I
knew Ernest Sandeen for almost 50 years, first as a student, then
as a faculty colleague. When I came to Notre Dame as a freshman
in l948, Professor Sandeen, pictured at right, had been here,
in the English Department, for two years. He still wore his World
War II Navy crew cut, and he stood straight and square-shouldered,
his chin prominent. He chuckled and snuffled a lot in class. My
roommate and I had our private nickname for him: Chuckles. Chuckles
Sandeen.
At that time, Frank O'Malley was Notre Dame's most admired and
inspiring teacher, not only in the English Department but on campus.
Professor O'Malley was eccentric, and he cultivated eccentricity.
If a professor wasn't in class, the rule at that time said students
could leave after waiting in the classroom for at least 10 minutes.
Professor O'Malley often came late, but students never left. Once,
well before the closing bell, he abruptly closed his notebook
and left. We sat there, not knowing what to do. When the bell
rang, we left, too, and found him waiting to chat with us in the
hall.
Professor Sandeen was the opposite. He showed up on time with
the text and a few jottings on a slip of paper. Whereas Frank
O'Malley read his lectures straight out, in his own elegant and
moving way, and rapt students listened quietly and took notes,
Ernest Sandeen turned the classroom into a think tank. He would
call our attention to a line of poetry or a scene in a novel and
ask questions raised by the text. His questions drew us into an
intellectual absorption that generated not debate but deep, thoughtful
conversation. We explored and discussed so meditatively that time
disappeared from our consciousness.
Speaking of himself as a poet, Professor Sandeen once said that
he learned by going where he had to go. That is also how he taught.
We students learned by going where we had to go, and Chuckles
Sandeen was our guide. I remember when we were discussing Arthur
Koestler's Darkness at Noon, a novel about communism
in Russia. After drawing us deeply into that book, Mr. Sandeen
raised the final topic of the day. "Does the world," he asked,
"run on actions and circumstances, or does it run on ideas?" And
that started it. Off we went. His question led us into explorations
beyond the boundaries of our knowledge, so much so that I still
remember leaving that classroom inebriated with thought.
After graduation I went on to postgraduate studies in English
literature. In one of my M.A. courses at the University of Michigan,
we were assigned a paper on Henry James's The American.
We had read that novel in one of the six or so courses I took
from Professor Sandeen at Notre Dame, so I pulled out my undergraduate
notes, which I kept with me all through graduate school. Re-oriented
by those notes, I moved into that novel in my own way and wrote
my paper. I not only received an 'A' for that paper, I also received
a note from the professor asking for a copy of it so he could
use it as a model for his students. The University of Michigan
professor wanted to elicit from his graduate students the kind
of paper Professor Sandeen elicited from his undergraduates.
I moved on to Stanford for a Ph.D. in English and Humanities
and returned to Notre Dame in 1958, to join the English Department
faculty. I discovered that Frank O'Malley no longer solely taught
English majors. When I was a Notre Dame undergraduate, the English
Department required all of its majors to take Frank's two-semester,
senior year Philosophy of Literature course. Now, Frank taught
one course per semester, open to all students as a University
elective. He still drew large enrollments and a devoted student
following, but Frank, I discovered, represented the closing down
of a previous phase of not only the English Department's but Notre
Dame's education, a period that had striven to bring to education
a certain pastoral depth.
Ernie's teaching strove for intellectual heights. His kind of
teaching, I discovered, and the teaching of faculty appointed
since Ernie's arrival, was now the norm and future direction,
and not only of the English Department but of the University.
That kind of teaching is still Notre Dame's commitment and direction.
Administrative changes
In 1965 Ernest Sandeen was named chairman of the English Department.
He accepted the appointment with the understanding that he would
serve for three years and no more. He kept to that understanding.
One of his first changes was to create the office of Director
of Graduate Studies. His immediate successor added a Director
of Undergraduate Studies. Anyone who looks around campus will
discover departmental administrations so organized to this day.
Ernie also appointed an executive committee to frequently inform
and advise him. At a time when authority descended from the Main
Building and stopped at the department chairman's office, Ernie's
executive committee extended that authority into the faculty.
Such committees are also typical in University departments today.
Ernie went further. He created an elected faculty committee
to deliberate and recommend every faculty appointment and promotion.
Some years after Ernie left office, the University faculty's revision
of the Academic Manual mandated that a Committee on Appointments
and Promotions exist in every department. The mandate was accepted
by University authorities and stands to this day.
Years before any campus discussion about bringing co-education
to Notre Dame, Ernie did his utmost to appoint women to the English
Department faculty. In this he partially failed, because no female
candidate -- and Ernie interviewed many and offered appointments
every year -- was willing to join an all male faculty in an all
male school. At the same time, Ernie appointed our own female
doctoral students on a full-time, though temporary, basis to our
regular faculty. It broke the ice and anticipated by a number
of years the University's move to co-education.
Ernie also founded the Ward-Phillips Lectures, a four-lecture
series given in a single week by a distinguished visiting professor
and published as a monograph by the University of Notre Dame Press.
Those lectures continue to this day.
Ernie, finally, stimulated the English Department's intellectual
activity through faculty meetings, readings and seminars, and
by appointments of distinguished visiting professors. Like the
Ward-Phillips Lectures, each of the latter focused on a different
literary specialism or area, one at a time.
Indeed, Ernest Sandeen was not only an important teacher and
administrator at Notre Dame, he was also a major cultural resource.
A published scholar and a poet, with five volumes of poetry published
from l953 to l995, he introduced Notre Dame to poets and writers
from across the land. He invited them to campus, arranged their
presentations and discussions, fed and housed them at his home,
and introduced them to as many students and faculty as could be
accommodated. He promoted and served the Sophomore Literary Festival
from the day of its conception.
Ernie's home, in fact, was a center of cultural activity. Students
and faculty dropped in virtually every day and night of the week,
unannounced, welcomed and free to stay. Books, journals and magazines
lined his bookshelves and covered his tables. Ernie would introduce
these to his visitors and spend the evening discussing them. Student
and faculty writers met at his home for sessions both regular
and impromptu, and he personally read, commented on and encouraged
aspiring writers of every age.
He attended to his own work after everyone left, from about
midnight to 5 or 6 a.m. It became his habitual work schedule.
Ernest Sandeen came to Notre Dame a little more than 100 years
after its founding. Yet he, himself, was a founder, a founder
of today's Notre Dame. I used to call him "Old Timer," after a
character in several of his poems, but Ernie was of the present,
not of the past. Ernie laid down lines that this University still
follows. When we, of today's generations, turn to our reflections
upon Ernest Sandeen, we pay our respects to a man who was truly
one of our own.
Edward Vasta is a Notre Dame professor emeritus of English.
(December 2005)
