TRIBUTES TO ROBERT FAGLES

Presented at the 2008 CAAS Meeting in Princeton

Chris Ann Matteo (Stone Bridge High School):

Hello. I am Chris Ann Matteo and I was honored to have been one of Robert Fagles' students while I was here at Princeton. During his life and since his passing in March this year, much has been written to express the heartfelt gratitude that we who were privileged to study with Fagles have felt. So, rather than recount the marvelous literary and personal accomplishments of this beloved teacher, I want to share the personal side, from the point of view of a student. Robert Fagles and his wife Lynne blessed every major rite-of-passage of my adult and intellectual life: from shepherding me through my doctorate, to celebrating my wedding in Princeton's Chapel, to rejoicing at the birth of our daughter, Lucy.

Robert Fagles had a gift for words and every one of his words was a gift, a doron, a donum. Case in point: when I first brought my 2-month-old baby to meet my department in East Pyne Hall, he greeted her with “Ah! The Luminous One!” (Lucia Clara's name means, of course, the bright light of day.) So, with effortless grace, with charis and caritas, our daughter received a Homeric epithet, a gift we will never forget. His character and words had the power to elevate the ordinary. To this day I strive, inspired by his example, to see beauty in my work, my family and my colleagues, and to believe without fail in the brilliant promise of my students.

Sandra Bermann (Princeton University):

Thanks for inviting me here. Robert Fagles helped found Princeton's Department of Comparative Literature in 1975 and went on to chair it for 19 years. I was one of two junior hires in the department in this early period and for a number of years was its only woman professor. Bob was always a great mentor and friend—as well as an admired scholar, translator, teacher and poet. For these reasons, I am particularly pleased to be here with my friend Chris Ann Matteo to honor him.

Robert Fagles will long be famous throughout the Anglophone world for his remarkable English renderings of the Greek and Latin classics. This life's work in translation crossed literary genres—from the lyric poetry of Bacchylides; to tragedy, with the Oresteia of Aeschylus and the three Theban plays of Sophocles; to epic, with the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer as well as Virgil's Aeneid.

Not only did Bob know perfectly and in great scholarly detail all the Greek and Latin texts he translated; he also had the capacity to render them into English as a poet does (and indeed, he did publish his own poetry as well). He wrote them into English in a way that touched people directly and powerfully—whether high school students, business executives, government officials or poets and critics. He was appreciated by colleagues and peers—winning many prizes, including the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letter, The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets, Princeton's Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities and even the National Humanities Medal, as well as honorary doctorates from his alma maters Amherst and Yale, and from Princeton, where he spent some forty-two years. Near the end of his life, he reached near rock-star status, with articles about him in publications such as The Paris Review, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and even Time magazine.

But for those of us in the Department of Comparative Literature, he was above all the beloved teacher, colleague and Chair, whose spirit of creativity and openness led us for so long. He must especially be credited for Comparative Literature's ongoing integration of philological study with interdisciplinary interpretation, translation and the creative arts.

As translator, poet, teacher, and institutional leader Bob left his mark. But he will also be remembered as a generous and loving person, dedicated to his wife, Lynne, his daughters Katya and Nina, and his grandchildren. His compassion and loyalty to his friends and colleagues is legendary. He cultivated the classical art of friendship. He will not be forgotten by those who knew him personally (this would be impossible)-or by all who came to know him through his well-chosen words as one of the greatest translators of the classics.