Freedman Invictus

By James S. Panero | Wednesday, May 1, 1996

I encourage all students to pick up the latest copy of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. Few of us have much contact with our fine and dear President Freedman. I think I caught a glimpse of the man once my freshman fall. The May issue is therefore a rare opportunity to see Freedman in all his splendor, and to take pride in Dartmouth's most honored leader.

Freedman's column on pages thirty and thirty-one, entitled "The Liberating Arts," might more accurately be called 'The Liberating Prose."

Freedman begins the piece with a quote from President Dickey which reads: "The liberal arts are a product of the struggle, man by man, for the liberation of man's mind and spirit." Makes good sense — art is a liberating experience.

Freedman takes this statement and puts it though his meat grinder. In go the ideas, out comes ground beef. As Freedman elaborates in his own words:

"I would argue that the fine arts engage us even as they enable us to liberate the best that is within us, and thereby transcend ourselves. Such transcendence is what an artist achieves when the creative and expressive process becomes so all-consuming that she loses herself in her work.

"It is in the act of letting go that the possibility of transcendence arises, and the artist breaks through to a more rarefied level of creative achievement.

"The arts enable persons to speak out, 'to resist.'

"To see the world as artists see it is to live more humanely and more generously."

If I wrote this way on my class papers, I'd surely fail out of Dartmouth. I am curious now to speak to Freedman in person. I bet he talks with his eyes crossed, or drools. Or perhaps, as he would like us to believe, he is above us. His language is beyond our mortal understanding. He is a mystic, a mystery, and if we fail to question his rhetoric, he wins. He is, to be sure, Freedman Invictus.

Freedman Invictus

Article Tools

Related Articles