Chapter Three - ‘Words to Keep Fully Amongst Us’: Honouring the Father in Raimond Gaita's Romulus, My Father

Summary

I say all this as his son, and because I say it at his funeral, I am conscious of the fact that many of you will believe that what I have said is, in the circumstances, an understandable and forgivable exaggeration. As God is my witness, I speak it as the truth about this singular man.

—Raimond Gaita, ‘Romulus Gaita: Turnings of Attention’

It is only with Renunciation (Entsagen) that Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin.

—Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

Polus. So you'd prefer to suffer injustice rather than do it?

Socrates. For myself I should prefer neither; but if it were necessary for me either to do or to suffer injustice, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.

—Plato, Plato's Gorgias

Raimond Gaita and Richard Freadman have been quite explicit about the reasons for writing patriographies. In the acknowledgements of Romulus, My Father, Gaita discloses how it originated from the eulogy he gave at his father's funeral, which was subsequently published in the journal Quadrant. The book's closing pages briefly recount the act of giving this eulogy, a task he performed because ‘There was no one else who could do it’ (207). Gaita quotes from the conclusion of his funeral speech, summing up what has been a major task of his work: to define his father's distinctive and admirable form of decency. Gaita writes, ‘He was truly a man who would rather suffer evil than do it’ (208).