All Scholars

It was a rare privilege, eagerly sought, to attend a class in Bulfinch Number Two, to listen to a Fitts reading, to be led through a text, to be called upon to recite, to have something you had written keenly scrutinized and commented upon sharply, sometimes acidly, but always constructively. Measure of the success of his teaching is the number of poets, novelists, and dramatists who once sat in that room. But the remarkable thing about Dudley Fitts was the appeal that he held for both young and old, for students and faculty. A large part of this appeal as a teacher came from the sense his students had that they were listening to and talking with a man actively engaged in the arts.Columbia University, in presenting Dudley Fitts the degree of Doctor of Letters, said: “Poet, teacher, scholar, and musician, you embrace diverse disciplines with talents of wit and taste, with a clear perception of antiquity and with a full appreciation of its joys for twentieth-century man. As a scholar and translator of your Greek and Roman predecessors, you evoke images of ancient cultures by their presentation in colloquial English. As a teacher for nearly half a century you have inspired the study of literature in many who later emerged as creative writers and critics of their generation. As a musician you provide for those fortunate members of your audiences translations of another kind, exploiting the magnificence of organ tones in giving expression to extraordinary richness in contrapuntal writing.”Some years ago there was one of those parties at which each guest was to bring a gift accompanied by some witty limerick. We all awaited the Fitts contribution. When it came, it simply read, “It's from Fitts.” So many things came from Fitts that it was impossible to contemplate his retirement with any kind of equanimity