I
have a student he is in his late 70s. Shall we say he is Greek. He
pent a lifetime in the catering industry, He attends three philosophy
courses a week. Today I visited him at home. It takes a lot to stun
me. I found a small flat in the middle of Swansea filled with books
and pictures and artefacts. I saw his art work and I saw all the
books he had collected over the last 30years.
He
is a n modest man and he told me that I was the first person other
his family to have seen this collection. There was psychology,
philosophy, literature, art , cookery and novels there. I have met
many people over the years keen to show off their knowledge, their
capacity for creativity, to show how artistic, how insightful they
are. I am and have been like that. I realised how the things that I
have taught , the things that Jenni Jenkins has taught this student
have gone in deeply, been thought about, books have been bought
because of the things talked about and discussed.
It
brought tears to my eyes to see the collection there in a small flat
in bed sit land in Swansea. Perhaps in the end all we are are the
books we have collected as a record of a lifetime. The pain , the
pleasure. The memories of what we once read and where we read it. The
memory of people who gave us the books and the collection as an outer
projection of our inner selves.
Some
years ago I was bought a picture of a man climbing the ladder in a
vast library. I have now seen that library in that small flat in the
heart of Swansea City. It makes me think of how little we know of
what lies behind those closed doors we never open.
I
suspect that many of my other students would be surprised at those
books I saw today. I might have been guilty myself of seeing the
tough exterior of my student, a rough diamond, a Greek working class
man from Northern Greece. And yet I always suspected that the
influence of both the old style Greek Communist party he got from his
father and the subtly of Greek orthodoxy he got from his mother gives
him a many lensed camera upon the world and on its myriad meaning. I
saw a well read Renaissance scholar there and I am delighted and
very very honoured that he showed me this morning his flat, his life
and his knowledge. I thought of Camus observation as I walked away
from his flat
”“The
only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free
that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” here's to you
Alecto
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