Pericles Lewis
May 21, 2023
Baccalaureate Service
Mr. President, Mr. Provost, Madame Secretary, deans, college heads, college deans, colleagues, friends, families, and, most of all, members of the class of 2023: welcome to this day, and congratulations.
I now call on the university chaplain.
Graduates, parents, friends, President Salovey, Chaplain Kugler, and colleagues on the faculty and staff,
On this occasion, Baccalaureate, it is customary for the President to deliver an address and for the Dean of Yale College to offer a reading.
Although this is only my first year as dean, I’ve been teaching at Yale for a quarter of a century, and I have had the opportunity to watch the class of 2023 over the past few years. Most of you came here in 2019 and experienced the pandemic as a disruption to your first year and sophomore year. Others arrived earlier and took some time off from your studies. Only recently have we had the opportunity to reestablish many Yale traditions in person.
It has been a challenging time to be a college student, but you have overcome obstacles and have thrived here at Yale. I am
reminded of some lines from one of my favorite bands, the Grateful Dead:
Sometimes the light’s all shining on me,
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it’s been.
But even though the last four or five years have been a remarkable journey, I am delighted to see you all set out on an even longer and perhaps stranger journey ahead, and I have no doubt that you will thrive in the world beyond the college gates. So I have chosen a poem about a journey for today’s reading.
Constantine Cavafy, a modern Greek poet born in Alexandria, Egypt, often rewrote stories from the ancient world. In his poem Ithaka, he addresses a person setting out on a journey. Although the addressee is not named, it seems to be Homer’s Odysseus, one of the most famous travelers in literature, who is setting out on a journey to his home on the Greek island of Ithaka. But as Cavafy addresses his traveler, I think each of you can imagine that he is speaking directly to you in this translation by Edmund Keeley.
Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Graduates of the class of 2023, I wish you success and self-discovery on the journey ahead of you.
Thank you, and congratulations!