WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.090 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.090 --> 00:00:05.080 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Kieran. 00:00:05.080 --> 00:00:08.230 align:middle line:84% Yes, a light and breezy topic for you. 00:00:08.230 --> 00:00:11.080 align:middle line:84% How is the audio, or is the sound OK? 00:00:11.080 --> 00:00:12.110 align:middle line:90% You're good back there? 00:00:12.110 --> 00:00:12.610 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:12.610 --> 00:00:16.860 align:middle line:90% 00:00:16.860 --> 00:00:19.050 align:middle line:84% "Baba Yaga, Demeter, and the Drunken Mother-- 00:00:19.050 --> 00:00:23.770 align:middle line:84% Myth, Metaphor, and Science at the End of the World." 00:00:23.770 --> 00:00:26.490 align:middle line:84% I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight 00:00:26.490 --> 00:00:29.280 align:middle line:84% to talk about this subject, listen, 00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:31.680 align:middle line:84% be part of a conversation that's going to go on here 00:00:31.680 --> 00:00:33.120 align:middle line:90% for several months. 00:00:33.120 --> 00:00:37.530 align:middle line:84% We all know how beautiful conversation is when 00:00:37.530 --> 00:00:40.060 align:middle line:90% we face difficult challenges. 00:00:40.060 --> 00:00:42.255 align:middle line:84% So this is a wonderful start tonight. 00:00:42.255 --> 00:00:45.780 align:middle line:90% 00:00:45.780 --> 00:00:48.450 align:middle line:84% The planet is changing faster than expected. 00:00:48.450 --> 00:00:51.870 align:middle line:84% Temperatures are rising, ice caps melting, arid zones 00:00:51.870 --> 00:00:53.550 align:middle line:90% growing, species declining. 00:00:53.550 --> 00:00:58.110 align:middle line:84% And people are suffering from displacement, hunger, and war. 00:00:58.110 --> 00:01:02.460 align:middle line:84% While the pressures upon us are keen to understand, mitigate, 00:01:02.460 --> 00:01:05.910 align:middle line:84% and adapt to these challenges, the desire 00:01:05.910 --> 00:01:11.850 align:middle line:84% to understand our human place in Earth's story is not new. 00:01:11.850 --> 00:01:15.480 align:middle line:84% How might some of the most enduring stories and some 00:01:15.480 --> 00:01:18.690 align:middle line:84% of the newest forms of artistic expression 00:01:18.690 --> 00:01:22.950 align:middle line:84% help us to see ourselves anew as we take these challenges 00:01:22.950 --> 00:01:25.740 align:middle line:90% to heart and into our hands? 00:01:25.740 --> 00:01:28.170 align:middle line:84% Those are the questions the Poetry Center will 00:01:28.170 --> 00:01:32.580 align:middle line:84% address in what promises to be an exhilarating fall reading 00:01:32.580 --> 00:01:34.800 align:middle line:90% series. 00:01:34.800 --> 00:01:37.170 align:middle line:84% In teaching creative writing as I do here, 00:01:37.170 --> 00:01:40.050 align:middle line:84% the emphasis is always on developing 00:01:40.050 --> 00:01:45.960 align:middle line:84% craft, the how tos of form, voice, and language. 00:01:45.960 --> 00:01:49.600 align:middle line:84% But writers need also to feed their vision. 00:01:49.600 --> 00:01:54.120 align:middle line:84% What's worth caring and writing about of all the blips 00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:56.820 align:middle line:90% that dart through our minds? 00:01:56.820 --> 00:01:59.520 align:middle line:84% The larger subjects like the fate of the Earth 00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:01.890 align:middle line:90% can feel overwhelming. 00:02:01.890 --> 00:02:05.520 align:middle line:84% Yet there is a role for the literary arts in bringing home 00:02:05.520 --> 00:02:08.729 align:middle line:84% the enormous abstractions of climate change 00:02:08.729 --> 00:02:11.250 align:middle line:84% and sustainability so that we feel them 00:02:11.250 --> 00:02:16.020 align:middle line:84% as urgencies in our emotional and psychological lives, 00:02:16.020 --> 00:02:19.950 align:middle line:84% so that our empathy extends to those who suffer because 00:02:19.950 --> 00:02:20.745 align:middle line:90% of these changes. 00:02:20.745 --> 00:02:23.730 align:middle line:90% 00:02:23.730 --> 00:02:26.130 align:middle line:84% In one of the weirdest memoirs ever written-- 00:02:26.130 --> 00:02:27.710 align:middle line:90% if you've read it, you know. 00:02:27.710 --> 00:02:31.080 align:middle line:90% The Education of Henry Adams. 00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:33.480 align:middle line:84% It was written in a third person about himself. 00:02:33.480 --> 00:02:36.990 align:middle line:84% Henry Adams writes of visiting France for the great exposition 00:02:36.990 --> 00:02:38.520 align:middle line:90% in 1900. 00:02:38.520 --> 00:02:40.680 align:middle line:84% He was more impressed by the Cathedral 00:02:40.680 --> 00:02:43.200 align:middle line:84% of Our Lady of Chartres than he was 00:02:43.200 --> 00:02:47.250 align:middle line:84% by displays of mechanical and electrical invention. 00:02:47.250 --> 00:02:49.530 align:middle line:84% The force of the Virgin, he wrote, 00:02:49.530 --> 00:02:52.260 align:middle line:84% was still felt at Lourdes and seemed 00:02:52.260 --> 00:02:55.650 align:middle line:90% to be as potent as X-rays. 00:02:55.650 --> 00:03:01.380 align:middle line:84% The woman had once been supreme not merely as sentiment but as 00:03:01.380 --> 00:03:02.250 align:middle line:90% force. 00:03:02.250 --> 00:03:05.040 align:middle line:84% She was a goddess because of her force. 00:03:05.040 --> 00:03:07.320 align:middle line:90% She was the animated dynamo. 00:03:07.320 --> 00:03:10.740 align:middle line:84% She was reproduction, the greatest and the most 00:03:10.740 --> 00:03:13.260 align:middle line:90% mysterious of all energies. 00:03:13.260 --> 00:03:16.410 align:middle line:90% All she needed was to be fecund. 00:03:16.410 --> 00:03:20.580 align:middle line:84% All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, 00:03:20.580 --> 00:03:23.720 align:middle line:90% build Chartres. 00:03:23.720 --> 00:03:26.570 align:middle line:84% What is our situation, a violent century 00:03:26.570 --> 00:03:28.700 align:middle line:90% deeper into the human story? 00:03:28.700 --> 00:03:33.140 align:middle line:84% When the impacts of human force intended and unintended 00:03:33.140 --> 00:03:37.880 align:middle line:84% press upon us with the weight of all the old deposed gods 00:03:37.880 --> 00:03:44.040 align:middle line:84% falling on us from their lofty obsolescence, an update de 00:03:44.040 --> 00:03:45.960 align:middle line:90% jour. 00:03:45.960 --> 00:03:47.490 align:middle line:90% Global warming, some call it. 00:03:47.490 --> 00:03:51.930 align:middle line:84% Global weirding is already causing 300,000 deaths per year 00:03:51.930 --> 00:03:54.750 align:middle line:84% due to displacement, disease, and malnutrition, this 00:03:54.750 --> 00:03:58.140 align:middle line:84% according to the newly released report of the United States 00:03:58.140 --> 00:04:00.570 align:middle line:90% Global Climate Panel. 00:04:00.570 --> 00:04:04.050 align:middle line:84% They predict increases in hunger, mass migration, and war 00:04:04.050 --> 00:04:06.480 align:middle line:90% as displaced people seek refuge. 