WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.070 align:middle line:90% 00:00:07.070 --> 00:00:09.320 align:middle line:84% In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche 00:00:09.320 --> 00:00:13.250 align:middle line:84% reminds us that the Greeks honored two gods of art-- 00:00:13.250 --> 00:00:17.120 align:middle line:84% Apollo, God of light and reason, order and clarity, 00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:22.025 align:middle line:84% and Dionysus, God of wine, orgy, rebirth, chaos, and life force. 00:00:22.025 --> 00:00:25.160 align:middle line:90% 00:00:25.160 --> 00:00:28.520 align:middle line:84% Lawrence is nothing, if not Dionysian. 00:00:28.520 --> 00:00:31.160 align:middle line:84% An apostle of life force, an asymmetry, 00:00:31.160 --> 00:00:33.770 align:middle line:84% that's the thematic burden of most of what he wrote, 00:00:33.770 --> 00:00:35.120 align:middle line:90% including this poem. 00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:37.490 align:middle line:84% The snake does live after all in a black hole. 00:00:37.490 --> 00:00:40.230 align:middle line:90% 00:00:40.230 --> 00:00:41.870 align:middle line:90% We can see it first. 00:00:41.870 --> 00:00:45.560 align:middle line:84% And Lawrence makes this easy by assigning each sentence 00:00:45.560 --> 00:00:50.000 align:middle line:84% in this poem, with only three exceptions, its own closed 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:51.800 align:middle line:90% stanza. 00:00:51.800 --> 00:00:54.590 align:middle line:84% We can see it first, this Dionysian impulse, 00:00:54.590 --> 00:00:59.900 align:middle line:84% in the tremendous variety in the length of the sentences. 00:00:59.900 --> 00:01:01.550 align:middle line:90% Phrases. 00:01:01.550 --> 00:01:05.180 align:middle line:84% This is what makes-- this makes what Jourdain calls describing 00:01:05.180 --> 00:01:08.660 align:middle line:84% music a series of highly irregular sonic shapes 00:01:08.660 --> 00:01:10.320 align:middle line:90% across the page. 00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:14.060 align:middle line:84% And after Justice's paradigms of line and stanza, 00:01:14.060 --> 00:01:19.670 align:middle line:84% the syntax here seems at first an unchecked centrifugal force 00:01:19.670 --> 00:01:22.940 align:middle line:90% in cult, out of control. 00:01:22.940 --> 00:01:25.730 align:middle line:84% But there are restraints aplenty and a different kind 00:01:25.730 --> 00:01:26.810 align:middle line:90% of pattern. 00:01:26.810 --> 00:01:31.370 align:middle line:84% Those also supplied solely by the syntax and not by the mind. 00:01:31.370 --> 00:01:34.190 align:middle line:84% For instance, nothing really is more orderly 00:01:34.190 --> 00:01:38.720 align:middle line:84% or more predictable and more Apollonian than a list. 00:01:38.720 --> 00:01:41.210 align:middle line:84% And a long compound sentence, that 00:01:41.210 --> 00:01:43.190 align:middle line:84% has a whole bunch of predicates in it, 00:01:43.190 --> 00:01:44.767 align:middle line:90% like sentence number three-- 00:01:44.767 --> 00:01:46.850 align:middle line:84% and you can go by the numbers, because that's also 00:01:46.850 --> 00:01:49.160 align:middle line:90% the numbers of his stanza-- 00:01:49.160 --> 00:01:50.630 align:middle line:90% is a list. 00:01:50.630 --> 00:01:53.150 align:middle line:84% In the poems first extended series of actions, 00:01:53.150 --> 00:01:59.090 align:middle line:84% the snake reach, trail, rested, sipped, drank. 00:01:59.090 --> 00:02:01.460 align:middle line:84% This is already pretty lively as a list goes. 00:02:01.460 --> 00:02:04.880 align:middle line:84% Transitive verbs are always more active than intransitive verbs. 