WEBVTT

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Somebody let me know if I'm
doing wrong by this microphone.

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They usually go wrong for
me because I do wrong.

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I've been talking with
and to and about writers

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and writing since I got here.

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I thought in a way I
would direct my reading

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to them and to anybody else who
may be interested in directly

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in problems of writing.

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And what I would do this evening
is read one little passage

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from Death of the
Fox and then a couple

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of short passages from
a more recent book, just

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came out last fall, called
The Magic Striptease,

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which is quite different.

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And they were both in kind
of stages of composition

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at the same time and
represent reactions

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in a way to each other.

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That is in Death
of the Fox which

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was written over a long period
of time, I was having to--

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I could have a number of voices.

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I was having to try
to work as an American

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in our time writing about 17th
century people, 16th century

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people.

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Seemed as I went along
increasingly strange

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alien and very,
very interesting.

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But the job was to create
a kind of language which

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I hadn't ordinarily used and
probably would not use again

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in exactly the same way.

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Well, one of the things
I talked to one class

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about, somebody asked me in
the first class I met I guess,

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something about
research for this book.

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I told him one story which
I won't burden you with,

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I can give the
shortened version of it,

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of finding a thing by accident.

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Has to do with
Queen Elizabeth who

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has all the biographers noted
regularly in her old age

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covered up the
mirrors in her palaces

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and has had them
turned to the wall.

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And this has been taken by
people to mean various things.

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This was in the last
decade of her life.

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I also found in an obscure
book about Venetian trade

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with England, something that
the biographers hadn't noted

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and nobody else had
since being confirmed.

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I was just guessing that
the things arrived there,

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that it precisely the
same period of time she

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ordered from Venice.

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And they were so shipped.

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An elaborate set of mirrors
which were enormous,

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the largest that had
ever been made in Venice,

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for her bathroom.

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And the contradiction there
didn't make a lot of sense

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but seemed to be one
I had to deal with.

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The only thing I can tell
you is that it turned out

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to be true last year.

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Finally got a letter
from some Englishman

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who heard they were portable
things because she moved

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from one palace to another.

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They hadn't known what these
very complicated stands

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were for.

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And they do know now
that she got the mirrors

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so this is one little thing
that turned out to be true.

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The reason I picked the
passage out is as an example.

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It's fairly short
of the kind of prose

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that was necessary
for this other book

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and kind of the
level of seriousness

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to compare and contrast
the other things with.

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One other thing.

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I finally had to decide
who since the characters

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all the way through.

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Who would say anything about
this and in what context?

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And it sort of developed
and came along that Raleigh.

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It's not really my
opinion of what it all

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means but his in
a letter which I

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imagined he wrote
to his surviving

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son who was very young then.

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And then to be true to
history I had him burn it

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later on in the
book so nobody will

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find this imaginary letter.

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But he gets on the subject of
mirrors and brings this up.

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The only other things you
might have to know about it

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is that this son
was born to him.

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He was quite far
along in age while he

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was in the tower
for the first time.

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And ordinarily
for the most part,

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his great days
apparently had been over.

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He refers to a wound that
he received and so forth.

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The son knew him as a gray
haired man with a limp

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from a wound and other things.

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And this is his
only surviving son.

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He had another son
on whom he lavished

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a great deal of getting older.

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Care and attention on
that son had been killed.

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He's therefore uses
mirrors to talk

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about how things
look now and then

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and from the sun's point of
view in the midst of the letter

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saying, think on this when
I look into a mirror glass,

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I see what my eyes see
of myself but I can never

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see what you see.

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I can think of you
and what you are,

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remembering that you
have never known me

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without gray in my hair and
beard, and have always known me

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as a man with one stiff leg.

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You have no reason to
imagine that I was not

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born with the wounds
and scars I've received.

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To me, the gray and the
deepening lines of my face

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are late intrusions
on my property.

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Impositions enforced against me.

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I see them but I cannot credit
them wholly and each wound is

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from a date and a time.

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Before I felt pain and fire
and the cracking of my bone,

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I could run and dance
as well as most men

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and sometimes my stiffened
leg can seem still

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to remember its former liberty.

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The truth of mirrors then
is more than meets the eye.

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Thinking of mirrors, I
remember the late queen.

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She as a young and beautiful
woman whom I knew not

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began our age and
she lived to end it.

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At the last there was melancholy
in her heart in common

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I know now with
all who live to see

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the strange ends so many
bright and fair things come to.

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There were hard times
in this kingdom,

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reflecting as it were
her inward sorrows,

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and she was required to be not
herself but much like a player,

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like any boy actor
with a high voice.

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For she must wear a wig
and cover her wrinkles

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with thick powders, flesh
her cheeks with rouge,

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righten her lips
with paint, not smile

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for fear of showing her
last few blackened teeth.

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Must perfume away
this stinks of aging

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and where many jewels and stiff
padded frothing gale dresses

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to divert the eyes from
frail flesh and bones.

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I tell you this so
that you can know

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things you will never
understand until you

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live to be old yourself.

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Body decays and fails
and flesh disgusts,

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and yet there is
no man so deformed

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or so ugly that he
believes himself to be

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beyond love or admiration.

