PROVO — Imagine, if you will, that Hugh Nibley is stuck like Bill Murray in the movie "Groundhog Day" — except instead of repeating the same day over and over, the magic of folklore is creating multiple stories of how Nibley found love and marriage at BYU.
William A. Wilson, an emeritus professor of English at BYU, spoke about Nibley and folklore on March 4 as part of BYU's Neal A. Maxwell Institute's weekly lecture series celebrating the 100th anniversary of Nibley's birth.
Wilson's expertise is folklore (BYU's folklore archives are named after him), and he recounted multiple versions of a story Mormons love to tell: how Hugh Nibley got married.
Story 1: Elder John A. Widtsoe of the Quorum of the Twelve told Nibley he needed to be married if he were to be teaching at BYU. Nibley said that was fine "As long as you arrange that the first girl I meet at BYU will be my wife." Nibley went to BYU's housing office, met the secretary, Phyllis Draper. A few months later they were married.
Story 2: Nibley was working at church publications and getting ready to teach at BYU when an LDS Church general authority told him it was time to get married. Nibley resolved to marry the first girl he met at BYU. When he went to get information at a ticket booth in the Joseph Smith Building, Nibley met Phyllis Draper. He invited her to get acquainted and so all day and night they walked in the mountains and foothills and he asked her to marry him.
Story 3: Nibley was reading about marriage and because of all the pressure on him to get married, he decided to get married. So he fasted three days and went to Rock Canyon to wait. Soon a girl came along and he asked her out and a little later, married her.
Story 4: Elder Widtsoe told Nibley he should get married. He met a girl in the housing office and spoke with her and borrowed some 3x5 cards from her. He kept coming back to borrow more 3x5 cards. He told her one day that he had been invited to a party, but since he didn't know any girls he wondered if she would go with him. They went on long walks together. Three months after they met they were married.
Story 5: Nibley was sent to BYU and was also called to get married. He said he would marry the first girl he saw. He went to the housing office in the Joseph Smith Building without seeing a soul until he met a secretary. He took her to a faculty party that night and got engaged at the same time.
Story 6: For several years general authorities had encouraged Nibley to get married. But his work left him little time for dating. Not wanting to waste his time on girl watching, Nibley prayed in the closed stacks in the library asking that the next woman who came through the door could be his wife. His best student entered, and even though she was much younger, they married.
Story 7: Nibley went to the housing office in the Joseph Smith Building looking for a wife. He asked the first girl he met on a date and they stayed up all night. By the morning they were engaged.
Story 8: The commissioner of education of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints told Nibley he needed to set a good example to his students and get married or lose his job. In desperation, Nibley went up and sat on a rock in Rock Canyon. He prayed to find a wife. A woman walked by and he figured she must be the one. He introduced himself and later they got married.
Story 9: An angel appeared to Nibley and told him to get married or he would cut off his head.
Story 10: Nibley walked into an office on campus. They didn't speak, but he was inspired to know this was the girl he should marry. He was engaged to somebody else, but he broke it off and married the new girl and they lived happily ever after.
So which story is true? Wilson said that from a folklore standpoint they are all true. He explained that there are three ways of looking at the truth of folklore.
1. It actually happened.
"A story will, on occasion, keep alive memory of events as they actually occurred," Wilson said. "It can be historically accurate." He said most Nibley stories start out this way, but get changed as they are retold.
2. It is a record of what people believe about something.
The story "will always provide," Wilson said, "a faithful record of what the storytellers believed happened."
3. It expresses the culture.
"It will mirror the culture of the people who believe it — reflecting their hopes, their anxieties, their fears, their attitudes and beliefs."
The various stories of Nibley's marriage (one of which is close to what actually happened*) communicate three truths that are important to those who have told the stories, according to Wilson. They show obedience to LDS Church authorities. They show Nibley relied upon the Lord for help. They show that Nibley didn't give up. These truths are communicated in each story — even though they are "drastically different," Wilson said.
Wilson believes that as people tell these stories, they re-create Nibley as a projection of their own values. The Nibley of the stories may tell more about the storyteller than about the real Nibley.
Some stories about Nibley are lifted from standard eccentric professor folktales — such as him writing notes on the board with his right hand while simultaneously erasing with his left hand.
Other stories are pure Nibley — showing people's perceptions about him and his talents.
One tale had Nibley parachuting into Greece during World War II. As he descends, Nibley shouts to the Greeks on the ground in an attempt to let them know he is their friend. But since he did not know modern Greek, he could only shout memorized passages of the Iliad and the Odyssey in ancient Greek. It worked and they didn't shoot him. Wilson said this story is used to illustrate Nibley's ability with languages.
Similar underlying messages are in other stories such as the one where students borrow his lecture notes only to find they are in a foreign language.
Another story finds the young student Nibley skipping class to read whole sections of the library at Berkeley — a reflection of Mormons' admiration of Nibley's raw intellect.
His ability to concentrate was illustrated by a story where he was warned that his office was about to be flooded from a broken pipe. Nibley quickly pulls books off the floor, puts his feet on his desk and continues reading.
"What I value the most in the stories is that Hugh Nibley in them forgets the superficial things of the world and focuses on what is eternally important," Wilson said. "Here's where the Nibley of the stories and the Nibley of reality come together: He never forgot what was important. He never sought the success of the world. He was an iconoclast — he hated conformity. But he did not hate conformity to the gospel."
For Wilson, both Nibleys are worthy of emulation.
*Note: Story 4 is closest to what actually happened, according to Wilson.
e-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com