ST ANTONY'S COLLEGE ST ANTONY'S COLLEGE, OXFORD 0X2 6JF - TEL: (01865) 284700 • DIRECT 284717 • FAX: (01865) 5^2323 e-mail: [email protected] From the Warden Sir Marrack Goulding KCMG SSiiiil iiflli 29 September 1999 His Excellency Mr Kofi Annan Secretary-General of the United Nations NEW YORK New York 10017, USA Thank you for giving me the honour of delivering your message to last night's~c^l^5mfWTrorffie7ife and~w"6Tk"H"Mrchaer^^SIs^H^elFO^blrHlaTthe Sheldomari Theatre where you yourself spoke earlier in the year). The ceremony was extremely well attended by Michael's acquaintances from all walks of life and all parts of the world. I read out your message before delivering my own statement. It was the only message that was read out at the ceremony. Its warmth and eloquence made a strong impression, particularly the reference to Michael as "an exemplary citizen of the world". I enclose copies of the programme and of my own remarks. A Marrack Goulding REMARKS BY MARRACK GOULDING AT A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF MICHAEL VAILLANCOURT ARIS Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, 28 September 1999 Per Kvaerne has spoken about Michael the Scholar. Robin Chnsu^. :i "^ sneak about Michael the Friend. I will try to build a bridge between them by speaking aix,u.. •," -1 *he Fellow - in the University sense of the word but also in the wider sense of, to quote the o.-.. a little selectively, 'a colleague, companion, associate, comrade'. Michael was a Fellow of St Antony's College for less than a decade, having previously been a Fellow at St John's and Wolfson. But his connexion with St Antony's had begun long before he became a Fellow. Since 1981 he had been helping to manage our Asian Studies Centre. The Centre is not actually a Centre in the physical sense. It is an association of kindred academics which exists in spirit but as yet has no premises. Its stubborn survival in that state may owe something to Michael's conviction that the spiritual is more important than the physical. As a College Fellow Michael was exemplary, the personification of what is good about this University: profound and original scholarship; a desire to share that scholarship with the students who flocked to him; a warm and unassuming personality; patience, discretion and fastidious judgement; loyally tu his College; vigorous defence of ib n^.,. in> an independent academic institution to study whatever it chooses to study; disdain for the petty squabbles and consuming bureaucracy which can so disfigure Academia. I did not meet Michael face-to-face until I came here two years ago. But as a UN official in New York I had received telephone calls from him, usually on a Sunday morning, and had come to know well that quiet and persuasive voice, that voice which proposed the impossible on a rising note of interrogation that implied you were less than a man if you did not at least attempt the impossible. The calls were of course about Burma and Daw Suu, and the proposals were for tougher action by the UN in Rangoon. My reply was usually that the impossible could not be attempted. I shudder now to recall the UN-speak in which that reply was conveyed. But Michael's calm politeness never wavered. For the newly arrived Warden, he was a generous guide and mentor, full of good advice about the need to build consensus before proposing changes in the College's established ways of doing things. Time spent on consultation, he rightly said, was rarely time wasted. He was also a consummate peacemaker - compassionate, discreet, consistent, firm. He would say very clearly that one was in the wrong and ought to back down; and he had the knack of doing this without causing offence. All these skills made him a most valuable Fellow of the College. The obituary by Peter Carey in the St Antony's College Record rightly describes him as 'a much loved figure' there. So much for Michael as the College Fellow. What about Michael as the all-purpose fellow with a small f - the colleague, companion, associate and comrade? One of the things that surprised me after Michael's death was how many people considered him to be their colleague, companion, associate or comrade. Their number was evident at his funeral, in spite of its having been billed as an occasion for the family only. It is even more evident in this packed Sheldonian this evening. Did Michael's discretion and natural modesty perhaps cause him, like a careful secret agent, to organize his life in separate cells or compartments, with only the closest and most privileged having access to all of them? During his life, my access was to the College compartment, to the international relations compartment, to the Burma compartment. But just before his death he convened the Steering Committee to which Per Kvaerne referred. Suddenly one became aware of a host of other compartments - his family, Tibetan Studies, Bhutan, his students, the benefactors who funded his Fellowship, his library, his love of art and music, his affinity with the contemplative religious, his correspondence with Carmelite nuns. Anthony has let me quote from a letter he once wrote to one of the nuns. She had just spent three months in the Carmelite community at Lisieux: 'I can see the wonderful attraction of Lisieux', wrote Michael. 