00:02:04.880 --> 00:02:07.490 align:middle line:84% They have power over an object, after all. 00:02:07.490 --> 00:02:09.949 align:middle line:84% Here, normally, intransitive verbs 00:02:09.949 --> 00:02:13.250 align:middle line:84% like trailed and rested, or just stand there by themselves, 00:02:13.250 --> 00:02:16.970 align:middle line:84% are made transitive and made more powerful by giving them 00:02:16.970 --> 00:02:18.260 align:middle line:90% direct objects. 00:02:18.260 --> 00:02:23.160 align:middle line:84% He trailed his slackness, he rested his throat. 00:02:23.160 --> 00:02:25.580 align:middle line:84% These predicates are then followed by normally transitive 00:02:25.580 --> 00:02:29.180 align:middle line:84% verbs, sipped and drank, set an edgy tension 00:02:29.180 --> 00:02:34.040 align:middle line:84% when their direct object, water, is elided and withheld. 00:02:34.040 --> 00:02:36.260 align:middle line:84% This linguistic vigor is underscored 00:02:36.260 --> 00:02:39.830 align:middle line:84% by putting those verbs all in the same place, readily 00:02:39.830 --> 00:02:44.370 align:middle line:84% available as tethers at the heads of each line. 00:02:44.370 --> 00:02:47.180 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, syntax gives them all the same function and placement 00:02:47.180 --> 00:02:48.200 align:middle line:90% in the sentence. 00:02:48.200 --> 00:02:50.870 align:middle line:84% Apollo would approve of this, so would Donald Justice. 00:02:50.870 --> 00:02:53.900 align:middle line:84% But Lawrence makes sure that each of those verbs 00:02:53.900 --> 00:02:55.070 align:middle line:90% has anaphora. 00:02:55.070 --> 00:02:56.480 align:middle line:90% It's at the head of the line. 00:02:56.480 --> 00:03:00.560 align:middle line:84% Each of those verbs also pulls a different weight load. 00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:03.740 align:middle line:84% There's a syntactical chunk come in behind it 00:03:03.740 --> 00:03:06.270 align:middle line:84% that's rhythmically different from the others. 00:03:06.270 --> 00:03:11.180 align:middle line:84% And we reinforce that, or that is reinforced by the line, 00:03:11.180 --> 00:03:14.150 align:middle line:84% which is always consonant and never goes 00:03:14.150 --> 00:03:16.490 align:middle line:90% against a chunk of the sentence. 00:03:16.490 --> 00:03:20.300 align:middle line:84% He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom 00:03:20.300 --> 00:03:23.090 align:middle line:84% and trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down 00:03:23.090 --> 00:03:25.190 align:middle line:84% over the edge of the stone trough, 00:03:25.190 --> 00:03:27.560 align:middle line:84% and rested his throat upon the stone bottom. 00:03:27.560 --> 00:03:28.600 align:middle line:90% Do you hear that? 00:03:28.600 --> 00:03:29.100 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:03:29.100 --> 00:03:31.340 align:middle line:84% We've just got three, this is just a list. 00:03:31.340 --> 00:03:33.440 align:middle line:84% There's a compound sentence, three verbs, 00:03:33.440 --> 00:03:36.620 align:middle line:84% he reach down, and trailed, and rested. 00:03:36.620 --> 00:03:38.750 align:middle line:90% That's it, it's a little list. 00:03:38.750 --> 00:03:42.080 align:middle line:84% But this list feels enormously varied. 00:03:42.080 --> 00:03:45.740 align:middle line:84% And that's because it's varied in the phrase-- 00:03:45.740 --> 00:03:48.800 align:middle line:84% the length of the phrase, the syntactical chunk 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:50.960 align:middle line:90% that follows it. 