John M. Crossett: A Memoir

In the class of 1941 from James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York, John M. Crossett was voted by his classmates the graduate “most Iikely to succeed.” The authors of this memoir do not know what became of the other graduates of the Class of 1941, but surely John Crossett did not disappoint their expectations. Crossett’s is a philosophic success: it cannot be measured because it is success in things not subject to quantification—reason, wisdom, virtue.

From James Madison High School, Crossett went to Columbia College, where he studied with, among others, Lionel Trilling, Harrison Ross Steeves, Moses Hadas, Mark Van Doren, and Gilbert Highet. His college years were the years of World War Two and the end of the Great Depression. The Depression meant that it was necessary for him to work twenty to thirty hours a week to earn money so that he could attend college; the war meant that enrollment at Columbia was very small. As a result of the first circumstance, Crossett learned the techniques of doing a great deal of intellectual work quickly. As a result of the second circumstance, Crossett came to know his teachers very well, was given a good deal of personal attention by them, and learned, by close contact, what it meant to be a great scholar. A smaller student body also meant more responsibilities and greater opportunities; in college Crossett became editor-in-chief of both The Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper, and The Jester, the campus humor magazine.

Crossett was graduated from Columbia in 1947, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, “with honors and special distinction in English, Latin and Greek, and History.” He taught for several years at a high school in Enosberg Falls, Vermont, where his family owned a country house, then followed his father into the insurance business as an adjustor. In this job, Crossett drove all over New York State examining damage and assessing losses. One day he had to examine some storm damage in a high school. As Crossett put it, “I went into a classroom, picked up a piece of chalk, and was overcome with nostalgia for teaching.” On the same day, he resolved to go to graduate school to pursue his studies.

He applied and was accepted to the English Department at Harvard University, but for him to attend he needed an assistantship of some sort. The days went by, and though he had not heard from the university, he nevertheless packed his bags and moved to Boston, not knowing but trusting that some aid would materialize. The day classes were to begin, the happy news came—he had received an assistantship. Graduate school was made far more bearable by the delight Crossett took in his duties as a teaching assistant. He especially enjoyed his humanities course, and it was there, arguing with his students, that he began to work out many of the theories which were to figure in his teaching and writing. Reflecting on his early teaching, he once observed, “The first time I ever taught the Oedipus Rex, I taught my class that Oedipus’s tragic flaw was his excessive anger.” This remark was meant to show from how low a condition his understanding of that work began to evolve, for he was later to reject the whole idea of tragic flaw and to see that, whereas a flaw is a lack, for which one. is not responsible, the idea in tragedy is of hamartia, a mis­ take, for which one is responsible. And the idea of Oedipus’s hamartia was to receive a great deal of sophistication under Crossett’s study.

Crossett especially admired Werner Jaeger, the author of Paideia: The Ideals of Creek Culture, a book which had influenced him to attend Harvard. He either took or audited every course Jaeger taught, and in later years would refer to his teacher as “the great Jaeger.” His favorite quotation was Jaeger’s remark that “All things begin in Homer.” Crossett was the only graduate student Jaeger ever chose to assist him in his Plato course. Crossett wrote his doctoral dissertation on English translations of Homer’s Iliad, in which he examined several major translations, both to understand the theory and practice of translation and to learn about Homer’s poem. He was thus able to combine the two fields-­ English and Classics—that were his primary interests.

After receiving his doctorate from Harvard in 1958, Crossett took a position as Assistant Professor of English at Hamilton College. For four years, in addition to teaching English and Humanities, he taught Freshman Composition. Where many other English teachers look upon Freshman Composition as the unpleasant and unrewarding chore which makes it possible to teach classes in literature, Crossett was convinced of its importance. For what distinguishes man from the animals, he thought, is reason; the expression of reason is language; the structure of language is grammar: therefore, the study of grammar is the study of human nature. The relation between grammar and human nature provided Crossett with the subject of his course, and he worked out with the students the nature of the parts of speech and the elements of composition. The experience he gained from teaching Freshman Composition at Hamilton provided the inspiration for his innovative method of teaching Greek and for the emphasis he put on composition in his humanities classes. At Hamilton College he prepared a succinct handbook of composition, his Breviary of English Grammar, which was later used at GrinnelI College and at Cornell College.