00:04:06.480 --> 00:04:09.387 align:middle line:84% This panel builds on the work of the United Nations' 00:04:09.387 --> 00:04:11.970 align:middle line:84% International Panel on Climate Change, which won, as you know, 00:04:11.970 --> 00:04:17.040 align:middle line:84% the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, reporting the work of 2,500 00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:18.839 align:middle line:84% of the world's leading scientists 00:04:18.839 --> 00:04:22.260 align:middle line:84% on the anthropogenic causes of climate change. 00:04:22.260 --> 00:04:24.300 align:middle line:84% There are dead zones in the ocean. 00:04:24.300 --> 00:04:26.400 align:middle line:84% There's an island of plastic particles 00:04:26.400 --> 00:04:28.860 align:middle line:84% that's probably twice the size of Texas 00:04:28.860 --> 00:04:32.890 align:middle line:84% building out in the Pacific gyre that won't go away. 00:04:32.890 --> 00:04:35.490 align:middle line:84% It traps as many as a million seabirds every year 00:04:35.490 --> 00:04:38.220 align:middle line:84% as well as 100,000 marine mammals. 00:04:38.220 --> 00:04:40.740 align:middle line:84% The Arctic tundra and Antarctic glaciers 00:04:40.740 --> 00:04:42.810 align:middle line:84% are melting faster than anticipated. 00:04:42.810 --> 00:04:43.740 align:middle line:90% Seas are rising. 00:04:43.740 --> 00:04:47.340 align:middle line:84% And low lying cities of the developing world 00:04:47.340 --> 00:04:49.050 align:middle line:90% are being subsumed. 00:04:49.050 --> 00:04:52.500 align:middle line:84% Carbon dioxide and methane produced by cars, industry, 00:04:52.500 --> 00:04:55.500 align:middle line:84% and agriculture continue to pile up and lock heat 00:04:55.500 --> 00:04:56.670 align:middle line:90% in the atmosphere. 00:04:56.670 --> 00:04:59.310 align:middle line:84% And depending on whose data you look at, 00:04:59.310 --> 00:05:02.340 align:middle line:84% something like 50% of the world's animals 00:05:02.340 --> 00:05:05.940 align:middle line:84% are in decline due to climate change and loss of habitat. 00:05:05.940 --> 00:05:09.180 align:middle line:84% One quarter of the world's mammals face extinction. 00:05:09.180 --> 00:05:12.450 align:middle line:84% Your grandchildren will grow up in a world 00:05:12.450 --> 00:05:15.990 align:middle line:84% in which the elephant-- unless Kieran kicks a lot of butt, 00:05:15.990 --> 00:05:19.650 align:middle line:84% which he does so well, your grandchildren will grow up 00:05:19.650 --> 00:05:21.630 align:middle line:84% in a world in which the elephant, humpback 00:05:21.630 --> 00:05:24.660 align:middle line:84% whale, cheetah, tiger, gorilla, orangutan, spider 00:05:24.660 --> 00:05:26.940 align:middle line:84% monkey, and polar bear, to mention only 00:05:26.940 --> 00:05:29.370 align:middle line:84% the sexy megafauna, will have ceased 00:05:29.370 --> 00:05:31.600 align:middle line:90% to exist as wild animals. 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:35.100 align:middle line:84% A few individuals were survive in captive breeding programs 00:05:35.100 --> 00:05:38.370 align:middle line:84% in zoos and aquariums, a human generosity 00:05:38.370 --> 00:05:40.830 align:middle line:90% for which we can be thankful. 00:05:40.830 --> 00:05:43.620 align:middle line:84% Frogs and bats are crashing due to a fungus that 00:05:43.620 --> 00:05:46.350 align:middle line:84% may be doing very well under the current conditions 00:05:46.350 --> 00:05:48.030 align:middle line:90% of global warming. 00:05:48.030 --> 00:05:51.870 align:middle line:84% A tincture of industrial agro pharmaceuticals 00:05:51.870 --> 00:05:54.270 align:middle line:84% is flowing into rivers and oceans, 00:05:54.270 --> 00:05:56.340 align:middle line:84% turning them into chemistry sets, 00:05:56.340 --> 00:05:58.440 align:middle line:90% brewing a monstrous future. 00:05:58.440 --> 00:06:01.320 align:middle line:84% Not the least of the concerns are chemicals that mess 00:06:01.320 --> 00:06:04.380 align:middle line:84% with endocrine hormones, which are the chemicals that run 00:06:04.380 --> 00:06:06.600 align:middle line:90% the mechanism of reproduction. 00:06:06.600 --> 00:06:08.730 align:middle line:90% Frogs are growing extra legs. 00:06:08.730 --> 00:06:12.570 align:middle line:84% Male smallmouth bass in the Potomac are producing eggs. 00:06:12.570 --> 00:06:15.930 align:middle line:84% Newborn males of our species are being born with alarming 00:06:15.930 --> 00:06:18.010 align:middle line:90% genital abnormalities. 00:06:18.010 --> 00:06:23.490 align:middle line:84% So much for the late, great reign of patriarchy. 00:06:23.490 --> 00:06:24.480 align:middle line:90% Sorry, guys. 00:06:24.480 --> 00:06:27.360 align:middle line:84% As for the sanctity of motherhood, 00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:29.220 align:middle line:90% we don't get off, women. 00:06:29.220 --> 00:06:31.080 align:middle line:84% As for the sanctity of motherhood, 00:06:31.080 --> 00:06:34.830 align:middle line:84% umbilical cord blood of babies clocks in with 200 chemicals 00:06:34.830 --> 00:06:36.300 align:middle line:90% and 21 pesticides. 00:06:36.300 --> 00:06:40.000 align:middle line:84% Detectable rocket fuel is present in infant formula 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:42.540 align:middle line:90% and in the water used to mix it. 00:06:42.540 --> 00:06:46.270 align:middle line:84% There, now I've got your attention. 00:06:46.270 --> 00:06:48.540 align:middle line:84% This is the story science gives us. 00:06:48.540 --> 00:06:51.360 align:middle line:84% It's no wonder some people turn their heads 00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:53.760 align:middle line:90% and close their eyes. 00:06:53.760 --> 00:06:57.030 align:middle line:84% So what is the nature of Mother Nature? 00:06:57.030 --> 00:07:01.800 align:middle line:84% It's beginning to look like she is a product of human culture. 00:07:01.800 --> 00:07:04.470 align:middle line:84% Whatever she once was, she is no longer 00:07:04.470 --> 00:07:09.030 align:middle line:84% and never will be again, well, never in the only scale of time 00:07:09.030 --> 00:07:11.070 align:middle line:90% that matters to human existence. 00:07:11.070 --> 00:07:14.250 align:middle line:84% Some millennia from now human beings will be gone. 00:07:14.250 --> 00:07:15.930 align:middle line:84% And the Earth will start over again 00:07:15.930 --> 00:07:19.290 align:middle line:84% with what's left as our friend and colleague Alan Weisman 00:07:19.290 --> 00:07:23.430 align:middle line:84% has so brilliantly imagined in "The World Without Us." 00:07:23.430 --> 00:07:27.900 align:middle line:84% But if people are gone, then the idea of nature will be gone. 00:07:27.900 --> 00:07:30.870 align:middle line:84% Earth will be, as [Auden wrote in his ode 00:07:30.870 --> 00:07:35.640 align:middle line:90% to Gaia, till the end herself. 00:07:35.640 --> 00:07:38.460 align:middle line:84% For now it's safe to say that the line dividing nature 00:07:38.460 --> 00:07:42.450 align:middle line:84% from culture has become fuzzy if not illegible. 00:07:42.450 --> 00:07:44.550 align:middle line:84% Psychologist James Hillman writes 00:07:44.550 --> 00:07:48.540 align:middle line:84% that "the cut between the self and the other 00:07:48.540 --> 00:07:51.030 align:middle line:90% is entirely arbitrary." 