WEBVTT

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"When I'd had enough
of her apple pie": the

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when makes it subordinate.

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Okay, here's even
more offensive.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Before I shot my mother, I'd
had enough of her apple pie."

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That's really offensive
because I took the major action

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and made that
subordinate and then gave

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this other trivial thing the
engine of the sentence, OK?

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But the main thing is
that it's hypotactic

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because one clause matters
more to the sinners

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than the other one.

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And that's very
different from paratactic

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where they are all the same.

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If you want to learn
something about that

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would be useful to your own
reading and your writing just

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use this Lawrence poem,
because he goes back and forth

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between paratactic sentences
and hypotactic sentences.

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And guess who gets the
paratactic sentences?

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The snake gets the paratactic
sentences, absolutely.

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The snake gets the
paratactic sentences.

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He gets all those
subject and verb

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or he gets a compound
where we have many verbs.

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And the verb phrases
then the clauses

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are arranged so that they
are all equal to one another.

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The poor idiot who is
telling us this story and he

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throws the thing at the snake,
the voices of his education

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have thoroughly entered
his head and he can barely

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speak without using
hypotaxis, that

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is to say without subordinating
one thing to the other.

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You cannot take them as equal
any more than he can take

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the snake as equal to his runt
to have the watering hole.

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He simply cannot.

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And there's a little
drama that goes on.

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I wish you had look at-- in
sentence five there's this--

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the other thing that
you can sort track

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is what's happening
with that conjunction

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that as is pounding is drinking
and that's going to come back

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around and in sentence
16 it's not going

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to be at the end of the line.

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Remember, what it says, as
cattle do as drinking cattle do

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and that's at the
end of the line.

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That's tacked on, right?

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So he raises his head as cattle
do, as drinking cattle do.

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You see this little--

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you know, this little
foot at the end.

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OK, look in sentence 16.

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It's at the head of the line.

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It's where formally you can put
it so you will most notice it.

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It's also at the
head of the sentence

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and it's also at the
head of the stanza.

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He has put it in every
possible major place.

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And as he put his head
into that dreadful hole

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and as he slowly drew up,
snake-easing his shoulders

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and entered farther a
sort of horror overcame.

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There is no hope for the snake
at this point in the poem.

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Because all of a
sudden the snake

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who got to have all
these actions, all

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of those verb sentences,
sentence three sentence five,

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all that was a snake doing
that, the guy was just

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standing out there looking
at even thinking about it.

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The snake got to be in
charge of his actions.

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Here the snake no longer is
in charge of his actions.

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How do we know that?

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Because this is a
subordinating conjunction as.

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This doesn't stand
alone as a sentence.

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And as he put his head
into that dreadful hole,

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Lawrence no longer says,
and he put his head

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in that dreadful hole.

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So the snake no longer gets
his own independent clause,

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the man does.

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And as he put his head
in that dreadful hole

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and as he slowly drew up
snake-easing his shoulders,

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and entered further,
a sort of horror,

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that's the subject of
the sentence, overcame.

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That's the predicate.

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In short, behind
all the variations

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that keep this poem
lively and plausible,

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there is in fact a solid
architecture in the poem:

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patterns and repetitions, its
structure and pace, the story

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of the man and the snake.

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Like the Larkin
and Justice poems,

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that structure is built
mainly out of syntax.

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Unlike those other poems
the Larkin and the Justice,

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its shape is neither
the rocket launching off

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into outer space like cut grass
nor the highly symmetrical

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ellipse that contains an
expansion and [INAUDIBLE]

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such as the Justice poem.

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Rather this is large scale
phrasing with a motif.

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No longer strictly musical,
no longer pure lyric

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that extends and examines a
moment of intense feeling,

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it shoulders a narrative,
a movement through time.

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The poem's plot
line is the struggle

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between thought and action,
civilization and nature.

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And the two wildly different
kinds of syntax paratactic

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and hypotactic
impact that struggle.

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If it seems that the snake
gets all the long sentences

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the speaker the
shorter ones, it's

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not because of snake
as long and skinny.

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As Lawrence's novels
predict, its action,

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natural physical sensual
action that usually

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gets the longer more
sensuous paratactic

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or compound sentences.

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Thought, the voice of my
education, the rational brain,

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the civilized man is rendered
in the more elaborate even if

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shorter hypotactic
sentences one thing more

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important than another.

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Hypotaxis contains an
imbalance of power.

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One clause is subordinated
to another clause.

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In contrast to the snake action
sentences that I was talking

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about before, we had all that--

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had the list we had
the verbs and we

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had that irregular I guess what
they were pulling behind him.

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Instead of that paratactic
or compound arrangement

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look at sentences 8 through 11.

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But must I confess.

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But must I confess.

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But must I confess.

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I must confess.

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There's a fundamental
dissonance.

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What?

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How I liked him.

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How glad I was.

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Here's another subordination
below that, how glad I was,

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he had come like a guest in
quiet to drink in my water

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trough and depart
peaceful, pacified,

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and thankless into the
burning bowels of this earth.

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Oh man, this guy has got his
fist around the whole thing.

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Must I confess?

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How much?

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I really liked that dude.

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If he really liked
him why didn't he

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put that up at the
beginning of the sentence?

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I really liked him.

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What is all this I'm asking
- you see how that does that?

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It subordinates
what comes behind.

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And then look at this
little arrangement.

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All the other stanzas remember
the sentence got its own stanza

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not here.

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Was it cowardice that
I dare not kill him?

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Was it perversity that
I longed to talk to him?

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Was it humility to
feel so honored.

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OK.

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These are interrogatives.

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They're different kind
of sentence that way.

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They're an inverted syntax.

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And in that anomalous stanza of
syntactically independent line

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sentences 9 through 11,
that inversion gives us

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this anaphora of was it,
was it, was it lining up

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three abstractions
cowardice, perversity,

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humility, which will be echoed
in the poem's very last word

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pettiness.

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That's what they
will come down to.

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Also notice the number
of subordinate clauses

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throughout the passage.

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Liking him, being glad,
longing to talk to him

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a very fine
sentiment but they're

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not embraced here in the syntax.

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And the poems first
half, half the sentences

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are short and
usually hypotactic.

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These are the ones
controlled by the speaker.

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Meanwhile, the long
compound snake sentences

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are full of predicates
of equal powerful actions

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of active verbs.

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He lifted his hand
and looked at me

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and flickered his two forked
tongue and mused and stooped

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and drank.

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Increasingly though
even though sentences

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began to include
subordinate clauses,

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the first after but then
intruding before the verbs

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until that sentence 16
that I already pointed out

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to you where the default
assignment is flipped me

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the snake is
subordinated to the man.

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