Conversations
Harold T. Shapiro
President and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs
Princeton UniversityDelivered at Opening Exercises
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
September 13, 1998
This afternoon I would like to speak directly to the entering students about conversations and the special role they can play in one's education. Conversation, of course, can be either a casual or intense experience, and may focus on small issues, such as concern over the local weather or on mighty issues such as world peace. The word "conversation," therefore, has a wide variety of meanings and connotations depending on its context. The special type of conversation I would like to speak about today, however, refers to very particular kinds of exchanges either between individuals or between individuals and such cultural artifacts as books, new ideas, works of art, and musical masterpieces. The unique context that defines these types of conversations is that the individual or individuals involved expect, through the reflective and thoughtful engagement with the work and ideas of others, to expand their imaginations, enlarge their awareness, deepen their understanding and hone their ability to perceive new possibilities of all kinds. Indeed, I would like to suggest that you might think of your next years at Princeton as an exceptional opportunity to participate in conversations that will open new personal and intellectual vistas for each of you, and, therefore, create new possibilities for you to consider.
Both the dividends and risks of these distinctive conversations are that they can transform one in important ways. Such conversations are not, therefore, for those who think they have nothing more to learn, or who are frightened by new ideas and new opportunities.
The context for such transforming conversations is any circumstance where you are exposed to a new idea. The contexts, therefore, can be as varied as: lectures, seminars, laboratories, theaters, museums, concert halls, pizza parlors and coffee houses, debates and discussions, or, more simply, times of quiet reflection in the library or while on a stroll. In short, there is a vast array of circumstances where we can encounter a new idea, whether through one-on-one interactions between individuals or the more solitary confrontation of an individual with the work of scholars or cultural artifacts. For the individual, the key is that these encounters can result in the emergence of new worlds of understanding.
As a teacher, for example, I experience such conversations with every class that I teach, as the students inspire me to think about an issue in a new and stimulating manner. Indeed, earlier this week I had a wonderful conversation with fifteen entering freshmen who were participating in our Urban Action program as we discussed our own attitudes and beliefs about poverty.
All such conversations, if their potential for personal growth is to be realized, will demand both an openness to new ideas and a focused effort from all who participate. As you all know, nothing worthwhile happens without special effort, and it has always been true, therefore, that personal growth and education require not only the effort involved in careful thought and deliberation, but a willingness to be open to new ideas. This is true whether you are trying to "talk through" an issue with a fellow student (where you have to take the risk that your own ideas might not be accepted by others, or that their ideas might upset you), or whether your conversation is in the form of reading a book, finding the beauty of a work of art, listening carefully to a musical masterpiece, developing a new idea, or designing a new experiment. In all these cases, you cannot know where such conversations or journeys will take you.
I hope that these special kinds of conversations will be an important part of your Princeton experience since a critical part of any genuine education is the process of self-transformation, and the conversations I have in mind are defined precisely by their potential for enlarging yourself through the growth in your understanding of both the nature of the human condition and the various challenges that confront us all.
We can, of course, have serious conversations of this sort not only with our contemporaries, but across the generations, as we reach back with empathy to learn something of the wisdom of those who went before us. Many of you have had such conversations whenever you have thought carefully about a literary masterpiece or a special poem written before our time. We can, of course, have such conversations across cultures as we reach out to learn more about each other.
You might think that some of the conversations I have just mentioned -- those that take place between a solitary individual and books, ideas, art, and music -- are rather artificial because they seem to be one-way and do not include the essential component of many kinds of conversations, namely, genuine "real-time" interaction between two or more individuals. On reflection, however, this is hardly the case. Each time we read the Iliad we can learn new things about Homer and his world. Each time we consider a Picasso portrait, or reflectively read a great novel, or listen thoughtfully to some musical masterpiece, we can learn something new not only about a creative artist, but about the human condition as we are drawn closer to a fuller understanding of the ideas and intentions of the author, the composer, or the artist.
Indeed, I would like to devote the remainder of my remarks to some specific examples of conversations between individuals and cultural artifacts such as books, works of art, and musical compositions.
My first example illustrates how we can have a special conversation with our own intellectual work whether this be an essay, a work of art, a new idea, or a particular experiment. The example I have in mind is a very special "conversation" between the great French artist, Auguste Renoir, and his own work.
Some of you may have seen the wonderful painting by Renoir called The Luncheon of the Boating Party. The painting portrays a group of individuals who are themselves engaged in animated conversation which was a frequent theme in Renoir's work. Each time I look at this painting, my first impression is one of spontaneous freshness. It has great immediacy. On one level this is true -- the atmosphere and feeling of an animated luncheon among friends are readily felt -- but on another level the painting is anything but spontaneous. Let me explain further.
We know that Renoir painted and repainted the scene before reaching the version that we now see. He worked and re-worked the painting, as many of you will work and re-work your own ideas. As the painting evolved, Renoir added and subtracted colors and forms depending on how he perceived their interactions with each other and the completed painting is the result of numerous on-going exchanges or reflective conversations that Renoir had with his own evolving work.