'I wish I could spend some time there, not in the guest quarters but right in the community- Unheard of (exclamation mark)! Breaking the rules (exclamation mark)! A scandal (exclamation mark)! But what bliss to be there, with a few books and the company of angels. I would even offer to help with the washing up'. In his approach to international relations, Michael combined idealism with realism, even cynicism. He was all in favour of an ethical dimension to foreign policy. But he was healthily sceptical about whether, when the crunch came, the ethical dimension would have much chance of prevailing over the national interest dimension. As we all know, his principal concern in this field was to promote respect for human rights in Asia - above all in Burma, of course, but also in Tibet, in China, in East Timor. Wonderful bonding took place last year between Michael and the Chinese dissident, Wei Jingsheng, when Wei dined at High Table at St Antony's. It was not only human rights that caused the bonding. Nicotine did too. As we went down to dessert, Michael took Wei firmly by the arm, marched him into one of our smaller dining rooms and proclaimed it to be a liberated zone for smokers. Wei blossomed with the weed and told fascinating tales to a rapt audience of smokers and non-smokers alike. Subsequent efforts to persuade Governing Body to make the liberation permanent have not yet succeeded but, as they say in East Timor, 'a luta continua e a vitoria e certa' ('the struggle continues and victory is assured'). Michael shared the dogged optimism of that slogan. He was convinced that, in the end, right would prevail in Timor and elsewhere. But, realist that he was, he knew how much suffering might have to be endured before freedom was achieved. Michael himself had more than his fair share of suffering during his 53 years - the long separation from his wife, the constant fear that some new ordeal was being planned for her, the stress of bringing up their boys without her, the pain of his final illness. Of all the achievements that we are here to celebrate tonight, of all the virtues that will cause us to remember Michael, of all the reasons that make us proud and happy to have known him, the rarest surely is that calm and cheerful fortitude in adversity. SHELDONIAN THEATRE OXFORD A Celebration of the Life and Work of MICHAEL VAILLANCOURT ARIS 27 March 1946 - 27 March 1999 Tuesday 28 September 1999 at 8 pm OXFORD UNIVERSITY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA John Beswick Conductor Priya Mitchell David Golby David Goode Violin Leader Organ KINDLY RESERVE APPLAUSE FOR THE END OF THE PROGRAMME music before the programme JOHAJNN SEBASTIAN BACH Choralvorspiele (organ solo): Kommst du nun, Jesu, von Himmel herunter; Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme PROGRAMME ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678-1741) The Four Seasons First movement, allegro, from Autumn, Concerto in F WELCOME given by Alexander Aris ADDRESS given by Professor Per Kvserne READING given by Anthony Aris Cities and Thrones and Powers Stand in Time's eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die: But, as new buds put forth To glad new men, Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth The Cities rise againD . This season's Daffodil, She never hears What change, what chance, what chill, Cut down last year's But with bold countenance, and knowledge small Esteems her seven days' continuance To be perpetual. So Time that is o'er kind To all that be, Ordains us e'en as blind, As bold as she: That in our very death, And burial sure, Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith, 'See how our works endure!' Cities and Thrones and Powers Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Concerto in D minor for two violins, strings, and continue Second movement, Largo ma non tanto ADDRESS given by Sir Marrack Goulding KCMG READING given by Karma Phuntsho on behalf of Aung San Suu Kyi The teacher is like a great ship carrying us across the perilous ocean of existence, an unerring navigator guiding us to the dry land of liberation ..