A DS Moment, Doubled

Because Great Books are people too

I reconnected with two old friends at my 45^th college reunion last week, and each provided an epiphany. Back when I was an undergrad, one stood much higher in my eyes than the other, though that’s since reversed.

I’m not talking about classmates—though it was wonderful seeing them—but rather two great books, and the chance encounter I had with each over reunion weekend.

By “great books” I mean the foundational works one reads in a program like Directed Studies, which is Yale’s prestigious introductory course to those writings.

I went to Yale, where I got a great education, but I did not take DS. It’s only a small exaggeration to say I’ve spent a half century atoning for that error.

My first reunion encounter was with Homer’s Iliad, which I once thought towered over all other writing. Assigned it freshman year in a lit survey class, I tried reading the Iliad with a student’s seriousness, but the propulsive story wouldn’t permit that. I drank it in greedily, as if it were ambrosia. Even now it feels as if the story took place where I read it, in the Old Campus, Yale’s freshman quadrangle.

In truth, the Iliad was far from my mind on that chilly Saturday morning. I was listening to a professor make an erudite defense of a liberal arts education. He and his interlocutor were polite, witty, and eloquent—a classic Yale vignette. They sat on easy chairs in front of six large double windows.

And then it happened.

Outside a powerful wind raised a mass of leaves and sent them shimmying against the windows.

Photo by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver on Unsplash

The leaves made me think of a famous verse from the Iliad. Two heroes, about to fight to the death, make speeches. One of them compares the countless generations of humans who come and go to autumnal leaves which appear and fade with the seasons.

Recalling that verse endowed the gyrating leaves with a voice that spoke my feelings. The bittersweetness of a 45th reunion, the recollection of loved ones who are gone, the unseasonal autumnal weather, all were expressed in the leaves’ devotional dance.

That was the first of my two “DS moments,” the name given to an experience that sends sparks from a great book into the soul.

The second DS moment came later, when some friends and I visited the Gutenberg Bible on display in Yale’s Beinecke Library.

The Bible was not a book I held in especially high esteem as an undergraduate. Homer’s poetry seemed much more sophisticated, and his action scenes more gripping, than the Bible’s. But, like Socrates’ fellow Athenians, I didn’t know the extent of my ignorance.

Gradually, I came to see the Bible’s profound moral vision, one that has shaped the West and the world for the better. By contrast, the characters of the Iliad live in a narrow and cruel space, bereft of the respect for life and the celebration of the individual that we take as self-evident.

The museum text inside the case recited a fact or two about the Bible and then segued to the life of environmentalist Rachel Carson. Behind the Gutenberg was a photo of a retreating glacier.

The Bible was opened to the story of Job, which seemed fitting because understanding why God tormented Job seems about as puzzling as why notes on Rachel Carson and a glacier photo sat side by side with the Gutenberg.

I consulted AI and got an explanation, but nonetheless found the pairing jarring. The odd combination brought back memories of being a young conservative at Yale, which meant being an outsider. I remembered the many times I censored myself rather than risk derision. And how I would silently vet my words so obsessively that by the time I gave myself permission to speak the conversation had moved on.

Who knows what a curator will put beside the Gutenberg 45 years from now. Whatever lucky thing it is, it will be tagging along with eternity for a privileged hour or two. And who knows what DS Moments with old friends await future reunions.