My point is that Renoir interacted or had probing conversations with his developing work of art in a manner that allowed his imagination and artistic brilliance to transform the various materials he worked with, including the models themselves into a great masterpiece that now allows each one of us who carefully reflects on, or "converses" with this great painting to expand our own imaginations.
Let me offer as a second and final illustration another conversation without words. In particular, I want to consider a musical theme taken from Musorgsky's piece for piano, Pictures at an Exhibition. This is a very well known piece of music, particularly as orchestrated by Ravel, but so that a particular theme from the finale of the piece will be fresh in our minds, I will ask Joan Lippincott, the University organist, to play the central theme from the last movement of the work, a section entitled "The Great Gate of Kiev."
***** The inspiration for Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition -- written in 1873 -- was a posthumous exhibition of drawings and watercolors by the composer's friend, the architect and visual artist, Victor Hartmann. The theme you have just heard can be described as Musorgsky's conversation with a particular drawing from the exhibition, an architectural sketch of a proposed ceremonial entrance gate to the Russian city of Kiev. Indeed, Musorgsky saved his friend's work from oblivion since none of Hartmann's architectural plans were ever built, and, therefore, there is no "Kiev Gate." Musorgsky, however, transformed his friend's drawing into music, and, therefore, into another realm of the human imagination, all the result of his intense response, interaction, or "conversation" with Hartmann's drawing.
The music you just heard also represents Musorgsky's and Hartmann's conversation with their national heritage. "The Great Gate of Kiev" -- as architecture and as music -- incorporates a certain national pride that both Hartmann and Musorgsky were trying to evoke. This becomes clearer if you know something of the period in which these artists worked. For many members of the Russian intelligentsia, the 1860s and the 1870s was a period that witnessed a great revival of interest in the special folklore traditions of medieval Russia. Many viewed these traditions as providing the cultural resources for a very distinctively Russian "road" that would lead them from the existing moral order to modernity. Indeed, Hartmann's design for the Kiev Gate was inspired, in part, by the desire to honor contemporary Russian writers and the Slavonic Renaissance that was then taking place. Inasmuch as "The Great Gate of Kiev" is evocative of Russia's past, both the renditions, in art and in music, reflect their creators' relationship to their national and cultural heritage and thus also to important elements of their own personalities and beings.
As some of you may recall, the Russia of the 1860s and 1870s was governed by an autocratic and repressive regime. Conversation -- at least public conversation in the sense of serious political discussion -- was virtually impossible because of the political climate, and literature and the arts often substituted for serious political discourse. At times it seemed that Russian society of these years was echoing Shelley's maxim, "poets are the unofficial legislators of the world"! As a result, it was also a time of great intellectual ferment among the community of artists and writers, and the music you have heard also contains echoes of this turmoil as experienced by two artists.
My point here is that if you enter into a serious, searching, and reflective conversation with the music we have just heard, that is, if you actively listen and are open to its rich interpretations, you will learn that both Hartmann and Musorgsky were telling the listener or the viewer something about themselves as well as their country, and inviting the viewer and listener to think about Russia's heritage and its future. Listen to the theme again, this time played by the University organist and the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble, and perhaps begin your own conversation with Musorgsky and Hartman.
***** If any of you pursue a conversation with the music you have heard today, you will discover it is really a cascade of conversations that unfolded over a considerable period of time from the folklore traditions of medieval Russia, to Hartmann and Musorgsky, to the intellectual ferment of the 1860s and 1870s, and, later to the composers Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel who had a role in transforming Musorgsky's initial piece for piano. All these individuals and cultural forces had some role in creating the music we heard today. Like other great musical masterpieces, conversations with this music can create reactions on many layers; it can be a treasure trove in terms of possible experiences and meanings that we can unearth, but only if we are willing to listen carefully and enter into an active and reflective exchange with the work and its creators.
Musorgsky's theme will provide the musical accompaniment for the academic procession at the end of these Exercises that will lead us from the Chapel to begin officially our new year. I urge you to use the years ahead to engage in these types of conversations as one way to get the most out of Princeton. Recall once again that these are conversations in the special sense of an active and reflective exchange between the person you are and the person you may become, between the stability of old mastered and well-learned skills and the excitement of exploring new horizons, between the comfortable familiarity of old ideas and the, hopefully, disconcerting effects of the truly new.
I hope you will be alert to the full possibilities of such exchanges. Use these conversations to build new worlds of meaning and lasting connections of all kinds. Use them both to learn from others and to earn respect for your own ideas. Finally, I hope that the conversations you begin today will lead you to deeper understanding of yourself, your place in the long stream of human history, your appreciation of others different from yourself, and your enhanced capacity to help us meet the challenges before us all. Thank you and good luck to you all!