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:53.060 align:middle line:90% Do you hear that? 00:03:53.060 --> 00:03:56.810 align:middle line:84% He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom 00:03:56.810 --> 00:03:59.570 align:middle line:84% and trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down 00:03:59.570 --> 00:04:01.400 align:middle line:84% over the edge of the stone trough. 00:04:01.400 --> 00:04:05.420 align:middle line:84% That's all part of this whole modifying the trail. 00:04:05.420 --> 00:04:08.520 align:middle line:84% And rested his throat upon the stone bottom. 00:04:08.520 --> 00:04:10.790 align:middle line:84% The first of those chunks is 14 syllables long. 00:04:10.790 --> 00:04:12.710 align:middle line:84% The second one is 20 syllables long. 00:04:12.710 --> 00:04:14.030 align:middle line:90% The third is only 11. 00:04:14.030 --> 00:04:17.779 align:middle line:84% And then the fourth, he sipped with his straight mouth, 00:04:17.779 --> 00:04:20.540 align:middle line:84% was the shortest at six syllables. 00:04:20.540 --> 00:04:21.980 align:middle line:90% That's interesting. 00:04:21.980 --> 00:04:23.880 align:middle line:90% That's rhythmically interesting. 00:04:23.880 --> 00:04:24.380 align:middle line:90% You see? 00:04:24.380 --> 00:04:27.950 align:middle line:84% Because it's being held stable by repeating that-- 00:04:27.950 --> 00:04:29.690 align:middle line:84% making that list out of the verbs, 00:04:29.690 --> 00:04:31.060 align:middle line:90% and then it's like Beethoven. 00:04:31.060 --> 00:04:33.560 align:middle line:84% And we just-- there's no way to know where he's going to go. 00:04:33.560 --> 00:04:35.930 align:middle line:84% And it's tremendously varied in the length 00:04:35.930 --> 00:04:40.010 align:middle line:84% of those musical phrases, the length of those chunks. 00:04:40.010 --> 00:04:42.590 align:middle line:84% There's more subtle variations to come. 00:04:42.590 --> 00:04:45.590 align:middle line:84% Halfway through that sentence, and this time, before the verb 00:04:45.590 --> 00:04:49.250 align:middle line:84% it will modify, Lawrence inserts a subordinate clause 00:04:49.250 --> 00:04:54.050 align:middle line:84% where the water had dripped from the tap in a small clearness. 00:04:54.050 --> 00:04:58.310 align:middle line:84% Then he repeats a so far elided subject pronoun, he sipped. 00:04:58.310 --> 00:05:00.500 align:middle line:84% He drops the conjunction, the and, 00:05:00.500 --> 00:05:03.410 align:middle line:84% and he ends the overall list with a verb phrase, 00:05:03.410 --> 00:05:07.020 align:middle line:84% the same number of syllables as the first one. 00:05:07.020 --> 00:05:09.900 align:middle line:84% Softly drank through his straight gums, 00:05:09.900 --> 00:05:12.570 align:middle line:90% into his slack long body. 00:05:12.570 --> 00:05:14.610 align:middle line:84% But Lawrence likes his lesser resolutions 00:05:14.610 --> 00:05:16.350 align:middle line:90% a little off-balance. 00:05:16.350 --> 00:05:18.210 align:middle line:84% And so, he frames that last verb phrase 00:05:18.210 --> 00:05:21.240 align:middle line:84% with adverbs, made obvious at the start of the lines-- 00:05:21.240 --> 00:05:24.030 align:middle line:90% softly, silently. 00:05:24.030 --> 00:05:28.500 align:middle line:84% Thus, we get pattern, from the parallel verb phrases, 00:05:28.500 --> 00:05:32.310 align:middle line:84% simultaneous with variation from the length 00:05:32.310 --> 00:05:35.110 align:middle line:90% and structure of those phrases. 00:05:35.110 --> 00:05:39.360 align:middle line:84% This is, in short, what Frost called a vital sentence. 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:41.280 align:middle line:90% It enacts something. 00:05:41.280 --> 00:05:46.810 align:middle line:84% And the something is the snake's powerful ease within its body. 00:05:46.810 --> 00:05:49.050 align:middle line:84% Therefore, these longer compound action 00:05:49.050 --> 00:05:53.220 align:middle line:84% sentences comprising an increasing number of verbs. 