WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:05.370 align:middle line:90% Pouring out, just pouring out. 00:00:05.370 --> 00:00:17.630 align:middle line:90% 00:00:17.630 --> 00:00:22.380 align:middle line:84% Well, it's very kind of the rest of you to stay with me. 00:00:22.380 --> 00:00:23.255 align:middle line:90% I know what it means. 00:00:23.255 --> 00:00:27.920 align:middle line:90% 00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:31.250 align:middle line:84% I'd now like to read the poem from Two-Part Inventions. 00:00:31.250 --> 00:00:35.690 align:middle line:84% I'm going to try to do it sitting in this chair 00:00:35.690 --> 00:00:37.085 align:middle line:90% if the microphone will admit. 00:00:37.085 --> 00:00:40.330 align:middle line:90% 00:00:40.330 --> 00:00:42.550 align:middle line:90% Does the microphone admit? 00:00:42.550 --> 00:00:44.800 align:middle line:90% Can I be seen now? 00:00:44.800 --> 00:00:53.820 align:middle line:90% 00:00:53.820 --> 00:00:57.960 align:middle line:84% The two speakers in this poem identify themselves 00:00:57.960 --> 00:01:01.680 align:middle line:84% rather rapidly and I don't think there's much need for me 00:01:01.680 --> 00:01:03.938 align:middle line:90% to explain who they are. 00:01:03.938 --> 00:01:08.310 align:middle line:84% You will perhaps be pleased to know that they 00:01:08.310 --> 00:01:11.340 align:middle line:90% did actually indeed meet. 00:01:11.340 --> 00:01:15.420 align:middle line:90% 00:01:15.420 --> 00:01:18.150 align:middle line:84% The poem is called "Wildflowers" 00:01:18.150 --> 00:01:24.870 align:middle line:84% and it's dated Camden, New Jersey, 1882. 00:01:24.870 --> 00:01:25.845 align:middle line:90% Oh it's not funny yet. 00:01:25.845 --> 00:01:34.170 align:middle line:90% 00:01:34.170 --> 00:01:35.700 align:middle line:90% "Is it raining, Mary? 00:01:35.700 --> 00:01:38.250 align:middle line:90% Can you see? 00:01:38.250 --> 00:01:39.150 align:middle line:90% I hear rain. 00:01:39.150 --> 00:01:41.940 align:middle line:90% 00:01:41.940 --> 00:01:43.320 align:middle line:90% Is the road black? 00:01:43.320 --> 00:01:46.460 align:middle line:90% Is it shining? 00:01:46.460 --> 00:01:47.120 align:middle line:90% It's dark. 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:49.190 align:middle line:90% I can see for myself. 00:01:49.190 --> 00:01:54.620 align:middle line:84% Put on my red tie, red has life in it 00:01:54.620 --> 00:01:58.100 align:middle line:84% Most men I know dress like undertakers making sure 00:01:58.100 --> 00:02:02.810 align:middle line:84% they look mournful enough to manage their own funerals. 00:02:02.810 --> 00:02:05.510 align:middle line:90% No accounting for taste. 00:02:05.510 --> 00:02:09.440 align:middle line:84% They should be grateful for that. 00:02:09.440 --> 00:02:13.910 align:middle line:84% Help me get to the window, I want to see Mickle Street. 00:02:13.910 --> 00:02:16.400 align:middle line:90% Don't you hear it now? 00:02:16.400 --> 00:02:21.264 align:middle line:84% Something like rain off in the distance. 00:02:21.264 --> 00:02:25.750 align:middle line:84% To my ear maybe, it's playing me tricks again. 00:02:25.750 --> 00:02:27.790 align:middle line:84% There was a rushing like rain when 00:02:27.790 --> 00:02:31.000 align:middle line:84% it moves closer and starts a milestone in the mill 00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:32.830 align:middle line:90% stream in the trees. 00:02:32.830 --> 00:02:35.290 align:middle line:90% No? 00:02:35.290 --> 00:02:39.640 align:middle line:84% I guess my senses must be losing their touch. 00:02:39.640 --> 00:02:43.090 align:middle line:84% It was nothing then, nothing more 00:02:43.090 --> 00:02:47.170 align:middle line:84% than a tantrum of the boneyard, best for me 00:02:47.170 --> 00:02:53.530 align:middle line:84% to hold still in this chair and listen to my beard grow. 00:02:53.530 --> 00:02:56.710 align:middle line:84% Now if hair was poetry then your Walt Whitman 00:02:56.710 --> 00:02:57.910 align:middle line:90% would be a great success. 00:02:57.910 --> 00:03:03.090 align:middle line:90% 00:03:03.090 --> 00:03:05.400 align:middle line:84% I wear out trying to come to terms 00:03:05.400 --> 00:03:09.840 align:middle line:84% with the wrong weather, what you might call speaking terms. 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:13.080 align:middle line:84% I don't want to talk to much else. 00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:16.020 align:middle line:84% You tell them to go home, Mary, no visitors today. 00:03:16.020 --> 00:03:19.440 align:middle line:90% Oh, one, just one. 00:03:19.440 --> 00:03:22.350 align:middle line:90% What else is a red tie for? 00:03:22.350 --> 00:03:27.630 align:middle line:84% Some English poet keeps me up, coming all the way here 00:03:27.630 --> 00:03:31.530 align:middle line:84% from California, Colorado, coming 00:03:31.530 --> 00:03:35.400 align:middle line:90% to ask the usual questions. 00:03:35.400 --> 00:03:40.510 align:middle line:84% I don't like questions that require answers. 00:03:40.510 --> 00:03:43.270 align:middle line:90% English questions. 00:03:43.270 --> 00:03:46.330 align:middle line:84% That's a country of things answered, 00:03:46.330 --> 00:03:50.290 align:middle line:84% London's a city of things done with. 00:03:50.290 --> 00:03:52.300 align:middle line:90% Brooklyn is different. 00:03:52.300 --> 00:03:58.990 align:middle line:84% New Orleans, Washington, they're my cities of romance, 00:03:58.990 --> 00:04:01.570 align:middle line:90% all the cities of things begun. 00:04:01.570 --> 00:04:04.930 align:middle line:84% I may have been deliberate, even laborious 00:04:04.930 --> 00:04:07.930 align:middle line:90% but I never looked for finish. 00:04:07.930 --> 00:04:10.900 align:middle line:90% Here, here where's his name. 00:04:10.900 --> 00:04:13.750 align:middle line:84% Bucke wrote about him after hearing one of his lectures. 00:04:13.750 --> 00:04:16.029 align:middle line:90% I had it here somewhere. 00:04:16.029 --> 00:04:17.589 align:middle line:90% Well, you let him in, Mary. 00:04:17.589 --> 00:04:19.744 align:middle line:90% No one else, no one. 00:04:19.744 --> 00:04:22.240 align:middle line:90% I'm slipping. 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:24.730 align:middle line:90% Oh here it is, here is the name. 00:04:24.730 --> 00:04:27.610 align:middle line:90% Slowly maybe but slipping. 00:04:27.610 --> 00:04:31.420 align:middle line:84% Who can say he has hold of what might be called a standing. 00:04:31.420 --> 00:04:35.530 align:middle line:84% It's what they do say though, all these visitors. 00:04:35.530 --> 00:04:42.740 align:middle line:84% They write, they call, and they stay, makes a problem. 00:04:42.740 --> 00:04:44.290 align:middle line:90% Doctor says, bar them. 00:04:44.290 --> 00:04:46.480 align:middle line:90% I can't, I won't. 