaneously typewriting with his toes. Hence, he was entrusted with some secretarial duties, which enabled him to feel useful in spite of his physical handicap. This greatly raised his morale. His three telephones were constantly ringing, his typewriter was rattling and clinking. His days were busy and happy.

Unfortunately, after many years of this life, Galosh became bored with his telephones and began to nourish the dream of becoming a leading pataphysician. Since the various duties within the department had to be detailed in typewritten form, and since he was the only person who knew how to type, he hit upon a brilliant idea: he would invite other blind men to come and train Hutudan’s disciples; as for Hutudan himself and all the colleagues who could see, they would be exclusively employed in the cleaning and maintenance of the departmental toilets.

As I have said, Hutudan was rather obtuse in all matters that did not pertain to pataphysics. This time, however, it did not take him too long to realise that something untoward was afoot. So, one day, he waxed his moustache, brushed his teeth, polished his shoes and went to knock at the door of the vice-chancellor, the wise and prudent Professor Krokodil. When I say that he knocked at the vice-chancellor’s door, this is merely a manner of speaking, for there was no door to knock at. Professor Krokodil had undertaken to break the world record of wise and prudent academic administration: he had already managed to run the university for thirty years without making a single decision or taking a single initiative. In order to preserve his record in its immaculate state, he stayed in permanent hiding and transformed the chancellery into a fortress surrounded by a moat; its only access was over a drawbridge manned by an army of drunken dwarfs. On that day, however, Professor Krokodil happened to be fishing in the moat, and thus Hutudan was able to shout his story from across the water, in spite of all the interference from the drunken dwarfs. Professor Krokodil listened to him attentively before shouting back to him: “Don’t you worry, sir! I shall look into this matter. I’ll be in touch with you very soon.”

Actually, when he heard the story, the wise and prudent Professor
Krokodil felt utterly indignant: Hutudan was really reacting in a most irresponsible manner—even if his complaint was groundless, it could potentially damage the reputation of the university; but if it proved to be
true
, then the consequences would naturally be far worse. This could obviously not be tolerated. He immediately instructed his most trusted assistant, the dean (whose name I forget), to launch an inquiry into the matter. The dean was a very insignificant man; so insignificant, in fact, that everyone constantly forgot his name—he had to carry it written on a filing card which was attached to the lapel of his coat with a clothes-peg.

As soon as he received his brief, the dean set to work. First, he conducted a long interview with the tea-lady of the faculty, during which they discussed the weather. He faithfully recorded these meteorological considerations. Then, he tore some twenty pages from an outdated telephone directory. Finally, he picked up an old issue of
The Timbuctoo Times
, destined for use as wrapping paper in a nearby fish-and-chip shop. Back in his office, he stapled together the minutes of his conversation with the tea-lady, the pages torn from the telephone directory, and the fish-and-chip wrapping. He put everything in a folder; with the colour pencils that Santa Claus had given him at Christmas, he wrote on the cover:
REPORT PRESENTED TO THE VICE-CHANCELLOR ON THE TEACHING OF PATAPHYSICS AND OTHER MATTERS RELATED AND UNRELATED.

The vice-chancellor devoured the report from cover to cover, and felt immensely relieved. He immediately wrote to Hutudan: “As promised, I consulted with the dean on the matter you raised. You will be pleased to learn that the dean’s report does not contain the
slightest
shred of evidence supporting the misgivings and fears you voiced.” Upon reading this, Hutudan was greatly relieved too; he went back to scrubbing the departmental toilets with a lighter heart.

From time to time, Hutudan still experiences brief pangs of nostalgia; he misses the autumn mornings in the meadows with their smell of mist and mushroom, when he would guide eager young pataphysicians in their first attempts at observing cows swinging their tails—but then he remembers what Professor Krokodil told him: to employ a world-famous pataphysician to clean the toilets is to adopt a
“multi-disciplinary approach”—that is what they do in all modern universities nowadays.

Galosh is still blind as a bat, but it does not matter really; he received a diploma of clear-sightedness
honoris causa
and was recently made pataphysician extraordinary. It is rumoured that even greater things are in store for him—but this I cannot ascertain, for I do not live in Timbuctoo.

S
OME PEOPLE
seem to know everything and understand nothing: usually this is a reproach one would be tempted to throw at
academic
critics, but it came irrepressibly to mind as I was reading the last volume (posthumously published) of Edmund Wilson’s notebooks,
The Sixties
. Actually, long ago, oblique hints in Anaïs Nin’s diaries, as well as the fascinating Wilson–Nabokov correspondence (I hope to come back to it on a later occasion) should have warned us of a central hollowness inside the old giant of American letters.

For the most part,
The Sixties
is made up of endless name-dropping and a dreary record of attendance at social and literary functions—the climax being an official dinner at the Kennedy White House. The book is not altogether uninteresting, though; there are occasional flashes of sharp perception (for instance, Cartier-Bresson “is so little provincial that one should not take him for a modern Frenchman”); there are also provocative observations from illustrious interlocutors—for example, Malraux told him that the New York Metropolitan Museum was “
un musée de province
,” whereas the National Gallery in Washington should be considered the real thing (this judgement may seem unfair at first, and yet when you think of it, it has an intriguing pertinence).