Remembering Robert Greene

How does one even begin to approach this?
It is hard enough to deal with the death of a friend, a teacher, a mentor, and simply someone you knew and saw almost every week if not every day for years.
It is even harder when all those people combine into the very same person.

I know Robert’s keen intellect, his crystalline scholarship, and encyclopedic knowledge of literature, history, or really any given topic of conversation will be most remembered on the University of Montana campus.

They were the first traits that struck me - and I’m sure myriad others - when I met him at a mere 18 years old. We shared a tenuous connection that I exploited to try to find an introduction to the University of Montana campus: he went to the University of Rochester and my family is from Rochester. After beginning our conversation talking about the city of Rochester and of future college life, I was already deeply impressed by this man’s high standard of communication, of ease in conversation and of comfort with himself.

While chances at interaction with Robert were slim my freshman year, my friendship with him began to develop the next year in fall of 2016. Robert taught HSTR 357: Imperial Russia. I’m sure many students know of this course’s difficulty, but it is ultimately one of the most compelling courses on this campus, and dare I say, in the country, and made only more compelling by the man teaching it.

It was in this class that Robert exhibited who he was beyond a bearded man behind a podium, an expert on tsarist Russia, and the chair of the history department. Instead of getting mad at me when I fell asleep in his class one day, Robert instead asked if everything was alright with me. I, the day before finals week began, acquired myself a concussion and needed an extension on a few of my final assignments. Robert granted it without question, and in characteristic fashion, checked on me to make sure my health was in order and even offered to extend further than when I wanted to turn it in.

The next semesters, though I had no formal class with him until 2018, only deepened my friendship and mentorship under this outstanding man.

Robert and his office, with its poster of Lenin, old maps of Europe, and books with titles in the Cyrillic alphabet, had a way of drawing you to it in your spare time. He never lost that magnetic charisma. It pulled me to his office for a year-long study of Weimar Germany. And his draw remained just as powerful on the other side of the world, pulling me to the phone for long calls in Germany, Scotland, and Macedonia.

While his intellect and alert mind always shined in conversation, the image his students, colleagues, and family will forever have of him places more emphasis on two other things.

More than thinking and knowing for the sake of using his freedom of thought and freedom to know, humor was at the core of Robert’s personality. If one goes through their notes from his courses, one is never far from true gems said by the man, such as:

“Ivan’s life is in danger on several occasions, those who cared for him were killed, exiled, etc. We know Ivan [the terrible] took out frustrations on animals, as he was fond of throwing cats off the towers of the Kremlin. Looking back … this perhaps should have raised some flags.”
Or “Ivan’s name was supposed to evoke images of an ideal autocrat. It doesn’t. The latter half of his reign is really terrible.”
Or “Peter thought he had concealed his identity well but he was also the only 6’ 7” Russian with a posse of 150 men who trashed every inn they stayed in.”
In conversation, the man produced similar turns of phrase, such as “If you can help it, I’d advise you away from contracting prostate cancer.”
Or “Reading his dialogue, I am hard pressed to wonder if Dostoevsky truly ever had or witnessed a conversation with other people.”
Or “I assume Macedonia abides by the general Slavic and Balkan custom of shutting all function down for two weeks around the new year, which I phrase hesitantly because it assumes there was function to begin with.”

Robert’s humor was understated. It was wry. But it reflected comfort with absurdity, and a resilience to the discomforts of not only history and the concept of truth, but to the hardships of life itself.

But the trait that will stay with us, and one we hopefully carry on from Robert is nothing to be found in his head. It is his heart.

Before all else, Robert was a deeply caring, loving man. He always thought of others before himself, to the very end.

While he could have been melancholy, or simply given up, Robert chose not to. He stayed with us for a year and a half. He taught two classes. He began a new research project. In the midst of suffering and great pain, pain that attacked his ability to walk, to sleep, and to function, Robert barely let me ask him how he was doing whenever we talked – instead going out of his way to counsel me and no doubt many others through abrupt changes in plans in the middle of a pandemic and other jagged, heartrending, and tumultuous occurrences in our lives. Even on my last phone call with him, as he struggled to stay awake and was in great pain and simply could have ended the call, Robert woke himself up twice and made sure I finished a nightmarish graduate school application. He was also using the few waking moments he had writing letters of recommendation for students up to the day he passed peacefully in his sleep. He even held on for a friend from Rochester to arrive so his aunt Joan would not be alone.

Again, Robert was always thinking of others first.

Though he would deny it out of both humility and a simple urge to be contrarian, he emanated and still emanates the spirit of a character we discussed many times: Father Zosima from the Brothers Karamazov. Father Zosima is the main character, Alyosha’s religious and intellectual mentor in the book. The man goes far beyond merely being the head of the monastery Alyosha joins; he teaches Alyosha that goodness can only be true when it reaches beyond the walls of the monastery and into the hearts of people outside it.

Robert was not just a professor, a teacher, or a friend to many of his students. Some students lacked cerebral council from their parents; they found it in Robert Greene. He became their Father Zosima. He was an intellectual father to many of us, whether he knew it or not, seeing potential we never we knew we had, preparing us for a world outside the classroom’s walls where we would learn to value kindness, laughter, and good conversation over intellect, security, and money.

