WEBVTT

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Now that it's too late perhaps
I should suggest that you not

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applaud after individual poems.

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There's a good reason for
making that suggestion.

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You see, if you don't
applaud after the next one

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I want something to blame it on.

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I guess I should tell
you what happened

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when I read that at the
Phi Beta Kappa ceremonial.

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None of the awful things
you might suppose.

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But I was being followed there
by the great Jewish historian,

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the great Jewish history
specialist Professor Baron,

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who had to deliver
a formal lecture

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without any notes in hand about
the Jewish problem in history.

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He had just come from the
Eichmann trial in Israel

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and he had to deliver
a formal lecture

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on the subject of the Jewish
problem without any notes.

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So of course he didn't
hear a word that I said.

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I mean, if you're on
the stage with someone

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you don't hear anything
that they say anyway.

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You're thinking about
what you have to do.

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And if you have a formal
lecture before a bunch

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of brilliant young
men, and I must

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say that the boys at Columbia
are very bright indeed insofar

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as the poem is about
the academic world,

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they got the point of
that rather quickly.

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Besides, it happened--
I was lucky.

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It was commencement day
and all the professors

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were wearing their
academic robes.

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So there sat all the boys
in Phi Beta Kappa, not quite

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daring to laugh out loud,
or throw rocks at me,

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or scream, or go blind, or
any of the alternatives.

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And in this terrible
dead silence,

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Professor Baron got
up and said, I'm

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sorry that I must
now take you away

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from this beautiful
world of poetry.

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[LAUGHTER] I mean, he never
knew what happened to the room.

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I'm going to read a
specially beautiful poem.

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In my first book there was a
poem that had a Greek title,

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still has a Greek title.

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By the second
printing of the book,

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we even got the Greek right.

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But I'm not sure that we
ever got the poem right.

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I guess I wasn't sorry
that I wrote that poem.

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But this much was
certain that no one

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could understand it and
have the information

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that it meant to me.

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Now perhaps that isn't important
but it certainly was important

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that I knew that anybody
reading that poem got

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a much thinner experience than
my experience of the material

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had been.

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You couldn't argue about that.

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That was just bad.

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And so I wanted to try to
handle that material again.

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There's a poem in which
I do try to handle

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the material, material which
for me began in during World War

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II when I was in the Navy
at San Bruno in California.

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And a man took about 50
of us out one morning

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and gave us a class in how,
if you should get caught out

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without any weapons
at all, you can

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blind a man with your bare hands
and then go on to kill him.

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And I must say, I cared
quite a lot about the things

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that man said.

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They were very important
to me and I guess

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that must be 25 years ago.

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I guess I think I could
reproduce just what he said.

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Well, in the first
poem that I had

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tried to handle this
material, I had put it

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through a kind of
mythological transformation

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and it became Odysseus
blinding the Cyclops

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and all kinds of things like
that I didn't care about

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very much about.

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And I decided that when I
tried to handle it again,

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I'd let the man say
just exactly what

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he said to us that morning.

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That that was at least seemed
to me so important and kind

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of atypical that I couldn't
do anything to that

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was going to make it more
interesting than it had--

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than it was just as it was.

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I've compressed
it and that's all.

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In the poem now he
says just what he says,

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but you don't hear
his voice alone.

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You hear it colliding
with another voice

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and that oddly enough
is another voice

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that I discovered at
just the same time.

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The voice of the great
Jewish philosopher

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Baruch Spinoza, who
again in the poem

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is saying just what he said in
a couple of places in his books.

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And I think when you hear
these two voices colliding

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as they do in the poem you
hear two lines from one and two

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from the other, two from the
first, two from the second,

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back and forth.

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When you hear these
voices colliding this way,

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of course at first you're struck
by the tremendous difference

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between them and of course
they are terribly different.

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The hand-to-hand
combat instructor

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must surely be one of the most
savage men who's ever lived.

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The- Spinoza as you
must know surely

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was one of the gentlest,
and kindest, and decent,

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and most humane of that not
very humane group humans.

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and there's a terrible
difference, of course,

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between them.

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Yet I don't think I'm-- insofar
as I know why these voices

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should be colliding in
the poem, it isn't only

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for their difference.

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It's also for the fact that
in some very essential way

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they are saying the
same thing and that

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frightens me very badly.

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I don't think I'm doing that
to undercut Spinoza and say

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that if you believe the kind
of things that he believes,

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you'll end up doing the kind of
things described by the poem.

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That's nonsense.

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You don't do things of that
sort because of anything you

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believe, you do that because
of the kind of man you are.

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And at least if I know why
that's happening in the poem,

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it's happening to undercut
the importance of any system

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of ideas or any system of--

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if you just have to tell
me you're a Christian,

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if you can't live
without telling me

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you're a communist, go ahead.

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I'll turn my hearing
aid down but then

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tell me something that counts.

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Have you quit beating your wife?

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How do you act as strangers?

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Visiting poets, say.

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I'd like to know something
about your qualities as a person

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since it seems to me that that's
a great deal more important.

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With the best ideas
in the world we

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have again and again
committed the worst actions

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and have used those best ideas
as a tool toward the worst

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actions.

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Whereas on the
other hand, you've

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known people who had 15th rate
ideas, who behaved very well--

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and I don't mean you ought to
go looking for 15th rate ideas,

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you don't need to,
they'll come to you.

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But getting better than 15th
rate ideas I don't think

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is any guarantee that you'll be
anything more than 15th rate.

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The first voice that you
hear in the poem though,

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is that of Spinoza
saying just what he said.

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"After experience taught me that
all the ordinary surroundings

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of social life are
futile and vain.

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I'm going to show you
something very ugly.

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Some day it might
save your life.

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Seeing that none of the things
I feared contain in themselves,

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anything either good or bad.

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What if you get caught
without a knife?

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Nothing.

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Even a loop of piano wire.

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Accepting only in the effect
they had upon my mind.

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I resolved to inquire.

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Take the first two
fingers of this hand,

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fork them out, kind
of a V for victory.

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Whether there might be something
whose discovery would grant me

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supreme unending happiness.

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And jam them into the
eyes of your enemy.

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You have to do this
hard, very hard.

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Then press.

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No virtue can be thought to
have priority over this endeavor

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to preserve one's being.

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Both fingers down
around the cheekbone

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and setting your foot
high into the chest.

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No man can desire
to act rightly,

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to be blessed, to live rightly,
without simultaneously.

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You must call up
every strength you own

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and you can rip off
the whole facial mask,

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wishing to be, to act, to live.

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He must ask first in other
words to actually exist.

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And you, whiner, who
wastes your time dawdling

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over the remorseless Earth, what
evil, what unspeakable crime

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have you made your life worth."

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