While at Hamilton, Crossett established the Virgil Press at his parents’ house in Enosberg Falls on the principle that “The only man who has freedom of the press is the man who owns a press.” During his summers, he designed books and set the type for his own poetry and that of others. His principal publications at The Virgil Press include Two Voices, a collection of poems that he wrote with his sister Barbara Crossett Manosh, Adam and Eve Poems, and The Wreath of Seasons, a sequence of poems he published quarterly, which celebrated the seasons of the year.

The early 1960’s were years of great mobility in American colleges, and after four years at Hamilton, Crossett in 1962 was offered the post of Associate Professor of English and Acting Head of the Department of Humanities at Parsons College. Unacquainted with the nature of Parsons College, he moved to Iowa. But one semester of coping with the intrigues of that college’s administration and with what he saw as shady practices was enough to convince him to resign in the middle of the academic year. Not knowing whether he could find another position, he was nevertheless unwilling to compromise his academic principles.

Luckily, a position in Classics was open at Grinnell College; though Crossett’s principal training had been in English, his competence in the ancient languages and his profound understanding of classical literature impressed the college, and he was hired as Associate Professor of Classics. Crossett stayed at Grinnell for seven years, teaching mainly Classics and Humanities.

In 1970, he was offered, and he accepted the position of Professor of Classics at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, and he taught there until his death in 1981. At Cornell he was able finally to experiment with a new way of teaching elementary Greek. Instead of using a traditional textbook, his students began at once by translating Aristotle’s De lnterpretatione. Students picked up Greek grammar as they went along. Crossett defended his method by observing that, even were his students to quit Greek after only one year, they would still have read a major Greek author, worked out a theory of language, and developed a sense of the beauty and complexity of ancient Greek.

In 1977, Crossett helped to found the Hesperis Institute for Humanistic Studies, intended to be the seed organization for a future college taught on the model of Plato’s Academy, dedicated to the propagation and transmission of religious humanism. He taught at the Hesperis Institute during the summers of 1977-1980.

Crossett’s scholarly publications consisted of work in English and Classics and often combined the two. His article “Did Johnson Mean ‘Paraphysical’?” was an attempt to use Greek etymology to deduce why Johnson called such poets as Cowley and Donne “metaphysical.” His “More and Seneca” showed the influence of Seneca on More. His other major articles include “The Art of Homer’s Catalogue of Ships,” “Aristotle as a Poet,” and “The Oedipus Rex.” His published books include a long monograph The Dating of Longinus (written with James A. Arieti) and Liberal and Conservative: Issues for College Students (co-edited with Eugene Garber). At his death, he was collaborating with Hippocrates G. Apostle on a translation and commentary of Aristotle’s Poetics.

The rather small quantity of published output does not reflect the depth and magnitude of Crossett’s scholarship. Crossett was first and foremost a teacher. When he taught Thucydides, he produced the core of a book on Thucydides; when he taught Sophocles, he produced the core of a book on Sophocles; the same was true when he taught Plato, Virgil, Milton, and other authors. Because the academic year is short and because at undergraduate liberal arts colleges it is necessary to teach many different authors, there was never adequate time to finish any single long work. Moreover, though Crossett knew that the surest road to academic advancement lay in publishing, he had no desire to publish unless what he wrote would stand the test of time. He often referred to Horace, who advocated that a writer put his work in a drawer and, after nine years, re-assess its worth. He often quoted approvingly the suggestion from Douglas Bush that there be a ten-year moratorium on all scholarly publication. He decried the proliferation of learned journals, whose only raison d’etre was to provide professors a place to publish and win advancement. Crossett’s published work stands on its merits. That there is not more is a side-effect of his dedication to teaching, a dedication honored in 1979 by the American Philological Association. The first year such awards were announced, the Association presented Crossett its prize for excellence in teaching.

