“Lewis was always engaging with some important piece of literature from the past,” says historian and classicist Emily Allen-Hornblower in this episode of The World in Time, edited from audio recorded at the memorial service held for Lewis H. Lapham in September 2024. “You can be chatting about the insanity of the current political landscape and quickly things would shift to how history repeats itself, how humanity simply does not learn. And Thucydides or Cicero would rear their heads. To quote Cicero, ‘To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?’ Lewis understood that without the past, we lose the ability to think productively or even understand the present. He made himself a warrior for the humanities, putting up a splendid fight on behalf of the arts and letters. ’Til the end.”

 

In this second of two episodes this week, we are joined once again by Lewis, first in the tributes and remembrances of his friends and colleagues and then in his own voice. Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis introduces the proceedings. Former Harper’s Magazine literary editor Ben Metcalf recalls Lapham the mentor. Emily Allen-Hornblower reads from Homer and Baudelaire. Actor Alec Baldwin reads Mark Twain’s essay “At the Funeral.” Actor Christopher Lloyd performs Prospero’s epilogue from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Producer and director Sandy Gotham Meehan shares a letter by Flaubert. In audio from our archives, Lewis Lapham reads from “’Round Midnight,” his preamble to Music, the Fall 2017 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly.

 

WORKS CITED

[In order of mention]

 

Charles Baudelaire. “Meditation.” Translated by Richard Howard. The Paris Review, Issue 82, Winter 1981.

 

Mark Twain. “At the Funeral.” Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays 1852–1890. Edited by Louis J. Budd. New York: Library of America, 1992.

 

William Shakespeare. The Tempest. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

 

Gustave Flaubert. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert. Edited and translated by Francis Steegmuller. New York: New York Review Books, 2023.

 

Lewis Lapham. “’Round Midnight.” Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall 2017: Music.

 

Ben Metcalf. Against the Country. New York: Random House, 2018.

 

Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.

 

Christopher Hitchens. The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice. New York: Verso, 1995.

 

A.A. Milne. Winnie-the-Pooh. Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard. New York: Dutton Books for Young Readers, 2017.

 

 “Steve Buscemi/Third Eye Blind.” Saturday Night Live, NBC, April 4, 1995.

 

Suetonius. The Lives of the Caesars. Translated by Tom Holland. New York: Penguin Classics, 2025.

 

Cicero. Brutus and Orator. Translated, introduced, and annotated by Robert A. Kaster. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

 

Dylan Thomas. “Do not go gentle into that good night.” The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. Introduced by Paul Muldoon. New York: New Directions, 2010.

 

Homer. Iliad. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

 

Catullus. “Catullus 5.” The Poems of Catullus. Translated by Peter Green. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

 

Euripides. The Trojan Women. Euripides III. Edited and translated by Mark Griffith, Glenn W. Most, David Grene, and Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Plato.The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro; Apology; Crito; Phaedo. Translated by Hugh Tredennick and edited by Harold Tarrant. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.

 

T.S. Eliot. “Ash-Wednesday.” Collected Poems, 1909–1962. New York: Ecco Press, 2014.

 

Bing Crosby and the Georgie Stoll Orchestra, Performers. “Pennies from Heaven.” From the film Pennies from Heaven. Composed by Arthur Johnston. Lyrics by Johnny Burke. Decca, 1936.

 

Lewis Lapham. “Pennies from Heaven.” Lapham’s Quarterly, Summer 2015: Philanthropy.

 

Lewis Lapham. “The Solid Nonpareil.” Lapham’s Quarterly, Winter 2014: Comedy.

 

Mary Shelley. Frankenstein

 

Woody Allen, dir. Zelig. Orion Pictures, 1983.

 

E.M. Forster. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Warbler Classics, 2023.

 

“From John Adams to Timothy Pickering, 6 August 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives.

 

Gustave Flaubert. Sentimental Education. Translated by Robert Baldick and revised by Geoffrey Wall. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.

 

Jonathan Biss. “Jonathan Biss Says the Unsayable.” Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall 2017: Music.

 

Jonathan Biss. Coda. Amazon Kindle Single, 2017.

 

Ludwig van Beethoven. Piano Sonata no. 32 in C minor, Op. 111. Vienna, 1821–22.

 

Johann Sebastian Bach. Partita for keyboard no. 2, BWV 826. Leipzig, 1727.

 

Miles Davis, Zoot Sims, Gerry Mulligan, Thelonius Monk, Percy Heath, and Connie Kay. “‘Round Midnight.” Composed by Thelonius Monk. Miles Davis at Newport 1955–1975: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4. Columbia/Legacy, 2015.

 

Friedrich Nietzsche. The Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ; or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer. Edited by Michael Tanner and translated by R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin Classics, 1990.

 

Jack Arnold, dir. Creature from the Black Lagoon. Produced by William Alland. Universal, 1954.

 

Ludwig van Beethoven. Piano Sonata no. 27 in E minor, Op. 90\. Vienna, 1814.

 

Thomas Bernhard. The Loser

 

Johann Sebastian Bach. The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, BWV 846–869. Köthen, 1722.

 

Johann Sebastian Bach. The Well Tempered Clavier, Book II, BWV 870–893. Leipzig, 1742.