In four years of wonderful undergraduate education, Victor Brombert was one of the most memorable and excellent professors I had — his lectures in our Lit 141 class for freshmen were erudite, eloquent, witty, and complex beyond compare and taught me what enormous pleasure critical analysis could give. I always regretted taking only that one class with him — I probably imagined every professor would be like him! — but how lovely to read that class was special for him as well. And perhaps he will smile to know that my friends and I, 29 years after graduation and more than 30 after taking his class, still quote him and try to (lovingly) mimic his incomparable way of connecting words and ideas. 

It’s fantastic that he’s being celebrated, and I hope he continues to enjoy the well-deserved praise and gratitude from all his former students — even those who were callow freshmen in his Lit 141 lecture. To me he will always be the beau ideal of a humanities professor.