I salute the members of Mortar Board-invitations to membership are limited and precious. It is no small feat to establish an outstanding academic record. An invitation to join Mortar Board is a bit like receiving a lifetime achievement award. I commend you for your good work at Hanover. You have earned my respect. And I hope that you recognize the subtle kudos sent your way by the rest of college community. Since it may be difficult to balance self-congratulation and humility, I encourage you to give your neighbor a "NICE JOB!" pat on the back and to congratulate her on this distinguished accomplishment. And, later in the evening, in the privacy of your own room, look in the mirror, smile, and congratulate yourself.

There is an obvious temptation to use Valentine's Day or Black History Month as a theme for a presentation like this one-something timely. But I decided to select something more basic. Before getting on to that though, let me say: Happy Valentine's Day. I encourage you to read some of the history of African-Americans this month. In a manner of speaking, it is also our history too.

Sometimes one needs to resist temptation, while at other times indulgence is the appropriate choice...Knowing the difference is important.

A week ago my working title for this Last Lecture was LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (with caps and an underlined verb for emphasis) but this is a bit misleading. When I gave this title to Shawn Turner, I only had a vague notion what I wanted to talk about this evening and LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL covered my vague notion to declaim unabashedly on the wonders of beauty. As you know though, frequently a project starts in one place and seems to develop a life of its own, taking a person to an entirely different place-writers and artists know about this, but I am not so sure about carpenters or bridge-builders. Over the last week my vague notion has evolved into something I am almost ready to present and in the process I have appended three more words to the title, also in caps and with an underlined verb for emphasis-- LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, LIFE IS HELL. So shall we get on with it?

Since few of you have actually enrolled in any of my classes, I think that I ought to tell you a bit about me so that you have some context for my comments this evening. Perhaps because of the oral histories that must circulate among students, you may know more about me than I think you do, but I want to give you one of my versions. This is my first year of full-time teaching since 1996; I have been otherwise occupied carrying around the title Associate Dean of Academic Affairs-perhaps someday I will deliver a formal address on the relative differences between being an administrator and a faculty member. But today is not that day.

As I said, few of you have been in my class and so how you know me is different perhaps than how I would present myself. So let me tell you a bit about my interests as a device to set up my thesis. My primary professional identity is rooted in my membership in the Hanover College Department of History (a department of--two Europeanists, two Americanists, and one Asianist. One Europeanist is responsible for pre-1750 topics while the other covers post-1750 topics (that's me). My teaching responsibilities range chronologically from the French Revolution and Napoleon to The World Since 1945. What really captures my attention, curiosity, --revs me intellectually--is the period World War I, the interwar period, and World War II-that is, 1914 or so until the late 1940s.

What can be said about this era that captures my attention? What are its distinguishing features? Two world wars, several unsuccessful revolutions, the Russian Revolution which launched the Soviet state, several civil wars, genocide, brutality that affected hundreds of millions, and the Great Depression. I could name more events, but you get the picture. And it is not a very pretty picture at all. And yet my original title was LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Perhaps you understand why I thought that I needed to append another phrase: LIFE IS HELL. Now I have no illusions that you will think that I am the least bit original with my two-part title. Some of you may have seen the film LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL or you might be familiar with the comic series LIFE IS HELL by Matt Groening, (the originator of television's "The Simpsons").

I wonder whether you are familiar with the controversy that surrounded the film. Scholars and others with vested interests in the Holocaust divided rather bitterly on the merits of this film. Critics decried the film for its false presentation of the Holocaust, as a game where the Germans could be outfoxed, for its fanciful evocation of the Holocaust. They argued that viewers might get the wrong impression and might be mislead by those who strive to dilute the importance and uniqueness of the Holocaust. Some critics were offended that someone could attempt to find humor in a place like Auschwitz.

