We can’t just live on a diet of alternating snark and rage at the feral Republican children trying to burn down the House. Rather, we could — but that’s like suffering the health effects of a day-after-day Super Size Me diet of political high fructose corn starch and a bucket of Krispy Kreme’s — and I, at least, need some happier stuff from time to time just to remind me that the world isn’t simply a playground for the worst of us.
Hence this delightful tale, via my science writing friend David Dobbs, who led to this gem from David Quigg, proprietor of the Two Many Daves blog. The link takes you to a post ostensibly about Quigg’s ongoing pursuit of Ernest Hemingway’s FBI file — in which he’s making progress, but still faces G-manned roadblocks between him and what he really wants to know.
Quigg (deliberately, I suspect) buried the lede. Hemingway’s a side show. The really sweet tale he’s managed to extract from the Great Redactor introduces a new character, Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley. Shapley had a mixed record as an astronomer — he picked the wrong side in the famous Curtis-Shapley debate on whether or not the spiral nebula that had been observed by 1920 lay inside or outside our Milky Way galaxy, and he rather unfortunately thought Edwin Hubble had committed junk science. But he had the right enemies. A political liberal and friend of Henry Wallace, he was targeted by Joe McCarthy,* which is what landed him in the FBI files that Quigg received.
Seeing a now rather obscure name in the history of astronomy turn up in the file led Quigg to the magical Google machine — and that’s where this story goes from curious to great:
According to Dr. Shapley, he and [Robert] Frost met at an annual faculty get-together during one of Frost’s stints as poet-in-residence at Harvard. Frost sought Shapley out, tugged at his sleeve–figuratively, if not literally–and said something like, “Now, Professor Shapley. You know all about astronomy. Tell me, how is the world going to end?” [1] Taken aback by this unconventional approach, Shapley assumed Frost was joking. The two of them chatted for a few moments, but not about the end of the world. Then they each became involved in conversations with other people and were soon in different parts of the room. But a while later, Frost sought out Shapley again and asked him the same question. “So,” said Shapley to his audience in 1960, “I told him that either the earth would be incinerated, or a permanent ice age would gradually annihilate all life on earth.” Shapley went on to explain, as he had earlier explained to Frost, why life on earth would eventually be destroyed by fire or ice.
“Imagine my surprise,” Shapley said, “when just a year or two later, I ran across this poem.” He then read “Fire and Ice” aloud. He saw “Some say” as a reference to himself–specifically to his meeting with Frost at that gathering of Harvard faculty.
I should add that the anecdote comes from Tom Hansen, who recalls hearing Shapley lecture about (inter alia) his conversation with Frost. Hansen doesn’t dispute Shapley’s memory of the encounter, but he does point out that the poem itself is not a versification of cosmology, and hence, that Shapley’s puff of pride at his muse’s role is very likely (IMHO too) misplaced.
In any event one may — I do — kvell at the thought of those two mutual incomprehensibles sipping sherry whilst thinking such different thoughts fashioned out of the same words.
Beats trying to deal with the Repblican’s Boehner problem, that’s for sure.
*Shapley’s line on McCarthy’s accusations: “the Senator succeeded in telling six lies in four sentences, which is probably the indoor record for mendacity.” Not bad for an ivy covered professor, I’d say.
Image: Francisco Goya, The Snowstorm (Winter), 178-1787. (This is a bit of Goya juvenalia, as far as I’m concerned — but even before Goya became GOYA, he still could paint a bit, wouldn’t you say?)
Villago Delenda Est
By “Frost” we’re talking Robert Frost, here.
MattF
Still, Mary McCarthy’s line about Lillian Hellman, ‘”Every word she writes is a lie—including ‘and’ and ‘the.’ probably holds and keeps the relevant record.
Tom Levenson
@Villago Delenda Est: Yup. Fix’t above. Thx.
Eric U.
I figure my life will be a success if it serves as a warning to others
2liberal
you left out the fried chicken and/or sausages
Amir Khalid
@Tom Levenson:
Thanks for the fix. I was wondering why he would make a big deal of meeting David Frost.