00:07:51.030 --> 00:07:54.000 align:middle line:84% That "the psychological core issue now 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:57.810 align:middle line:84% should be examining the uncertainty of this boundary, 00:07:57.810 --> 00:08:01.020 align:middle line:84% examining what happens to the self when 00:08:01.020 --> 00:08:05.190 align:middle line:84% for instance, a person is overwhelmed by birdsong 00:08:05.190 --> 00:08:11.060 align:middle line:84% and taps into a psyche the size of the Earth." 00:08:11.060 --> 00:08:14.000 align:middle line:84% I want to pose a few questions about this idea of the nature 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:15.410 align:middle line:90% of Mother Nature questions. 00:08:15.410 --> 00:08:18.230 align:middle line:84% I will probably not answer, but maybe you will. 00:08:18.230 --> 00:08:20.300 align:middle line:84% And then I want us to look at two stories that 00:08:20.300 --> 00:08:22.760 align:middle line:90% come to us from the old world. 00:08:22.760 --> 00:08:26.360 align:middle line:84% The questions, one, can we get away 00:08:26.360 --> 00:08:30.650 align:middle line:84% from the sentimental piety of the personification of nature 00:08:30.650 --> 00:08:31.760 align:middle line:90% as mother? 00:08:31.760 --> 00:08:35.630 align:middle line:84% The flowers and powdered sugar of the new age greeting card 00:08:35.630 --> 00:08:39.980 align:middle line:84% and rediscover the force with which Henry James contemplated 00:08:39.980 --> 00:08:47.290 align:middle line:84% the woman as metaphor, a force that promises continuity. 00:08:47.290 --> 00:08:51.340 align:middle line:84% Two, if culture is reinventing nature 00:08:51.340 --> 00:08:54.940 align:middle line:84% both by accident and on purpose, then 00:08:54.940 --> 00:08:58.120 align:middle line:84% what can the literary arts do to deepen our understanding 00:08:58.120 --> 00:08:59.980 align:middle line:90% of this process? 00:08:59.980 --> 00:09:03.430 align:middle line:84% Three, what kind of stories, reflections, and songs 00:09:03.430 --> 00:09:05.800 align:middle line:84% do we need now that we see ourselves 00:09:05.800 --> 00:09:09.550 align:middle line:84% at the end of the world or at least of a certain chapter 00:09:09.550 --> 00:09:10.960 align:middle line:90% of the world's story? 00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:15.040 align:middle line:84% The story of our domination of nature, 00:09:15.040 --> 00:09:19.210 align:middle line:84% a little more apocalypse, a little more transcendence, 00:09:19.210 --> 00:09:20.620 align:middle line:90% a little more Boccaccio. 00:09:20.620 --> 00:09:23.350 align:middle line:84% Any storytellers hanging out in the countryside 00:09:23.350 --> 00:09:26.230 align:middle line:84% entertaining each other with drunken tales, 00:09:26.230 --> 00:09:29.590 align:middle line:84% while in the city people are dying off from plague. 00:09:29.590 --> 00:09:32.200 align:middle line:84% A little more polymorphous perversity, 00:09:32.200 --> 00:09:34.210 align:middle line:84% as the feminist post-structuralist 00:09:34.210 --> 00:09:35.410 align:middle line:90% would have it. 00:09:35.410 --> 00:09:39.070 align:middle line:90% Sure, all of that and more. 00:09:39.070 --> 00:09:42.258 align:middle line:84% There, I've answered one of the questions. 00:09:42.258 --> 00:09:44.550 align:middle line:84% I'd like to look at two of the oldest and most enduring 00:09:44.550 --> 00:09:47.880 align:middle line:84% stories stories that carry an echo of the old matriarchy, 00:09:47.880 --> 00:09:50.340 align:middle line:84% a social order in which woman was the highest 00:09:50.340 --> 00:09:53.610 align:middle line:84% authority in the family and in the social organization 00:09:53.610 --> 00:09:56.310 align:middle line:84% before the regime change of male dominance 00:09:56.310 --> 00:09:58.230 align:middle line:84% took over somewhere back at, oh, well, 00:09:58.230 --> 00:10:01.440 align:middle line:90% the beginning of civilization. 00:10:01.440 --> 00:10:02.880 align:middle line:90% First, "Baba Yaga." 00:10:02.880 --> 00:10:05.590 align:middle line:90% 00:10:05.590 --> 00:10:07.780 align:middle line:84% I have no idea how old this story is. 00:10:07.780 --> 00:10:09.370 align:middle line:90% It has pagan origins. 00:10:09.370 --> 00:10:11.980 align:middle line:84% Baba Yaga is the demonized remnant 00:10:11.980 --> 00:10:15.100 align:middle line:84% of the old matriarchal goddess figure representing 00:10:15.100 --> 00:10:19.450 align:middle line:84% the wholeness of the life cycle including birth and death. 00:10:19.450 --> 00:10:22.270 align:middle line:84% Versions of the story come out in the oral traditions 00:10:22.270 --> 00:10:26.000 align:middle line:84% of Russia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Poland, 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:28.270 align:middle line:84% Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic. 00:10:28.270 --> 00:10:33.820 align:middle line:84% Many versions exist here as a kind of composite thumbnail 00:10:33.820 --> 00:10:36.670 align:middle line:90% off the cuffish version. 00:10:36.670 --> 00:10:40.820 align:middle line:84% Baba Yaga is a nasty, ugly, vicious old woman. 00:10:40.820 --> 00:10:42.970 align:middle line:90% She is a witch and a trickster. 00:10:42.970 --> 00:10:45.760 align:middle line:84% She lives on the edge of the forest in a house made 00:10:45.760 --> 00:10:49.540 align:middle line:84% of bones surrounded by a picket fence built 00:10:49.540 --> 00:10:51.730 align:middle line:90% with the skulls of her victims. 00:10:51.730 --> 00:10:55.390 align:middle line:84% The eye sockets lit up with fire. 00:10:55.390 --> 00:10:59.080 align:middle line:84% Her gate is fastened with human legs and arms. 00:10:59.080 --> 00:11:03.220 align:middle line:84% A mouth with sharp teeth serves as a lock. 00:11:03.220 --> 00:11:08.110 align:middle line:84% Her house stands on long legged chicken feet. 00:11:08.110 --> 00:11:11.350 align:middle line:84% It will not reveal its door unless the proper chant 00:11:11.350 --> 00:11:15.640 align:middle line:84% is spoken, hut, oh, hut, turn your back to the forest, 00:11:15.640 --> 00:11:19.210 align:middle line:84% your front to me, which tells you from the start 00:11:19.210 --> 00:11:24.220 align:middle line:84% that Baba Yaga's allegiances lie in the dark place of the wild. 00:11:24.220 --> 00:11:27.100 align:middle line:84% She eats children who stray too far from home, 00:11:27.100 --> 00:11:29.170 align:middle line:84% and then she's similar to other tales 00:11:29.170 --> 00:11:32.230 align:middle line:84% in other cultures like the Kwakiutl Dzunukwa story, 00:11:32.230 --> 00:11:34.930 align:middle line:84% "The Wild Woman of the Woods" and other cautionary tales 00:11:34.930 --> 00:11:37.270 align:middle line:84% about these women who go out there. 00:11:37.270 --> 00:11:42.370 align:middle line:84% And we'll steal your children if you allow them to leave home. 00:11:42.370 --> 00:11:45.490 align:middle line:84% She can rip an animal or human apart limb from limb 00:11:45.490 --> 00:11:47.680 align:middle line:90% in less than three seconds. 00:11:47.680 --> 00:11:50.980 align:middle line:84% She flies through the forest riding in a mortar using 00:11:50.980 --> 00:11:52.480 align:middle line:90% a pestle for a rudder. 00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:55.780 align:middle line:84% She sweeps her tracks away behind her with a broom 00:11:55.780 --> 00:11:58.180 align:middle line:90% as she flies. 00:11:58.180 --> 00:12:00.910 align:middle line:84% Despite her alignment with evil in witchcraft, 00:12:00.910 --> 00:12:03.010 align:middle line:90% Baba Yaga holds wisdom. 00:12:03.010 --> 00:12:06.800 align:middle line:84% People come to her seeking it, but they do not return. 00:12:06.800 --> 00:12:09.040 align:middle line:84% They are required to perform tasks 00:12:09.040 --> 00:12:13.120 align:middle line:84% to earn what they ask for, and they always fail, 00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:17.500 align:middle line:90% except Vasilisa the Beautiful. 00:12:17.500 --> 00:12:21.580 align:middle line:84% This tale is recorded by Russian folklorist Alexander Afanasev, 00:12:21.580 --> 00:12:23.820 align:middle line:84% the Russian counterpart of the Brothers Grimm, 00:12:23.820 --> 00:12:25.810 align:middle line:84% who published about eight volumes of folk 00:12:25.810 --> 00:12:28.690 align:middle line:90% tales in the mid-1800s. 00:12:28.690 --> 00:12:31.300 align:middle line:84% Vasilisa the Beautiful, I will tell 00:12:31.300 --> 00:12:33.850 align:middle line:84% a little bit about her experience with Baba Yaga. 00:12:33.850 --> 00:12:36.070 align:middle line:84% You'll hear in this of course echoes 00:12:36.070 --> 00:12:38.200 align:middle line:84% of many other European fairy tales that 00:12:38.200 --> 00:12:39.910 align:middle line:90% may be better than this one. 00:12:39.910 --> 00:12:43.690 align:middle line:84% Gretel is certainly in here and Cinderella. 00:12:43.690 --> 00:12:47.740 align:middle line:84% So Vasilisa's mother dies when the girl is 8 years old. 00:12:47.740 --> 00:12:51.220 align:middle line:84% On the death bed, her mother gives her a tiny wooden doll. 00:12:51.220 --> 00:12:54.160 align:middle line:84% If you are in need, give the doll 00:12:54.160 --> 00:12:58.120 align:middle line:84% a little to eat and a little to drink, and she will help you. 00:12:58.120 --> 00:13:03.110 align:middle line:84% The mother principle is handed on as an act of imagination. 00:13:03.110 --> 00:13:05.660 align:middle line:84% After the mother's death, Vasilisa's father 00:13:05.660 --> 00:13:08.030 align:middle line:84% remarries a woman who becomes of course, yes, 00:13:08.030 --> 00:13:10.400 align:middle line:84% the evil stepmother, a corruption 00:13:10.400 --> 00:13:12.470 align:middle line:84% of the matrilineal line, which I will 00:13:12.470 --> 00:13:15.830 align:middle line:84% define as the loss of faith in nature's ability 00:13:15.830 --> 00:13:17.900 align:middle line:90% to renew itself. 00:13:17.900 --> 00:13:21.230 align:middle line:84% The father has to go on a long journey of course, 00:13:21.230 --> 00:13:23.630 align:middle line:84% and the evil stepmother moves the family 00:13:23.630 --> 00:13:26.990 align:middle line:84% to a gloomy hut on the edge of the forest. 00:13:26.990 --> 00:13:30.110 align:middle line:84% Vasilisa becomes a little more than a domestic slave 00:13:30.110 --> 00:13:32.840 align:middle line:84% to her stepmother at home while the stepsisters sit 00:13:32.840 --> 00:13:35.420 align:middle line:84% around watching television or whatever 00:13:35.420 --> 00:13:36.665 align:middle line:90% they did, eating bonbons. 00:13:36.665 --> 00:13:39.320 align:middle line:90% 00:13:39.320 --> 00:13:43.910 align:middle line:84% One day Vasilisa lets the family's flame go out, 00:13:43.910 --> 00:13:48.020 align:middle line:84% the only source for their heat and for cooking their meals. 00:13:48.020 --> 00:13:49.880 align:middle line:84% The evil stepmother rages at the girl, 00:13:49.880 --> 00:13:51.350 align:middle line:90% sends her out to fetch fire. 00:13:51.350 --> 00:13:54.440 align:middle line:84% Vasilisa, if you're so smart with your magic little doll, 00:13:54.440 --> 00:13:57.650 align:middle line:84% why don't you go to the witch and ask for fire? 00:13:57.650 --> 00:14:00.260 align:middle line:84% For Vasilisa, of course, this is a simple task. 00:14:00.260 --> 00:14:02.960 align:middle line:84% She's one of the great hero girls of literature. 00:14:02.960 --> 00:14:05.330 align:middle line:90% And she sets off to the woods. 00:14:05.330 --> 00:14:06.920 align:middle line:84% When she arrives at the witch's hut, 00:14:06.920 --> 00:14:08.690 align:middle line:84% Baba Yaga is sitting at her spinning wheel 00:14:08.690 --> 00:14:12.620 align:middle line:84% making thread from human tendons and muscles. 00:14:12.620 --> 00:14:14.870 align:middle line:90% Why should I give you fire? 00:14:14.870 --> 00:14:16.640 align:middle line:90% Because I ask for it. 00:14:16.640 --> 00:14:19.970 align:middle line:84% Complete these tasks otherwise you will be eaten. 00:14:19.970 --> 00:14:22.610 align:middle line:84% Clean the house and yard, cook the supper, 00:14:22.610 --> 00:14:26.180 align:middle line:84% pick black grains and wild peas from this quarter measure 00:14:26.180 --> 00:14:28.430 align:middle line:90% of wheat. 00:14:28.430 --> 00:14:31.730 align:middle line:84% Vasilisa is back to domestic servitude. 00:14:31.730 --> 00:14:35.990 align:middle line:84% A woman's work and apparently a girl's is never done. 00:14:35.990 --> 00:14:38.270 align:middle line:90% However, Vasilisa has invention. 00:14:38.270 --> 00:14:39.800 align:middle line:90% She has the doll. 00:14:39.800 --> 00:14:42.050 align:middle line:84% So she does the cooking, and she gets the doll 00:14:42.050 --> 00:14:44.480 align:middle line:84% to do all the rest of the chores. 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:46.520 align:middle line:84% The next day Baba Yaga gives her a harder task. 00:14:46.520 --> 00:14:48.620 align:middle line:84% Clean out the poppy seeds that have been mixed in with all 00:14:48.620 --> 00:14:49.940 align:middle line:90% this dirt, and she does it. 00:14:49.940 --> 00:14:51.920 align:middle line:84% And Babba Yaga is beginning to realize 00:14:51.920 --> 00:14:56.570 align:middle line:84% she's got a very inventive creature in her midst. 00:14:56.570 --> 00:15:00.050 align:middle line:84% Vasilisa has seen three horsemen near the chicken legged 00:15:00.050 --> 00:15:04.160 align:middle line:84% hut, a white rider, a red rider, and a black rider. 00:15:04.160 --> 00:15:07.220 align:middle line:84% She asks the witch, who are those riders? 00:15:07.220 --> 00:15:10.130 align:middle line:84% Baba Yaga does not like to be asked questions. 00:15:10.130 --> 00:15:13.760 align:middle line:84% She ages one year for each question she is asked, 00:15:13.760 --> 00:15:16.340 align:middle line:90% and she is already old and ugly. 00:15:16.340 --> 00:15:18.530 align:middle line:84% Her lumpy nose is said to be so big it 00:15:18.530 --> 00:15:22.880 align:middle line:84% rattles against the ceiling of her hut when she snores. 00:15:22.880 --> 00:15:28.460 align:middle line:84% She answers, the horsemen are my white dawn, my red sun, 00:15:28.460 --> 00:15:31.100 align:middle line:90% and my dark midnight. 00:15:31.100 --> 00:15:33.560 align:middle line:84% Baba Yaga the dark and terrifying one rules 00:15:33.560 --> 00:15:34.310 align:middle line:90% over nature. 