From some points of view, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL is an absurd assertion. LIFE IS HELL seems more apt. Can there be any two more contradictory images-Beauty and Auschwitz??? Can there be any notion of beauty in the figurative or literal shadows of the gate of Auschwitz, in the shadow of the chimneys for the crematoria?? On a superficial level, even the question seems absurd. Auschwitz has come to represent almost universally the darkest manifestations of inhumanity, indeed evil. Although there are countless other images which fit the LIFE IS HELL schema, these lack the overwhelming power of Auschwitz. One can easily point to some of these particularly potent images -Guernica from the Spanish Civil War, Verdun, or the Somme from the First World War, Wounded Knee from the American push against the Native Americans, Shiloh from the American Civil War, or the Middle Passage/the transport of Africans across the Atlantic to be slaves in the Western Hemisphere. You are probably able to suggest others without too much difficulty. One might draw a list of manifestations of inhumanity dating to ancient times, truly a long list. But one need not go traipsing through history to develop such a list. The people of the 20th century have produced an abundance of dark and grim events. The long list from this century very well may overshadow the brutality and violence of earlier ages and leads me in various classes to refer to the 20th century as a New Age of Barbarism.

In the shadow of Auschwitz, in this new age of barbarism, in the face of what I study and teach, how dare I declaim about beauty?? The accumulation of facts would seem to propel one to a contrary assumption that LIFE IS HELL. But I refuse to fall for that perspective. Why? LIFE IS HELL suggests that one would be better off being as disengaged as possible and perhaps the smartest among us ought to ponder seriously suicide as an escape. Disengagement as the best option and suicide as the rational option, these have no appeal to me.

The LIFE IS HELL camp is nothing new. Throughout history people have argued the LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL or LIFE IS HELL dichotomy. One of the most fundamental elements of human thought through the ages has been this debate over the essential nature of the human being. Are people, at the core of their being, basically good or basically corrupt? How one answers this question affects one's view of social structures, political ideology, and many other aspects of the human experience. We discuss it repeatedly in my Foundations of the Modern Age class. LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL? LIFE IS HELL? My answer to these two questions is a resounding YES to each.

Before I try to clarify my answer further, let me step away from the history that I do professionally for a few moments to talk about some bits of my personal history. I am a child of the Cold War. I remember being frightened in the dark of the night when I turned over and over in my mind tales of the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising of 1956 (something about tanks running over people and the like). In my teen years there was war in Vietnam (well, strictly speaking, there was war there for most of the first 25 years of my life), as well as political and racial tension and violence throughout the world. The 1960s fit quite neatly into the dichotomy stated in my title.

In that time, I participated in many conversations where there seemed to be common agreement that the existing society was thoroughly compromised in the perpetuation of darkness, perhaps even thoroughly corrupt; it was irredeemable. Indeed, it seemed obvious that LIFE IS HELL. For the people I knew, the ideological polar opposite carried little attraction either-the USSR seemed overburdened with the contradiction between its rhetoric of democracy and the reality of the fundamental distrust of the people that lies at the core of Leninism. We struggled with a basic question, what is a well-intentioned, serious-minded person to do? How can one live honorably, peacefully? This is a good question, no matter the age, I might add.

In that age, as in so much of the 20th century, the fundamental crisis could be characterized in the language of the most basic questions of faith-and here I do not mean the questions of god and confession, although there was plenty of discussion of these questions as well. In every age there are fundamental actions people take which are intentional or unintentional expressions of faith in their community, their place in it, and the future-perhaps one of the most fundamental is to join with another person and produce children.

In those conversations, many folks said "this world is too screwed up to bring babies into it." Now there might be the temptation to dismiss such assertions along with much of the other youthful excess of that age, but I do not think such a dismissal is appropriate. These sentiments were not really idle or foolish expressions or particularly original-others in other times and places in this century have had similar discussions.. In that age, as in so much of the 20th century, there were a variety of frightening events people were trying to get their minds around. Let me name a few to give you the flavor of the age:

--The massacre at My Lai where American servicemen killed non-combatants-systematically, intentionally, and up close and personally.
--A string of assassinations-Malcolm X, M L King, Robert Kennedy are the most prominent.
--For some, the imprisonment of Rueben Carter proved that African-Americans could not get a fair trial in this land (and one could substitute a number of other names without altering the assertion).
--For many the police did not exist "to serve and protect" and the testimony of Frank Serpico suggested that the New York police force (and by implication, all police) were hopelessly corrupt

Richard Nixon was in the White House and all was not right in the world! Given this context, how could one have faith? It was easy to assert that it would be reckless to bring a baby-the epitome of innocence-into this foul world. Beyond the question about bringing children into this world, I also thought about leaving this country, thereby casting my future in a different place. I did not leave. I did get married, but resisted fatherhood.

