WEBVTT

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I embarked a few years
ago on a long project

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that I fortunately
never completed,

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because it was unnatural to
me in the manner in which it

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was written to some extent
called Lives of the Saints.

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This is a part of that,
what was projected

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to be a long poem
in many small parts.

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They're little vignettes
involving artists--

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by and large, artists.

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Some of them involve old people
like Sacco and Vanzetti, say.

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But what connects them in
the sections of the poem

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that I did complete
to an extent,

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it has to do with a
Bresson poem that they're

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connected by the
suffering of their lives,

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even insanity in some
cases, poverty, whatever.

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Artists used to suffer.

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Now, they make us teach.

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[LAUGHTER]

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These are four
little parts of it.

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Each one is sort
of antithetical.

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It's kind of a statement
about the person's life

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or whatever, and a kind of
personal response to it.

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I don't think you have
to know much about them.

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Mozart died in poverty.

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That's all you have
to know, I guess.

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The first part of the
John Clare section

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is a letter from
John Clare which

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I believe is the last letter
that he wrote in his life.

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It begins "Dear Sir"
and ends "John Clare."

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Tolstoy gave up all his
possessions and left his manor.

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One of the earliest Russian
films was of his funeral,

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huge masses of people at a
place called Astapovo Station.

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In the Chopin part, I'm thinking
of that little strange little

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flurry at the end of
what's popularly called

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the funeral march sonata.

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And Robert Schumann, the
composer, as John Clare

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spent the last part of
his life in saying--

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Lives of the Saints.

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This is the rain on Mozart's
grave, sheering to glissandi.

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Where do you little
lie, exhausted,

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whole, and holy done?

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Sweet Amadeus, when I sit
my bourbon, weaving myself

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toward pure abstraction--

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the recollection of emotion
without the tired events.

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I'd trade my part in
this to bear your song.

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Even the most last broken human
moan, you were so friendly,

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and your pillow is a stone.

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This is Mozart, a
curtain of rain,

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the turning heads
of certain women,

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the sweetness of bourbon,
sweetness of music,

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the poor politeness of oblivion.

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Dear Sir, I am in a Madhouse
and quite forget your name

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or who you are.

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You must excuse me for I have
nothing to communicate or tell.

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And why I am shut
up, I don't know.

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I have nothing to say.

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So I must conclude, yours
respectfully, John Clare.

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Was this his letter
into the earth?

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Was it wholly
composed of solitude?

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It was wholly composed.

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Did he bear
extravagant pain, whose

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poems of such light
fragrance as to be--

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Dear Sir, forgive me-- small?

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You are minor, Sir,
and would not offend.

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I am, respectfully, yours.

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Under the gathering, luminous
clouds he walked his grounds,

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thought--

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another reigns.

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I must not, Tolstoy, be
myself, and fled from home.

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We have the early flickering
films, the mourning strangers,

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waving.

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All day, he lay at Astapovo
Station, over and over--

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I do not understand
what it is I have to do.

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Part of this is
quotes from stories.

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Yes, one good deed,
a cup of water given.

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Prevailed-- his gentleness,
his pride, who would not bow--

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the light a small tin
lamp without a shade--

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to read himself, I
have no passport.

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I am a servant of God.

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I am Chopin.

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I enclose a little
time, I bow and play.

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The sea, the chandelier,
this room, the sky,

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the cliffs at Sourash,
even the whole of Europe,

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blown black, spin--

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music speeds, retreats.

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And I am Robert
Schumann, mad and done,

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yet must, a little time, go on.

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Now at the hour, we
lately lie awake,

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give us that surety on which
our fragile art depends.

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I am Robert
Schumann, bewildered,

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woken by a strange
sonata in a foreign bed.

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Give me a little time,
eternity, and I will mend.

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