George Rosen: in memoriam, June 23, 1910--July 27, 1977

born in Brooklyn, New York, died in Oxford, England

My father's study in North Haven, Ct, as it was after his death. He was ready to begin writing, with books at printed matter carefully laid out on his desk. He intended to enlarge his study which was far too small for his needs.
I drew the portrait as my father wrote in Canterbury in the 50s-60s. In 2005 I retouched the eyes, slightly but realize now that the changes, slight as they, are too are too dark. To be emended in the future.




More than three decades ago you died at Oxford. You could not go farther, although you were scheduled to speak in Edinburgh. Your heart had pained you and yet you continued to write and even drove north to your destination. But the body could no longer support you and reason and strength of character could not overcome the physiological blows that struck you. You woke once in the hospital and told your wife Beate, my mother, that you had heard the most beautiful music you had ever experienced. No, you were not a believer but the gods were readying you for the eternal or the body, as it declined, translated its attacks into a musical perceptual experience. Though the doctors tried to revive your heart, they were unable to gain ground and you slipped away. I was in Germany when this was taking place and did not learn of your death until I reached Paris. I never saw you alive after we met briefly in London, earlier in June. Always curious, always ready to entertain the new, you who had lived through so much and acccomplished so much and still had so much to do before your life ended when you were so young. Would matters have turned out differently today with medical advances. Probably. Today you would be have been frail but your mind would have been as keen as ever.
A friend of mine remembers exactly how you were in the late 1950s:

"The picture of your father writing a scholarly piece at the kitchen table in your old country place in Connecticut, untroubled by the domestic distractions around him, unburdened with works of reference, spinning it all from hi sown compact but capacious head, remains clear to me after fifty years!"