Remembering Michael Novak

This perhaps (on my part) overly optimistic, one-line message was what I thought to convey to my dear friend and colleague, Michael Novak, when my wife, Catherine, went to visit him in the hospital a few days before his passing.

I later reflected on why.  Yes, in part it was because we were both philosophers in the footsteps of Socrates, and accustomed, then, to think of death as simply "movement to another place."  In part, too, I wished to signal that I shared his vibrant Christian faith, that in death life is "changed not ended."

But the deepest reason, I realized, is that we had both passed through death together three times before.  The movement from this side to the next was a familiar part of our friendship.

I mean in our meditations upon Blessed John Henry Newman's Dream of Gerontius, in a course on "The 20th Century Catholic Intellectual Renaissance," which I was fortunate to have taught with Michael Novak three times at Ave Maria University.

We would spend two full weeks on Gerontius.  In the first, he and I would take turns in a complete dramatic reading of the poem, followed by discussion.  In the second, we would watch with the class a performance of Sir Edward Elgar's magnificent oratorio, which takes the poem as its libretto.  (Novak loved Daniel Barenboim's rendition with the Berlin Philharmonic.) It was eight hours of very intense, draining, reflection on Gerontius on his deathbed, and his passage ultimately to the throne of God, led there tenderly by his guardian angel.

A wise professor once said that the true task of teaching is to point at beautiful and true things and say, "Look!" Michael believed that simply pointing out these works to students, unknown to most undergraduates, was a tremendous service.  Perhaps for this reason it was his habit at the end of a discussion to recommend a book.  As one student has remarked: "This was his way of continuing a conversation and continuing to teach us, even when he could no longer be present with us."

But suppose those beautiful and true things are reflected too in the visage of the professor who does the pointing.  This, I think, is what students experienced in Novak.  "I have no doubt that the theme of Gerontius was something that Novak reflected upon deeply," a student wrote, "I felt like a child, trying to understand something beyond me, something I would come to understand later."

He was a wounded teacher.  He carried with him wounds of love, for his dear departed wife, Karen.  "Not a day went by when he didn't proclaim to everyone who would listen the beauty, joyfulness, and virtue of his late wife, Karen Laub-Novak," a student wrote.  This love infused itself into all his relations with colleagues and students.  In the classroom, he would above all want to teach about charity.  This was the theme that made him most animated, most impassioned.

But he also liked to speak about the dark night of the soul, and the problematic of human suffering, turning again, in his old age, to existentialist authors who had affected him deeply as a young man, especially Marcel but even Camus.  It was important, he thought, not to sugarcoat life or Christianity.

A wise professor once said that the true task of teaching is to point at beautiful and true things and say, "Look!"

The result was that, when I asked a student to summarize his teaching, she wrote, "He taught me the importance of sacrificing yourself for the people you love."

Only about 1/100th of Novak's teaching, by my rough reckoning, took place in class.  That he was a Founding Trustee of Ave Maria might explain why he relocated to Florida.  The move had something to do also with seeking consolations in a new setting after Karen's passing (as would be very human).  He found them in abundance, in friendships with admiring colleagues, who would gladly gather at his house for a dinner party at a moment's notice, and in students who adored him.

He loved his students.  He praised them, encouraged them, wrote letters on their behalf, found internships for them, hired them as assistants, promoted their careers, and invited groups of them to spend weeks with him at his summer home in Delaware.  Above all he delighted in them.  One of them explained: "If he thought you were beautiful, he would tell you – and because of him, every woman in Ave Maria knew that she was beautiful.  The way he looked at people, especially women, as each being beautifully created and infinitely valuable, was genuine, sincere, and something we should all strive for."

He was that teacher and friend who was disponible in Marcel's sense.  "He was always inviting students over for dinner.  We read poetry together, watched movies, drank manhattans, and often just chatted.  Once he came on his golf cart to the local coffee shop and asked me what I would like, and we sat and talked about everything and nothing.  He knew how to spend time well and cultivate friendships," I heard from a student.

From another: "I knew Novak had done great things in the world, but never realized how many people he had reached.  He was humble about his experiences; he would tell stories like a grandfather, gently and sweetly.  I felt like a granddaughter who knows that her grandfather has done great things and fought some great battles abroad.  Of course he had.  He was the best."

For me, when I taught Gerontius with Michael, I noticed how he would linger over the poem's final lines and insist that we go back and dwell upon them again, slowly.  They are spoken by Gerontius' guardian angel:

Softly and gently, dearly-ransom'd soul,
  In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll,
  I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.
…
Farewell, but not forever! brother dear,
  Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
  And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.