Fan letter to Dr. Vandiver

July 24, 2011

Dear Dr. Vandiver,

My students asked to read a comedy and, without flinching, I smiled and suggested Frogs—my personal favorite.  I purred the word “personal” just like you did in Lecture 23 on Greek Tragedy.  Never mind that I’d never read a comedy, never studied Aristophanes, never led a group of freshman through Ancient Literature, you dedicated five paragraphs and almost minutes to the topic.  With your voice in my head and your course guidebook on my desk, I knew my students and I would enjoy our journey to Hades as Dionysus sought a great tragedian to save Athens.  Dionysus needed Aeschylus to save his beleaguered, war weary city; I needed you.

I needed you from October to June, from The Iliad to the The Aeneid with months of The Odyssey, Greek Tragedies, and a touch of comedy in between.  During this time I possessed rare moments of original thought; surprisingly though, I could not only recite key passages in Greek, but I would shake my head with distress over poorly translated key passages.  Mênin aeide, thea, the first three words of The Iliad, introduced my maiden lecture on the text.  I had heard you say those three words on lecture three entitled “Glory, Honor, and the Wrath of Achilles” so often that my car’s CD player sometimes skipped at that point; I always wanted it to be repeated so that I might say with you, say it as you.  

As long as you provided a lecture for the day’s topic, we often sounded wonderful.  Your words, my flying hands, your organized outline.  Our success continued with The Odyssey, particularly in Book IX when I challenged the students to decide whether or not Penelope knew that the beggar was indeed her missing husband of 10 years, her beloved Odysseus.  We dedicated an entire class to a textual debate on the subject.  Surely you remember Lecture Nine, “Odysseus and Penelope,” where Penelope shares her dream of an eagle killing her pet geese and then asks the beggar for his interpretation of the dream.  Some swore this proved she knew and she was speaking code, asking him if he planned to kill the gaggle of suitors.  But vehement students pointed to her weeping over Odysseus that evening in her room to prove she didn’t know.  The “she didn’t knows” won.  I fretted over this decision; there were right, weren’t they?

Your students at the University of Maryland acted out one scene from a Greek tragedy; my students at Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy recreated an entire tragedy of their choice.  I should have followed your lead more closely.  After one week of three Medeas murdering Barbie dolls, baby dolls, or doll-faced freshman girls we all needed occasion to hear Aristophanes poke fun of tragedy. 

Alas, I was hired two years ago with the primary directive of creating a French program.  It was fated that French instruction would someday supplant my English classes.   Our French program has grown to the point where, this September, I will no longer be teaching Ancient Lit.   Please know that I will miss our daily diatribe on ancient literature as “an enduring form of dramatic literature that remains powerful today.”  I will miss your polumêtis; Dr. Vandiver, I will miss you.  In our daily travels from Spokane to Coeur d’Alene, I followed you from Troy to Ithaca to Hades to Thebes to Hades to Carthage to Hades to Rome.  Thank you for the ride.

Your xenos,

Lynda LeBlanc, D.A.

English and French

Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy