Edmund “Mike” Keeley, the Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English, Emeritus, and professor of English and creative writing, emeritus, died Feb. 23, 2022. He was 94.
Edmund “Mike” Keeley, the Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English, Emeritus, and professor of English and creative writing, emeritus, died Feb. 23, 2022. He was 94.
Mike was one of the most extraordinary men one could ever come across… Erudite as much as he was wise, generous beyond description, with inexhaustible humanity, warmth, thoughtfulness and compassion. He had a talent for looking at cultures, and at “old stones that cannot be deciphered”, from the inside rather than with falsifying pseudo-objectivity and distance, he possessed a rare gift for friendships, for encounters of every kind. Together with his wife Mary, they created a centre of gravity, of stability and of beauty that was as irresistible as it was sustaining. I will always be grateful to him for the stories and friends he shared so beguilingly (including Salome, his cat), the worlds of vision he believed in so adamantly. I owe him many journeys, as many lessons in simplicity, and in the value of great literature and culture as gestures that can redeem a world in ruins. Like his close friend, Zisimos Lorentzatos, Mike knew how to touch others deeply, transform their lives…
Mike was my uncle, and he and his wife, Mary, were very kind and welcoming to me when I was an undergraduate at Princeton so many years ago. I was lucky to be able to speak to him shortly before he died. I will miss him!