Instead of leaving, I went to graduate school where I began to study the Holocaust, the Stalinist system, the World Wars and other 20th century history. My studies confirmed my belief in the reality of corruption, darkness, and evil. With an assurance that my perspective approached truth, I struggled to understand how anyone could disagree with me. I was not so besotted with my own opinions that I concluded everyone else was wrong-I have seen enough historical figures with this point of view and the results were rarely admirable. Still, it seemed to me that those optimists failed to engage the realities of the world, preferring to look at the world and at humanity through rose-colored glasses.

Over the years I have changed my mind and I stand before you giving voice to the assertion that LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL/LIFE IS HELL. Some of the impetus came from my experiences with the child that I did not believe I should father. Ironically, some of the impetus also came from my studies. As I pursued detailed study of some of the darkest events in history, I marveled at a variety of instances of noble behavior and optimistic perspectives. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who participated in the struggle against the Nazis, said, at one point, that if he knew the world would end tomorrow, he would still plant a tree today. From a pessimistic perspective, such sentiments make no sense. The LIFE IS HELL perspective runs counter to repeated historical examples of behavior of some of the people in the worst imaginable circumstances. Inmates at Auschwitz made toys, wrote poetry, and produced art. Some of those tormented people acted kindly toward others, sacrificed, and helped. If some of those who were at what one Jewish theologian called the anus mundi, could still seek beauty, then how can I fail to be touched? I came to understand that some people, no matter what the circumstances, will always strive to brighten their part of the world.

Eventually I came to the point where I rejected both optimism and pessimism as a false dichotomy. Neither perspective is a sufficient answer to the question of how one should live. LIFE IS HELL presupposes that this is a dangerous world where there is continual, if not constant danger from a nature populated by assorted botanical and beastly ne'er-do-wells. I could not sustain my pessimistic perspective because to do so meant perpetual alienation, an uncomfortable, unattractive state of being as well as a denial of abundant evidence to the contrary. But I also could not negotiate the shift to utter optimism either. In the extreme, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL can postulate an expectation of an unbroken string of pleasant experiences. There is simply too much evidence to convince me that ugliness has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen-on the grand scale and on the small scale. And, surrounding oneself only with beauty seemed the worst sort of escapism.

Something that prompted some of this thinking came during a recent visit to St. Louis-some of you perhaps remember Yvette Robeson and her husband Paul. In their bathroom there is a blow dryer with a tag attached to the power cord. In ominous capitalized letters the tag says: DO NOT REMOVE, followed by the admonition: WARN CHILDREN OF THE RISK OF DEATH BY ELECTRIC SHOCK! So a couple of Saturdays ago, I pondered this command and my reactions to it. My initial inclination was to mock it and think that children do not need to be warned about the risk of death by electric shock or any other form for that matter. The beauty of childhood is its innocence and innocence cannot be sustained if the children are afraid. The Romantic in me is ready to sing out LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Then, after reminding me that I cannot sing, the Realist in me calmly counters that the responsible thing is prepare our children for the many dangers they will face. The Romantic-Realist in me recommends that we find ways to help a child acquire wariness without becoming so frightened that she will not leave the house. After all, we all learned to look both ways before stepping into the street. Our children need our protection and need to learn to protect themselves. A few minutes ago, I recounted discussions from several decades ago where people seriously questioned having children but, if one is going to have children, then there seems to be either an implicit or explicit commitment to nurture/educate them.