00:05:53.220 --> 00:05:55.230 align:middle line:84% There are five verbs in sentence three. 00:05:55.230 --> 00:05:57.330 align:middle line:84% There are six verbs in sentence five. 00:05:57.330 --> 00:05:59.550 align:middle line:84% And there are eight verbs in sentence 15, 00:05:59.550 --> 00:06:02.280 align:middle line:84% if we count the two infinitives, but also, 00:06:02.280 --> 00:06:05.790 align:middle line:84% shorter and shorter syntactical chunks being dragged along 00:06:05.790 --> 00:06:07.500 align:middle line:90% by those words. 00:06:07.500 --> 00:06:10.890 align:middle line:84% Check out the links of verb phrases in sentence five, which 00:06:10.890 --> 00:06:15.120 align:middle line:84% is also stanza five, it's the next action stanza. 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:18.660 align:middle line:84% He lifted his head from his drinking, 9. 00:06:18.660 --> 00:06:21.570 align:middle line:90% And looked at me vaguely, 6. 00:06:21.570 --> 00:06:26.090 align:middle line:84% And flickered his two forked tongue from his lips, 10. 00:06:26.090 --> 00:06:31.140 align:middle line:84% And mused a moment, 5, and stooped, 2, and drank 00:06:31.140 --> 00:06:33.010 align:middle line:90% a little more, 6. 00:06:33.010 --> 00:06:33.510 align:middle line:90% OK? 00:06:33.510 --> 00:06:36.360 align:middle line:84% Those are just a little-- those are the verb phrases. 00:06:36.360 --> 00:06:41.010 align:middle line:84% Varied, and also camouflaged, disguised by a reframe tacked 00:06:41.010 --> 00:06:43.320 align:middle line:84% on to the first two phrases, as cattle do, 00:06:43.320 --> 00:06:45.360 align:middle line:90% as drinking cattle do. 00:06:45.360 --> 00:06:49.530 align:middle line:84% Disguised also by lineation, which chunks together flickered 00:06:49.530 --> 00:06:52.590 align:middle line:90% and mused, stooped and drank. 00:06:52.590 --> 00:06:56.340 align:middle line:84% And disguised by the addition to the last phrase of two 00:06:56.340 --> 00:06:59.010 align:middle line:84% verbless lines of right branching modification 00:06:59.010 --> 00:07:02.220 align:middle line:84% being earth-browned all the way down through Etna smoking. 00:07:02.220 --> 00:07:03.540 align:middle line:90% But it's still a list. 00:07:03.540 --> 00:07:08.417 align:middle line:84% If we strip all that stuff away, it's a list of verb actions. 00:07:08.417 --> 00:07:10.500 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, this snake action sent as a [INAUDIBLE] 00:07:10.500 --> 00:07:13.650 align:middle line:84% to the previous one and the next one by that last verb, 00:07:13.650 --> 00:07:15.150 align:middle line:90% drank a little more. 00:07:15.150 --> 00:07:18.570 align:middle line:84% It came last in sentence three as well, softly drank 00:07:18.570 --> 00:07:20.250 align:middle line:90% through his straight gums. 00:07:20.250 --> 00:07:24.870 align:middle line:84% But at 15, it will come first embedded in the shortest verb 00:07:24.870 --> 00:07:27.810 align:middle line:84% phrase, he drank enough, to get us another grocery 00:07:27.810 --> 00:07:29.850 align:middle line:90% list of actions. 00:07:29.850 --> 00:07:35.400 align:middle line:84% He drank enough and lifted his head, and flickered his tongue, 00:07:35.400 --> 00:07:39.360 align:middle line:84% and looked around, and turned his head. 00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:40.590 align:middle line:90% That's boring. 00:07:40.590 --> 00:07:42.420 align:middle line:84% It's boring, because they're all apples. 00:07:42.420 --> 00:07:45.870 align:middle line:84% They're all the same weight and heft, that same length 00:07:45.870 --> 00:07:47.370 align:middle line:90% and rhythm. 