Peter Viereck, 89; writings helped inspire conservatism
Two days before death stilled a mind that for decades had hopscotched nimbly between poetry and political philosophy, Peter Viereck told his son he was at peace and quoted William Butler Yeats:
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
As a valedictory, Dr. Viereck could as easily have quoted himself, from a poem he wrote for his dear friend Joseph Brodsky:
Only the living can write about dying,
And for terminal cases the narcotic of choice is scribble.
Dr. Viereck chose to take pen to paper constantly in a career that began before World War II, leaving his mark as permanently in politics as he did in poetry. His first volume of poems, ''Terror and Decorum," was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949. He also is credited with giving name to the conservative movement when, as a 23-year-old Harvard graduate student, The Atlantic Monthly published his essay: ''But -- I'm a Conservative!"
Dr. Viereck died Saturday in his South Hadley home at Mount Holyoke College, where he was professor emeritus of history. He was 89.
After receiving a pacemaker about a decade ago, he expanded his oeuvre and finished with a flurry of seven new or revised books in the past two years.
As a Harvard student, he was awarded the undergraduate prizes for best prose and best poetry, a feat repeated when he received two Guggenheim Fellowships, one for poetry and one for history -- double honors that were highly unusual.
''He's probably the most distinguished faculty member in the history of Mount Holyoke College," said Joseph Ellis, Ford Foundation professor of history at the college. ''We will not see his like again. Being that intellectually ambidextrous is extremely rare."
While Dr. Viereck helped build the foundation of conservatism, his intellectual rigor and examination of ideas proved an ill fit for the litmus tests of ideologies. At times he was an almost forgotten figure in a political movement whose original philosophy he helped define.
''He would always say, 'Save me from 'iologies' and 'isms,' " said his granddaughter Stephanie Viereck Gibbs Kamath of Cambridge.
After a lengthy profile of Dr. Viereck was published last fall in The New Yorker, his conservative credentials were questioned in The National Review. Among the perceived sins some conservatives have never forgotten: He condemned the red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy and supported Adlai Stevenson, a Democrat, for president.
Peter R. Viereck was born in New York City. His father was analyzed by Sigmund Freud and, as a reporter, interviewed Adolph Hitler before World War II. Later convicted of conspiring with the Nazis, his father was in prison while Dr. Viereck and his brother served in the Army during the war. Dr. Viereck's brother was killed in action. He responded to news of the death by writing:
'And what if one of us'
I asked last May, in fun, in gentleness,
'Wears doom, like dungarees, and doesn't know?'
After the war, he was recruited by the University of Chicago but ''he chose to go to Mount Holyoke because he liked the beauty of the surroundings," his granddaughter said.
Dr. Viereck loved walking around what is known as Upper Lake, where in later years a bench was installed with a plaque honoring him.
''He would say, 'I used to have an endowed chair. I prefer an endowed bench,' " Ellis said.
A bit of an eccentric even in the absent-minded professor crowd, Dr. Viereck would rise early, sometimes awakening his daughter at 4 a.m. when he began typing. Then he would rush to class, taking up two or three spaces with his haphazardly parked car, sometimes leaving the driver's door agape in the wake of his departure.
''He would just burst into the classroom and start lecturing right away," said his daughter, Valerie Viereck Gibbs of Columbus, Ohio. ''He had notes, but spoke in a very animated manner. And he would tell the students if they read everything he assigned, then there was something wrong . . . because that meant you wouldn't have enough time to walk around the lake."
He became an early friend and supporter of Brodsky, helping bring the future Nobel laureate to the United States, then to teach at Mount Holyoke.
''Brodsky was Dad's one true friend. They loved to pun together -- they had infinite capacity to make puns," said his son, the Rev. John Viereck, an Episcopal priest in Los Angeles.
They had co-taught a class on poets under totalitarianism, which Dr. Viereck dubbed ''Rhyme and Punishment."
Brodsky wasn't the only poet to frequent the Viereck household. Dylan Thomas visited, as did Robert Frost and Robert Lowell. Meanwhile, Dr. Viereck continued to write articles and books on political philosophy.
''He was interdisciplinary before that was a word," his granddaughter said. ''He would say, 'I'm human, and therefore everything touches me.' "
In his political writings, Dr. Viereck was somewhat unusual in American conservatism in that he was ''much more attentive to the nonpolitical, or the pre-political, if you will," said Claes Ryn, professor of political philosophy at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Ryn, who wrote a monograph on Dr. Viereck's work, said he ''always resisted true believerism -- people who don't allow for the complexity of the world."
Dr. Viereck was twice married to and divorced from Anya Markov, who died in 1972. His second wife, Betty Falkenberg Viereck, was convalescing in Seattle during his final illness.
His son, daughter, two granddaughters, and a great-grandson gathered with him not long ago, using a telephone to include his grandson, Jonathan Gibbs, who is studying abroad.
After he died, relatives gathered again to listen to a tape his granddaughter Sophia Gibbs Kim recorded of Dr. Viereck reading his poetry several years ago. At the end, he lightly mocked his advancing age: ''Forward, forward, half-speed ahead."
''It was like he was back," Stephanie Kamath said.
A memorial service at Mount Holyoke will be announced. 