That wasn't last.
Here we go.
Robert Rauschenberg did a series of illustrations too,
which are really amazing.
They're very difficult because they're--
especially in reproduction because they're a little pale
and they've got like 200 different parts to them all.
But his version of the three giants is out there
and what it is is it looks like three Russian wrestlers
on the Olympic stand after a meet.
So he has a lot of strange, private--
and not so private--
allusions in it, including the one for the place where
the sodomites are in hell and talk to-- they
have to walk on the sand in bare feet and their feet are burned.
And he has a picture of himself in that one
and the little footprint at the top of it.
So there they repay some study.
And I just want to end by reading,
if I can, a little bit of my favorite piece.
This whole book is about, I think,
transformations and transferences
and transcendence.
And like Ovid, everybody is turning into everybody else.
But in particular in its 20--
canto 25, lizards and people change places.
It starts off by this lizard attacking
this man over his back.
And they melt, after many stanzas,
into the same creature.
And it shuttles off.
And then there's another lizard--
here's-- this is Richard Wilbur.
"As lizards, in the cruelest heat of day,
skitter from hedge to hedge along the lane,
and flash like lightning if they cross the way, so
toward the bellies of the other twain,
there spread a little reptile, fiery hot and blackly glinting
as a pepper grain.
It now transfixed in one of them the spot through which
our earliest nourishment must come then
fell and sprawled before him like a sock.
The victim gazed at it and yet was dumb.
He stood stock still and did but yawn a bit
as if some drowsy fever made him numb."
It goes on-- blah blah blah.
"Incited by their mutual sympathies,
the serpent caused its tail now to divide
and the rich pressed together his feet and knees.
His legs and thighs adhered then side to side
soon blended so that nowhere, low or high,
could any seam or juncture be described.
Cloven tail took on the form that by degrees the other lost.
And now its skin turned soft while the other
is hardened in reply.
I saw the armpits of the man begin
to engulf the arms while the beast's short four legs--
four legs grew by just that length to which the arms sank
in.
Now, while the smoke by which they both were veiled
transposed their hues and planted on one crown
the hair that from the other it plucked and peeled,
the one arose, the other toppled down.
And each, still grimly staring, set
about to make the others liniment his own."
Then it goes on.
It's an amazing piece of writing, I think.
Anyway, thank you all for listening
and I hope you have the time to spend with the exhibit.
[APPLAUSE]