Omnes Omnibus
@2liberal: KFC Double Down.
normal liberal
Oh my, I do like Shapley’s line about McCarthy. I’ll have to save that for a public hearing sometime.
Not a Goya fan especially, but that is certainly Some Pig.
The Bobs
Don’t mention Hubble with out giving the real credit to Henrietta Leavitt who discovered the period-luminosity relationship the made Hubble’s calculations possible.
MattF
@normal liberal: I didn’t know much about Goya until I read the Robert Hughes book… but I’m a fan now.
Elmo
I saw what you did there.
“Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life!”
E
Best version of the “how many lies” joke, IMO:
I was reading a sign high on the wall behind the bar:
ONLY GENUINE PRE-WAR AMERICAN AND
BRITISH WHISKEYS SERVED HERE
I was trying to count how many lies could be found in those nine words, and had reached four, with promise of more, when one of my confederates, the Greek, cleared his throat with the noise a gasoline engine’s backfire.
From The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: Death by Chicken is a better name for it. Plus they’re awful. Don’t ask how I know.
Matt McIrvin
It’s using cosmology as a metaphor for destructive emotions. That’s as legitimate a poetic use as anything (and at least more positive than the poems Walt Whitman and E. E. Cummings wrote about how boring astronomy was).
SiubhanDuinne
Juvenilia, not juvenalia.
I can’t believe I actually got to correct a small bit of Tom Levenson’s writing. This is a red-letter day.
HBinBoston
“Poet in Residence at Harvard?”. Perhaps Amherst? Can’t find any source for Harvard.
M31
Supposedly, back in the 80s Harvard medievalist David Hurlihy got a phone call from the writers at Saturday Night Live (probably some old Harvard Lampoon folks) and asked him what was funny about the Middle Ages. He replied “Law, and Medicine,” and then he hung up. (Some then-students of his told me this, so it’s at least possibly true.)
That’s the origin of those skits with Steve Martin about ‘Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber’ and so on.
Another classic Harvard prof influencing timeless aspects of our culture.
Francis
I@E: I’ve often wondered what the lies were. Here’s my guess:
1. “only” the bar also serves something other than whiskey.
2. “genuine” the bar actually cuts their whiskey.
3. “pre-war” the whiskey was actually released last week
4. “american whiskey” Hammett’ character believes that there’s no such thing as “whiskey” made in America. It’s some other product that just steals the name.
Redshirt
I thought science had answered this question. First, there will be fire, and our world will burn. Long after, there will be ice, but who cares? As the world had long since been burned to a cinder.
Uncle Cosmo
@The Bobs: Um, no, not “the real credit” but certainly a significant part of it: Leavitt’s work provided a measurement tool that Hubble used to determine the distance to “spiral nebulae” & demonstrate that they were much more distant than the Milky Way was known to extend, & therefore were “island universes” on the order of the Milky Way itself.
Subsequently, the distance determination was part of what went into establishing the Hubble-Humason relationship between the distance of a galaxy & its speed of recession from us.
(NB Humason was quite a story himself–a guy who drove a mule team up & down the hill to the Mt Wilson Observatory & subsequently became an astronomer who made many of the observations Hubble used.)
Leavitt’s work was exhausting, exhaustive, inspired, and absolutely crucial to the advance of cosmology–even to its very existence as a branch of science–but to claim she deserved “the real credit” is IMHO several bridges too far.
marv
Pretty amazing to me because only recently did I realize Professor Shapley was a real person in one of my favorite ee cummings poems as well – can’t find exact version on the internet – but something about ProfessorShapley has compared the universe to a…(pause) cookie…(cough) but I think it is… ends with one of my favorite phrases in all of literature: the dear beautiful eternal night
E
@Francis: I think the fourth is “served here.”
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Yatsuno:
I once ate two at a single sitting several years ago. It was a noon breakfast, so it hit the spot. Haven’t had one since, because I don’t eat fast food as a rule.
Omnes Omnibus
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): I had one once just to see what is was like. It was a mistake.
SFAW
@Elmo:
He didn’t make a very dry martini, though
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
“I shot my GI in KFC, just to watch it die”?