'...Meminisse Iuvabit'

I have been at Harvard nine years--four in the College, five as a graduate student. I wrote a magna thesis about Shelley. My dissertation is on Wyatt's versification. It has been accepted. In June I will enter the ancient fellowship of scholars.

When I was a Freshman I met a girl at the registration mixer who was nutty as a fruitcake and had hair to her waist. We stood in the lobby of Memorial Hall and translated the Latin inscriptions. She had a brother who wanted to be a monk.

Three years ago I had an affair with one of my Radcliffe tutees.

Once, as a junior, I stayed drunk for a week.

I have seen all things.

But last week I heard something awful. Walking down Brattle St. I heard two undergraduates talking. One of them said to the other: "There weren't any good old days."

"Of course not," the other said.

I had to stop and look in the window of the Versailles to collect myself. And looking in the window I saw one of those marble eggs they sell there. And that calmed me. I had a roommate once who, mad with longing, went to that store and bought a marble egg, and walked all over Cambridge till he found a girl to give it to. Just stopped and handed it to her. On the steps of Widener, as I remember. "Why?" she said. "Because you're beautiful and it's spring," he said. He was that way. They lasted until the next winter.

But the mad undergraduates. Were they typical? Had some last, dismal sophistication overtaken Cambridge, that people should forsake delusion? Cynicism I live with. Skepticism I live on. But memory is my refuge. It is every man's.

A bum transcends his gutter, recalling ancient nights. A fat little lady on the subway, purse and packages piled in her lap, eyes shut like a kitten, is holy in her thoughts.

It is not, you must understand, the recollection of personal triumphs--for there was that in the undergraduates' tone--but of a greater glory, now past, in which one participated. Merely to have been there--that night at Endrich's room, that summer in Paris.

Now here was a generation of spoilers who insisted, not that the night at Endrich's must have been dull, just that it couldn't have been special. I realized, as I stood there, how often I've noticed this attitude of late. The Advocate has just brought out an anthology, and that story we all got so excited about in Freshman year is in it. I heard people talking at a party: "Not awkward," the girl said, "but how could we have been so....taken with the thing. It seemed so magical."

Turning from the gilded window, I took my wonder to a wise old cop I know. He used to work in Boston but he's been a University policeman for years. "Has there really been a change," I asked him. "Or do I just imagine it?"

He listened gravely as I spoke. "No," he said, and paused. "No, nostalgia ain't what it used to be."