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:48.430 align:middle line:90% Still they bother me. 00:04:48.430 --> 00:04:51.190 align:middle line:84% One young fellow walks in says, Walt, I 00:04:51.190 --> 00:04:53.140 align:middle line:84% should like to read you my epic and have 00:04:53.140 --> 00:04:56.680 align:middle line:90% your opinion of its worth. 00:04:56.680 --> 00:04:59.740 align:middle line:84% Thank you, say I, but I've been paralyzed once already. 00:04:59.740 --> 00:05:04.060 align:middle line:90% 00:05:04.060 --> 00:05:07.840 align:middle line:84% Suppose someone took it into his head to come here 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:11.080 align:middle line:90% and sit and say nothing. 00:05:11.080 --> 00:05:14.380 align:middle line:84% Someone who knows even the first syllable 00:05:14.380 --> 00:05:17.530 align:middle line:90% of the great speech of silence. 00:05:17.530 --> 00:05:20.470 align:middle line:84% Today's visitor maybe will mind his tongue, 00:05:20.470 --> 00:05:24.850 align:middle line:84% maybe spare you the trouble of putting his latest tribute 00:05:24.850 --> 00:05:27.910 align:middle line:90% on the shelf with all the rest. 00:05:27.910 --> 00:05:34.270 align:middle line:84% Give me enemies rather than these disciples of mine. 00:05:34.270 --> 00:05:35.890 align:middle line:84% Best thing I ever heard of Browning 00:05:35.890 --> 00:05:39.730 align:middle line:84% is how he disapproves of all those societies. 00:05:39.730 --> 00:05:46.450 align:middle line:84% Not that I quote Browning, or care for him, or read him. 00:05:46.450 --> 00:05:51.550 align:middle line:84% I've tried Browning on every way but he don't fit. 00:05:51.550 --> 00:05:59.500 align:middle line:84% Tennyson, he has his place, local English place. 00:05:59.500 --> 00:06:03.050 align:middle line:84% I don't see how the world could make much use of him elsewhere. 00:06:03.050 --> 00:06:04.240 align:middle line:90% Not the others. 00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:07.360 align:middle line:84% The others, I conclude most literature 00:06:07.360 --> 00:06:12.880 align:middle line:84% was written on all fours and the rest on stilts. 00:06:12.880 --> 00:06:14.500 align:middle line:84% Now there, Mary, that's the bell. 00:06:14.500 --> 00:06:16.720 align:middle line:90% I did hear that. 00:06:16.720 --> 00:06:19.630 align:middle line:90% I know my own bell, don't I? 00:06:19.630 --> 00:06:21.710 align:middle line:90% Go on, go on down. 00:06:21.710 --> 00:06:22.450 align:middle line:90% Bring the man up. 00:06:22.450 --> 00:06:25.190 align:middle line:90% 00:06:25.190 --> 00:06:29.220 align:middle line:90% In here, Mr. Wilde. 00:06:29.220 --> 00:06:33.690 align:middle line:84% This room is not such a ruin as it seems. 00:06:33.690 --> 00:06:38.460 align:middle line:84% I find most things I search for without much trouble. 00:06:38.460 --> 00:06:43.650 align:middle line:84% Found Dr. Bucke's letter with your name, for instance. 00:06:43.650 --> 00:06:45.240 align:middle line:90% Found my red neckties. 00:06:45.240 --> 00:06:47.550 align:middle line:90% Well, come in, come in. 00:06:47.550 --> 00:06:50.190 align:middle line:84% You cast a shadow where you stand. 00:06:50.190 --> 00:06:53.745 align:middle line:84% Come in, the chaos is more suspected than real. 00:06:53.745 --> 00:06:57.730 align:middle line:90% 00:06:57.730 --> 00:07:00.300 align:middle line:90% Though I suspect no chaos. 00:07:00.300 --> 00:07:04.500 align:middle line:84% I am convinced of the cosmos in your company, Walt Whitman. 00:07:04.500 --> 00:07:11.760 align:middle line:84% I greet you sir as America's great voice. 00:07:11.760 --> 00:07:18.390 align:middle line:84% Well, you have come to be disillusioned, have you? 00:07:18.390 --> 00:07:20.340 align:middle line:90% Disillusioned? 00:07:20.340 --> 00:07:21.930 align:middle line:90% Not after Colorado. 00:07:21.930 --> 00:07:24.650 align:middle line:90% 00:07:24.650 --> 00:07:28.470 align:middle line:84% Red Rocks are a foolish place in which to look for inspiration. 00:07:28.470 --> 00:07:34.190 align:middle line:84% But a fine one in which to look to forget you ever had any. 00:07:34.190 --> 00:07:37.040 align:middle line:90% Disillusion here. 00:07:37.040 --> 00:07:39.980 align:middle line:84% There is no one in this wide America of yours 00:07:39.980 --> 00:07:44.420 align:middle line:84% whom I love and honor half so much. 00:07:44.420 --> 00:07:49.370 align:middle line:84% I came to see you without the illusion of a ground glass 00:07:49.370 --> 00:07:51.290 align:middle line:90% lens between us, Walt Whitman. 00:07:51.290 --> 00:07:54.150 align:middle line:90% 00:07:54.150 --> 00:07:56.800 align:middle line:90% Look your fill. 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:01.410 align:middle line:84% Look close enough and you may even see my beard growing. 00:08:01.410 --> 00:08:04.800 align:middle line:84% I fear I've been photographed until the cameras themselves 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:07.620 align:middle line:90% are tired of me. 00:08:07.620 --> 00:08:11.970 align:middle line:84% The real man by now is a poor replacement. 00:08:11.970 --> 00:08:16.440 align:middle line:84% You and a good proofreader must puzzle me out. 00:08:16.440 --> 00:08:19.170 align:middle line:84% I don't feel worth my weight in feathers. 00:08:19.170 --> 00:08:21.630 align:middle line:90% Not even quills. 00:08:21.630 --> 00:08:23.580 align:middle line:90% Not pinions, but pens. 00:08:23.580 --> 00:08:28.440 align:middle line:84% It must be so for every prophet I discover reads his proofs. 00:08:28.440 --> 00:08:32.520 align:middle line:84% Do I disturb you when you are not yourself? 00:08:32.520 --> 00:08:36.480 align:middle line:84% Your health is not all it might have been today? 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:40.620 align:middle line:84% My health is hell and heaven is the first moment 00:08:40.620 --> 00:08:44.159 align:middle line:90% after constipation. 00:08:44.159 --> 00:08:46.440 align:middle line:90% There is no purgatory. 00:08:46.440 --> 00:08:48.090 align:middle line:90% Here, come around here. 00:08:48.090 --> 00:08:52.260 align:middle line:84% Now this way, stand where I can see you. 00:08:52.260 --> 00:08:53.250 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:08:53.250 --> 00:08:54.930 align:middle line:90% Dr. Bucke gave me no clue. 00:08:54.930 --> 00:08:58.230 align:middle line:84% Oh, doctors are all very well when you are. 00:08:58.230 --> 00:09:02.400 align:middle line:84% But only they then they can offer comfort. 00:09:02.400 --> 00:09:07.140 align:middle line:84% When one is ill doctors are most depressing. 00:09:07.140 --> 00:09:09.390 align:middle line:90% Bucke is not that breed. 