Poetic Justice

When I first read last week about Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott, withdrawing his nomination from an Oxford University professorship, I smelled a rat. The story that had forced this move was about alleged sexual misconduct during his teaching career, and that the stories were being circulated anonymously among those who would choose the new Oxford University Professor of Poetry--a prestigious role, that is viewed as second only to the Poet Laureate. All the candidates threw up their hands and said "Shame!", "Horror!", "Disgrace!", etc.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? If Shakespeare will allow me to borrow his lines from Romeo and Juliet. We find one of the rival candidates was behind sending e-mails to journalists who then helped launch a little smear campaign. Now, Prof. Ruth Padel, who won the professorship, against the weakened field, has confessed and resigned from the chair (see NY Times report), stating “I acted in complete good faith and would have been happy to lose to Derek.” Yea, right. But when she won she had said her victory was “poisoned by cowardly acts which I condemn and which I have nothing to do with...Those acts have done immense damage to people and to poetry.” She certainly has a way with words, but truth doth elude her. We may have to see if that is not a lift from a literary work. In the end, she admits that she acted "naively" and "unwisely". But, she is still kicking the stone that I did nothing wrong and am gravely misunderstood.

Just reading a few of the reports about this episode would lead me to think that this might be some crazy, mixed up lady. Then I find that she is a great-great-grand-daughter of naturalist Charles Darwin; had a father who was a psychoanalyst; and did a doctoral thesis on Greek tragedy. She was once a journalist, too. Funny, how she did not put two and two together when she sent the e-mails. Or did she? Enough there to find its way into a best selling novel. One wonders what phoenix may rise from the ashes of this sorry tale.