The Perfect Academic

THERE is a striking passage in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s famous “Letter from Lord Chandos” that always reminds me of contemporary academia. The essay, supposedly written by an Elizabethan nobleman to Francis Bacon, recounts a harrowing descent into linguistic chaos. “My case, in short, is this,” Hofmannsthal’s character complains: “I have lost completely the ability to think or to speak of anything coherently. . . . Single words floated round me; they congealed into eyes which stared at me and into which I was forced to stare back—whirlpools which gave me vertigo and, reeling incessantly, led into the void.”

At first blush, this might seem like simple madness. But it soon becomes clear that Hofmannsthal is describing a spiritual rather than a neuro-physiological breakdown. It is a sickness, all right, but one that is self-induced and, if only a healthy dose of reality were available, easily remedied. Anyone who has bothered to peek into the productions of our literary theorists—our post-structuralist, anti-hegemonic, neo-Marxist, radical-feminist, new-historicist, cultural-studies, post-colonialist, eco-sensitive, multicultural, America-hating professors—knows the territory. I bunged a few dozen examples into my book Tenured Radicals a decade ago, and have made it a minor hobby to go on collecting particularly bizarre specimens of this sad intellectual-spiritual malady ever since.

About the Author

Roger Kimball

Mr. Kimball is publisher of Encounter Books, and co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion.

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THERE is a striking passage in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s famous “Letter from Lord Chandos” that always reminds me of contemporary academia. The essay, supposedly written by an Elizabethan nobleman to Francis Bacon, recounts a harrowing descent into linguistic chaos. “My case, in short, is this,” Hofmannsthal’s character complains: “I have lost completely the ability to think or to speak of anything coherently. . . . Single words floated round me; they congealed into eyes which stared at me and into which I was forced to stare back—whirlpools which gave me vertigo and, reeling incessantly, led into the void.”

At first blush, this might seem like simple madness. But it soon becomes clear that Hofmannsthal is describing a spiritual rather than a neuro-physiological breakdown. It is a sickness, all right, but one that is self-induced and, if only a healthy dose of reality were available, easily remedied. Anyone who has bothered to peek into the productions of our literary theorists—our post-structuralist, anti-hegemonic, neo-Marxist, radical-feminist, new-historicist, cultural-studies, post-colonialist, eco-sensitive, multicultural, America-hating professors—knows the territory. I bunged a few dozen examples into my book Tenured Radicals a decade ago, and have made it a minor hobby to go on collecting particularly bizarre specimens of this sad intellectual-spiritual malady ever since.