00:09:09.390 --> 00:09:12.240 align:middle line:90% He tends the mad in Canada. 00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:16.470 align:middle line:84% Kind of a medical mystic, he lets me call him. 00:09:16.470 --> 00:09:21.630 align:middle line:84% His letter gave me no hint you were such a great boy. 00:09:21.630 --> 00:09:26.160 align:middle line:84% I feared a man wizened by the frost of worldliness 00:09:26.160 --> 00:09:28.920 align:middle line:90% but for all that fur-- 00:09:28.920 --> 00:09:31.200 align:middle line:90% it is fur, isn't it? 00:09:31.200 --> 00:09:33.780 align:middle line:90% Not a mane. 00:09:33.780 --> 00:09:38.040 align:middle line:84% You are the lion, sir, between the two of us. 00:09:38.040 --> 00:09:41.880 align:middle line:84% Well, you're no lamb judging by the look of you. 00:09:41.880 --> 00:09:43.710 align:middle line:84% From the set of your shoulders, one 00:09:43.710 --> 00:09:49.230 align:middle line:84% would say you had the American I am in you somewhere. 00:09:49.230 --> 00:09:53.880 align:middle line:84% In Boston, sir, they took me up for Irish, 00:09:53.880 --> 00:09:56.280 align:middle line:90% in Baltimore for British. 00:09:56.280 --> 00:10:00.450 align:middle line:84% In each city they seem ready to take me for what I am 00:10:00.450 --> 00:10:02.790 align:middle line:90% but I am not a boy, sir. 00:10:02.790 --> 00:10:06.420 align:middle line:84% Is it my fault if I seem young because I look behind me 00:10:06.420 --> 00:10:11.100 align:middle line:84% and you as old as you do because you look so far ahead? 00:10:11.100 --> 00:10:16.080 align:middle line:84% Future of mind, you have that, where presence 00:10:16.080 --> 00:10:18.240 align:middle line:90% is the most one hopes for. 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:23.340 align:middle line:84% You know I saw a man in the West whose twig bends near water. 00:10:23.340 --> 00:10:29.610 align:middle line:84% I call on you as one consults such a man. 00:10:29.610 --> 00:10:32.910 align:middle line:84% You know how to say the remembered if not 00:10:32.910 --> 00:10:35.160 align:middle line:90% the right thing. 00:10:35.160 --> 00:10:38.610 align:middle line:84% If I can't speak poetry, I can inspire it. 00:10:38.610 --> 00:10:41.190 align:middle line:90% I swim in your flattery, son. 00:10:41.190 --> 00:10:45.540 align:middle line:84% Oh better swim than drown in any element. 00:10:45.540 --> 00:10:50.220 align:middle line:84% Never heed our ages Walt. May I call you Walt? 00:10:50.220 --> 00:10:53.100 align:middle line:90% I must be Oscar to you. 00:10:53.100 --> 00:10:58.380 align:middle line:84% We meet here as prophets at ease in Zion, 00:10:58.380 --> 00:11:01.920 align:middle line:84% without age, without agitation, and I 00:11:01.920 --> 00:11:05.940 align:middle line:84% hope to find you feeling the better for that. 00:11:05.940 --> 00:11:13.020 align:middle line:84% I am as you see incarcerated in this one chair. 00:11:13.020 --> 00:11:16.890 align:middle line:90% What is prophetic about that? 00:11:16.890 --> 00:11:18.840 align:middle line:90% What we share. 00:11:18.840 --> 00:11:21.150 align:middle line:84% The gift of prophecy is given to all 00:11:21.150 --> 00:11:25.770 align:middle line:84% who do not know what will happen to themselves. 00:11:25.770 --> 00:11:28.410 align:middle line:90% You may be as right. 00:11:28.410 --> 00:11:30.810 align:middle line:90% I know. 00:11:30.810 --> 00:11:35.700 align:middle line:90% Day by day I learned. 00:11:35.700 --> 00:11:40.470 align:middle line:84% The trouble with me is not what I do but what I don't feel. 00:11:40.470 --> 00:11:42.510 align:middle line:90% My fingers are dead. 00:11:42.510 --> 00:11:46.470 align:middle line:84% Oh put them in mine, Walt. Doctors prate of chills 00:11:46.470 --> 00:11:49.050 align:middle line:84% but I think any man who has survived 00:11:49.050 --> 00:11:53.670 align:middle line:84% your American newspapers is impregnable. 00:11:53.670 --> 00:11:58.650 align:middle line:84% And your decor, I have been dashing between coyotes 00:11:58.650 --> 00:12:01.140 align:middle line:84% and canyons only to discover one is 00:12:01.140 --> 00:12:04.320 align:middle line:90% a ravine and the other a fox. 00:12:04.320 --> 00:12:06.780 align:middle line:84% I don't know which, I believe they change about. 00:12:06.780 --> 00:12:09.540 align:middle line:90% 00:12:09.540 --> 00:12:12.930 align:middle line:84% So it would have been with me, a like confusion 00:12:12.930 --> 00:12:19.680 align:middle line:84% if I had ventured in the broad foreign landscape, 00:12:19.680 --> 00:12:22.410 align:middle line:90% foreign livestock. 00:12:22.410 --> 00:12:25.770 align:middle line:84% I'm homesick enough right here in Camden. 00:12:25.770 --> 00:12:29.340 align:middle line:84% America is the one country you can be homesick 00:12:29.340 --> 00:12:32.460 align:middle line:90% for while you're in it. 00:12:32.460 --> 00:12:36.390 align:middle line:90% One big case of homesickness. 00:12:36.390 --> 00:12:41.550 align:middle line:84% I would have frozen solid if I had taken Tennyson's offer. 00:12:41.550 --> 00:12:44.220 align:middle line:84% You would have discovered that Lord Tennyson believes 00:12:44.220 --> 00:12:46.470 align:middle line:84% himself constituted to protest against 00:12:46.470 --> 00:12:48.930 align:middle line:90% all modern improvements. 00:12:48.930 --> 00:12:51.930 align:middle line:84% He regards-- I think I should warn you, Walt, he 00:12:51.930 --> 00:12:55.725 align:middle line:84% regards America as a modern improvement, one of the worst. 00:12:55.725 --> 00:12:58.740 align:middle line:90% 00:12:58.740 --> 00:13:03.660 align:middle line:84% You give the literary man a touch of frostbite over there 00:13:03.660 --> 00:13:09.720 align:middle line:84% and he's never quite the man he was after London has set in. 00:13:09.720 --> 00:13:13.180 align:middle line:84% I don't regret never getting myself to England. 00:13:13.180 --> 00:13:20.100 align:middle line:84% How would England have helped or hurt the Leaves, for instance. 00:13:20.100 --> 00:13:24.640 align:middle line:84% The leaves-- Oh yes, Leaves of Grass. 00:13:24.640 --> 00:13:27.550 align:middle line:84% You know, I've always thought spears your word 00:13:27.550 --> 00:13:32.200 align:middle line:90% my dear, Walt. Spears of Grass. 00:13:32.200 --> 00:13:35.950 align:middle line:84% You are a naked man, you know, bearing a naked spear. 00:13:35.950 --> 00:13:38.800 align:middle line:90% 00:13:38.800 --> 00:13:45.430 align:middle line:84% Leaves is what I wrote and what I wear if my nakedness must 00:13:45.430 --> 00:13:48.070 align:middle line:90% be covered. 00:13:48.070 --> 00:13:52.060 align:middle line:90% Spears, I want no defenses. 00:13:52.060 --> 00:13:55.810 align:middle line:84% All this fear of indecency, all this noise about purity 00:13:55.810 --> 00:14:00.400 align:middle line:84% and the social order is nasty, too nasty to compromise with. 00:14:00.400 --> 00:14:02.380 align:middle line:84% I never come up against it but I think 00:14:02.380 --> 00:14:04.930 align:middle line:84% of what Heine, the poet Heine, said 00:14:04.930 --> 00:14:08.860 align:middle line:84% to a lady who had expressed some suspicions about the body. 00:14:08.860 --> 00:14:12.520 align:middle line:84% Madame, Heine said to her, are not all of us 00:14:12.520 --> 00:14:15.700 align:middle line:90% naked under our clothes. 00:14:15.700 --> 00:14:16.390 align:middle line:90% I say so. 00:14:16.390 --> 00:14:19.570 align:middle line:84% I got it all set in the Leaves, Oscar. 00:14:19.570 --> 00:14:25.630 align:middle line:84% Sex is the word when you mean sex, discredited here with us. 00:14:25.630 --> 00:14:31.960 align:middle line:84% Rejected from art but still the root of our life. 00:14:31.960 --> 00:14:33.475 align:middle line:90% A life below the life. 00:14:33.475 --> 00:14:36.100 align:middle line:90% 00:14:36.100 --> 00:14:40.960 align:middle line:84% You are with the prophets, Walt, when you speak so. 00:14:40.960 --> 00:14:45.310 align:middle line:84% I can imagine Isaiah hearing you. 00:14:45.310 --> 00:14:50.620 align:middle line:84% In Idaho, Isaiah would have been as you appear. 00:14:50.620 --> 00:14:55.270 align:middle line:90% Isaiah in a red cravat. 00:14:55.270 --> 00:15:00.880 align:middle line:84% Spare me Isaiah, spare me the responsibility. 00:15:00.880 --> 00:15:04.780 align:middle line:84% The Leaves is a this side book, Oscar. 00:15:04.780 --> 00:15:08.350 align:middle line:84% As for landscape, all we need is grit, 00:15:08.350 --> 00:15:14.650 align:middle line:84% the body's grit not to fall like Emerson fell short of Earth. 00:15:14.650 --> 00:15:18.790 align:middle line:90% After the shadow, not the fact. 00:15:18.790 --> 00:15:22.330 align:middle line:84% Grit is the guarantee of the rest. 00:15:22.330 --> 00:15:27.025 align:middle line:84% Coyotes here, canyons, castles there. 00:15:27.025 --> 00:15:29.620 align:middle line:90% 00:15:29.620 --> 00:15:32.480 align:middle line:90% A this-side book. 00:15:32.480 --> 00:15:37.420 align:middle line:84% Some love it on their side, Walt. Some worship. 00:15:37.420 --> 00:15:43.210 align:middle line:84% In the scriptures of modern Europe I can cite no verses. 00:15:43.210 --> 00:15:45.760 align:middle line:90% Well, I brought you mine. 00:15:45.760 --> 00:15:48.880 align:middle line:90% Bound to order in grass green. 00:15:48.880 --> 00:15:51.280 align:middle line:84% I have noticed that the public is largely influenced 00:15:51.280 --> 00:15:53.170 align:middle line:90% by the look of a book. 00:15:53.170 --> 00:15:54.580 align:middle line:90% So are we all. 00:15:54.580 --> 00:15:58.670 align:middle line:84% It is the one artistic thing about the public. 00:15:58.670 --> 00:16:02.110 align:middle line:84% These are our first poems, an offering 00:16:02.110 --> 00:16:05.740 align:middle line:84% honored to be held between your hands. 00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:08.210 align:middle line:90% Warmer now, are they not? 00:16:08.210 --> 00:16:10.030 align:middle line:84% We're seeing, Walt, before vanity 00:16:10.030 --> 00:16:11.530 align:middle line:84% came between us though I do not wish 00:16:11.530 --> 00:16:13.850 align:middle line:90% to appear to run vanity down. 00:16:13.850 --> 00:16:18.580 align:middle line:84% I was seeing that I can conceive of no Bible worthy, save yours 00:16:18.580 --> 00:16:22.150 align:middle line:84% and Baudelaire's, to prepare mankind 00:16:22.150 --> 00:16:26.080 align:middle line:90% for an identical body and soul. 00:16:26.080 --> 00:16:31.090 align:middle line:84% Leaves of Grass, Flowers of Evil, our sacred botany. 00:16:31.090 --> 00:16:35.290 align:middle line:90% 00:16:35.290 --> 00:16:39.670 align:middle line:84% Is that meant to be a joke, Oscar? 00:16:39.670 --> 00:16:42.580 align:middle line:90% Flowers of Evil. 00:16:42.580 --> 00:16:45.610 align:middle line:90% What grows out of the ground. 00:16:45.610 --> 00:16:49.600 align:middle line:84% That's a mystery and had better remain so. 00:16:49.600 --> 00:16:50.890 align:middle line:90% I'm glad to have your book. 00:16:50.890 --> 00:16:54.550 align:middle line:90% Don't apologize for first poems. 00:16:54.550 --> 00:16:59.110 align:middle line:84% Books are like men, the best of them have flaws. 00:16:59.110 --> 00:17:02.260 align:middle line:90% Thank God for the flaws. 00:17:02.260 --> 00:17:10.180 align:middle line:84% If not for the flaws, Oscar, love would be impossible. 00:17:10.180 --> 00:17:13.750 align:middle line:84% Life, it continues, Walt. Flaws and all, 00:17:13.750 --> 00:17:17.890 align:middle line:84% unless you link the temperament of a vampire 00:17:17.890 --> 00:17:22.210 align:middle line:90% to the discretion of an anemone. 00:17:22.210 --> 00:17:25.450 align:middle line:84% Is that the evil flower you speak of? 00:17:25.450 --> 00:17:26.660 align:middle line:90% Anemones. 00:17:26.660 --> 00:17:30.850 align:middle line:90% Even sea anemones. 00:17:30.850 --> 00:17:33.190 align:middle line:90% Les Fluers du Mal. 00:17:33.190 --> 00:17:38.260 align:middle line:84% Poems by Charles Baudelaire, Walt. The greatest moralist 00:17:38.260 --> 00:17:41.740 align:middle line:84% to sing in France since Villon was imprisoned. 00:17:41.740 --> 00:17:44.730 align:middle line:90% 00:17:44.730 --> 00:17:48.000 align:middle line:90% Do moralists sing? 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:51.030 align:middle line:90% I thought they expurgated poems. 00:17:51.030 --> 00:17:55.410 align:middle line:84% French or Hebrew, it's all one to me. 00:17:55.410 --> 00:18:00.690 align:middle line:84% Prophets, moralists, bibles, they make me uneasy. 00:18:00.690 --> 00:18:03.450 align:middle line:84% I want picnics and the freedom to loaf, 00:18:03.450 --> 00:18:06.720 align:middle line:84% jolly all round good time with the parsons 00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:09.510 align:middle line:90% and police uninvited. 00:18:09.510 --> 00:18:12.180 align:middle line:84% I've always been a first-rate aquatic loafer, 00:18:12.180 --> 00:18:15.420 align:middle line:90% could float on my back forever. 00:18:15.420 --> 00:18:21.510 align:middle line:84% The indecency is always invoked against floating and growing. 00:18:21.510 --> 00:18:25.140 align:middle line:84% What kind of a gardener is your Baudelaire? 00:18:25.140 --> 00:18:29.820 align:middle line:84% Are his flowers indecent like mine, 00:18:29.820 --> 00:18:33.930 align:middle line:84% were some plucked up by the roots? 00:18:33.930 --> 00:18:35.670 align:middle line:90% The book was censored. 