BY MULUGETA GUDETA
Back in the 1970s, the late Professor Claude Sumner used to give a philosophy Course called “Logic” at the Haile Selassie 1 st University later on renamed Addis Ababa University. Professor Sumner had a philosophical assertion he almost always used to repeat to the freshmen who attended his classes. He used to say that, “All men are mortal. Aristotle is a man. Aristotle is mortal.” Professor Sumner was a Jesuit and committed philosopher who came to Ethiopia from Canada in his younger years and launched philosophy as a subject to be taught at University level.
This was something that was unprecedented before him. His trade mark smile and polite manners are, among other things, the most unforgettable features of this venerable philosophy professor who has done a great deal to Ethiopian philosophy by unearthing Zera Yacob from the graveyard of history and put him on the same par with 17the century French rational philosopher Rene Descartes, largely considered the father of French rationalism. Descartes and the Ethiopian Zera Yacob were in fact contemporaries and this was the point that was highlighted by Sumner’s research 300 years after the two philosophers developed similar ideas without knowing one another.
All men are indeed mortal and when this apparently simply assertion is repeated by on many occasions it assumes a new dimension, particularly when anyone you know or a man like Assistant professor Zerihun Asfaw, who spent most of his life teaching literature at the same university as Sumner did many decades before him, pass away. However this is seldom appreciated by society simply because writers and journalists are often the most neglected species whose services rarely receive gratitude from society while they are doing the most peaceful job in the world with the most peaceful weapon in a world where the written word is the only tool. It is as if writers and people associated with books and things like that were superfluous. Their lives as well as their deaths often go unnoticed. Other artists relatively fare better in this regard as their lives as well as their death are held in high esteems.
While singers and dancers enjoy better treatments while alive or dead and receive full honors at their burials, one can hardly see a deceased writer or academician go to their graves with full national honors. In the past, some of our best writers were either murdered or simply disappeared with a trace. Others were often forgotten as soon as they died. Their legacies however small were immediately forgotten.
Zerihun Asfaw was neither a celebrated man of letters while he was still alive. His life was characterized by diligence, hard work and predictable routine like the German philosopher Emmanuel Kant whose noon time strolls were used by the villagers as a means of marking the time. He was so meticulous in his routine that anyone who saw or met him in the street at that particular hour knew that the clock had indeed struck midday.
This is neither the result of perversity or wrongheadedness as some people might thought at that time, but the result of discipline forged in the fires of long decades of studiousness and punctuality that was amazingly the case with Professor Sumner whose clockwork discipline helped him write so many books, do researches that were never tried before him and weather the bad days under the self-styled communist academicians in the department of philosophy with philosophical distance verging on learned stoicism.
There are equally amazing episodes in the life of the late Assistant Professor Zerihun Asfaw who, as a student of language and literature and later on as a lecturer at the same faculty where he distinguished himself as a bright student. He once related that famous Ethiopian writer Bealu Girma came to their department to give them speeches about his life as a writer and his books such as “Ke’Admas Bashager” (Beyond the Horizon).
Long after he became a lecturer, Assistant Professor Zerihun wrote a book entitled “From Be’alu Girma to Adam Reta” a study of the evolution of the novel genre in the books of the two authors. This may be taken as a tribute to the late Be’alu Girma for whom Zerihun had great admiration. He has also penned a couple of books on Amharic literature that can be used as reference or study materials for the younger generation of Ethiopian students of literature.
Zerihun Asfaw was also known for his method of literary teaching which consisted of inviting authors to his classes in order for his students to meet them and talk to them face to face and ask them any question about their literary lives. In this , he might have been inspired by Be’alu who used to come to their classes when Zerihun was still a student.
Zerihun was also known for his enlightening radio and TV interviews where he discussed current events in literature as well as analysis of literary topics. He was also known for being supportive of novice writers who showed some promise of future maturity. He edited their works and gave them precious advices that later on helped many of them turn into established writers.
Professor Sumner, Professor Pankhurst and Assistant Professor Zerihun Asfaw are three of the university’s veteran men of letters who fascinated me personally for their hard work and commitment to their respective fields of study. I had also had brief encounters with the three of them. When I was a younger journalist writing for the Ethiopian Herald back in the 1980’s, I had written a profile of Professor Sumner and he come to see me at my office after the story was published.
I was of course honored as well as embarrassed by his presence. His trade mark smile, I remembered so well from my college years, was particularly amazing. He smiled at me and said, “Have you been my student by the way?” I was struck by his easy manners and smile and told him that I had taken Logic, as a subject during my freshman year. He smiled again and said, “That can be seen from your eyes!” before he raised some other topics.
Professor Pankhurst had also an amazing academic discipline and a distinguished career at the Addis Ababa University and at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies he helped establish with his other colleagues. I once met him at my office when he came to give me an article for publication telling me to edit it well. I was shocked and surprised. How I, an inexperienced editor of a magazine called Yekatit at one time and changed into “Dawn” later on, to which he had contributed a great deal could “edit” his article? His politeness and modesty was stunning indeed. Every time I think about him, that brief moment flashes into my mind.
I met Zerihun in person for the first time in 2019 at Sidist Kilo campus where I had given one of my books for publication to the printing house that was located right inside the campus. I saw him coming from the direction of the university cafeteria for staff and our eyes suddenly met. I knew him before that day from a distance.
He stopped walking, greeted me, smiled and asked my name. I told him and asked him how he could know me. “I remember your picture I saw on the blurb page of one of your books” he said. We exchanged a few words and he asked me why I could not come to one of his classes and talk to the students. “I’ll try to do so and thank you for your invitation!” We walked in opposite directions since we were both in a hurry to go to our respective businesses.
Now that all three of them are no more in our midst, I feel a bit of remorse and nostalgia. Remorse because I should have known them better and nostalgia Because I miss them and their time. I feel I am a bit diminished now that these three great academicians have left this world which was better when they were alive and at their primes. They impressed us with their vast knowledge, with the books they have written, their polite and respectful demeanors, and their generosity.
The three of them are also historians in their own rights. They lived and experienced history in the making starting from the time the university was established, and the academic excellence that prevailed during their times and the highs and lows they went through in their long and committed service.
Assistant Professor Zerihun was the youngest of the three great academicians. I know next to nothing about his private life that might be as interesting as his academic one. He might have book projects that he might have finished or left halfway. He might have plans for the future. He might have new ideas about Ethiopian literature or the history of novel writing.
Most British academicians refer to “Aspect of the Novel” by E.M Forster as a good how to book on fiction writing. American writer Earnest Hemingway talked about Twain and Huckleberry Finn or the Adventures of Tom Sawyer as inspirations or standard setters for American modern fiction. The late Zerihun Asfaw might have his own idea about the pioneer of modern Ethiopian fiction. Sadly, it is now too late. As Aristotle said and Professor Sumner repeated for umpteenth times, we are all mortals indeed. The saddest part of it may be that we may take with us the best that was in us that will never be recovered.
The Ethiopian Herald March 16/2023