What a strange place I was in and I do not mean Yvette's bathroom. I clearly recall a particular moment when I began my movement toward the place I now recognize as unabashedly straddling the fence, one foot firmly planted on the LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL side and the other just as firmly planted on the LIFE IS HELL side. I feel a bit awkward about this, cannot really explain it, and rarely speak publicly about it. I believe that something from outside touched me. I remember that particular afternoon-not the details like day or season-when much of my frame of mind turned over, almost in an instant. I was riding my bicycle home from classes. It was a sunny day and, all of a sudden, I thought that the day was too pretty for me to be so gloomy. Nothing like Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, but still something happened that I cannot explain. And over the years, I have felt no urge to seek further explanation of what happened, but the implications of that transformance continue to move through me to this day. My awareness of the darkness did not evaporate instantly, indeed, it remains with me to this day and I anticipate that it will accompany all my remaining days. But that awareness was complemented by an awareness of the opposite of darkness, lightness if you will, indeed beauty.

Now I must say that, even though I revel in the considerable beauty around me, I have no illusions about the grimness of many of the events of this century and in my own time. I am not fooling myself or wrapping myself in pretty things as a device to escape the ugliness. But I have set aside the "angst" which once propelled me to think that nothing could be good unless and until all things were thoroughly good. I am more calm. Perhaps this is because I am older and thus supposedly wiser. Or perhaps it is because I live in different times from those several decades ago. Perhaps it is because my daily view of the Ohio River exerts a sedating influence on me. While it is true that I am older and these are different times and I want to believe that I am wiser, I do not believe that I have simply abandoned the foolishness of my younger days. And I do not believe that it was an entirely foolish perspective-there is ample evidence to support such a view. But I am convinced that too much grimness in one's perspective is just as hobbling as too much lightness.

I still get worked up, feel pain, over the trauma people impose on others and on themselves. Brutality and other forms of violence still trouble me. I cannot understand racism and other forms of prejudice. I show atrocity films and assign disturbing readings to my students because I believe that the ugliness must be acknowledged and perhaps even confronted on a variety of levels. I want people to deal with each other honestly and kindly, even though I know that I fail to do this at times. I am not optimistic about changing behavior-bad things will always happen. But in the midst of "bad things as usual," there is still abundant beauty to behold. I live quite conscious of the ugliness all around and throughout the ages, but I choose not to have that consciousness be my only consciousness.

And my life is not without its own pains-in recent years I have attended funerals for my grandfather, my father, and my brother. In general I have attended more funerals than I care to attend and I know that the number and frequency will increase in the days ahead. I am sufficiently estranged from my mother to consider myself an orphan. I divorced my wife. We had a deeply divisive political blow-up here at Hanover College a few years ago. Three of my closest friends at Hanover College have moved away. And I have had a couple of health scares. None of these are particularly devastating or unique, but the accumulation does affect one's state of mind.

One of the really important highlights of my life though has been the joy my daughter has brought to me. She has taught me important lessons about love, sharing, and hope. Indeed, beauty. I have wonderful memories of afternoons at the sandbox and the swings or her joy when she got to ring the bell on the bus to alert the driver that we wanted to get off. When she was four or five, we attended a holiday play that attempted to bring the story of the birth of Jesus into a modern setting with emphasis on the plight of Mary and Joseph-no place at the inn. The character playing Mary spoke of how she had no money and my daughter interrupted the performance to offer the quarter she had in her hand. After we came to Hanover, she loved to ride down Scenic Drive, encouraging me to drive fast (in this department, I need very little encouragement). Every age with her has been wonderful and every age has been better than the one before. I expect that to continue. She is a sophomore in college, gone most of the time, but I am as excited as ever for the new ways that we will engage each other. We laugh, talk seriously, play and work together. I solicit her advice on tough questions that come up and we tease each other with little mercy. It is difficult to engage one's child without being touched by the sense that LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.

At this point, reflecting on this journey of life, what I have found is that there is a perspective, or a point of view that has grown in me. The usual optimist/pessimist dichotomy is a phony one. We are asked to pick between two unworkable perspectives. LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL? LIFE IS HELL? The answer to each question seems to be YES. To answer the first question with YES is to take a Romantic stand, yet it also makes sense. To answer the second with YES is to take perhaps a Realistic stand. There are abundant reasons to be a Romantic--people planning for their futures, linking with partners, birthing babies and the like., just as there are all sorts of points in favor of Realism-there is enough ugliness to tear at your heart-well, I really do not know about you, but certainly enough to tear at my heart.. I am an unabashed Romantic who is also solidly a here-n-now, nitty-gritty Realist.