00:18:35.670 --> 00:18:39.030 align:middle line:84% The poems were called obscene when they appeared 00:18:39.030 --> 00:18:43.440 align:middle line:84% a short while after yours, Walt. Their interest is not 00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:46.620 align:middle line:84% that they were suppressed by a foolish official 00:18:46.620 --> 00:18:49.320 align:middle line:84% but that they were written by a great artist. 00:18:49.320 --> 00:18:52.700 align:middle line:90% 00:18:52.700 --> 00:18:57.770 align:middle line:84% Foolish officials can be interesting too, Oscar. 00:18:57.770 --> 00:19:00.530 align:middle line:90% I found that out. 00:19:00.530 --> 00:19:02.630 align:middle line:84% Secretary Harland took the Leaves 00:19:02.630 --> 00:19:06.080 align:middle line:84% so seriously he abstracted them, the proof sheets, it 00:19:06.080 --> 00:19:10.700 align:middle line:84% was not the book yet, from my desk drawer at night after I'd 00:19:10.700 --> 00:19:11.420 align:middle line:90% gone. 00:19:11.420 --> 00:19:17.450 align:middle line:84% Put them back again neat and the next day discharged me. 00:19:17.450 --> 00:19:22.730 align:middle line:84% Will not do to fly in the face of courts and conformity. 00:19:22.730 --> 00:19:26.525 align:middle line:84% It did not do at all well for me, Oscar. 00:19:26.525 --> 00:19:29.870 align:middle line:90% 00:19:29.870 --> 00:19:34.790 align:middle line:84% I usually cross that bridge after I've burned it behind me. 00:19:34.790 --> 00:19:38.420 align:middle line:84% They knew it is not my past people so much object to, 00:19:38.420 --> 00:19:43.920 align:middle line:84% I do not yet have a past, but my future. 00:19:43.920 --> 00:19:46.310 align:middle line:90% They objected to Baudelaire. 00:19:46.310 --> 00:19:48.500 align:middle line:90% What was it he wrote, Oscar? 00:19:48.500 --> 00:19:51.020 align:middle line:90% Can you say it out? 00:19:51.020 --> 00:19:53.330 align:middle line:90% I never could say mine. 00:19:53.330 --> 00:19:56.090 align:middle line:90% I never commit poems to memory. 00:19:56.090 --> 00:19:59.420 align:middle line:90% They'd be in my way. 00:19:59.420 --> 00:20:03.650 align:middle line:84% If I cannot hear Walt Whitman's "Calamus" from his lips, 00:20:03.650 --> 00:20:06.890 align:middle line:84% I am happy to be the first to bring Baudelaire's artistry 00:20:06.890 --> 00:20:09.720 align:middle line:90% to his ears. 00:20:09.720 --> 00:20:13.070 align:middle line:84% I've heard a good deal with these ears, son. 00:20:13.070 --> 00:20:18.140 align:middle line:84% I find it hard to imagine a shock in that direction. 00:20:18.140 --> 00:20:23.030 align:middle line:84% Even the Leaves are no longer said to be lewd. 00:20:23.030 --> 00:20:28.400 align:middle line:84% Nothing is harder to keep up than a bad reputation. 00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:32.570 align:middle line:90% Try a flower on me, Oscar. 00:20:32.570 --> 00:20:36.620 align:middle line:84% Try me with a bloom from my wicked bed. 00:20:36.620 --> 00:20:40.430 align:middle line:84% Speak it in English though, I can neither hear 00:20:40.430 --> 00:20:42.830 align:middle line:90% nor read a Frenchman's language. 00:20:42.830 --> 00:20:44.540 align:middle line:90% Speak your piece, Oscar. 00:20:44.540 --> 00:20:49.760 align:middle line:84% I am all ears to meet my fellow evangelist. 00:20:49.760 --> 00:20:53.810 align:middle line:84% And I all eagerness, Walt. Not until you permit a poet 00:20:53.810 --> 00:20:58.070 align:middle line:84% a mask does he dare tell you the truth. 00:20:58.070 --> 00:21:00.290 align:middle line:90% I dared. 00:21:00.290 --> 00:21:04.230 align:middle line:84% Do not suppose that the Leaves is a mask. 00:21:04.230 --> 00:21:07.460 align:middle line:84% It is the man, the life a man can live in language. 00:21:07.460 --> 00:21:08.720 align:middle line:90% He must tell it himself. 00:21:08.720 --> 00:21:10.355 align:middle line:90% No disciple can. 00:21:10.355 --> 00:21:13.340 align:middle line:90% 00:21:13.340 --> 00:21:15.730 align:middle line:84% Is it not incredible then that the prospect 00:21:15.730 --> 00:21:18.400 align:middle line:84% of having a biographer has tempted no one 00:21:18.400 --> 00:21:21.670 align:middle line:90% to renounce having a life? 00:21:21.670 --> 00:21:25.240 align:middle line:90% There can be no renouncing. 00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:27.220 align:middle line:90% You have to get on with it. 00:21:27.220 --> 00:21:31.750 align:middle line:90% Do get on with it, Oscar. 00:21:31.750 --> 00:21:39.070 align:middle line:84% My memory will serve to recite but not to recreate the music. 00:21:39.070 --> 00:21:43.880 align:middle line:84% I translate line by line trusting the mystery. 00:21:43.880 --> 00:21:47.680 align:middle line:84% It is an early piece and no less perfect than the late. 00:21:47.680 --> 00:21:51.506 align:middle line:84% Only mediocrity is progress, masters revolve. 00:21:51.506 --> 00:21:54.400 align:middle line:90% 00:21:54.400 --> 00:21:57.610 align:middle line:84% I was never so certain of myself, Oscar, 00:21:57.610 --> 00:22:04.420 align:middle line:84% that I could afford to revolve, to write on and on to the end 00:22:04.420 --> 00:22:06.550 align:middle line:90% even if in senility. 00:22:06.550 --> 00:22:09.400 align:middle line:90% To make a complete record. 00:22:09.400 --> 00:22:13.480 align:middle line:84% There's more to say, always more. 00:22:13.480 --> 00:22:18.250 align:middle line:84% Let me hear if this crudity of your Baudelaire. 00:22:18.250 --> 00:22:22.780 align:middle line:90% It is a poem entitled "Spleen." 00:22:22.780 --> 00:22:25.270 align:middle line:90% Spleen? 00:22:25.270 --> 00:22:30.880 align:middle line:90% In the way of resentment, anger? 00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:33.640 align:middle line:84% They're not forever patted on the back. 00:22:33.640 --> 00:22:36.430 align:middle line:84% Sometimes we're kicked in the behind. 00:22:36.430 --> 00:22:39.360 align:middle line:90% Spleen then, say on. 00:22:39.360 --> 00:22:43.390 align:middle line:90% 00:22:43.390 --> 00:22:47.560 align:middle line:84% I am even as the king of a rainy country, 00:22:47.560 --> 00:22:51.820 align:middle line:84% rich but impotent, senile but still young, 00:22:51.820 --> 00:22:54.970 align:middle line:84% who wearies of his courtiers' flattery nor hunts with hawk 00:22:54.970 --> 00:22:59.860 align:middle line:84% or hound, nor heeds the while his subjects starve 00:22:59.860 --> 00:23:02.920 align:middle line:90% outside the palace walls. 00:23:02.920 --> 00:23:05.650 align:middle line:84% His favorite fool no longer brings a smile 00:23:05.650 --> 00:23:10.420 align:middle line:84% to cruel eyes incredulous of doom. 00:23:10.420 --> 00:23:14.950 align:middle line:84% The royal bed becomes a royal tomb. 00:23:14.950 --> 00:23:18.940 align:middle line:84% And ladies who might find all princes fair game no longer 00:23:18.940 --> 00:23:25.420 align:middle line:84% gaud themselves enough to win a glance from this cold skeleton. 00:23:25.420 --> 00:23:27.790 align:middle line:84% His alchemist turns lead to gold yet fails 00:23:27.790 --> 00:23:30.580 align:middle line:84% to draw the dark corruption from his soul. 00:23:30.580 --> 00:23:34.690 align:middle line:84% And even bloodbaths in true Roman style such as old 00:23:34.690 --> 00:23:41.440 align:middle line:84% warriors regard with shame cannot relume a living corpse 00:23:41.440 --> 00:23:45.605 align:middle line:84% whose veins no blood but Lethe's livid absinthe stains. 00:23:45.605 --> 00:23:50.660 align:middle line:90% 00:23:50.660 --> 00:23:54.680 align:middle line:90% King of a rainy country. 00:23:54.680 --> 00:23:57.440 align:middle line:90% I know what that means, Oscar. 00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:04.370 align:middle line:84% I lived by the sound of rain, imaginary rainfall. 00:24:04.370 --> 00:24:07.130 align:middle line:90% And I'm used to defections. 00:24:07.130 --> 00:24:10.050 align:middle line:84% How often young enthusiasts grow old. 00:24:10.050 --> 00:24:12.860 align:middle line:90% Yes, old and cold too. 00:24:12.860 --> 00:24:14.990 align:middle line:84% Still if the world's unjust to you, 00:24:14.990 --> 00:24:19.470 align:middle line:84% you must take care not to be unjust to the world. 00:24:19.470 --> 00:24:23.840 align:middle line:84% I don't get much beyond that with Spleen. 00:24:23.840 --> 00:24:28.280 align:middle line:84% What I hear is a sickly sensuality in it. 00:24:28.280 --> 00:24:31.700 align:middle line:84% The sensuality of convalescence you 00:24:31.700 --> 00:24:35.810 align:middle line:90% might call it that, you might. 00:24:35.810 --> 00:24:40.160 align:middle line:84% I don't care, it's all too bad to be true. 00:24:40.160 --> 00:24:42.530 align:middle line:90% Livid absence. 00:24:42.530 --> 00:24:44.600 align:middle line:90% No, no, no, no, absinthe. 00:24:44.600 --> 00:24:49.160 align:middle line:84% Absinthe, Walt. A liquor brewed from wormwood. 00:24:49.160 --> 00:24:51.520 align:middle line:90% Oh I know absinthe. 00:24:51.520 --> 00:24:56.210 align:middle line:84% In New Orleans, a man drank it or said he did. 00:24:56.210 --> 00:25:01.580 align:middle line:84% I saw him dip his fingers in, wet his eyebrows, eyelids, 00:25:01.580 --> 00:25:04.970 align:middle line:90% faint dead away. 00:25:04.970 --> 00:25:08.480 align:middle line:90% So his Lethe is real. 00:25:08.480 --> 00:25:12.710 align:middle line:84% It is a way of getting rid of the real. 00:25:12.710 --> 00:25:15.410 align:middle line:90% Bad riddance. 00:25:15.410 --> 00:25:19.250 align:middle line:84% Sounds as if the man could pity himself alone, not 00:25:19.250 --> 00:25:22.280 align:middle line:90% seriously pity other men. 00:25:22.280 --> 00:25:27.770 align:middle line:84% And is it not verse written of malice prepense, all laid out, 00:25:27.770 --> 00:25:32.810 align:middle line:84% rhymed, designed on mathematical principles. 00:25:32.810 --> 00:25:35.930 align:middle line:90% Is it not a machine, Oscar? 00:25:35.930 --> 00:25:38.580 align:middle line:90% A kind of enslavement. 00:25:38.580 --> 00:25:41.170 align:middle line:90% 00:25:41.170 --> 00:25:42.250 align:middle line:90% Here. 00:25:42.250 --> 00:25:44.170 align:middle line:90% Yes, it is art. 00:25:44.170 --> 00:25:46.870 align:middle line:90% It bears the fetters of art. 00:25:46.870 --> 00:25:52.180 align:middle line:84% No, Walt. And you make no slaves, only lovers. 00:25:52.180 --> 00:25:55.630 align:middle line:84% I shall not be so foolish as to defend one genius from another. 00:25:55.630 --> 00:25:58.690 align:middle line:84% Disaffection is inseparable from faith. 00:25:58.690 --> 00:26:02.050 align:middle line:84% I often betray myself with a kiss. 00:26:02.050 --> 00:26:06.740 align:middle line:84% Surprising, though, you are not more taken by the criminal. 00:26:06.740 --> 00:26:09.100 align:middle line:90% The morbid, you mean? 00:26:09.100 --> 00:26:13.270 align:middle line:90% I'm not taken by that. 00:26:13.270 --> 00:26:16.270 align:middle line:84% The Americans I have met are certainly great hero 00:26:16.270 --> 00:26:18.880 align:middle line:84% worshippers and always adopt their heroes 00:26:18.880 --> 00:26:22.570 align:middle line:90% from the criminal classes. 00:26:22.570 --> 00:26:28.630 align:middle line:84% Leaves is a book written for the criminal classes. 00:26:28.630 --> 00:26:31.210 align:middle line:84% How on Earth do you come to such a notion, Walt? 00:26:31.210 --> 00:26:34.540 align:middle line:84% I don't come to it, it's the case. 00:26:34.540 --> 00:26:37.240 align:middle line:84% The others have no need for a poet. 00:26:37.240 --> 00:26:40.160 align:middle line:90% 00:26:40.160 --> 00:26:43.700 align:middle line:84% Are you in the criminal classes yourself? 00:26:43.700 --> 00:26:45.440 align:middle line:90% Certainly. 00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:46.996 align:middle line:90% Certainly. 00:26:46.996 --> 00:26:49.880 align:middle line:90% Why not? 00:26:49.880 --> 00:26:53.990 align:middle line:84% Well, I was hoping you might get me in as well. 00:26:53.990 --> 00:26:57.350 align:middle line:84% Only the utterly worthless can be reformed. 00:26:57.350 --> 00:26:59.810 align:middle line:90% I feel beyond reform. 00:26:59.810 --> 00:27:02.420 align:middle line:90% I want only form. 00:27:02.420 --> 00:27:05.495 align:middle line:84% Is it not form, Walt, that keeps things together? 00:27:05.495 --> 00:27:08.000 align:middle line:90% 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:09.950 align:middle line:90% I keep nothing together. 00:27:09.950 --> 00:27:11.780 align:middle line:90% Look around. 00:27:11.780 --> 00:27:15.260 align:middle line:84% Have I ever kept anything together? 00:27:15.260 --> 00:27:18.980 align:middle line:84% Body and soul, that's all I keep together. 00:27:18.980 --> 00:27:23.330 align:middle line:90% You keep them splendidly. 00:27:23.330 --> 00:27:28.970 align:middle line:84% That simplicity has been the great enclosing secret for you. 00:27:28.970 --> 00:27:30.620 align:middle line:84% All the same along the way I should 00:27:30.620 --> 00:27:35.670 align:middle line:84% suppose there were distinctions, even in criminal classes. 00:27:35.670 --> 00:27:40.700 align:middle line:90% Our failure is we form habits. 00:27:40.700 --> 00:27:47.350 align:middle line:84% In Idaho, Walt, they took me to visit their prison, apparently 00:27:47.350 --> 00:27:49.420 align:middle line:90% a model one. 00:27:49.420 --> 00:27:52.060 align:middle line:84% There was all the odd prey of humanity 00:27:52.060 --> 00:27:57.280 align:middle line:84% in hideous striped suits making bricks in the sun. 00:27:57.280 --> 00:28:01.150 align:middle line:84% I saw one man, a murderer, with steel eyes, 00:28:01.150 --> 00:28:07.120 align:middle line:84% spending the interval before he was hanged in reading novels. 