6B Wednesday, January 23 2013 // The Statement Prof. Ralph Williams: A modern day Prospero by Peter Shahin 0 0 0 An interview with Ralph Williams is a daunting task - one I wasn't wholly prepared for. In the Daily's online archives, which go back just over a decade, there are more than 90 articles that either mention or are directly about him. This is impressive amount for a time period that barely scratches the surface of the half-cen- tury Williams has spent at the University, first as a student, then an English professor. In those articles, there are overviews of his involvement with the Royal Shakespeare Company, highlights from his more famous lectures, an analysis of his handwriting and profiles more or less like this one. The collection, however, doesn't seem to capture much beyond the surface of his achievements. He remains, for the most part, a splendid enigma. No mention of his early life, few mentions of a personal philosophy, nothing about his struggles - but plenty of triumphs - and little about the soul of the man himself. Williams's return to the lecture hall was a surprise to many - though, perhaps, not to those who know him well. He retired in 2009 with a grand send-off and a final lecture enti- tled "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?" given to a packed house at Rackham Auditorium. In 2012, he made a much-herald- ed return to teaching, though he had contin- ued to be deeply involved with the University during his absence from the classroom. Nearly four years after that "final" lecture, Ralph Williams is still enraged. "There is in me a deep - shall I call it anger? - at social injustice more widely," he said. "Life has in many ways been gracious to me, but the level of profligate waste of the world's resources, the profligate destruction of the world's peoples, is justifiably a cause for anger. There is a question about where to put that anger, how to deal with it in ways that aren't sentimental, saying, 'Oh, I forgive so it's alright."' Of the many characters he's studied throughout his storied career, he sees him- self now as Prospero, the betrayed and exiled duke from Shakespeare's "The Tempest." Among . all of Shakespeare's characters, Prospero is perhaps the most wronged by the world, but he remains conciliatory and forgiving. Against great odds, and with a bit of magic, Prospero regains his holdings and leaves something better for the next genera- tion. "That play shows a Prospero who doesn't give over his ground, if you will," Williams said. "He has been deeply wronged - there is wrong in the world, and one appropriately responds to that with something that can be called anger. The issue of how one redirects that with all that one can do into not only an action and appropriate action, but beneficent action, while retaining or re-achieving, as in Prospero's case, a goodwill." "I suppose from where I am, that must be so ... in such a way as to open the way for the next generation, even as realizing one's own limitations in time." Any student who has learned from Wil- liams will know that he is unabashedly Cana- dian. Growing up in St. Marys, Ontario, his family later moved further to the country- side. His mother raised him and his four sib- lings while their father worked as a machinist in Niagara Falls and was frequently away. "Milton, Shakespeare, were part of the daily vocabulary of the house," he said. "Their phrases were part of the language of self-expression. There was nothing preten- tious about it ... it was just how you talked!" r His primary education occurred in two one-room schoolhouses. Each day's task was written on the blackboard as the lone teacher roamed the room helping students with their work. Instead of simply completingwhat was assigned to him, Williams completed all the other grades'-assignments too. "Knowledge didn't come in neat little packets," Williams grinned. He also faced tragedy in his childhood - one of the darkest moments of his life. As he recalls those bleak dayshis voice weakens and his eyes look, as they often do, into the distance as though he is narrating his own memory. In 1948, Bill, his brother suddenly died from what was thought at the time to be encephalitis. "His last words were, 'Give me a kiss good- bye, mother,"' Williams recalled, his expres- sion pained. The aftermath of his brother's death was "real terror" for his mother. The family wasn't sure ofhow communicable the disease was and whether or not any of the other chil- dren were afflicted. In the wake of the loss, she turned to the Bible for comfort, making each child memorize the Psalm 91:5-6. "Thou shalt not be afraid of the terrors by night, or the arrow that flyeth by day, and of the pestilence that walketh in darkness ..." he repeated from memory. "(My early experiences) both made me acquainted with the resonance (of) those roll- ing phrases (and) of the comfort presented TERRA MOLENGRAFF/Daily there, and started a lifelong dialogue in many ways with those texts because (they) made a promise that didn't get fulfilled," he said. "It said if you were a good guy, then God would