By means of this volume we want to honor John Crossett for his teaching. He taught by a method as close to Socratic dialectic as the English language allowed, and he therefore spent a great deal of class time in defining a very few words. In reading the Iliad, for example, he would seek to work out with his students the meaning of “anger” or the meaning of “hero.” Often, after a couple of weeks, when a teacher in another section of the course would have finished teaching Homer altogether, Crossett’s class would still be investigating a single, lonely word. But what an investigation! By his constant questioning he would open up the word and the students would find the whole world inside. In seeking a definition, a student would examine the nature of language, the nature of man, and his own individual nature. He would come to see that words have meanings only if there is a constant and abiding truth, and that human reason is capable of discovering unshakable answers. Crossett rejected the constraints of a syllabus; he did not care whether his class was one week or more behind someone else’s. Although students may at first have been wary of these methods, those who eventually realized the effect of his teaching would not have traded Crossett’s class for any other. Crossett was aware that there were some professors whose lectures were delivered with polish and were full of information, but he himself did not want to lecture. He believed that good teaching always has a moral purpose and that that purpose is achieved when a student learns something true. No method could compare with dialectic for forcing a student’s mind to grasp and keep a true idea.

He believed too that nothing so facilitated teaching as examples, and he used to cite as model Achilles’ mentor Phoenix, who told the tale of Meleager. Crossett was quick to think up and employ examples from the students’ experience, and the slower the class, the greater the number of examples he would use. In teaching Aristotle’s Poetics and the theory of unities, he would cite the cinematic western, in which a gunfighter might be shooting with a six-shooter. “The gunfighter might be able to get away with seven or eight shots without reloading,” Crossett observed, “but by the twelfth shot our credulity is strained.”

He believed too that nothing so facilitated teaching as examples, and he used to cite as model Achilles’ mentor Phoenix, who told the tale of Meleager. Crossett was quick to think up and employ examples from the students’ experience, and the slower the class, the greater the number of examples he would use. In teaching Aristotle’s Poetics and the theory of unities, he would cite the cinematic western, in which a gunfighter might be shooting with a six-shooter. “The gunfighter might be able to get away with seven or eight shots without reloading,” Crossett observed, “but by the twelfth shot our credulity is strained.”

In an age pervaded with relativism Crossett maintained that there was such a thing as truth and that truth was the end of education. He sometimes appeared ruthless in argument, and he was sometimes insensitive to his fellow-arguer’s feelings; but his motive was always the determination of truth. When, however, he was arguing with someone who was seriously eager to learn, Crossett had endless patience. He was willing to spend unlimited amounts of time in individual discussion with any person. He expended countless hours arguing with students who were not sure that they existed or that there were not a hundred pink elephants in the room, for he knew that once a breakthrough had been achieved, the students would henceforth be open to reason and a kind of intellectual salvation. And students flocked to him, some intrigued by a sort of teacher they had never elsewhere experienced, some because, with Crossett’s help, they could seek answers to questions elsewhere ignored. Some of the students who came to him went away hostile; many of his colleagues saw him as an eccentric, out of place in the modern world. Such scorn, while it saddened Cros­ sett, never deterred him from his work. On the other hand, many of his students were dedicated to him, and to the extent to which his talent could be passed along to his students will continue to benefit the academic world.

John Crossett lived and taught in the middle of a century which will be remember for its technological innovation, philosophical confusion, political turmoil, and monstrous savagery. But throughout his life, despite his pains and disappointments, Crossett maintained a genuine optimism: he saw man as created in God’s image and that image as reason; and he believed in the efficacy of reason to solve the problems of the world. He was aware of man’s tendency to commit hamartiae, or, mistakes, but he always wondered how, if man was inherently rational, mistakes were possible. Had he lived, perhaps he would have found a solution to the riddle. We who have contributed to this volume hope that we may assist in the search.

James A. Arieti