00:28:07.120 --> 00:28:10.720 align:middle line:84% A poor apprenticeship I thought for facing either God 00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:11.380 align:middle line:90% or nothing. 00:28:11.380 --> 00:28:14.580 align:middle line:90% 00:28:14.580 --> 00:28:20.880 align:middle line:84% It was for just such a man I wrote Leaves of Grass. 00:28:20.880 --> 00:28:26.160 align:middle line:84% A man reading in a jail, as well as any other man 00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:29.160 align:middle line:90% who cares to read me. 00:28:29.160 --> 00:28:34.200 align:middle line:84% No one was ever bad enough to be put in jail. 00:28:34.200 --> 00:28:35.430 align:middle line:90% He was. 00:28:35.430 --> 00:28:40.050 align:middle line:84% Or might be, bad enough to be put in a hospital. 00:28:40.050 --> 00:28:43.560 align:middle line:84% But all this judging is not a habit, 00:28:43.560 --> 00:28:46.830 align:middle line:90% more likely it's a disease. 00:28:46.830 --> 00:28:49.350 align:middle line:84% I don't hold with judging, measuring, 00:28:49.350 --> 00:28:53.100 align:middle line:84% weighing this offense against that penalty. 00:28:53.100 --> 00:28:58.680 align:middle line:84% Breaking loose is the only thing, opening new ways. 00:28:58.680 --> 00:29:01.830 align:middle line:84% Once a man breaks loose though or starts to or even thinks 00:29:01.830 --> 00:29:06.300 align:middle line:84% he'll start he should be sure he knows what he's undertaken. 00:29:06.300 --> 00:29:11.730 align:middle line:90% I expected hell, I got it. 00:29:11.730 --> 00:29:15.480 align:middle line:84% Nothing that's occurred came as a surprise. 00:29:15.480 --> 00:29:22.470 align:middle line:84% Probably more is to come and that won't surprise me either. 00:29:22.470 --> 00:29:27.960 align:middle line:84% To me, Walt, it must come as a surprise. 00:29:27.960 --> 00:29:32.790 align:middle line:84% Life is so often nothing more than a quotation. 00:29:32.790 --> 00:29:36.690 align:middle line:90% Most people are other people. 00:29:36.690 --> 00:29:40.410 align:middle line:90% Surprises change life. 00:29:40.410 --> 00:29:44.100 align:middle line:84% I have more, I'm sure, than I deserve. 00:29:44.100 --> 00:29:47.025 align:middle line:84% But it is always nice to have a little more than one deserves. 00:29:47.025 --> 00:29:50.070 align:middle line:90% 00:29:50.070 --> 00:29:53.190 align:middle line:90% There is no deserves, Oscar. 00:29:53.190 --> 00:29:57.610 align:middle line:84% I never weighed what I gave for what I got. 00:29:57.610 --> 00:30:00.540 align:middle line:90% And I'm glad of what I got. 00:30:00.540 --> 00:30:03.960 align:middle line:90% But did I get enough? 00:30:03.960 --> 00:30:07.440 align:middle line:84% Well, I got the boys for one thing. 00:30:07.440 --> 00:30:09.810 align:middle line:90% The boys, hundreds of them. 00:30:09.810 --> 00:30:15.420 align:middle line:84% They were, they are, they will be mine. 00:30:15.420 --> 00:30:22.830 align:middle line:84% I gave myself for them, myself, and I got the boys. 00:30:22.830 --> 00:30:29.880 align:middle line:84% And I got the Leaves, not spears, but leaves of grass. 00:30:29.880 --> 00:30:32.460 align:middle line:84% Without the boys-- if it hadn't been for the boys 00:30:32.460 --> 00:30:36.870 align:middle line:84% I never would have had the Leaves, the consummated book, 00:30:36.870 --> 00:30:41.490 align:middle line:90% the last confirming word. 00:30:41.490 --> 00:30:44.100 align:middle line:84% Oscar, what are you doing down there? 00:30:44.100 --> 00:30:45.735 align:middle line:84% You lost your seat or your senses? 00:30:45.735 --> 00:30:49.390 align:middle line:90% 00:30:49.390 --> 00:30:56.630 align:middle line:84% Oh, Walt, you've gained another boy. 00:30:56.630 --> 00:31:00.860 align:middle line:84% It will not give you another poem for the Leaves 00:31:00.860 --> 00:31:05.150 align:middle line:84% but I want to ask something of you, 00:31:05.150 --> 00:31:11.630 align:middle line:84% a favor, Walt. I reckon there must be a reason for you 00:31:11.630 --> 00:31:16.100 align:middle line:84% to visit another kind of model prison, 00:31:16.100 --> 00:31:21.770 align:middle line:84% more than to give me your book and more than to get me down 00:31:21.770 --> 00:31:25.880 align:middle line:90% to Baudelaire's level. 00:31:25.880 --> 00:31:29.150 align:middle line:90% I think I know the reason. 00:31:29.150 --> 00:31:32.690 align:middle line:84% I usually can guess why a man comes to see me. 00:31:32.690 --> 00:31:38.030 align:middle line:84% You want more than a handshake with Walt Whitman. 00:31:38.030 --> 00:31:42.380 align:middle line:84% You want to know what you must give up. 00:31:42.380 --> 00:31:47.240 align:middle line:84% You see me here alone in this chair at this window, 00:31:47.240 --> 00:31:50.270 align:middle line:84% you take my hands to ward off the chill, 00:31:50.270 --> 00:31:55.280 align:middle line:84% and you wonder how to go about giving yourself away. 00:31:55.280 --> 00:32:00.230 align:middle line:90% 00:32:00.230 --> 00:32:06.950 align:middle line:90% Walt, you must bless me. 00:32:06.950 --> 00:32:12.850 align:middle line:84% I want to take your blessing with me. 00:32:12.850 --> 00:32:15.660 align:middle line:90% I cannot leave you my book. 00:32:15.660 --> 00:32:21.600 align:middle line:84% It is not the book I must write for Walt Whitman. 00:32:21.600 --> 00:32:24.290 align:middle line:90% That poem will come. 00:32:24.290 --> 00:32:31.650 align:middle line:84% Oh, bless me and it will come from a deeper place than these. 00:32:31.650 --> 00:32:35.160 align:middle line:90% Let me have my book again. 00:32:35.160 --> 00:32:36.570 align:middle line:90% What? 00:32:36.570 --> 00:32:39.315 align:middle line:90% Indian giving. 00:32:39.315 --> 00:32:43.905 align:middle line:84% You know the sense of that boy, taking back what you give. 00:32:43.905 --> 00:32:46.980 align:middle line:90% 00:32:46.980 --> 00:32:49.995 align:middle line:90% I have nothing to give you yet. 00:32:49.995 --> 00:32:52.500 align:middle line:90% 00:32:52.500 --> 00:32:57.570 align:middle line:84% Here for now, Walt. My buttonhole, 00:32:57.570 --> 00:33:01.140 align:middle line:90% the tribute of a flower. 00:33:01.140 --> 00:33:04.440 align:middle line:90% Not an evil one I trust. 00:33:04.440 --> 00:33:10.770 align:middle line:84% Even on your knees, Oscar, not a flower of evil. 00:33:10.770 --> 00:33:19.520 align:middle line:84% One harmless heliotrope, Walt, for your hand on my forehead. 