教養学部報
第607号 
駒場をあとに「Farewell to Komaba」
Brendan Wilson
I joined the English Department - the Department of Language and Information Sciences was created later - more than twenty-five years ago. It happened by accident. I met someone at a British Council lecture, and in the informal way things sometimes worked in those days, a vacancy was filled.
I cannot praise too highly the research and teaching environment I found. It has changed of course, in some ways very considerably. Over the years, teaching has become more standardised and therefore more accountable: procedures have become more formal and perhaps more Westernised: the spirit of research has kept up with the times. But it has been, for me, a very friendly environment, and one which gave me the time and encouragement to write.
The excellence of the students goes without saying. Some students are aware, of course, that they may have little use for English in their intended future lives, and for them, the compulsory nature of English as a Foreign Language might be an issue. But the students generally have an intellectual curiosity about topics beyond their intended specialisation, and they respond well to interesting ideas. I'm sure 99% of them will have forgotten 99% of my classes, which is natural, healthy and good. But I hope they retain a vague feeling that English can be interesting.
The excellence of my colleagues, on the other hand, deserves special explanation. At an intellectual level, it has been wonderful to be able to go to an expert and get a really good answer when some question has come up. 'What was Shakespeare's cosmology?', 'What is the syntax of the non-demonstrative 'that'?', 'What on earth has gone wrong with America?' - these are all questions outside a philosopher's normal purview. They are all questions I have been happy to take to experts, who have been kind enough to give me thoughtful and illuminating answers.
But there is also a moral level, which is equally important. When I first joined the department, we were housed in Building 8, where, due to a shortage of space, we shared offices. For a number of years, I shared with Professor Yamanouchi, a very distinguished scholar of Romanticism. When he retired, he gave a speech in which he tried to explain what he saw as our special ethos, using the English word 'decency'. Well, in any group, there will inevitably be tensions, conflicts of interest, clashes of personality. But I hope we have retained from that earlier generation a sense of 'decency', or 'group harmony', or 'civilised behaviour', or whatever it is. It's the element we have our lives in, as teachers and researchers, and even if it only becomes visible at moments of crisis, it is nevertheless essential at all times.
People have asked me how I plan to spend my retirement. I shall pursue a couple of hobbies, but my main plan is to watch the clouds go by. And since there is a serious shortage of clouds during the Japanese summer, I plan to spend that part of the year in Scotland, where we are exceptionally well provided with varied and interesting clouds. I hope I shall be able to entertain my friends and colleagues from Komaba there.
(Language and Information Sciences/English Language)
無断での転載、転用、複写を禁じます。
