George Andrew Panichas

In Loving Memory of Professor George A. Panichas Professor Emeritus George A. Panichas passed away, on March 17, 2010, at the age of 79. An author, humanist, scholar, educator, editor, and literary critic, he was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1930. He split his time between his two residences in College Park, Md. and Agawam, Mass. A 1951 alumnus of American International College in Springfield, he majored in sociology as an undergraduate but became keenly interested in literature and went on to be awarded an M.A. from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, in 1952, and a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham, England, in 1962. Before leaving to study in England, he taught for several years at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Theological School in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland in College Park from 1962 to 1992 and received an Honorary Doctorate degree from American International College on May 13, 1984. Editor of the quarterly journal Modern Age from 1984-2007, he wrote innumerable scholarly articles and 25 books, including The Burden of Vision: Dostoevsky's Spiritual Art (1977), Epicurus (1967), The Essential Russell Kirk (2007), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision (2005), and Promise of Greatness: The War of 1914-1918 (1968). In his writings, as in his teaching, he encouraged the quest for beauty, wisdom, and goodness, reflected in the title, derived from Plato's Phaedrus, of his Growing Wings to Overcome Gravity: Criticism as the Pursuit of Virtue (1999). This book, along with three earlier works of criticism, The Reverent Discipline (1974), The Courage of Judgment (1982), and The Critic as Conservator (1992) comprised his critical tetralogy. Such titles alone testify to the cosmic sweep of his scholarly investigations, but their substance is even more impressive, ranging from politics to religion, from the erosion of standards in education to the spiritual barrenness of Marxism. His main task was that of elucidating a writer's vision and quest and of evoking sensitively the complete range of their power, intensity, and effort. He was concerned with the most significant writers of Western World culture, evaluating them with scholarly profundity, balanced judgment, and stylistic grace. A unifying element in all his work is an unswerving belief in the permanence of the divine dimension in life - that the secular is to be subordinated to the spiritual, that the ephemeral must yield to the eternal, and that leaders in all fields must lead into excellence and not follow faddish popularity into mediocrity. His achievements have received wide recognition, praised by such outstanding critics as Thomas Merton, John W. Aldridge, G. Wilson Knight, Sir Herbert Read, Russell Kirk, and Austin Warren. His books have been acclaimed not only in some of the most prestigious scholarly publications in the United States and Europe, but also in such popular newspapers as The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Los Angeles Times. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts of the United Kingdom, he is listed in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, The International Who's Who, Contemporary Authors, and a number of other biographical sources. A cultural critic whose strength, it has been observed, is in "his breadth of sympathy, his humanity, his humility," his resistance of "the enemies of the permanent things" perhaps best characterizes his dual vocation as both a university teacher and a man of letters in the modern world. As one critic writing in Contemporary Authors noted, "George A. Panichas's career as a professor of English and comparative literature, as editor and critic, and a scholar of the interdisciplinary relationships between Western literature and other humanities, has produced works that critics rank among those of history's greatest conservative writers." He was the loving son of the late Andrew and Fotini Panichas who emigrated from Greece; dear brother of Bessie Papas and her husband Dr. Alexander, and the late Constantine A. Panichas; uncle of Tina Papas Cole and her husband Trevor, and Christa Papas McKenzie and her husband Kevin; long time friend and colleague of Mary Slayton. A private Funeral Service will be held at St. Theodore Greek Orthodox Church, 7101 Cipriano Road, Lanham, MD 20706, on Friday, March 26 at 11:00am. Interment, George Washington Cemetery, Adelphi, MD. If desired, contributions may be made to St. Theodore Greek Orthodox Church.