keep a pestilence from you, and God didn't keep'pestilence from Bill. And so it started a long clialogue about the status of those prom- ises and the relationship between their elo- quent majesty and the root facts of life." His undergraduate years weren't easy, either. He attended Andrews University in Berrien Springs, a 7th Day Adventist institu- tion, where he found himself stifled by a con- servative Christian worldview. "It was an interesting experience. By the time I finished there, I decided I wasn't 'that,'" he said. "I actually may be one of the last to get myself called up in front of a uni- versity president on charges of atheism. It wasn't true at the time, anyway, but there it is ..." He arrived at the University of Michigan as a doctoral student in the mid-1960's, and apart from a brief teaching stint at Cornell - been here ever since. Still, his many years of learning and grow- ing at the University have not brought him unrequited happiness. Aside from his broth- er's death, Williams said grappling with the implications of the Shoah - more commonly known as the Holocaust - challenged his most basic human assumptions. "Ina life that has known a number of chal- lenges, it is the case that the answer needs to be related-to what's indicated in what I call an old 'Williams-ism:' that happiness is not a state into which you fall. It's a choice of the will, and it's always against odds." He looks down at his large hands and pauses as he ruminates over the implications of what he said. "This means that I don't know whether we're going, as a species, to make it," he said. "I can't rely, you see, on notions that we are basically good ... The Shoah took care of that. I have no moral alternative but to try - do you know? That trying itself, as an individual and in relation to others, can be a source of enduring happiness." That famous grin reappeared, more hesi- tantly this time. For Williams, his drive to "try" comes from both the campus and his students. "There are three trees (outside of Natural Science auditorium) that, as you go toward them, they have the most marvelous mot- tled bark," he said. "The mottled-ness of the bark reminded me of the mottled-ness of our human nature. We are creatures of the motley. Shakespeare was intimately aware of this... And (the trees) became, if you will, my friends over the years. Sometimes I feel I want to do more for my students, I want to be worthy of my students, and some days I'd worry, 'Am I worthy of them today? Can I be with and for them, as I want to be? DoI know enough?' And I'd walk by (the trees), and I'd look at them, and I'd smile, and I'd go into the lecture hall strengthened by their very beauty and the reminder of the mottled-ness of us all."' His learning process isn't over. I didn't ask him if he ever intended to retire again. I didn't feel I needed to. "When I was a man of 20, I thought to be a.man of unchanging principle was the best thing I could possibly be. I no longer think that. Over the years I've changed principles, I've jettisoned some, I hope in favor of larger, more capacious ones. What gives me the most joy right now is the experience in the aston- ishing variety of ways the human good can work itself out. That's the texture of my life - it's ongoing." outtakes photo by patrick barron/daily >_ on the record "The problem is if we keep swinging at each other, we'll get to the point where we can't ... have the ability to do our job." - REP. JOHN DINGELL (D-Mich.), on the need for Republicans and Democrats to work together in the new term "Guys were out there, we were out there in the war, we had to stick it out in the second half." - TREY BURKE, sophomore Michigan basketballguard, on the team's 83-75 win on the road against Minnesota "That is, Obama said, 'our generation's task.' Not his task, not the government's responsibility, not God's will. It's completely up to us, as citizens, to have hope in each other." - ADRIENNE ROBERTS, Daily Editorial Page Editor, reflecting on her experience atPresident Obama's inauguration "The fencing mask - the most effective form of birth control since 1200 B.C." -Eliot Hedeman Submit your own photo caption on The Michigan Daily's Facebook page for next week's outtake. Though he confessed last week to soiling his pants in the White House in 2002, TODAY show co-anchor Al Roker kept it clean when covering the 2013 inauguration. He landed the first interview with the new Commander in Chief without having to go commando. NFL coaches Jim and John Harbaugh will take sibling rivalry to the next level on Feb. 3 as their teams face off in the Super Bowl. If only all sibling confrontations included a Destiny's Child performance. 1 \ m L Though accused oflip-syncing, Queen Bey won the people's heartswith her performance atthe inauguration. More importantly, she prohably was on the receiving end of the selfies Sasha and Malia took on stage. Temperatures dip this week across the country with the coldest air in two years, according to weather experts. Cue the Instagram photos of weather apps! Cue the "pity" of those studying, abroad! "-0"