Giovanni Costigan, A Poet With Outrage

Giovanni Costigan, who died last week at 85, was a courtly man. He was a man of poetry, of literature, of history, of politics; a man of grace and erudition.

His colleague in the University of Washington history department, the late Professor W. Stull Holt, once said of Giovanni:

``He is very retiring, sensitive and considerate. He has a tremendous sympathy, a sense of compassion for people, and it is ironical that he, of all people, was being hated by people.''

The explanation for this irony is readily at hand. Beneath Dr. Costigan's grace, his courtliness, his gentle demeanor, was a quality rare among campus academicians.

He had a sense of outrage.

In his spare, short body there was some kind of spiritual fire that brought forth flames of indignation against excessive power and injustice.

He was always speaking out - for the poor, the dispossessed, the exploited, the shackled and downtrodden of the world. Thus he was always a catalyst in raising public issues.

He was a liberal, yes, what John Kenneth Galbraith would call ``an abiding liberal.'' He was proud of it, and his liberalism was consistent - undiluted until his final breath in Spain last Wednesday.

Spain seemed an appropriate place for Giovanni to die. For it was during Gen. Francisco Franco's fascist revolt against Spanish democracy in the 1930s that Seattle first became aware of Giovanni Costigan. He denounced the fascists and defended the Spanish Republic.

Down through the years, again and again, Dr. Costigan continued to speak out. Gently, but so devastatingly effective, he went against the tide of public opinion, whipped up by anti-communist demagoguery in the 1950s. Later he would speak out against the Vietnam War, many aspects of the Cold War itself and, more recently, our misadventures in Central America.

Some called him a ``tool of Moscow'' and ``that Red Rat,'' and one radio station owner decreed: ``Never mention that bastard's name on the air.'' So much for the First Amendment.

Giovanni was always a man of courage and integrity. When he got abusive phone calls at 3 a.m., even threats on his life, he refused to shut off his phone service or change to an unpublished number.

``I will not give them the satisfaction,'' he said.

He was like that, Giovanni, but he was also like this: When organized hate mail came in, this courtly respecter of civilized debate answered each letter in his careful, tiny handwriting.

Curious to learn how he was bearing up during this time, I went out to visit him at his cluttered campus office. He still had his wry sense of humor intact.

``It is not a pleasant thing, being hated,'' he said. ``You don't hate anyone, you hold no hatred for any man. But it's awful to realize that there are people out there'' - he gestured toward the window - ``people unknown to you, who would destroy you if they could. It is very distressing.''

A long pause, then the wry twist: ``It is very distressing, especially when one is so inoffensive.''

He was never inoffensive, because bred in his bones was the urge to attack, attack and attack again, wherever he perceived injustice. Giovanni left no doubts - his enemies always knew their man.

Yet he was admired by many, and by many conservatives. A prominent lawyer once said of Giovanni: ``He is no armchair patriot. He has the courage to be the voice of reason, when it's easier to keep quiet. He is willing to be hated and that's one reason he is so widely loved.''

No, when Giovanni's convictions were at issue, he had no soft spots in his schedule. Once, some years ago, during the height of Ronald Reagan's popularity, he addressed the annual dinner of the King County Bar Association. Present were judges, lawyers, wives and dignitaries, many of them enamored of Reagan.

Dr. Costigan spoke for 45 minutes. His speech was not one, as you might expect, that extolled the American legal system.

Instead, it was a catalog of crimes committed in El Salvador - murder, rape, terrorism, mutilations, bombings - an unrelieved chronicle of horrors backed by the Reagan administration.

Giovanni concluded by saying, ``I am sorry to have brought you such a terrible message,'' and then he sat down.

The place erupted in a protracted, cheering, standing ovation; once again, he had the courage to take his views off campus and place them in a public arena, where he won them over.

How did he get away with such things? The language. The voice. The words so exquisitely crafted. Like Churchill, Dr. Costigan used language as a weapon, eloquence in the service of cause and conviction.

Giovanni's eloquence was never so in evidence as the time he delivered a paper before a group of fellow historians in Canada. When he finished his paper, a visiting scholar rose and said:

``This is the first time I have ever heard such a paper read aloud and emerge as poetry.''

But he was a poet, and poetry, to Giovanni, was part of the fabric of history, something to be cherished and passed on.

When Theodore Roethke, the UW's Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, was unable to teach for a considerable time, the English department turned to Costigan, of the history department, to conduct Roethke's classes in poetry.

Gone now, at 85. But for nearly 60 years in Seattle, Giovanni aimed his weapon - the English language - at our conscience and made thousands of us better people with his victories.

Emmett Watson's column appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday in the Northwest section of The Seattle Times.