I encourage you to avoid the trap of believing that it has to be either-or. For me, I have come to recognize that I dwell in two worlds: a macro-world where there is violence, injustice, and also beauty. And a micro-world of my day-to-day. I exist in the macro-world, but I live in the micro-world. In the former there is much that is disconcerting-indeed, if this is all there was, life would indeed be Hell. But there is the micro-world, where there are babies and marriages-perhaps I should switch the order-jokes, a myriad of shades of green in the spring, friends and lovers, and so many other things. Just last Thursday, Music Professor Hopkins and spouse had a little girl. I have heard of several other recent births too and, speaking of beauty, on Saturday night, a woman sat next to me at the cinema, holding her three-month daughter.

As a Romantic-Realist, I can keep my eyes set on both worlds. LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL/LIFE IS HELL. There is beauty all around me. This very room is filled with countless manifestations of beauty. There is also much that is hellish, some bit here, but we are fortunate that most of it is far beyond these walls. It is too much to ask for things to be otherwise. And both the beauty and the ugliness combine to make us who we are. There are all those funerals I have and will attend. Each and every one hurts in some way. Would I be better not to have known those people. NO! We are some peculiar combination between those forces from within and those forces from without. Why choose? LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, LIFE IS HELL?? It is just one question. It is like being asked to choose between cake and pie. The correct answer, it seems to me, is YES.

All around us we have images of beauty (some of them crass commercialism) as well as images of ugliness (some of them rank exploitation). I offer you these visual aids: A magazine advertisement for travel to New Zealand with this text [photo has old man with tattooed face touching foreheads with a smiling young girl]: When we touch noses, or hongi, we're sharing the breath of life. With gentle presses, we offer peace, friendship and hospitality. It's a traditional welcome that's 100% New Zealand.

An article about a January 1945 slaughter of Jewish innocents four days after the liberation of Auschwitz [New York Times, 31 January 00: "Russians Awaken to a Forgotten SS Atrocity".].

How to keep one's head when pulled here and there? I have two suggestions. 1) Be informed by your studies and consider age-old words of wisdom -the collection of writings from the Hebrew Bible called Ecclesiastes dismisses the pursuit of wealth, beauty, and other conventional indicators of success as meaningless, chasing after the wind. Similarly, in his 18th century secular variation of Ecclesiastes, Voltaire has his hero, Candide tend his garden as a device to combat the evils of the world. What I have learned from this wisdom which has withstood the passage of time is that I am not responsible for everything. I need to work on things in my backyard where I might have some impact. These are two of my favorites.

2) Be charmed by a belief in magic. Recently I read an article describing how silicon chips were made, more information and detail than I needed. I would rather believe that it is all magic and thus retain the belief that the computer in my office is really an instrument of magic. I do not need to know how it works, but I can take a child-like delight in the fact that it indeed does the work it does. 35 or so years ago, a band called the Lovin' Spoonful sang "Do You Believe in Magic?" Indeed, I do. There is magic in a toddler's laugh, in the morning fog over the river, in the delightful flavors of breakfast at Lynn's Paradise Cafe, in the sight of a friend's return address [after the talk I decided that "handwriting" would be a better image], in music made by BB King and Lucille, in the timbre of a special someone's voice...well, I could go on and on and on, but you get the idea. Magic is in the air. Enjoy it.

And last, but not least, let me close with these oxymoronic tips, (my, how arrogant I am to think that you want or need my tips-but I have the podium). I encourage you to explore and enjoy the tension within each one. I think they contain the prospects of a lifetime of engagement.

1) Go everywhere, but be still.

2) Sample broadly, but be discriminating.

3) Talk a lot, but listen even more.

4) Look outward, but close your eyes frequently.

5) Be quite serious, but laugh freely.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL/LIFE IS HELL, my friends. Live it fully. Thank you.

Delivered 14 February 2000 in the Hanover College Campus Center Dining Room to an audience of approximately 50-60 people. Mortar Board presented achievement awards to Professors Nancy Hanna [absent] and Walter Bruyninckx.