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Easy enough to
regret what once one

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has been, to curse the young
with shine on their flesh,

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and green sap in their limbs,
and to wish them a long life

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too, and the same bitter
fruits at the end of it.

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Still in all, I think no man is
so loathsome that even in his

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self-disgust, he cannot cleave
to the belief that in some way

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magical, as in some myth or
child's tale of transformation,

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toad and depressed, sub zero
and the silk persons alike,

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that in some way he is far
more beautiful than he seems

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or knows.

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I venture there is a
hidden truth veiled

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behind this illusion.

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We are said to be
in the image of God

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and to be in the image of God
is therefore to be beautiful.

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And therefore the
naked truth of us

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veiled though it
is, is beautiful

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and would be most beautiful
if we could behold it.

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This illusion then, though
it is denied by every wrinkle

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and deformity of flesh, may
be the one true apprehension

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of our true condition.

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It is a sad wish that
is more than a wish,

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because what it asks for
has already been granted.

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Yet without thinking of these
mysteries beyond understanding,

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we can see how
those whom we love

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are transformed and
being loved by another.

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We find that we ourselves
have been somehow

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remade and restored.

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Indeed through
the power of love,

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we feel the certainty of
this in the lover's eyes.

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Who is to say that the
fantasy of human love

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is not true for as
long as love lasts?

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If human love is a weak
reflection or wavering

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image of the light of
infinite and eternal love,

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then it may be that in the
transformation of lovers,

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each one to the other, we are
given a sign of hidden truth.

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No, more than that.

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We are seeing true and
clear for the first time.

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In love not deluded but the
scales of our eyes fallen away.

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Return to the queen.

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Consider a woman with
more than a woman's will

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and all of a woman's
vanity, consider

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that she had a woman's
harsh and ruthless eye

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for the truth of herself.

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In the myth, Narcissus
is depicted as a man

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and rightly so.

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For only a man could fall in
love with his own appearance,

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for it is a stranger to him.

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The woman had her looking glass
sees what she sees and knows

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it.

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And therefore I
think women do justly

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demand the slight subterfuge
of flattery from us.

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The queen ordered the
mirrors in her palaces

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removed and covered
up in her last years.

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And this has been taken by
some as a sign of her vanity

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and self deceit.

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They do not know
or do not remember

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that her in-most bathing
chambers where she was alone

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with herself, as
naked as God made her,

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we're all made of mirrors,
walls, floor and ceiling.

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To see herself not in delusion
or vanity or self-love

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but from all sides as
no one sees himself

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so that she would know and never
forget the truth of herself.

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She knew her
appearance as well as

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any who make a life
study of themselves.

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And yet she took that aging
body, that withering face,

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and she painted, and dubbed,
and costumed, and disguised it

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until at a proper
distance, she was

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the very picture of a queen.

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Not out of the
wish to deceive but

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out of the compelling
necessity to be

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what she must be
to rule and never

00:10:44.200 --> 00:10:47.410 align:middle line:84%
to permit the expectations
and the pride of her subjects

00:10:47.410 --> 00:10:50.170 align:middle line:84%
or of this kingdom
to be diminished.

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She was willing then
to sacrifice even

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her own integrity of person
in the name of her office

00:10:57.010 --> 00:10:59.050 align:middle line:90%
and for the good of the kingdom.

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And I think it was
too much to ask

00:11:01.300 --> 00:11:05.590 align:middle line:84%
her to look upon herself in
the disguises of public mirrors

00:11:05.590 --> 00:11:09.100 align:middle line:84%
and then beam approval
and signify thereby

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a total self-delusion.

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We deprived her of
her youth, for better

00:11:13.990 --> 00:11:17.560 align:middle line:84%
from the natural life and joys
of a woman, and in the end

00:11:17.560 --> 00:11:21.490 align:middle line:84%
we denied her even the
privilege of being old.

00:11:21.490 --> 00:11:23.320 align:middle line:84%
That she loved us
in this kingdom

00:11:23.320 --> 00:11:27.430 align:middle line:84%
I find remarkable yet she
did love us even at the last

00:11:27.430 --> 00:11:30.430 align:middle line:90%
when so very few loved her.

00:11:30.430 --> 00:11:34.330 align:middle line:84%
And it is that love, my son,
all these years afterward

00:11:34.330 --> 00:11:37.180 align:middle line:84%
which has the power to
transform our memory

00:11:37.180 --> 00:11:41.620 align:middle line:84%
of her and of the age and
therefore of ourselves

00:11:41.620 --> 00:11:44.800 align:middle line:84%
so that we view those
times gone with and through

00:11:44.800 --> 00:11:47.920 align:middle line:90%
the transforming power of love.

00:11:47.920 --> 00:11:51.070 align:middle line:84%
And none of us who were
witnesses in the flesh

00:11:51.070 --> 00:11:55.810 align:middle line:84%
will ever again have the
power to give true testimony.

00:11:55.810 --> 00:12:00.910 align:middle line:84%
We are all false witnesses and
yet the sum of our witnessing

00:12:00.910 --> 00:12:02.648 align:middle line:90%
may be true.

00:12:02.648 --> 00:12:03.148 align:middle line:90%