Cyrus Hamlin

Professor of German and Comparative Literature

Cy Hamlin, B.A. Harvard College, Ph.D. Yale University, assistant professor at Yale from 1962-1967 and, after a career at Toronto, Professor at Yale from 1983: you were born in New Haven, and although your brother went to Yale, you went to Harvard, returning to Yale for your graduate studies and completing your dissertation under the great Comparative Literature scholar Rene Wellek. You are a comparatist, but even that term would be too narrow to describe you—an encompassing humanist would be more exact. Your dissertation was on Romantic Studies of Greek Tragedy—and German and English Romanticism, as well as an interest in the classics, have been themes through your career. You are an expert on Hölderlin and have published widely on Hölderlin, Goethe and the poetics of German Romanticism. Literary theory has also interested you and papers on Romantic theory, Hermeneutics, and translation dot your career. But you have also published on the Bible, and have a deep interest in theater and opera, with particular emphasis on Wagner and Brecht. You are co-editor of essays on Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Culture, shortly to appear with the Yale Press, and are currently writing on the founding of the Institutions of Culture in Berlin during the Romantic Period from 1810-1830.

At Yale, you have been a devoted citizen of the larger community. You have served as Chair of both German and Comp Lit. You have taught Directed Studies and your own literature major course in the Foundations of Western Thought with readings from Homer and Plato through the Bible. Long before the current interest in internationalism you were a big fan of students going abroad, and eager to see them reach beyond their own borders, thus helping to galvanize several study abroad programs. You have been on the Theater Studies Committee, the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Beinecke, and are president of the Manuscript Society. You believe that new horizons broaden the mind, and you yourself have accepted invitations to be a visiting professor at Boston University, the University of California at San Diego, Oxford, Harvard and the Free University in Berlin. You have been Chairman of the Board of the J.E. Trust, thereby marking your close relationship to J.E. with a leadership role in its fellowship. It would be unusual not to see you in the audience of the Opera Theatre of Yale College or in any of the dozens of events of the School of Music you attend, and we are delighted that while you expect to spend more time in Maine, you still intend to make New Haven your principal home. With special thanks for the variety of your contributions, and with trust that we will see you around often, your colleagues send you off with a warm Auf Wiedersehen.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans