Paul Strand, Dean
 College of Arts and Letters
 
 

Paul and colleagues--I was sorry to hear about the death of Jay Gellens. Jay was a true original, one of the last of the "characters" who once made up this university. It's interesting to learn that Jay had two daughters and three grandchildren, because it's hard for me to imagine him in a family context. He was always a loner, slinking on and off campus like a phantom--and I say that not in disparagement, but only to acknowledge the persona that he himself created. Jay was a man of the theater and also a theatrical man. He "presented" himself a certain way--tie askew, suit rumpled, dark glasses, incessently chain smoking. He was never found in his office on campus and met his students here and there for conferences. I'm not surprised to hear his remark about retirement--"and do what"? because teaching was his life. He never quite lived up to his potential either as a playwright or a scholar, but his students will always remember his acerbic classroom wit, his existential integrity. By that I mean he created his own meaning and he lived fully in the present moment of experience. Our campus is diminished without him.... 

Fred Moramarco, Professor
Department of English 
 
 

Jay Gellens would have hated my writing anything about his death. "I'm just gone, baby," he would have said. But I am greatly moved by his passing. Jay created his life rather than following lines laid down by others. At every moment he challenged his students, himself, and whomever he encountered, including myself. At Yale his philosophy professor told him not to read Sartre but to read Heidegger from whom Sartre took his ideas, so Jay read the works of Heidegger in German. He was always quoting the Greek dramatists to me, first in Greek and then translating for my benefit. When I used the word "postmodern" he stopped me and put me through an examination to see if I had the slightest idea of the meanings of the word. I have known one of his students for almost twenty years and that student's private life revolves around a love of Shakespeare that grew for him in Jay's classes, and now he has passed that love down to his daughter. "That's the way it goes, baby," Jay would have responded to this mention of his student. "What goes around comes around," and he would have broadly smiled at the use of the cliché. Jay was a person to be loved and feared at the same time, a loner who could most intimately get under one's skin. He made one see how truly personal the intellectual life can be. 

Harlan Lewis, Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
 
 

I first met Jay in the mid-sixties, when I enrolled in his Tragedies
of Shakespeare class. It was a night course, and those three hours
each week were the most intense and exciting of the semester. At
break time, no one could wait for Act II of the evening; anybody who
left at the break--well, poor schmuck. Like many in that class, I
followed up that semester with every course Jay taught until I ran
out of semesters. For those of you who know little--if anything--about
Jay, allow me to expand on the message sent out by Dean Strand earlier
today.

In the sixties, Jay was active in the department, and was known as a
brilliant lecturer, with students clamoring to take his courses in
Shakespeare. He was honored as the campus-wide Teacher of the Year
at least once, and he edited a collection of critical essays on
Hemingway' "A Farewell to Arms." Yet Jay did not want to be
a critic--in fact, he had come West from Yale in search of
the anonymity he needed to write novels and plays--what he called
"the  real  thing."  In  1959,  he  had written "Blind Man on the
Corner," a play that had been produced by the Yale Repertory Theater,
and throughout the 1960's and 1970's, Jay studied contemporary
theater and wrote play after play, exploring the human condition.
(I know because I was one of several women he sweet-talked into
typing multiple drafts and revisions of these plays.)

But it was as a teacher that he truly distinguished himself. Whether
the text under scrutiny was Shakespeare or Beckett, Jay was able to
reveal the meanings of the text through its reiteration with
contemporary allusions and by evoking personal responses from
students. Through his powerful teaching persona, he created a
temporary community within the classroom, a community devoted to
the investigation and pursuit of what it means to be human in these
times--with so much behind us and the unknown before us.

Although not many of Jay's many manuscripts found their way to
publication, his passion for writing ultimately contributed to
his own growth as a teacher. The solitary nature of his daily
ritual of writing in the mornings enriched his afternoons spent
with students in his "office"--the courtyard between Nasatir and
Storm Halls-- and, more importantly, in his afternoon classes.
The writing in the mornings and teaching in the afternoons:
this was what his life was and why he was not considering
"retirement."

Gellens admirers are legion among us--among our current students as
well as our alumni. An undergraduate advisor in English said recently,
"Jay still has the magic--students keep coming into my office who have
changed their majors to English after having taken English 220 from
him." And, those students who have come under Jay's spell
--regardless of their subsequent pursuits--have found their lives
widened and deepened by their capacity to perceive and interpret
the world. In this way, Jay actualized the true mission of a liberal
arts institution--despite what he saw as the decline of the
institution itself. That, finally, is "the real thing"--the legacy
of Jay Gellens.

Those of us who often walk through the Nasatir-Storm courtyard
will miss the solitary figure who sat there, waiting for the next
student who had what it took to approach him and talk, one to one.
Those of us who were at one time his students, who were introduced
by him into ways of thinking--and being--that stunned us and changed
our lives' paths--we mourn the loss of a great soul and teacher.

Jay had memorized thousands of lines of drama and poetry, and,
in lecture,  he would sometimes launch into a haunting recital,
in his full-rich voice, of Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, Eliot,
or Auden. Even in private conversations, he returned often to these
lines from W.H. Auden:

      For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find
           it
      Until you have looked for it everywhere and found nowhere that
            was not a desert....

Elise Miller 
Rhetoric and Writing Studies