WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Hello, can you hear me OK?

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I'm very, very happy to be here,
and I hope that soon enough you

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will be too.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Because I'm an
academic, I arranged

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for you to have a handout
given to you out of door.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's a little poem of a
Spartan poet named Alcman,

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and it figures in the first
piece that I'm going to read.

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So I thought you might
like to look at it

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or take it home as a memento.

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"Essay on what I
think about most--

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error and its emotions.

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On the brink of error
is a condition of fear.

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In the midst of error, is a
state of folly and defeat.

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Realizing you've made an error
brings shame and remorse,

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or does it?

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Let's look into this.

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Lots of people,
including Aristotle,

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think error an interesting
and valuable mental event.

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In his discussion of
metaphor in the rhetoric,

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Aristotle says there are
three kinds of words--

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strange, ordinary,
and metaphorical.

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Strange words simply
puzzle us, Aristotle says.

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Ordinary words convey
what we know already.

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It is from metaphor
that we can get hold

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of something new and fresh.

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In what does the freshness
of metaphor consist.

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Aristotle says that
metaphor causes the mind

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to experience itself in the
act of making a mistake.

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He pictures the
mind moving along

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a plane, the surface of
ordinary language when suddenly

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that surface breaks
or complicates,

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unexpectedness emerges.

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At first, it looks odd,
contradictory, or wrong.

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Then it makes sense.

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And at this moment,
according to Aristotle,

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the mind turns to
itself and says,

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how true and yet I mistook it?

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From the true
mistakes of metaphor,

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a lesson can be learned, not
only that things are other

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than they seem and
so we mistake them,

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but that such
mistakeness valuable.

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Hold on to it,
Aristotle says, there

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is much to be seen
and felt here.

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Metaphors teach the
mind to enjoy error

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and to learn from the
juxtaposition of what is

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and what is not the case.

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There's a Chinese
proverb that says,

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rush cannot write two
characters with the same stroke.

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And yet that is exactly
what a good mistake does.

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Here is an example.

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It's a fragment of
ancient Greek lyric

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that contains an
error of arithmetic.

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The poet does not seem to
know that 2 plus 2 equals 4.

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I have to find my handout now.

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In Greek, it says, ὥρας δ' ἔσηκε τρεῑς, 
θέρος καὶ χεῑμα χὠπάραν τρίταν, καὶ τέτρατον τὸ Ϝηρ, 
ὅκα σάλλει μὲν ἐσθίεν δ' ἄδαν οὐκ ἔστι...

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which means question mark
made three seasons, summer,

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and winter, and autumn,
third, and fourth spring when

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there is blooming, but
to eat enough is not.

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Alcman lived in Sparta
in the 7th century BC.

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Now Sparta was a poor
country, and it is unlikely

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that Alcman led a wealthy
or well-fed life there.

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This fact forms the
background of his remarks

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which end in hunger.

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Hunger always feels like a
mistake when it happens to you.

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Alcman makes us experience
this mistake with him

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by an effective use of
computational error,

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for a poor Spartan poet with
nothing left in his cupboard

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at the end of winter,
along comes spring

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like an afterthought of
the natural economy, fourth

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in a series of three,
unbalancing his arithmetic

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and end jamming his verse.

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Alcman's poem breaks off
midway through in iambic metron

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with no explanation of
where spring came from

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or why numbers don't help
us control reality better.

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There are three things I
like about Alcman's poem.

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First that it is
small, light, and more

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than perfectly economical.

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Second, that it seems
to suggest colors,

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like pale green without
ever naming them.

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Third, that it manages
to put into place

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some major
metaphysical questions

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like who made the world
without overt analysis.

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You notice that the verb made in
the first verse has no subject.

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I put a question
mark in brackets.

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It is unusual in Greek for
a verb to have no subject.

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In fact, you could call
it a grammatical mistake.

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Strict philologists
will tell you

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that this mistake is just
an accident of transmission,

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that the poem as we have
it is surely a fragment

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broken off some longer text,
and that Alcman almost certainly

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did name the agent of creation
in the verses preceding

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what we have here.

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Well, that may be so.

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But as you know, the
chief aim of philology

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is to reduce all textual delight
to an accident of history,

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and I am uneasy with any
claim to know exactly

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what a poet means to say.

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So let's leave the
question mark there

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at the beginning of the poem
and admire Alcman's courage

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in confronting what it brackets.

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The fourth thing I like
about Alcman's poem

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is the impression it
gives of blurting out

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the truth in spite of itself.

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Many a poet aspires to this
tone of inadvertent lucidity,

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but few realize it
so simply as Alcman.

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Of course, his
simplicity is a fake.

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Alcman is not simple at all.

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He is a master contriver, or
what Aristotle would call,

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an imitator of reality.

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Imitation, mimesis in Greek,
is Aristotle's collective term

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for the true mistakes of poetry.

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What I like about
this term is the ease

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with which it accepts
that what we are engaged

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in when we do poetry is error.

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The willful creation of error.

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The deliberate break
and complication

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of mistakes out of which
may arise unexpectedness.

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So a poet like Alcman sidesteps
fear, anxiety, shame, remorse,

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and all the other silly
emotions associated

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with making mistakes in order to
engage the fact of the matter.

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The fact of the matter for
humans is imperfection.

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Alcman breaks the
rules of arithmetic,

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and jeopardizes
grammar, and messes up

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the metrical form of
his verse in order

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to draw us into this fact.

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At the end of the
poem, the fact remains

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and Alcman is likely
no less hungry,

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yet something has changed in the
quotient of our expectations.

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For in mistaking them, Alcman
has perfected something.

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Indeed he has more than
perfected something,

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using a single brushstroke.

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[APPLAUSE]

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