00:15:34.310 --> 00:15:38.270 align:middle line:84% In her the matrilineal line continues, albeit with death 00:15:38.270 --> 00:15:41.300 align:middle line:84% always close at hand and in mind. 00:15:41.300 --> 00:15:44.240 align:middle line:84% Now Baba Yaga asks a question in return. 00:15:44.240 --> 00:15:46.040 align:middle line:84% What is the cause of your success 00:15:46.040 --> 00:15:47.930 align:middle line:90% in completing these tasks? 00:15:47.930 --> 00:15:51.920 align:middle line:84% Vasilisa says, by my mother's blessing. 00:15:51.920 --> 00:15:53.990 align:middle line:90% It is the right answer. 00:15:53.990 --> 00:15:55.940 align:middle line:84% Again the power of the imagination 00:15:55.940 --> 00:15:57.710 align:middle line:84% has won the day, a power that here 00:15:57.710 --> 00:16:00.230 align:middle line:90% transcends the mother's death. 00:16:00.230 --> 00:16:02.540 align:middle line:84% Baba Yaga gives her a fence picket 00:16:02.540 --> 00:16:04.700 align:middle line:84% with a burning skull atop it which 00:16:04.700 --> 00:16:08.270 align:middle line:84% she uses as a torch to find her way home in the night. 00:16:08.270 --> 00:16:10.670 align:middle line:84% At home the skull turns on the stepmother 00:16:10.670 --> 00:16:13.310 align:middle line:84% of course and the siblings and turns them all to ash. 00:16:13.310 --> 00:16:16.040 align:middle line:84% And the beautiful Vasilisa lives happily forever. 00:16:16.040 --> 00:16:18.080 align:middle line:84% And the torch burns until the day she dies. 00:16:18.080 --> 00:16:21.780 align:middle line:90% 00:16:21.780 --> 00:16:24.000 align:middle line:84% Of course in some versions there's always a Prince, 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:28.470 align:middle line:90% but not in all versions. 00:16:28.470 --> 00:16:30.930 align:middle line:84% There are many modern and contemporary adaptations, 00:16:30.930 --> 00:16:34.800 align:middle line:84% the 1939 film by Alexander Rou, the Soviet filmmaker. 00:16:34.800 --> 00:16:37.590 align:middle line:84% Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" 00:16:37.590 --> 00:16:40.810 align:middle line:84% has a section devoted to the hut on bird's legs. 00:16:40.810 --> 00:16:46.080 align:middle line:84% Ravel, Emerson, Lake, & Palmer and even the Hellboy comics 00:16:46.080 --> 00:16:48.360 align:middle line:90% have a Baba Yaga story. 00:16:48.360 --> 00:16:50.640 align:middle line:84% As a child growing up in rural Connecticut, 00:16:50.640 --> 00:16:53.100 align:middle line:84% I read and loved the story, finding 00:16:53.100 --> 00:16:55.410 align:middle line:90% it deliciously terrifying. 00:16:55.410 --> 00:16:58.800 align:middle line:84% Some years later, I came across Baba Yaga in a "Little Lulu" 00:16:58.800 --> 00:17:00.570 align:middle line:90% comic book. 00:17:00.570 --> 00:17:01.890 align:middle line:90% And only people of a certain-- 00:17:01.890 --> 00:17:04.170 align:middle line:84% Little Lulu was this great girl hero. 00:17:04.170 --> 00:17:04.839 align:middle line:90% She was cool. 00:17:04.839 --> 00:17:06.297 align:middle line:90% She had these little pipe curls. 00:17:06.297 --> 00:17:08.880 align:middle line:84% I don't remember there being any adults in Little Lulu's life. 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:10.680 align:middle line:90% But she had problems. 00:17:10.680 --> 00:17:12.810 align:middle line:84% She solved every problem just like that. 00:17:12.810 --> 00:17:16.359 align:middle line:84% She was just this capable little character. 00:17:16.359 --> 00:17:19.650 align:middle line:84% So I had the "Little Lulu" comic book 00:17:19.650 --> 00:17:22.710 align:middle line:84% where Little Lulu goes to Baba Yaga's chicken legged hut. 00:17:22.710 --> 00:17:24.180 align:middle line:90% It was a very safe rendition. 00:17:24.180 --> 00:17:25.920 align:middle line:84% Of course you knew that Little Lulu was 00:17:25.920 --> 00:17:27.359 align:middle line:90% part of a greater continuity. 00:17:27.359 --> 00:17:28.650 align:middle line:90% It was never a question. 00:17:28.650 --> 00:17:31.380 align:middle line:84% The weekly funnies, she'd be back. 00:17:31.380 --> 00:17:32.940 align:middle line:84% So there was nothing to be afraid. 00:17:32.940 --> 00:17:36.780 align:middle line:84% Of course, I knew the scary version was the truth 00:17:36.780 --> 00:17:39.870 align:middle line:84% and felt drawn to the girl who was fearless and clever 00:17:39.870 --> 00:17:42.480 align:middle line:90% in the face of evil and death. 00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:44.160 align:middle line:84% The story had the power of myth for, 00:17:44.160 --> 00:17:47.340 align:middle line:84% me tapping into a well of mortal fear 00:17:47.340 --> 00:17:50.670 align:middle line:84% while the "Little Lulu" spinoff had lost its force by keeping 00:17:50.670 --> 00:17:52.980 align:middle line:90% the protagonist safe. 00:17:52.980 --> 00:17:56.280 align:middle line:84% Being a pragmatist, I'm curious about the roots of this story. 00:17:56.280 --> 00:17:59.580 align:middle line:84% What reality seeded the fantastic tale? 00:17:59.580 --> 00:18:03.030 align:middle line:84% I found a lot of speculation about the hut. 00:18:03.030 --> 00:18:05.580 align:middle line:84% The Samis, the indigenous, nomadic people 00:18:05.580 --> 00:18:08.400 align:middle line:84% of Northern Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia 00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:10.950 align:middle line:84% in the late matriarchy of the Siberian peoples 00:18:10.950 --> 00:18:15.450 align:middle line:84% built storehouses on legs where they kept food preserved out 00:18:15.450 --> 00:18:17.820 align:middle line:84% of the reach of animals during their absence when 00:18:17.820 --> 00:18:18.900 align:middle line:90% they were off hunting. 00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:21.600 align:middle line:84% And you can see pictures if you Google it of the stumps. 00:18:21.600 --> 00:18:25.050 align:middle line:84% They used stumps of trees where the spreading roots 00:18:25.050 --> 00:18:27.780 align:middle line:84% attached so that they would provide support. 00:18:27.780 --> 00:18:29.440 align:middle line:90% And they're 10 feet high. 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:31.350 align:middle line:84% And they look exactly like the illustrations 00:18:31.350 --> 00:18:35.550 align:middle line:84% you see in the children's books of Baba Yaga's hut. 00:18:35.550 --> 00:18:39.060 align:middle line:84% A smaller but similar structure was used by Siberian pagans 00:18:39.060 --> 00:18:40.500 align:middle line:90% to hold figures of their gods. 00:18:40.500 --> 00:18:42.660 align:middle line:84% And in the late matriarchy of the Slavs, 00:18:42.660 --> 00:18:45.450 align:middle line:84% small huts with circular fences of this type 00:18:45.450 --> 00:18:47.220 align:middle line:90% were used for cremation. 