The 1984 film Amadeus begins with a suicide attempt. The aged court composer Antonio Salieri, in a fit of remorse and despair, has finally cut his own throat. One of the most respected composers of his time, Salieri recognized his mediocrity in relation to the enfant terrible Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Salieri was a devout Catholic. As a boy, he had struck a bargain with God: “Make me a composer, and I will worship you through music.” Miraculously, he rose to become the court composer for Emperor Joseph II in Vienna. Through the mysterious workings of providence, Salieri had fulfilled his dream.
Then Mozart came to Vienna.
Salieri was a good composer, though not a great one. He felt threatened by the younger man’s talent. He envied Mozart’s father who encouraged his boy to write operas at the age of 4. He envied Mozart’s easy confidence and carefree manner. God seemed to speak directly through this irreverent young man, while the devout Salieri labored over every reluctant note.
But Mozart was arrogant and impolitic. His talents were squandered. He lost his court connections. He fell into debt, and, finally, died young and was tossed into the common pit, like a sack of garbage. And in the film’s fictional account, it was Salieri, more than anyone else, who ruined Mozart and drove him to a premature death -- even as he wept at Don Giovanni and worshipped Mozart as the greatest composer who had ever lived.
How many of us, as teachers, have encountered a student or younger colleague whose talents were manifestly greater than our own at the same age? How have we responded?
We recognize them. They look at us with skepticism, alert and unsmiling. They ask us probing questions, forcing us out of the groove of our memorized speeches. We drop our intellectual guard, and they get the better of us. They even mock us behind our backs. Among friends, they imitate our voices, our pet phrases, and our familiar habits (or so we imagine). They have us all figured out, but the source of their talent remains a mystery.
No doubt, the young have innate advantages. They are more beautiful. They have new ideas. They are prone to enthusiasms. And they tread on the toes of their elders, unaware that they have done so. Sometimes they are genuinely arrogant because their potential is limitless, while we -- older and uglier, and scarcely a whit wiser -- make ever more elaborate plans for a future that recedes from us semester by semester.
We brood -- alone in the car, lying awake in bed: “I could have done more. I could have risen higher. If only circumstances had been more favorable. If only the right people had recognized my talents.”
But even most celebrated professors are mediocrities in the larger panorama of human accomplishment. We publish a few books that will be read by a handful of specialists. So what? The attention may last for a few years, and then our mental lives are deposited in libraries, where they remain like unvisited tombs, until someone decides to sell them for $1 each or throw them into a dumpster to be pulped. Our self-esteem is built on sand. That’s why the pompous professor -- puffed up to compensate for inner insecurity -- has the durability of a true cliché.
Salieri’s real calling was not to rival Mozart as a composer; it was to save Mozart while enduring the young man’s arrogance and ingratitude. Salieri could have smoothed the path for Mozart, coached him in court etiquette, cultivated patronage for him, and, in so doing, fulfilled himself and served God by enabling Mozart to create more of the greatest music of his age.
And so, like thousands of Salieris, we sometimes support those students and subordinates who outshine us -- not out of duty to our calling or gratitude for what we have been given -- but out of a desire to affirm our fragile egos.
But pride would not permit Salieri to subordinate himself to the divine gifts of a younger man. The film portrays the vengeful composer, in his final prayer, declaring that he will “hinder and block your creature as far as I am able.” Like Lucifer, Salieri proclaims, non serviam: I will not serve.
For most of us, the pattern begins in elementary school and intensifies over time. A classmate says something bright and receives the praise of the teacher, and we hate her for it. A fellow graduate student wins an award and, instead of being happy for him, we decide that the contest was rigged. It never ends, and it makes us miserable.
The undergraduate who challenges us in class comes to our office to talk about graduate school. Shall we encourage that student, or offer only discouragement, pretending that our motives are based purely on the poor prospects for academic careers? We never say this, but the message is clear: “Look kid, I had the talent to make it in this business, but you don’t. Go do something else.”
An advisee submits a dissertation chapter. Shall we admit that it is already quite good and that we have nothing to add, or shall we produce -- under the pretense that we are being helpful and conscientious -- a complex critique that will result in a series of fruitless, time-consuming revisions? “Your work shows lots of potential, kid, but you’ll never be as good as I am. I notice shortcomings in your work that you’ll never understand.”
The job candidate arrives for an interview. Shall we ask honest questions about the person’s interests and suitability for the position, or shall we exercise our departmental rivalries at the candidate’s expense? “What are your views on the dialogue between Professor X and Professor Y? (Either way, of course, you are wrong.)”
How can we know the difference between honesty and resentment when our actions often move in advance of the principles we would profess to believe?
I don’t know, but I wonder if the solution is to think of yourself, as a matter of principle, as a mediocrity. Principled mediocrity, as I see it, is the belief that you should not regard yourself as better than other people, including your students and subordinates. It is regarding yourself as the servant of talent, rather than the talent whom others must serve.
You cannot write a column about accepting your mediocrity without being suspected of false modesty or fishing for compliments, “Oh, no you are actually wonderful!” But I think principled mediocrity is not an underestimation of one’s abilities, but a realistic assessment of one’s importance in the larger picture. I think it can only come from an inner core of confidence and security that is hard to attain in an academic culture that demands that excellence be documented in quantifiable units of production. Fearful of losing status, fearful of never finding the secure and esteemed position we think we deserve, we resent each other’s talents and tear each other down.
Principled mediocrity is the pursuit of goodness rather than “excellence.” We regard ourselves as failures if we don’t have an endowed chair. Our students believe that anything less than an “A” is unacceptable. Everyone must be No. 1, and, in consequence, everyone is encouraged to lead a life of self-loathing. We learn to hate ourselves for being average, and we become ungrateful for what we have and who we are. We become paralyzed by fear -- not of failure -- but of not being the best.
We interview for academic positions and are told: One verbal misstep, and you’ve lost the job. We spend years on a book, only to have a reviewer attack a few ill-chosen words. We deliver an elegant lecture and dwell on an ill-considered response to a friendly question. We teach 10,000 students and feel our service is marred by the dissatisfaction of one.
All thorough academe, there are too many people who would sacrifice the good for the sake of the “excellent,” the precise meaning of which changes from year to year. But the God of Genesis did not behold the creation and declare that it was “excellent.” Sometimes “good” is good enough.
“Mediocrities of the world,” proclaims the remorseful Salieri, after his suicide attempt, “I absolve you. I absolve you!”