While Robert preferred the elegant realism of Tolstoy, he bears more resemblance to these frenetic, passionate, and caring characters of Dostoevsky, and particularly of the Brothers Karamazov. In many conversations about this book, we discussed its ending and how it is one of the most perfect in all of literature. I now see, that was perhaps for a reason.

Alyosha witnesses the death of Father Zosima, the death of his father Fyodor, his Brother Ivan’s descent into madness, his brother’s Dmitri’s sentence to exile, and his brother Pavel’s suicide throughout in the last half of the book. But he holds to his faith in people and their innate goodness – despite all proof to the contrary. That faith keeps him practicing kindness, thoughtfulness, and love for others in the face of great pain and suffering. He believes at the end of the book that one can best serve others by fighting to preserve that good in themselves through all circumstances. Robert did this for all of us – despite any excuses he had to be melancholy or stop believing that he could help preserve a spirit of good in others by preserving it in himself.

At the novel’s end, Alyosha is confident in expressing Father Zosima’s lessons at a little boy named Ilyushechka’s funeral. Whenever I read Alyosha’s speech at the funeral now, the words have an eerie echo, one in a measured American accent, the same accent that filled the office on floor two of the Liberal Arts building:

“Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death's door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha's stone, that we will never forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind-hearted, brave boy, he felt for his father's honor and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we attain to honor or fall into great misfortune—still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are. My little doves—let me call you so, for you are very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look at your good dear faces. My dear children, perhaps you won't understand what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly, but you'll remember it all the same and will agree with my words some time. You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. Perhaps [pg 876]we may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men's tears and at those people who say as Kolya did just now, ‘I want to suffer for all men,’ and may even jeer spitefully at such people. But however bad we may become—which God forbid—yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all together, at this stone, the cruelest and most mocking of us—if we do become so—will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at this moment! What's more, perhaps, that one memory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say, ‘Yes, I was good and brave and honest then!’ Let him laugh to himself, that's no matter, a man often laughs at what's good and kind. That's only from thoughtlessness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, ‘No, I do wrong to laugh, for that's not a thing to laugh at.’ ”
“That will be so, I understand you, Karamazov!” cried Kolya, with flashing eyes.
The boys were excited and they, too, wanted to say something, but they restrained themselves, looking with intentness and emotion at the speaker.

“I say this in case we become bad,” Alyosha went on, “but there's no reason why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and above all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other! I say that again. I give you my word for my part that I'll never forget one of you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did not care to know whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov exists and that he is not blushing now as he did when he discovered the founders of Troy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear little eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave and generous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he is grown up), and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as Kartashov. But why am I talking about those two? You are all dear to me, boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me! Well, and who has united us in this kind, good feeling which we shall remember and intend to remember all our lives? Who, if not Ilusha, the good boy, the dear boy, precious to us for ever! Let us never forget him. May his memory live for ever in our hearts from this time forth!”
“Yes, yes, for ever, for ever!” the boys cried in their ringing voices, with softened faces.
“Let us remember his face and his clothes and his poor little boots, his coffin and his unhappy, sinful father, and how boldly he stood up for him alone against the whole school.”
“We will remember, we will remember,” cried the boys. “He was brave, he was good!”
“Ah, how I loved him!” exclaimed Kolya.
“Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don't be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!”
“Yes, yes,” the boys repeated enthusiastically.
“Karamazov, we love you!” a voice, probably Kartashov's, cried impulsively.
“We love you, we love you!” they all caught it up. There were tears in the eyes of many of them.
“Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya shouted ecstatically.
“And may the dead boy's memory live for ever!” Alyosha added again with feeling.
“For ever!” the boys chimed in again.
“Karamazov,” cried Kolya, “can it be true what's taught us in religion, that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each other again, all, Ilusha too?”
“Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!” Alyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic.
“Ah, how splendid it will be!” broke from Kolya.
“Well, now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner. Don't be put out at our eating pancakes—it's a very old custom and there's something nice in that!” laughed Alyosha. “Well, let us go! And now we go hand in hand.”
“And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya cried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up his exclamation: “Hurrah for Karamazov!”

We, Robert Greene’s Alyoshas, go hand in hand take forward his lessons beyond the bounds of the University of Montana, beyond the bounds of Missoula, beyond the bounds of offices, and beyond the bounds reason. We mourn our Father Zosima with confidence and say hurrah for Robert today. We were all dear to him, with places in his heart for each of us. Now, we have places in our hearts for him, united in the kind, good feeling this precious man and his warm presence produced. May his memory live forever in our hearts from this time forth as he goes on to spend time with his relatives, friends, and his mentors.
He was brave. He was good.
How we loved him.
We shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened.
Hurrah for Robert.

While our current reeling world may currently leave the state of a service for you uncertain, you deserve nothing less than ceremony, pomp, and hearts aflame in your wake.

We all love you deeply.

Ronan Kennedy
University of Montana, Class of 2019