I
have found a favorite spot. It is 1552 steps from my house, about 9/10ths of a
mile door to chair. It is in a quiet quadrangle surrounded by Harvard Law
School dormitories. For the past two weeks I have walked from my house to the
quadrangle. I sit on a wire mesh chair beside a wire mesh table that is one of four sets strategically placed beside a canopy that offers protection
should the weather turn wet. So far every day has been fair or, if cloudy, with barely a suggestion of rain.
I
like two things about my favorite spot. The first is that apparently it is no one else's. I’m sure that will change once the students return. But just now it is as free of people as a private
beach in the dead of winter.
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| The Axe |
The
sculpture that I look at every day was Safer’s first public commission. It was a
gift of the class of ’49. It was moved to this somewhat out of the
way spot from its original location to accommodate law school expansion. Since Safer
was involved in the relocation, I assume he approved of placing it on the outskirts of Harvard property. I wonder why. It seems to me to be too important a piece to hide under a bushel.
I didn't always think that. When I first sat in my wire mesh chair across from it, the piece struck me as overly opaque with its three
angular blobs sitting stolidly on a platform. Nothing in particular about them jumped out at me until one day, as I got up to leave, I caught a glimpse
of the profile of the tallest blob. Of course! I exclaimed to myself. How slow
not to have seen it before. I savor that moment. It is the way one feels when
one is learning a foreign language. In the beginning everything is just a
meaningless stream of sounds. Then, suddenly, you hear words and the spaces
between them, even though the spaces aren’t really there.
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| The Executioner's Block |
 |
| The Executioner |
Even so there is
something a bit odd about the installation. Perhaps the class of ’49 had a
macabre sense of humor. Or maybe they shared with the sculptor a dark view of
the legal profession. Judgment, after
all, doesn’t have to be harsh. Think, for example, of the Judgment of Solomon
where the death of a child was averted by the wisdom of the king. But this
statue brooks no such merciful denouments. There is the axe. There is the axeman.
There is the block from which the head will fall. No matter how you slice it, the presence of this sculpture in this quadrangle is a hostile act.
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| Judgment by John Safer '49 |
I
wonder what the students who live in these rooms think about this meditation on
their chosen careers. What do they see when they look out of their windows at
the three blobs in the quadrangle? Do they even see it? Perhaps they take it for
granted that there is a symmetry between justice and legality. Perhaps the
sculptor wanted to call that into question.
After all, he was a graduate of this very school of law, class of '49.
After all, he was a graduate of this very school of law, class of '49.