00:07:47.370 --> 00:07:50.488 align:middle line:90% Lawrence is never boring. 00:07:50.488 --> 00:07:51.780 align:middle line:90% He doesn't leave them that way. 00:07:51.780 --> 00:07:54.780 align:middle line:84% He varies them with right branching syntax. 00:07:54.780 --> 00:07:58.560 align:middle line:84% And he uses the shortest chunks to anchor a bulge. 00:07:58.560 --> 00:08:01.620 align:middle line:90% It looks like this. 00:08:01.620 --> 00:08:03.300 align:middle line:90% Like that. 00:08:03.300 --> 00:08:06.570 align:middle line:90% He drank enough, five. 00:08:06.570 --> 00:08:10.890 align:middle line:84% And lifted his head dreamily as one who has drunken, 14. 00:08:10.890 --> 00:08:14.130 align:middle line:90% Five syllables, 14 syllables. 00:08:14.130 --> 00:08:16.590 align:middle line:84% And flicking his tongue like a forked knife on the air, 00:08:16.590 --> 00:08:19.290 align:middle line:84% so black, seeming to lick his lips, 20. 00:08:19.290 --> 00:08:22.670 align:middle line:90% 00:08:22.670 --> 00:08:26.270 align:middle line:84% And looked around like a god, unseeing into the air. 00:08:26.270 --> 00:08:28.390 align:middle line:90% Great. 00:08:28.390 --> 00:08:29.050 align:middle line:90% 14. 00:08:29.050 --> 00:08:30.610 align:middle line:90% What model does it like that? 00:08:30.610 --> 00:08:34.555 align:middle line:90% And slowly turned his head. 00:08:34.555 --> 00:08:35.950 align:middle line:90% Five. 00:08:35.950 --> 00:08:39.010 align:middle line:84% That's an architecture, that is a structure. 00:08:39.010 --> 00:08:42.309 align:middle line:84% That's an architecture of sound, of rhythm, 00:08:42.309 --> 00:08:45.190 align:middle line:84% of that phrasing that's happening, OK? 00:08:45.190 --> 00:08:49.900 align:middle line:84% So we get short chunk, longer chunk, much longer chunk, 00:08:49.900 --> 00:08:52.390 align:middle line:84% that did chunk these sounds, down to little short chunk. 00:08:52.390 --> 00:08:55.120 align:middle line:84% And the whole thing, that arc over the whole thing, 00:08:55.120 --> 00:08:59.780 align:middle line:84% is this long musical phrase like the Beethoven. 00:08:59.780 --> 00:09:00.280 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:09:00.280 --> 00:09:04.810 align:middle line:90% 00:09:04.810 --> 00:09:07.180 align:middle line:84% I'm going to skip over some other part here. 00:09:07.180 --> 00:09:11.160 align:middle line:90% 00:09:11.160 --> 00:09:13.080 align:middle line:84% One other thing that I want to just point out 00:09:13.080 --> 00:09:15.600 align:middle line:90% to you about the Lawrence poem. 00:09:15.600 --> 00:09:17.880 align:middle line:84% And now, we're going to really use 00:09:17.880 --> 00:09:20.100 align:middle line:84% two very sort of technical terms. 00:09:20.100 --> 00:09:22.630 align:middle line:84% Well, I don't know any way around it. 00:09:22.630 --> 00:09:28.050 align:middle line:84% And the two terms are parataxis and hypotaxis. 00:09:28.050 --> 00:09:30.930 align:middle line:84% Impress your friends at dinner tonight 00:09:30.930 --> 00:09:32.910 align:middle line:90% by using one of these terms. 00:09:32.910 --> 00:09:35.580 align:middle line:84% And the way to remember them, para 00:09:35.580 --> 00:09:40.140 align:middle line:84% as a prefix that means "equal," as in paramutual bet, 00:09:40.140 --> 00:09:45.720 align:middle line:84% as in paralegal, as in parallel is the best way to remember it. 00:09:45.720 --> 00:09:47.850 align:middle line:90% They are the same. 00:09:47.850 --> 00:09:51.180 align:middle line:84% And hypo is like hypodermic, right, under the skin. 00:09:51.180 --> 00:09:56.490 align:middle line:84% So hypo means "less than" and what they refer 00:09:56.490 --> 00:09:59.450 align:middle line:90% to is relationship of clauses. 00:09:59.450 --> 00:10:00.000 align:middle line:90%