Living a life immersed in the humanities has lessons to teach us about connecting with the “other” and embracing diversity.
In the April 2017 Humanities College convocation, the BYU Mariachi Band and Choir performed “De colores,” a Mexican folkloric song with melodies dating to 17th-century Spain and with lyrics originating in both Spain and Mexico. Diverse in origin and in its formal composition, “De colores” has been sung throughout the years in settings as varied as children’s classrooms and farm worker protest rallies.
De colores, de colores
Se visten los campos en la primavera.
De colores, de colores
Son los pajaritos que vienen de afuera.
De colores, de colores
Es el arco iris que vemos lucir.
This song translates to English as follows:
In colors, in colors
The fields are dressed in the spring.
In colors, in colors
Are the little birds that come from outside.
In colors, in colors
Is the rainbow that we see shining.
“De colores” is generally thought of as a celebration of the diversity of God’s creations. In a similar vein, a lifelong study of the humanities will enable you to more fully appreciate the diversity of our world.
The Literary Hero
As a student at the University of Utah, President Gordon B. Hinckley majored in English and minored in ancient languages, an extension of the love for literature he acquired growing up in a house full of literary works. As an adult, he filled his own house with approximately 1,000 literary, historical, and philosophical volumes. Concerning the study of books, President Hinckley once said: It is both relaxing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life, seek the company of a friendly book and . . . look into un-lived days with prophets. Youth will delight in the heroic figures of Homer. . . . The absurdity of Don Quixote riding mightily against a windmill may make your own pretentiousness seem ridiculous. . . .
From the reading of “good books” there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way. It is not enough to read newspapers. . . . But to become acquainted with real nobility as it walks the pages of history and science and literature is to strengthen character and develop life in its finer meanings. 1
I love these words from President Hinckley. Not only do they indicate that the study of great works of literature is an essential part of a university education, they call us to “look into un-lived days,” to imaginatively put ourselves onto—or in—the path of a fictional character, that is, to experience empathy alongside the great literary heroes, like Don Quixote de la Mancha, whom the prophet curiously refers to here as a “prophet.”
What kind of hero is Don Quixote? Superficially, he is a madman. He initiates his eccentric adventures—riding on a horse throughout his native land of Spain alongside his faithful squire Sancho Panza—following countless nights of binge reading. The novel states: In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains dried up.
Or, in the Spanish original, “se le secó el cerebro.” Perhaps we can gain a deeper understanding of Don Quixote as a literary hero by considering the well known academic article published in 2004 called “The Don Quixote Effect.”2
This article describes the results of a scientific study showing that filmic works with a quixotic theme often leave a short-lived effect of empathy and even altruism on medical students and residents.
Responding to this research, Jack Coulehan suggests that even longer -term effects of empathy may occur when future doctors
become regular, long-term readers of literature, suggesting that as teachers, “we can also engender the Don Quixote effect through the . . . use of short stories, poetry, essays, and drama, . . . combined with reflective discussion.”3
All of this suggests that there are a myriad of reasons why you should continue reading after graduating from this university. Studies and exit surveys indicate that university graduates by and large do not read books after graduation. That is why I want to stress today that there is growing evidence that, to borrow President Hinckley’s phrase, the reading of “good books” can play an important role in virtually every walk of life, from business and teaching to parenting or making art.
The Idea of Empathy
Recently the media has been flooded with articles concerning the benefits of the humanities for the professions. 4 Much of the research on the intersection of humanities and professions turns on the idea of empathy, of deeply connecting with an “other”—an idea beautifully expressed by Robert Coles, who writes: When you read, you are in the company of another person. The other person’s words and thoughts become part of yours, and connect with you, and reading is a kind of human connection. It’s an embrace of another person’s thoughts, ideas, suggestions, premises, worries, concerns. 5
Reading thus opens our hearts to others, an idea also expressed by President Hinckley, when late in his life he said that the study of humanities “gives an aspect of living that is essential. You need technology. You need the professions. You need all of those things, but we need the heart also, and the humanities speak to the heart.” 6
Books speak to our hearts when, through reading, we gain empathy for the other—men and women of different creeds, cultures, and colors. The great African-American writer Richard Wright shared such a life-altering experience through reading when he wrote the following: Now [the impulse to dream] surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.
As dawn broke I ate my pork and beans, feeling dopey, sleepy. I went to work, but the mood of the book would not die; it lingered, coloring everything I saw, heard, did. I now felt that I knew what the white men were feeling [emphasis added]. Merely because I had read a book that had spoken of how they lived and thought, I identified myself with that book. 7
Wright’s experience demonstrates the Don Quixote effect. Cervantes scholars often describe a chiastic motif of mutually becoming other that occurs in the latter chapters of the famous novel: the Quixotification of Sancho coinciding with a Sanchification of Don Quixote that parallels the reader’s own interior process of developing empathy for the other. Perhaps Don Quixote’s brains shrivel up through excessive book study, but his heart grows exponentially as a result of reading. The song “De colores” eventually reveals this message:
De colores, de colores
Sí, de blanco y negro y rojo y azul y castaño.
Son colores, son colores
De gente que ríe, y estrecha la mano.
Son colores, son colores
De gente que sabe de la libertad.
Which translates as:
In colors, in colors
Yes, black and white and red and blue and brown.
All the colors, colors
From people laughing, and shaking hands.
All the colors, colors
From people who know freedom. The Spanish word estrecha in the phrase “estrecha la mano” means not just a handshake but an embrace of hands. When we laugh and celebrate with others, when we reach out and embrace people of all colors, we share in the diversity of God’s creation. This unity recalls the description given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland—another English major—about a diverse choir in which “there is room for those who speak different languages, celebrate diverse cultures, and live in a host of locations.” 8
Please consider following President Hinckley’s recommendation to study good books and to find a place for the humanities in your future. As you do so, you will gain a deeper appreciation of the diversity essential for your temporal and spiritual progress. I know that your future is bright. And I encourage you to keep in touch with your professors and mentors here as you move through life. We are proud of you, and we hope to reconnect with you often.
Greg Stallings is a BYU associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese. This essay is adapted from an address delivered at the BYU College of Humanities convocation April 28, 2017.
1. Gordon B. Hinckley, “Good Books,” Millennial Star, 21 December 1933, 829; emphasis added.
2. Johanna Shapiro and Lloyd Rucker, “The Don Quixote Effect: Why Going to the Movies Can Help Develop Empathy and Altruism in Medical Students and Residents,” Families, Systems & Health 22, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 445–52.
3. Jack Coulehan, “The Possible Dream: A Commentary on the Don Quixote Effect,” Families, Systems, & Health 22, no. 4 (2004): 456.
4. See, for example, George Anders, “That ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket,” Forbes, 29 July 2015, forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/07/29/liberal-arts-de-gree-tech/#47c9173f 745d; and Chad Bray, “Carlyle Co-Founder’s Formula for Success: Study the Humantities,” New York Times, 23 January 2014, dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/carlyle-co-founders-formula-for-success-study-the-humanities/?mcubz=1.
5. Robert Coles, quoted in Nicholas A. Basbanes, Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 263; emphasis added.
6. “Endowment Hosts Scholar,” LDS Church News, 19 March 2005, ldschurchnewsarchive.com/articles/46997/Endowment-hosts-scholar.html; emphasis added.
7. Richard Wright, quoted in The Open Door: When Writers First Learned to Read, ed. Steven Gilbar (Boston: David R. Godine, 1989), 79.
8. Jeffrey R. Holland, “Songs Sung and Unsung,” Ensign, May 2017.