POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

It became for me the anthem of academic pretentiousness--that march by Sir Edward Elgar, which you've probably heard at every graduation you ever attended: Sir Edward Elgar's "Pomp And Çircumstance."

There's nothing in either its composition or its musical nature that explains why it came to be the theme song for graduation. It originally wasn't intended for that purpose. Elgar composed it for the coronation of King Edward VII.

But in 1905 Elgar received an honorary doctorate from Yale, and they played the song. Other Ivies--not to be out-shown, I can imagine--quickly followed. Princeton, Vassar, the University of Chicago, even dear old Columbia. By the 20s its use as a Commencement march had become part of the academic protocol.

"Just the thing that you had to graduate to," one commentator noted.

The origin of the title confirmed my questioning about its use in the Groves of Åcademe. Elgar took it from Shakespeare’s Othello, where the Moor is lamenting what he has lost after being tricked into thinking his beloved Desdemona and Cassio have been getting it on:

Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
Farewell, Othello's occupation's gone!
Act III, Scene III

One commentator has written that perhaps the academics were moved by the ability of music to “sound triumphant, but with an underlying quality of nostalgia, making it perfectly suited to Commencement that marks the beginning of one stage of life, but the end of another.”


Triumphant over what? Ignorance? I know what’s ending, but what’s beginning?

I didn't attend my college graduation; nor the graduation when I was supposed to received my PhD. But it was an unwritten Commandment where I taught that faculty shalt attend, and in the full regalia of their caps and gowns.

Now here we may be getting closer to what that pomp and circumstance at graduation is fundamentally about. Ecclesiastics began wearing caps and gowns back in the 14th century, embodying the authoritarian and hierarchical structure of their positions. And so, too, the regalia calls attention to the structure of the professoriate. The students don black or white; but oh! those professors' garb. Depending on the degrees they hold, there are hoods down the back, and the floor-length gowns bear the different colors of their degree-granting universities.

For those holders of the supreme PhD there are black velvet stripes on the puffy arms (reminding me of the "hash marks" on the Navy's Chief Petty Officers marking the number of four-year stints they've put in). Down the front of the doctoral gown, on either side of the robe openings, is a black velvet stripe.

Most caps do earn the title of board--as in mortar boards--but Columbia's cap had no such stiffener, and it flopped down the sides of my head, making me look like a Roman Catholic Cardinal. Those caps and gowns reek of the ecclesiastical influences that, believe it or not, still lurk in the darker recesses of Academe.

You can’t wear such regalia and solemnly march to Elgar’s tune without calling attention to yourself. I felt like one of those ecclesiastics you see marching down the aisles of great cathedrals. Why all this attention to the faculty, anyhow? Wasn’t this supposed to be a day to honor the students? Elgar’s march soon became like a dirge to me. To this day I have trouble listening to it.

A possible opportunity for me to expose this folly arose at the first Commencement of an alternative B.A. program in the University Without Walls movement I'd became involved with in the 70s. It was one of Antioch College's far-flung alternative programs, called Antioch West. It was dedicated to inventing alternatives to just about everything in higher education.

There were only seven students receiving B.A. degrees at our first Graduation, and with an equal number of faculty and administrators we'd gathered in a student’s home for some sort of ceremony. But other than a buffet and drinks, and giving the students their degrees, we had no idea what we would do.

I brought along my elegant Columbia cap and gown, though I had no idea what for; or even whether I'd wear them. We faculty members put our heads together. One had composed some humorous verses for the occasion; one would play a faintly recognizable "Pomp And Circumstance" on a kazoo. But what would I contribute?

Then it hit me, just before the hastily constructed ceremony began. I took off all my clothes and donned the robe, which, like all such robes, had nothing to keep it closed. Never mind, I joined the others on the program standing before the seated students. And as we proceeded I could be spotted shaking a wicked leg out from the robe.

Ånd when the students came forward to receive their degrees I threw my arms around them in a big hug--the robe opening be damned. My point was well received (no pun intended): underneath all that medieval splendor there were only naked bodies.

It all turned out to be quite creative, and when it was over we went skinny-dipping in the pool.