Monday, November 6. 1967
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
5
Free university explores 'existence'
(Editor's note: Kansan staff reporter Maggie Ogilvie sat in on the second weekly meeting of Free University coordinator Hamilton Salsich's class in "Existence" and reports her views of the happenings there. Salsich is an assistant instructor of English.)
It was late Sunday afternoon in the dim, quiet living room of a house on Tennessee. A score of students and a few teachers were scattered cross-legged across the carpet, folded against the wall, or clumped on a couch, but strung together by their conversations.
By Maggie Ogilvie Kansan Staff Reporter
They were studying "existence"
It was the "workshop in self-discove" Hamilton Salsich hoped his free university class would be. William Holm, another assistant instructor of upper-class English, led discussion in Salsich's absence of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."
"Professors all hate Whitman," he began, "because he said 'In libraries I don't become alive'.
"Whitman really meant that for people to take his poetry seriously, you'd have to forget everything you were taught . . . He wants to teach you that your own instincts are good and not to think what you are and what you do is wrong."
'Whitman feels who he is'
A voice interrupted: "I know a lot about what I'm not. That's all Whitman is telling me. I'm more interested in finding out what I am."
"The only way he can do that is in telling you what he is," said Holm.
But the voice said it would rather discuss Zen, dualisms in modern terminology, and the concept that everything is composed of basics, as he had in two previous meetings.
"Whitman doesn't have time for contemplation," said another member of the English staff, Nadia Medina. She was pulling her own thoughts out with frantic
thrusts of her arms toward the others.
"He's enjoying himself too much. You read Whitman and you feel happy!"
"We've gotten so much out of the habit of fun," her colleague, Judith Scheff, said later.
The second coordinator for the group began to explain why Whitman often takes the role of a child—internalizing outside objects rather than escaping into himself.
"But he doesn't choose joy, either," said Holm. "It's not a rational thing. He's telling us that he doesn't, not why he does."
"I think the last thing he worries about is purpose," said the boy.
"I don't agree," said Holm. "His purpose is to bring other people to the realizations he has come to."
"He says life is groovy," another offered, "so I'll just live life as it is and have a groovy time."
"I think that's oversimplified," said Miss Scheff. "If you knew bad, you could know good."
"It's a matter of finding out what I am." reiterated the boy who thought Whitman insignificant, "through other books and people."
"He thinks the ability to be a poet is in each of us," said Holm, "and he would bring it out."
"He is the 'guru' of new poetry today, because he's not a rational poet, he's a mystic—akin to the movements of our time."
Suddenly the talk turned to the Russian love for Whitman, a lover of equality who also saw corruption in capitalistic systems.
"Whitman saw a completely democratic society and an aristocracy as incompatible," said Holm. "Americans hated him for that."
"Americans are always trying to make kings of their aristocrats," he continued, leaving literature for political science.
"In high school, I was being drilled full of Americanism," said a listener, "At first I didn't like Whitman."
"I'm interested in the American paradox of being yourself and still one of many—without revolting," said one who wanted to emphasize Whitman's philosophy instead.
"Like in Hegel," said Miss Medina. "There's a thesis and an antithesis. You make your own synthesis. I get convinced with every book I read."
"You're the antithesis of me," said the boy. "I add ideas, but I don't accept any of them. I just use them."
"I know very few things that are basically me," he said. "I just know that I exist and I'm not convinced at that."
"What is the problem?" asked another. "What are you trying to prove that you exist for?"
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"What I'm interested in," said a third, "is how to get the most out of existence. I really despise determinism."
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"That's too bad," said the first. "I really like determinism."
The debate continued for some time, encompassing the circle of people and varied academic areas. It was reminiscent of a line from Whitman:
"You are asking me questions and I hear you but I cannot answer you. You must find it for yourself."
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