In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

271 Memories of Rachel Bespaloff Barbara Levin Amster As a brand-new freshman in Pearsons Hall,I crossed College Street,walked through the gates, and fell in love with Mount Holyoke College. It is a love affair that has lasted more than fifty years. Little did I know in those early days that Mount Holyoke would change my life forever. Rachel Bespaloff was the architect of that change. Indeed, the most significant part of my college and lifetime experience was my relationship with her. For weeks I have been searching for the appropriate words to do justice to her brilliance and magnetism.Lo and behold,I heard those word in Chris Benfey ’s superb description of Stanley Cavell as teacher. What Madame Bespaloff generated was “intellectual excitement in a classroom.” It was breathtaking, especially since I was holding my breath hoping not to be called on. Upon arriving at Mount Holyoke, I viewed the world and my studies with a hopelessly uncritical eye. Madame made short shrift of my apathy. Early in her course an essay, the first of many, was assigned. Madame returned my sorry excuse for an essay with more critical comments than my paper itself contained. Therein began my intellectual relationship with this extraordinary woman and great teacher, a relationship that is as vivid today as it was more than fifty years ago. Paramount among her criticisms was that I translated English into French. “Think in French,” she said. I could hardly think in English let alone French. Furthermore, I was to get into the hearts and souls of the main characters in the books and plays that we were reading. Perhaps this could be done with Emma Bovary, but I challenge you to get into the heart and soul of an existentialist. The result of her ability to be a great teacher at last bore fruit. My papers at long last contained more of my writing than hers. Her great gift to me was to make me better than I ever thought I could be. I soared under her tutelage. (There are sixteen years of my own students who indirectly benefited from Madame B. I tried to make my classrooms as challenging and exciting as hers. I tried to treat my students’ work as carefully as she had treated mine.) By the end of the year I was bold enough to use comparisons from works other than French. I had the temerity to compare Julien Sorel with a character in the Iliad. Now I had piqued her curiosity. She peppered me with questions seeking to ascertain how I had arrived at that comparison. I explained that I 272 BarbaraLevinAmster was reading the Iliad. Again she asked why I would be doing that, as if I didn’t have enough reading to do for her. I explained that I was a second-year Greek student.“Aha,”she said.“Are you reading it in Greek?”A“yes”answer changed our relationship. Prior to spring break of my junior year in 1949, I submitted a hurriedly prepared paper which suffered from the effect of my desire to get home. How I have subsequently wished that last paper had been my best, but it was not. Madame called me to her modest apartment quite disappointed with my regression . She was frowning because of the many inadequacies of my paper. Among the things she said was that one would think that I was in love. Suddenly she smiled and said, “Mademoiselle Levin, are you in love?” I said yes. She crumpled my paper and said, “Now, Barbara”—calling me Barbara for the first and only time—“you must learn about life. There are some things in life more important than writing papers, and the most enchanting of these is falling in love.” I never saw her again. ...

Share