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Mr. Eric Friesen (BA 1967)

Life Lesson #2

Life Lesson #2 - a love of words, of their sound, of their power, of their beauty. I was what you might call a wordy kid. Mouthy. Loved to talk. Loved to hear myself talk. I was an avid reader from before I went to school. I was stimulated by words and their power and their beauty in high school and in my early days in radio. But it wasn’t until I got HERE, to UW, that I realized what a spell words could cast. My great mentor here was the English professor W.R. Martin – Walter Rintoul Martin – whose lovely South African accent and twinkly eyes and fragrant pipe, and whose wisdom and absolute passion for language, seduced me completely. Seduced in the academic sense. Later he would become a champion of Alice Munro, but in my day it was D. H. Lawrence with whom Dr. Martin gifted us. I remember in his literary criticism course, he lectured for a whole hour on one word in a line from Lawrence’s short story – “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter.”  The word was “swung” – in the sentence – the great draught horses SWUNG past…I remember that class as if I took it yesterday. Dr. Martin showed us how Lawrence conveys to us the feeling of awe that the three brothers and sister in the story felt, as the shire horses swung past for the last time in their lives. A noble image, about to disappear, just as the hamlets and yeomen of old England were disappearing. That kind of intelligent lingering on the power and beauty of a single word in a special sentence opened a gate of heaven for me – a heaven of language, lovingly and inspiringly crafted for its power, its beauty, its purpose.

In the interests of full disclosure here, I have to say that my youthful love of D H Lawrence, inspired by Dr. Martin, has not much survived. A couple of years ago I went back to Women in Love and frankly was embarrassed by all that blood power stuff. But what HAS survived is my recognition of his lyrical approach, and his unabashed celebration of human passion.

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