from my Leeds past: the present dies, the past lives

On 16th June 1998, in imitation of Shakespeare writing a play in five acts, and inspired by its being James Joyce Ulysses Day anniversary, 16th June 1904, a day that could be a feast or festival for literature and writing, a day on which every year I, like Mr Bloom in JJ's Ulysses, have kidney for lunch, I was motivated to write a letter to Professor Christopher Ricks who was the first literary authority whose name my eyes caught sight of on the inside cover of the literary journal, Essays in Criticism, of which he and Stephen Walsh were editors. I wrote a letter and posted it to his Boston University, USA address. Following day, I felt like writing a sequel to the fiest letter, which I did, and I likewise posted it. For the following three days I wrote and posted letters, one per day, and in the fifth letter on the fifth day, I decided to cease writing, finding an analogy between Shakespeare and me, the great Bard writing five acts for each play, and me, quoting from Hamlet, "a fool of nature" writing five letters. A week later, I received from Professor Ricks a letter where he tells me about "the flurry of letters" he had received from me. Having told him in one of my letters that I studied in Leeds, he mentioned some Leeds University professors he knew as his colleagues and that he knew one of them from schooldays, Professor Barnard whom I still remember way back from my Leeds years 1971-2, when he worked together with Professor John Hordern and a Mrs Stead at The Bibliography and Texual Criticism Centre, when Professor Mitchell, who spoke Arabic in half a dozen Arabic dialects, was School of English Chairman; Audrey C Stead, Secretary; Arthur Ravenscroft, Graduate Students Coordinator; A Norman Jeffares, Yeats authority, Professor Morpurgo, American literature authority; Professor Douglas Jefferson 18th-19th Century authority; Wlash, Colerdgian; Dr Martin Fido, novel man on leave in exchange with Robert Uphaus of Michigan University-East Lansing, USA; Dr Cowley, modern drama man; Dr Ann Massa, American literature specialist and Malcolm Reed, Student Union Representative when I was an MA student in English Literature, taking these courses: Romance and Tragedy in Shakespeares's Latter Plays, with Robert Uphaus; Four Major Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, with Ann Massa; Bibliogliography and Textual Criticism, with John Hodern; and my dissertation was The Attempt at Failure: a Study of Samuel Beckett's Plays, supervised by Robert Welch

This morning, I read in the archive of the Leeds University Archive the tribute paid to Professor Douglas Jefferson. "I never knew death had undone so many," says TS Eliot in The Wasteland, quoting frm Dante, and likewise, I never knew that Professor Jefferson had authored so many books and researches

I just wanted to say hello to my Leeds past