Getting Lost in One’s Research

ancient scholar

French monk from the 15th century (1480)

For many college teachers, summer is research time. Freed from teaching and administrative duties, we get to dive into our scholarly passions, which sometimes seem of interest to no one but ourselves. I still remember the ecstasy I felt in L’Arsénal, a library in Paris, when I stumbled across an article helping confirm my thesis that French cinema in the late 1930s had a Hollywood inferiority complex. (One of France’s film magazines was over-the-top excited that French actress Danielle Darrieux was turning her back on Hollywood and returning to France.) Think of the activity as its own reward.

So here’s a light poem to commemorate library research. My father, a superb researcher himself who made important source discoveries while studying French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, imagines a scholar who becomes lost—literally—in his subject. In some ways, the poem anticipates Woody Allen’s short story “The Kugelmass Episode,” where a Madame Bovary fanatic finds himself a character in the book. (Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo is another version of the idea.)

The poem appears written in the Hillaire Belloc style. Incidentally, its description of a scholar’s monomania is not exaggerated. Enjoy:

The Mystery of the Missing Historian
Or
The Sad Ballade of Professor Dodd

By Scott Bates

One Dr. Dodd, of high degree,
Of high scholastic pedigree,
A connoisseur extraordinaire
Of medieval bill-of-fare,
And peeping tom behind the screens
Of Europe’s cultured, careless queens
(Where oft his penetrating glance
Revealed the leading men of France),
Was finishing his latest book:
HOW LOUIS XIII USED TO LOOK
OR, MEN OF FRENCH SOCIETY
BEFORE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
COMPLETE WITH NOTES APPENDICES
AND TWENTY DIFFERENT INDICES,
When,
One memorable day in history
(Like every other day), while he
Was in the library on his back
Beneath the PQ-three-ought stack,
He chanced upon an ancient play
Which hadn’t seen the dust of day
Since some librarian had thought
That Q-ought-three was Q-three-ought.
It didn’t take him long to find
It was unique among its kind
Since jealous Louis caught the Queen
Between the first and second scene
A-holding of the author’s hand
And had the first edition banned;
But finding, too, the author’s pen
Had moved in grooves that only Men
Of French Society, et. al.,
Considered comprehensible,
Professor Dodd, when first he scanned it
Was at a loss to understand it.
Well did he know, however, the way
Behind the meaning of the play
Which was to (1) investigate,
Explore, and fully recreate
Environmental cause and plan
Of how the author’s mind began;
And (2) to turn scholastic cogs
Of footnotes, files, and catalogues
In order to adjust his sight
To see that first (and final) night
And speak the past subjunctive tense
And mingle with the audience.
So this he set about to do.
But as his sum of learning grew,
As facts and figures came in view,
As bibliophiles were bribed and stripped
Of folio and manuscript,
As antiquarians found themselves
Unclothed about their middle shelves,
As Louis’ tomb was poked and pried
And Louis’ pimples magnified,
Professor Dodd was losing view
Of what the twentieth century knew—
For with each fact his mind acquired,
Another current fact expired,
Until at last he caught the feel
Of Louis’s favorite roulette wheel
But always was compelled to guess
The numbers of his home address.
This backward relativity
Soon reached a final stage where he,
While dining at his home one night,
Completely disappeared from sight
Before his little family group
Between the cocktails and the soup.
This cause, which gave them quite a turn
And caused the second course to burn,
Brought far more envy than surprise
To fellow-explicators’ eyes
Who set about with increased zeal
To Feel What Louis Used to Feel
–One even claiming to have spied
The late Professor Dodd inside
The footnote of an ancient play…
A claim still unconfirmed today…

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