00:18:47.220 --> 00:18:49.680 align:middle line:84% These were found by archeologists in the '40s. 00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:52.980 align:middle line:84% So here we have the associations with both death and fire 00:18:52.980 --> 00:18:55.350 align:middle line:90% embodied in a forest hut. 00:18:55.350 --> 00:18:59.670 align:middle line:84% My more preposterous and favorite premise 00:18:59.670 --> 00:19:01.410 align:middle line:84% is that the image of the bone hut 00:19:01.410 --> 00:19:05.880 align:middle line:84% may go back even much farther in time, all the way back 00:19:05.880 --> 00:19:09.930 align:middle line:84% to the last Ice Age, to the mammoth bone huts made 00:19:09.930 --> 00:19:13.830 align:middle line:84% by hunter gatherers of the late Pleistocene in what is now 00:19:13.830 --> 00:19:16.740 align:middle line:90% Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. 00:19:16.740 --> 00:19:19.470 align:middle line:84% And if you have-- you can see a reconstruction, 00:19:19.470 --> 00:19:22.800 align:middle line:84% a model of one of these at the Field Museum in Chicago. 00:19:22.800 --> 00:19:27.030 align:middle line:84% These people built huts using the jaw bones 00:19:27.030 --> 00:19:29.580 align:middle line:90% and tusks of mammoths. 00:19:29.580 --> 00:19:31.680 align:middle line:90% The jaw bones were the base. 00:19:31.680 --> 00:19:32.850 align:middle line:90% The tusks were the roof. 00:19:32.850 --> 00:19:34.290 align:middle line:90% They covered them with pelts. 00:19:34.290 --> 00:19:37.710 align:middle line:84% This was happening 27,000 to 12,000 years ago, 00:19:37.710 --> 00:19:42.070 align:middle line:90% peaking around 15,000 years ago. 00:19:42.070 --> 00:19:44.130 align:middle line:84% Imagine stumbling upon the remnants 00:19:44.130 --> 00:19:48.450 align:middle line:84% of such a dwelling when you go out picking berries. 00:19:48.450 --> 00:19:50.160 align:middle line:84% Would it not set the mind reeling 00:19:50.160 --> 00:19:54.510 align:middle line:84% with question and the need for a story, what unknown hands made 00:19:54.510 --> 00:19:55.980 align:middle line:90% these structures? 00:19:55.980 --> 00:20:02.760 align:middle line:84% Is it possible for a story or a continuity to be that old? 00:20:02.760 --> 00:20:04.560 align:middle line:84% Stories like Baba Yaga the terrible 00:20:04.560 --> 00:20:08.070 align:middle line:84% and Vasilia the Beautiful last, not because they yield up 00:20:08.070 --> 00:20:11.850 align:middle line:84% a single clarifying meaning, because they echo out 00:20:11.850 --> 00:20:14.400 align:middle line:84% in so many directions and yield themselves 00:20:14.400 --> 00:20:18.120 align:middle line:84% to multiple readings that keep morphing over time. 00:20:18.120 --> 00:20:21.520 align:middle line:84% Baba Yaga herself is associated widely with fertility, fate, 00:20:21.520 --> 00:20:22.020 align:middle line:90% and death. 00:20:22.020 --> 00:20:24.900 align:middle line:84% She's the evil witch, the trickster, the hideous crone, 00:20:24.900 --> 00:20:27.330 align:middle line:84% a good fairy degraded to a witch. 00:20:27.330 --> 00:20:30.360 align:middle line:84% She's the Earth mother, the woods mother, the bone mother, 00:20:30.360 --> 00:20:31.800 align:middle line:90% the death mother. 00:20:31.800 --> 00:20:35.580 align:middle line:84% Her evil was assuaged only by the blessings of the mother. 00:20:35.580 --> 00:20:40.020 align:middle line:84% Baba Yaga is mothering nature that brings light and death. 00:20:40.020 --> 00:20:43.200 align:middle line:84% For me looking at the story through an environmentalist 00:20:43.200 --> 00:20:46.560 align:middle line:84% lens, Baba Yaga represents a rupture 00:20:46.560 --> 00:20:48.090 align:middle line:90% in the matrilineal line. 00:20:48.090 --> 00:20:51.000 align:middle line:84% She is what you get when people lose connection 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:53.040 align:middle line:84% with the force that has given them 00:20:53.040 --> 00:20:56.160 align:middle line:84% their life, the matrix of nature. 00:20:56.160 --> 00:20:58.680 align:middle line:84% In the tale, only the imagination 00:20:58.680 --> 00:21:02.550 align:middle line:84% in the form of a magic wooden doll and in the form of a story 00:21:02.550 --> 00:21:06.420 align:middle line:84% can connect the child to a sense of her own destiny, 00:21:06.420 --> 00:21:09.540 align:middle line:84% the possibility of claiming a future that she 00:21:09.540 --> 00:21:11.730 align:middle line:90% wants to live in. 00:21:11.730 --> 00:21:13.380 align:middle line:84% One of the most profound renditions 00:21:13.380 --> 00:21:15.000 align:middle line:84% of this story in the literary arts 00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:18.600 align:middle line:84% is Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Joseph and Koza" 00:21:18.600 --> 00:21:20.900 align:middle line:84% which locates Baba Yaga the Terrible 00:21:20.900 --> 00:21:25.310 align:middle line:84% in the historic crossroads where agrarian paganism and Abrahamic 00:21:25.310 --> 00:21:27.410 align:middle line:90% monotheism meet. 00:21:27.410 --> 00:21:29.760 align:middle line:84% Set in Poland, where battling tribe-- 00:21:29.760 --> 00:21:30.960 align:middle line:90% This is a children's book. 00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:33.050 align:middle line:84% It's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen in my life. 00:21:33.050 --> 00:21:33.758 align:middle line:90% I would no more-- 00:21:33.758 --> 00:21:35.930 align:middle line:84% I mean, this is beyond the delicious terror 00:21:35.930 --> 00:21:37.940 align:middle line:90% of a scary book. 00:21:37.940 --> 00:21:40.310 align:middle line:84% Set in Poland where battling tribes believe 00:21:40.310 --> 00:21:42.200 align:middle line:84% in devils and witches, in a village where 00:21:42.200 --> 00:21:45.050 align:middle line:84% a maiden is sacrificed every summer to pacify 00:21:45.050 --> 00:21:47.780 align:middle line:84% evil spirits of the river and ensure a fruitful 00:21:47.780 --> 00:21:51.650 align:middle line:84% crop of grain, a stranger named Joseph arrives, a Jew 00:21:51.650 --> 00:21:52.910 align:middle line:90% and goldsmith. 00:21:52.910 --> 00:21:55.280 align:middle line:84% He tells the villagers of the one God 00:21:55.280 --> 00:21:57.290 align:middle line:90% more powerful than all demons. 00:21:57.290 --> 00:21:59.930 align:middle line:84% He dares them to conduct an experiment. 00:21:59.930 --> 00:22:03.380 align:middle line:84% What will happen to their crops if they do not sacrifice 00:22:03.380 --> 00:22:04.970 align:middle line:90% the chieftain's daughter? 00:22:04.970 --> 00:22:09.830 align:middle line:84% It is a gamble, and they require evidence to change their ways. 00:22:09.830 --> 00:22:11.850 align:middle line:90% Soon enough they have it. 00:22:11.850 --> 00:22:14.180 align:middle line:84% It's an oddly empirical lesson coming 00:22:14.180 --> 00:22:16.310 align:middle line:90% from a messenger of monotheism. 00:22:16.310 --> 00:22:19.550 align:middle line:84% Nonetheless, the village soon finds such sacrifice 00:22:19.550 --> 00:22:23.570 align:middle line:84% unnecessary and moves away from its life of superstition 00:22:23.570 --> 00:22:29.050 align:middle line:84% to one of religious faith tempered by reason and will, 00:22:29.050 --> 00:22:33.670 align:middle line:84% which brings us to the story of Demeter in Greek mythology. 00:22:33.670 --> 00:22:36.860 align:middle line:84% She, as you know, is the daughter of Kronos and Rhea, 00:22:36.860 --> 00:22:38.740 align:middle line:84% the goddess of harvest and fertility. 00:22:38.740 --> 00:22:42.190 align:middle line:84% She's the sister and consort of Zeus, by whom she 00:22:42.190 --> 00:22:44.320 align:middle line:90% has the daughter Persephone. 