WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.870 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.870 --> 00:00:03.420 align:middle line:90% "I know a man. 00:00:03.420 --> 00:00:07.410 align:middle line:84% As I said to my friend, because I am always talking, 00:00:07.410 --> 00:00:10.230 align:middle line:84% John, I said, which was not his name, 00:00:10.230 --> 00:00:12.180 align:middle line:90% the darkness surrounds us. 00:00:12.180 --> 00:00:15.240 align:middle line:84% What can we do against it, or else, shall we? 00:00:15.240 --> 00:00:18.090 align:middle line:84% And why not buy a goddamn big car? 00:00:18.090 --> 00:00:20.220 align:middle line:84% Drive, he said, for Christ's sake, 00:00:20.220 --> 00:00:22.140 align:middle line:90% look out where you're going." 00:00:22.140 --> 00:00:22.920 align:middle line:90% [CHEERING] 00:00:22.920 --> 00:00:24.690 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:24.690 --> 00:00:25.500 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:25.500 --> 00:00:29.100 align:middle line:84% Well, let me tell you something about that particular-- 00:00:29.100 --> 00:00:34.320 align:middle line:84% one of the only times that I've ever had the honor, 00:00:34.320 --> 00:00:37.410 align:middle line:84% really, I suppose, in an American-- 00:00:37.410 --> 00:00:41.250 align:middle line:84% an issue on American writing of the London Times Literary 00:00:41.250 --> 00:00:42.210 align:middle line:90% Supplement. 00:00:42.210 --> 00:00:45.060 align:middle line:84% This particular poem came into their discussion. 00:00:45.060 --> 00:00:47.790 align:middle line:90% And the reviewer-- 00:00:47.790 --> 00:00:49.830 align:middle line:84% I only want to suggest to you the difficulties 00:00:49.830 --> 00:00:51.630 align:middle line:84% of the possible confusions that can 00:00:51.630 --> 00:00:53.550 align:middle line:84% come of trying to read into a poem more 00:00:53.550 --> 00:00:55.560 align:middle line:90% than it's actually stated in it. 00:00:55.560 --> 00:00:57.990 align:middle line:84% But this particular reviewer felt 00:00:57.990 --> 00:01:03.240 align:middle line:84% that John had some equivalence to John the Baptist 00:01:03.240 --> 00:01:07.380 align:middle line:84% and felt that, therefore, the speaker must 00:01:07.380 --> 00:01:11.370 align:middle line:84% be Christ and ended up by making a parallel with one 00:01:11.370 --> 00:01:12.360 align:middle line:90% of Auden's poem. 00:01:12.360 --> 00:01:14.460 align:middle line:84% It's something of like Christian advice 00:01:14.460 --> 00:01:20.820 align:middle line:84% to undergraduates on the dangers of abstract thinking. 00:01:20.820 --> 00:01:23.430 align:middle line:90% But I don't think it's that. 00:01:23.430 --> 00:01:26.070 align:middle line:84% I mean, again, I don't think the poet or man, whatever 00:01:26.070 --> 00:01:27.060 align:middle line:84% to call him, I don't think the man 00:01:27.060 --> 00:01:29.130 align:middle line:84% who writes the poem is always the best man to ask 00:01:29.130 --> 00:01:30.450 align:middle line:90% as to what literally it means. 00:01:30.450 --> 00:01:32.947 align:middle line:84% It means a very complex thing to him. 00:01:32.947 --> 00:01:33.780 align:middle line:90% I mean, he wrote it. 00:01:33.780 --> 00:01:35.447 align:middle line:84% He has particular needs of his involved. 00:01:35.447 --> 00:01:38.100 align:middle line:84% He may not be able to say what it means in any quote objective 00:01:38.100 --> 00:01:38.600 align:middle line:90% way at all. 00:01:38.600 --> 00:01:43.530 align:middle line:84% For me, that poem quote means simply 00:01:43.530 --> 00:01:45.900 align:middle line:84% a wish to think of some way happily 00:01:45.900 --> 00:01:48.870 align:middle line:84% to get some ease and some reliefs 00:01:48.870 --> 00:01:51.270 align:middle line:84% and then the sense of a friend coming in 00:01:51.270 --> 00:01:54.030 align:middle line:84% as qualification of that, simply to watch out 00:01:54.030 --> 00:01:57.390 align:middle line:84% what all this is leading to, which I suppose is partly 00:01:57.390 --> 00:01:59.640 align:middle line:90% the exercise of friends. 00:01:59.640 --> 00:02:03.630 align:middle line:84% And all the poems of this period involve this character. 00:02:03.630 --> 00:02:06.210 align:middle line:84% This one, this next one, "Wait For Me," 00:02:06.210 --> 00:02:10.199 align:middle line:84% the underlying sections came from one of these marriage 00:02:10.199 --> 00:02:13.710 align:middle line:90% handbooks that I remember-- 00:02:13.710 --> 00:02:16.250 align:middle line:90% I don't remember who wrote it. 00:02:16.250 --> 00:02:17.000 align:middle line:90% I think it was a-- 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:20.310 align:middle line:84% I think a woman author, and it was simply 00:02:20.310 --> 00:02:23.220 align:middle line:90% a guide for marital happiness. 00:02:23.220 --> 00:02:26.790 align:middle line:84% And this was literally, the section involving her advice to 00:02:26.790 --> 00:02:27.750 align:middle line:90% The wife. 00:02:27.750 --> 00:02:30.780 align:middle line:84% And this italicized part here is where 00:02:30.780 --> 00:02:33.720 align:middle line:84% it was the literal instruction-- to give a man his manliness; 00:02:33.720 --> 00:02:36.390 align:middle line:84% provide creature comfort for him and herself; 00:02:36.390 --> 00:02:38.310 align:middle line:84% preserve essential hypocrisies, in short, 00:02:38.310 --> 00:02:39.600 align:middle line:90% to make a home for herself. 00:02:39.600 --> 00:02:41.580 align:middle line:90% This was the advice. 00:02:41.580 --> 00:02:44.275 align:middle line:84% And so this-- I wanted to see if you could get to-- 00:02:44.275 --> 00:02:45.900 align:middle line:84% if you could get a qualification acting 00:02:45.900 --> 00:02:47.817 align:middle line:84% against that actual statement at the same time 00:02:47.817 --> 00:02:49.580 align:middle line:90% it was being said.