longer wrote her my weekly letter nor (when she was in Washington nursing her illness) spoke directly to her in our daily phone call, I kept her as a silent companion anyway. To be held in her arms when she wished to cuddle and stroke me as a small boy was bliss indeed, but such attention could never be sought or asked for. Her moods regulated mine, and I recall one of the most anguished moods of my childhood and early adolescence was trying, with nothing to guide me and no great success at all, to distract her from her role as taskmaster, and to tease her into giving me approval and support. A good deed, a decent grade, a well-executed passage on the piano might nevertheless cause in her a sudden transfiguration of her face, a dramatic elevation in her tone, a breathtakingly wide opening of arms, as she took me in with “Bravo Edward, my darling boy, bravo, bravo. Let me kiss you.” Yet most of the time she was so driven by her sense of duty as mother and supervisor of household life that the habitual voice of those years that has also stayed with me is the one she used to call out injunctions: “Practice your piano, Edward!”; “Get back to your homework”; “Don’t waste time: begin your composition”; “Have you had your milk, your tomato juice, your cod liver oil?”; “Finish your plate”; “Who ate the chocolates? A full box has disappeared. Edward!”
IV
MY FATHER’S STRENGTH, MORAL AND PHYSICAL, DOMINATED the early part of my life. He had a massive back and a barrel chest, and although he was quite short he communicated indomitability and, at least to me, a sense of overpowering confidence. His most striking physical feature was his ramrod-stiff, nearly caricaturelike upright carriage. And with that, in contrast to my shrinking, nervous timidity and shyness, went a kind of swagger that furnished another browbeating contrast with me: he never seemed to be afraid to go anywhere or do anything. I was, always. Not only did I not rush forward, as I should have done in the unfortunate football game, but I felt myself to be seriously unwilling to let myself be looked at, so conscious was I of innumerable physical defects, all of which I was convinced reflected my inner deformations. To be looked at directly, and to return the gaze, was most difficult for me. When I was about ten I mentioned this to my father. “Don’t look at their eyes; look at their nose,” he said, thereby communicating to me a secret technique I have used for decades. When I began to teach as a graduate student in the late fifties I found it imperative to take off my glasses in order to turn the class into a blur that I couldn’t see. And to this day I find it unbearably difficult to look at myself on television, or even read about myself.
When I was eleven, this fear of being seen prevented me from doingsomething I really wanted to do. It was perhaps my second opera performance in the Cairo house that was a miniature replica of the Paris Garnier behemoth and had canonized
Aida
. I was excited by the solemn rituals of the stage and costumed people, but also by the music itself, its enactments and formality. I was particularly intrigued by the orchestra pit and, at its center, the conductor’s podium, with its enormous score and long baton. I wanted a closer look at both during intermission, which our center
baignoire
seats did not afford. “Can I look at them?” I asked my father. “Go ahead. Go down there,” he responded. The idea of walking alone through the parquet suddenly struck me as impossible: I was too ashamed, my physical vulnerability to inquiring (perhaps even condemning) looks too great. “All right,” he said with exasperation. “I’ll go.” I saw him commandeer the aisle, almost strutting toward the podium, which he very slowly, deliberately, reached; then, adding to my discomfort, he pretended to turn the pages of the score with curiosity and daring all over his face. I sank further into my seat, allowing
IV
MY FATHER’S STRENGTH, MORAL AND PHYSICAL, DOMINATED the early part of my life. He had a massive back and a barrel chest, and although he was quite short he communicated indomitability and, at least to me, a sense of overpowering confidence. His most striking physical feature was his ramrod-stiff, nearly caricaturelike upright carriage. And with that, in contrast to my shrinking, nervous timidity and shyness, went a kind of swagger that furnished another browbeating contrast with me: he never seemed to be afraid to go anywhere or do anything. I was, always. Not only did I not rush forward, as I should have done in the unfortunate football game, but I felt myself to be seriously unwilling to let myself be looked at, so conscious was I of innumerable physical defects, all of which I was convinced reflected my inner deformations. To be looked at directly, and to return the gaze, was most difficult for me. When I was about ten I mentioned this to my father. “Don’t look at their eyes; look at their nose,” he said, thereby communicating to me a secret technique I have used for decades. When I began to teach as a graduate student in the late fifties I found it imperative to take off my glasses in order to turn the class into a blur that I couldn’t see. And to this day I find it unbearably difficult to look at myself on television, or even read about myself.
When I was eleven, this fear of being seen prevented me from doingsomething I really wanted to do. It was perhaps my second opera performance in the Cairo house that was a miniature replica of the Paris Garnier behemoth and had canonized
Aida
. I was excited by the solemn rituals of the stage and costumed people, but also by the music itself, its enactments and formality. I was particularly intrigued by the orchestra pit and, at its center, the conductor’s podium, with its enormous score and long baton. I wanted a closer look at both during intermission, which our center
baignoire
seats did not afford. “Can I look at them?” I asked my father. “Go ahead. Go down there,” he responded. The idea of walking alone through the parquet suddenly struck me as impossible: I was too ashamed, my physical vulnerability to inquiring (perhaps even condemning) looks too great. “All right,” he said with exasperation. “I’ll go.” I saw him commandeer the aisle, almost strutting toward the podium, which he very slowly, deliberately, reached; then, adding to my discomfort, he pretended to turn the pages of the score with curiosity and daring all over his face. I sank further into my seat, allowing
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