00:22:44.320 --> 00:22:46.450 align:middle line:84% At Eleusis there's a large temple 00:22:46.450 --> 00:22:48.610 align:middle line:84% built for the worship of Demeter who 00:22:48.610 --> 00:22:51.850 align:middle line:84% instituted what became the principal religious ritual 00:22:51.850 --> 00:22:55.780 align:middle line:84% of ancient Greece known as the Eleusanian Mysteries, 00:22:55.780 --> 00:23:01.540 align:middle line:84% originally a secret cult perhaps begun around 1,600 BCE 00:23:01.540 --> 00:23:05.020 align:middle line:84% to honor the annual cycle of death and rebirth of grain 00:23:05.020 --> 00:23:08.440 align:middle line:84% in the fields, its rituals signifying 00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:12.580 align:middle line:84% that the resurrection possible for seeds buried in the ground 00:23:12.580 --> 00:23:15.460 align:middle line:84% might also apply to the human soul 00:23:15.460 --> 00:23:17.980 align:middle line:90% after the body is laid to rest. 00:23:17.980 --> 00:23:22.030 align:middle line:84% The Eleusinian Mysteries became an official state religion, 00:23:22.030 --> 00:23:24.490 align:middle line:84% spread to Rome, and was ultimately outlawed 00:23:24.490 --> 00:23:27.220 align:middle line:84% by the Roman emperor in the fourth century. 00:23:27.220 --> 00:23:30.190 align:middle line:84% The Eleusinian Mysteries as religious ritual 00:23:30.190 --> 00:23:34.630 align:middle line:90% lasted 2,000 years. 00:23:34.630 --> 00:23:37.180 align:middle line:84% The canonical source of the story we have 00:23:37.180 --> 00:23:39.490 align:middle line:84% is the Homeric hymn to Demeter, which 00:23:39.490 --> 00:23:43.630 align:middle line:84% dates from the 7th century BCE about a thousand years 00:23:43.630 --> 00:23:45.550 align:middle line:84% into the practice of these rituals. 00:23:45.550 --> 00:23:49.300 align:middle line:84% It's called Homeric because it implies the same meter used 00:23:49.300 --> 00:23:52.730 align:middle line:84% in the Iliad and Odyssey, which is dactylic hexameter. 00:23:52.730 --> 00:23:54.700 align:middle line:90% You remember the dactyl, right? 00:23:54.700 --> 00:23:56.860 align:middle line:84% "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, picture yourself 00:23:56.860 --> 00:23:59.710 align:middle line:90% on a boat on the river." 00:23:59.710 --> 00:24:03.100 align:middle line:84% The foundation of the Mysteries was the transformation 00:24:03.100 --> 00:24:07.180 align:middle line:84% of bare ground into a vast sheet of ruddy corn at the will 00:24:07.180 --> 00:24:09.040 align:middle line:90% of the Goddess Demeter. 00:24:09.040 --> 00:24:12.730 align:middle line:84% I should say, there's a sidebar here for you naturalists. 00:24:12.730 --> 00:24:15.310 align:middle line:84% The word corn is used over and over again 00:24:15.310 --> 00:24:17.260 align:middle line:84% in every version you read of this. 00:24:17.260 --> 00:24:20.710 align:middle line:84% It's throughout Sir James Frazer, the Golden Bough. 00:24:20.710 --> 00:24:23.830 align:middle line:84% You see, and here is Demeter and Persephone with the ears 00:24:23.830 --> 00:24:25.510 align:middle line:90% of corn surrounding them. 00:24:25.510 --> 00:24:28.690 align:middle line:90% And of course it was not corn. 00:24:28.690 --> 00:24:33.100 align:middle line:84% Corn in these translations means small grains, 00:24:33.100 --> 00:24:35.290 align:middle line:84% probably barley in the case of Demeter, 00:24:35.290 --> 00:24:37.420 align:middle line:84% this being the oldest cultivated crop in Europe. 00:24:37.420 --> 00:24:39.880 align:middle line:90% Corn in Scotland is oats. 00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:42.880 align:middle line:84% In the Bible corn is either barley or wheat. 00:24:42.880 --> 00:24:45.670 align:middle line:84% And in recipes for corned beef, it is grains of salt. 00:24:45.670 --> 00:24:47.710 align:middle line:84% Corn as you all know in the Southwest 00:24:47.710 --> 00:24:51.340 align:middle line:84% was domesticated in Mesoamerica from the wild plant teosinte. 00:24:51.340 --> 00:24:53.998 align:middle line:84% And it did not arrive in Europe until Columbus brought it back 00:24:53.998 --> 00:24:54.790 align:middle line:90% from the New World. 00:24:54.790 --> 00:24:57.580 align:middle line:84% So there weren't no corn in ancient Greece. 00:24:57.580 --> 00:25:00.520 align:middle line:90% 00:25:00.520 --> 00:25:03.010 align:middle line:84% Sir James Frazer, author of the "Golden Bough," which 00:25:03.010 --> 00:25:05.050 align:middle line:84% explores religious and magical dimensions 00:25:05.050 --> 00:25:08.380 align:middle line:84% of early agrarianism, speaks of Demeter and Persephone 00:25:08.380 --> 00:25:11.290 align:middle line:84% as two goddesses, each personifying grain, 00:25:11.290 --> 00:25:14.350 align:middle line:84% Demeter the Old Corn of Fall and Persephone 00:25:14.350 --> 00:25:17.110 align:middle line:90% the Young Corn of Spring. 00:25:17.110 --> 00:25:18.820 align:middle line:84% The story goes like this-- because I 00:25:18.820 --> 00:25:22.090 align:middle line:84% know not everybody gets these stories necessarily 00:25:22.090 --> 00:25:26.680 align:middle line:84% as they're coming up through school so slight reiteration 00:25:26.680 --> 00:25:29.600 align:middle line:90% for those who know it well. 00:25:29.600 --> 00:25:33.700 align:middle line:84% And this is reiterated from the Homeric ode, which 00:25:33.700 --> 00:25:35.090 align:middle line:90% is really, really interesting. 00:25:35.090 --> 00:25:37.270 align:middle line:84% You can pull up several versions of it online. 00:25:37.270 --> 00:25:40.720 align:middle line:84% There are elements to the story that come up in that you 00:25:40.720 --> 00:25:42.970 align:middle line:90% don't hear that often. 00:25:42.970 --> 00:25:46.000 align:middle line:84% So Persephone the Maiden is out picking flowers 00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:48.400 align:middle line:84% in the meadow when the Earth gates open. 00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:50.830 align:middle line:84% And Hades the Lord of the Dead, the Lord 00:25:50.830 --> 00:25:53.950 align:middle line:84% of the Underworld, the Lord who receives many guests, 00:25:53.950 --> 00:25:56.290 align:middle line:90% carries her off to be his bride. 00:25:56.290 --> 00:25:58.378 align:middle line:84% Demeter the Mother hears her daughter's cries. 00:25:58.378 --> 00:25:59.920 align:middle line:84% She can't figure out what's happened. 00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:03.220 align:middle line:84% She wanders the Earth crying out in grief. 00:26:03.220 --> 00:26:04.930 align:middle line:84% Her torch is blazing in her hands, 00:26:04.930 --> 00:26:07.120 align:middle line:84% but not one of her fellow gods is 00:26:07.120 --> 00:26:09.470 align:middle line:90% willing to tell her the truth. 00:26:09.470 --> 00:26:13.750 align:middle line:84% She asked Helios the Sun, show me respect, God to Goddess. 00:26:13.750 --> 00:26:16.780 align:middle line:84% She begs, and he tells her that Zeus has given Persephone 00:26:16.780 --> 00:26:17.740 align:middle line:90% to Hades. 