Peter Chad Tigar Levi, MA

Peter Levi was born in Ruislip, Middlesex, on 16 May 1931, the son of a Jewish merchant from Constantinople, who had converted to Roman Catholicism. Levi was taught by the Jesuits at Beaumont College and in 1954 went up to Campion Hall, Oxford, to read Greats, having joined the Jesuits at the age of seventeen and begun a five-year novitiate. But it was another ten years before he was ordained, his superiors regarding him as an intellectual dandy, provocative, reckless and less than submissive in his attitude to the Society of Jesus, though undoubtedly brilliant. Meanwhile, Levi had contracted polio while still at Beaumont and had to spend a year recuperating, during which time he read widely, especially in classical Greek, and came across Cyril Connolly’s literary magazine, Horizon, for the first time. Then, at Campion Hall he overcame an even more serious setback: he was badly injured in a car accident that resulted in a nervous breakdown. Ready to take up his studies again, Levi finally abandoned Greats and switched to modern Greek After graduation he taught classics at Stonyhurst for two years but his somewhat unorthodox approach to teaching caused many raised eyebrows among the traditionalists on the staff. Levi was ordained in 1964 and, in addition to his pastoral duties, taught classics at Campion Hall and continued to write poetry, the first volume, The Gravel Ponds, having been published in 1960. Levi might almost be described as a compulsive writer. In his memoir, The Flutes of Autumn, he wrote, “A piece of blank paper is the only thing in the world I have a serious ambition to control” and, inevitably, among his output of some sixty assorted books, a number are best forgotten. Others are works of scholarship: his impeccable translation of the second-century Lydian traveller Pausanias (1971), Atlas of the Greek World (1980), A History of Greek Literature (1985), The Frontiers of Paradise (1987) and studies of Horace (1997) and Virgil (1998). Levi’s abundant production of poetry, too, is uneven and the first volume is probably the best, followed by Shadows and Bone (1989). A literary gem among the novels, thrillers and travel books is his elegy for his friend, In Memory of David Jones (1975). Superficial though he may have been in some respects, as a priest Levi was totally single-minded and serious, giving spiritual guidance and practical help to the destitute, the grieving, the hopeless and the outcasts, especially among the prison inmates to whom he was chaplain. His ministry lasted only thirteen years, until 1977, when, after three years’ heart-searching following the death of Cyril Connolly in 1974, he left the priesthood to marry Connolly’s widow whom he had first met at a party at All Souls shortly before his ordination, and been captivated by her beauty and personality. He was not disappointed in his choice; the marriage was supremely happy. With his wife, Levi spent a year in Athens as archaeological correspondent for The Times after his momentous decision; and then returned to academic life in Oxford. He was awarded a Fellowship of St Catherine’s College in 1977 and a lectureship in classics at Christ Church from 1979 to 1982. In 1984 he was elected Professor of Poetry for five years after an unusually muted contest and protestations from Levi himself that the method of selection was ridiculous and should be ended. But the modest annual payment of £2,500 made the undemanding post as attractive for the emoluments as for the prestige in Levi’s straitened circumstances. His lectures were published in 1991 as The Art of Poetry, two years after he retired from Oxford to settle in the Gloucestershire village of Frampton-on-Severn, where he died on l February 2000.