00:33:19.520 --> 00:33:23.790 align:middle line:84% I dressed many a wound, Oscar, with this hand 00:33:23.790 --> 00:33:27.450 align:middle line:90% which can feel nothing now. 00:33:27.450 --> 00:33:31.920 align:middle line:84% But the boys I nursed had suffered their fate. 00:33:31.920 --> 00:33:34.860 align:middle line:90% Yours is yet to come. 00:33:34.860 --> 00:33:40.920 align:middle line:84% Take my blessing with your book, boy, they're both yours. 00:33:40.920 --> 00:33:44.820 align:middle line:90% Oh, you have instructed me. 00:33:44.820 --> 00:33:50.100 align:middle line:84% Past hopes, past fears, in you, Walt, I 00:33:50.100 --> 00:34:00.690 align:middle line:84% discover how a desire becomes a destiny to give myself away. 00:34:00.690 --> 00:34:04.890 align:middle line:84% Well, not to make sacrifices but to be one. 00:34:04.890 --> 00:34:07.820 align:middle line:90% 00:34:07.820 --> 00:34:14.270 align:middle line:84% To be somehow wholly like you, Walt. 00:34:14.270 --> 00:34:16.340 align:middle line:90% What else does sacrifice mean? 00:34:16.340 --> 00:34:19.100 align:middle line:90% 00:34:19.100 --> 00:34:23.780 align:middle line:84% I am a sick old man on Mickle Street, boy. 00:34:23.780 --> 00:34:27.830 align:middle line:90% I am not a holy man. 00:34:27.830 --> 00:34:30.920 align:middle line:90% Or all men are. 00:34:30.920 --> 00:34:32.840 align:middle line:90% Then you understand me? 00:34:32.840 --> 00:34:36.590 align:middle line:90% Or maybe I understand you now. 00:34:36.590 --> 00:34:40.630 align:middle line:84% To me you see, the Leaves is an essential poem 00:34:40.630 --> 00:34:45.170 align:middle line:84% that needed making like an essential life needs living. 00:34:45.170 --> 00:34:47.389 align:middle line:84% Maybe yours will be an essential life, 00:34:47.389 --> 00:34:51.290 align:middle line:90% one needing to have been lived. 00:34:51.290 --> 00:34:54.260 align:middle line:84% Give me the best man over the best books. 00:34:54.260 --> 00:35:02.100 align:middle line:84% Books are not facts, merely the effort to master facts. 00:35:02.100 --> 00:35:03.930 align:middle line:90% Let's say effort. 00:35:03.930 --> 00:35:05.670 align:middle line:90% I'm not sure of much else. 00:35:05.670 --> 00:35:08.380 align:middle line:90% 00:35:08.380 --> 00:35:15.600 align:middle line:84% Life, Walt. You make me sure of life. 00:35:15.600 --> 00:35:22.200 align:middle line:90% Your hand, I am truly your boy. 00:35:22.200 --> 00:35:26.000 align:middle line:90% 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:28.430 align:middle line:90% Kiss me and catch your trolley. 00:35:28.430 --> 00:35:31.010 align:middle line:90% I've lectured long enough. 00:35:31.010 --> 00:35:35.870 align:middle line:84% You must read the writing on the wall, or the page, 00:35:35.870 --> 00:35:39.590 align:middle line:90% or the face, Oscar. 00:35:39.590 --> 00:35:45.830 align:middle line:84% For yourself you must find it, you can't be told it. 00:35:45.830 --> 00:35:48.380 align:middle line:84% My own preference is for texts that 00:35:48.380 --> 00:35:52.420 align:middle line:90% can be carried in the pocket 00:35:52.420 --> 00:35:59.390 align:middle line:84% Oh, Walt. Walt, you have scored a triumph for America. 00:35:59.390 --> 00:36:04.040 align:middle line:90% I came, I saw, I was conquered. 00:36:04.040 --> 00:36:06.350 align:middle line:84% Not by fame though anything is better 00:36:06.350 --> 00:36:12.440 align:middle line:84% than a virtuous obscurity, not fame conquered but life. 00:36:12.440 --> 00:36:18.350 align:middle line:90% Your life, your immortality. 00:36:18.350 --> 00:36:25.190 align:middle line:84% Not immortality, Oscar, identity. 00:36:25.190 --> 00:36:28.010 align:middle line:90% Call it that and we are one. 00:36:28.010 --> 00:36:35.000 align:middle line:84% Oh, you've won, Walt. I am with you and so I leave you 00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:41.240 align:middle line:84% with gratitude, and honor, and all my love. 00:36:41.240 --> 00:36:43.520 align:middle line:90% Goodbye. 00:36:43.520 --> 00:36:46.280 align:middle line:90% Goodbye, son. 00:36:46.280 --> 00:36:51.440 align:middle line:84% Mary Davis, show Mr. Wilde how to go the trolleys 00:36:51.440 --> 00:36:54.100 align:middle line:90% at the end of Mickle Street. 00:36:54.100 --> 00:36:56.495 align:middle line:84% Give him one of our umbrellas if it's raining still. 00:36:56.495 --> 00:37:00.410 align:middle line:90% 00:37:00.410 --> 00:37:02.257 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Mary. 00:37:02.257 --> 00:37:02.840 align:middle line:90% That's enough. 00:37:02.840 --> 00:37:05.240 align:middle line:90% No, I don't want you fussing. 00:37:05.240 --> 00:37:08.720 align:middle line:90% I want to empty this room. 00:37:08.720 --> 00:37:13.250 align:middle line:84% I can still see him in front of the window. 00:37:13.250 --> 00:37:19.700 align:middle line:84% A dim reflection of Oscar talking about art. 00:37:19.700 --> 00:37:24.344 align:middle line:84% I can still hear him as if he's there. 00:37:24.344 --> 00:37:31.720 align:middle line:84% The north his needle points to, his only art. 00:37:31.720 --> 00:37:36.370 align:middle line:90% Art it is always only art. 00:37:36.370 --> 00:37:41.860 align:middle line:84% But a great boy still, a great manly boy. 00:37:41.860 --> 00:37:43.340 align:middle line:90% Well, he was here. 00:37:43.340 --> 00:37:45.595 align:middle line:84% I think I found the haystack in his needle. 00:37:45.595 --> 00:37:48.220 align:middle line:90% 00:37:48.220 --> 00:37:52.480 align:middle line:84% Did you notice if he left a green book downstairs 00:37:52.480 --> 00:37:53.995 align:middle line:90% on the table by the door? 00:37:53.995 --> 00:37:57.090 align:middle line:90% 00:37:57.090 --> 00:37:59.640 align:middle line:90% Nothing. 00:37:59.640 --> 00:38:02.850 align:middle line:90% Well, that's the right thing. 00:38:02.850 --> 00:38:08.580 align:middle line:84% They put this in water, this harmless heliotrope, 00:38:08.580 --> 00:38:09.510 align:middle line:90% leave it by the bed. 00:38:09.510 --> 00:38:12.680 align:middle line:90% 00:38:12.680 --> 00:38:16.410 align:middle line:84% There are some things too big for the world. 00:38:16.410 --> 00:38:19.770 align:middle line:90% They crowd it out at the sides. 00:38:19.770 --> 00:38:24.270 align:middle line:84% They need more room than Camden can supply them, 00:38:24.270 --> 00:38:27.390 align:middle line:90% or Canada either. 00:38:27.390 --> 00:38:30.810 align:middle line:90% Look at that color. 00:38:30.810 --> 00:38:35.670 align:middle line:84% Can anyone state the whole case for the universe? 00:38:35.670 --> 00:38:38.460 align:middle line:90% I need a nap, Mary. 00:38:38.460 --> 00:38:42.370 align:middle line:90% Get me back into bed. 00:38:42.370 --> 00:38:46.500 align:middle line:90% I want time to myself now." 00:38:46.500 --> 00:38:49.800 align:middle line:90% 00:38:49.800 --> 00:38:53.150 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:38:53.150 --> 00:39:34.000 align:middle line:90%