00:26:17.740 --> 00:26:18.850 align:middle line:90% Helios cautions her. 00:26:18.850 --> 00:26:20.860 align:middle line:84% Everybody's trying to shut these women out. 00:26:20.860 --> 00:26:22.060 align:middle line:90% Helios cautions her. 00:26:22.060 --> 00:26:24.350 align:middle line:84% You should not have anger out of bounds. 00:26:24.350 --> 00:26:26.980 align:middle line:84% It is not unseemly to have Hades as a son-in-law. 00:26:26.980 --> 00:26:28.270 align:middle line:90% He is the brother to Zeus. 00:26:28.270 --> 00:26:31.270 align:middle line:84% His seed is from the same place as yours. 00:26:31.270 --> 00:26:33.220 align:middle line:84% This only deepens Demeter's grief. 00:26:33.220 --> 00:26:36.400 align:middle line:84% She shuns the company of gods of their home on Olympus 00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:39.880 align:middle line:84% and goes to visit the cities of humans with all their fertile 00:26:39.880 --> 00:26:41.410 align:middle line:90% landholdings. 00:26:41.410 --> 00:26:43.510 align:middle line:84% There she's not recognized as a goddess. 00:26:43.510 --> 00:26:46.810 align:middle line:84% For gods are hard for mortals to see. 00:26:46.810 --> 00:26:50.620 align:middle line:84% She sits by a well appearing to be an old childless, loveless 00:26:50.620 --> 00:26:51.730 align:middle line:90% woman. 00:26:51.730 --> 00:26:54.160 align:middle line:84% Who are you, old woman, ask the young women 00:26:54.160 --> 00:26:56.380 align:middle line:84% who come to the well to fill their water jars. 00:26:56.380 --> 00:26:58.360 align:middle line:90% She does not tell them. 00:26:58.360 --> 00:27:00.970 align:middle line:84% She just wants to work for a household that has children. 00:27:00.970 --> 00:27:02.950 align:middle line:84% She wants to take a newborn in her arms 00:27:02.950 --> 00:27:05.380 align:middle line:84% and nourish him well as is fitting for a woman 00:27:05.380 --> 00:27:07.300 align:middle line:90% in her situation. 00:27:07.300 --> 00:27:10.360 align:middle line:84% These women too caution her to measure her grief. 00:27:10.360 --> 00:27:13.960 align:middle line:84% We humans endure the gifts the gods give us even when we are 00:27:13.960 --> 00:27:16.690 align:middle line:90% grieving over what has to be. 00:27:16.690 --> 00:27:19.060 align:middle line:84% They take her to the Palace of Helios. 00:27:19.060 --> 00:27:21.460 align:middle line:84% When she enters the threshold of the King's chamber, 00:27:21.460 --> 00:27:23.230 align:middle line:90% her head reaches the ceiling. 00:27:23.230 --> 00:27:27.190 align:middle line:84% And she fills the whole indoors with divine light. 00:27:27.190 --> 00:27:28.870 align:middle line:84% For some reason that I don't understand, 00:27:28.870 --> 00:27:31.360 align:middle line:84% she's not outed at this point as a goddess. 00:27:31.360 --> 00:27:34.270 align:middle line:84% In my reading of the story it's like, couldn't you tell? 00:27:34.270 --> 00:27:35.620 align:middle line:90% But apparently not. 00:27:35.620 --> 00:27:38.950 align:middle line:84% She passes a woman who starts telling her dirty jokes 00:27:38.950 --> 00:27:40.660 align:middle line:84% and in some versions lifts her skirt 00:27:40.660 --> 00:27:42.820 align:middle line:90% and reveals her bare crotch. 00:27:42.820 --> 00:27:46.090 align:middle line:84% It's a moment where even in her terrible grief Demeter 00:27:46.090 --> 00:27:49.210 align:middle line:90% sort of cracks up. 00:27:49.210 --> 00:27:52.120 align:middle line:84% She asks for a potion of barley water mixed with penny oil. 00:27:52.120 --> 00:27:55.240 align:middle line:84% These kind of details that are in the poem 00:27:55.240 --> 00:27:57.250 align:middle line:90% are part of the rituals. 00:27:57.250 --> 00:28:00.250 align:middle line:84% There's a fast, a torchlight procession, some ritual 00:28:00.250 --> 00:28:03.140 align:middle line:90% obscenity, and dirty joking. 00:28:03.140 --> 00:28:05.800 align:middle line:84% There's a beverage that induces visions. 00:28:05.800 --> 00:28:10.450 align:middle line:84% Some speculate it was lysergic acid, barley 00:28:10.450 --> 00:28:14.200 align:middle line:84% parasitized with the fungus ergot, which 00:28:14.200 --> 00:28:15.580 align:middle line:90% produces lysergic acid. 00:28:15.580 --> 00:28:19.060 align:middle line:84% Others say it was the psilocybin mushrooms, which had been 00:28:19.060 --> 00:28:21.980 align:middle line:90% cultivated since ancient Egypt. 00:28:21.980 --> 00:28:24.190 align:middle line:84% So the Mysteries might possibly have 00:28:24.190 --> 00:28:28.810 align:middle line:84% had some empirical physical base in the chemical world. 00:28:28.810 --> 00:28:34.960 align:middle line:84% So King Helios gives his son to Demeter to raise. 00:28:34.960 --> 00:28:36.460 align:middle line:90% And she wants to thank him. 00:28:36.460 --> 00:28:37.630 align:middle line:90% She's so grateful. 00:28:37.630 --> 00:28:39.010 align:middle line:84% She wants to thank him by turning 00:28:39.010 --> 00:28:41.080 align:middle line:90% the child into an immortal God. 00:28:41.080 --> 00:28:44.800 align:middle line:84% So every night she lays the infant in the hearth fire 00:28:44.800 --> 00:28:47.590 align:middle line:90% to burn his mortal nature out. 00:28:47.590 --> 00:28:49.510 align:middle line:84% One night she's discovered doing this 00:28:49.510 --> 00:28:52.120 align:middle line:84% by the boy's mother who freaks out. 00:28:52.120 --> 00:28:54.370 align:middle line:84% Demeter now is outed as a goddess. 00:28:54.370 --> 00:28:56.740 align:middle line:84% And the Eleusinians build a temple in her honor. 00:28:56.740 --> 00:28:58.210 align:middle line:90% She's still in grief though. 00:28:58.210 --> 00:28:59.980 align:middle line:84% Her mourning over the loss of her daughter 00:28:59.980 --> 00:29:01.465 align:middle line:90% is of heroic proportion. 00:29:01.465 --> 00:29:03.340 align:middle line:84% She's still shunning the company of the gods, 00:29:03.340 --> 00:29:05.260 align:middle line:84% still refusing to let seeds grow, 00:29:05.260 --> 00:29:07.090 align:middle line:90% keeping them hidden underground. 00:29:07.090 --> 00:29:09.880 align:middle line:84% She stays in her temple wasting away, the Earth lying 00:29:09.880 --> 00:29:11.410 align:middle line:90% fallow all around her. 00:29:11.410 --> 00:29:13.900 align:middle line:84% Humans are at risk of dying out from hunger. 00:29:13.900 --> 00:29:16.750 align:middle line:84% Many a curved plow was dragged along the fields 00:29:16.750 --> 00:29:18.970 align:middle line:90% by many an ox, all in vain. 00:29:18.970 --> 00:29:21.790 align:middle line:84% Finally Zeus takes notice, not out of compassion 00:29:21.790 --> 00:29:23.260 align:middle line:84% but because he and the other guys 00:29:23.260 --> 00:29:26.920 align:middle line:84% were being deprived of their sacrificial portions of meat 00:29:26.920 --> 00:29:32.080 align:middle line:84% to be eaten or burned or in other versions, grain. 00:29:32.080 --> 00:29:33.820 align:middle line:84% So all the gods come to Demeter one 00:29:33.820 --> 00:29:35.680 align:middle line:84% by one, calling out and offering gifts. 00:29:35.680 --> 00:29:36.823 align:middle line:90% If only they would-- 00:29:36.823 --> 00:29:37.990 align:middle line:90% if only she would join them. 00:29:37.990 --> 00:29:40.390 align:middle line:84% And she says, only if I can see my daughter alive. 00:29:40.390 --> 00:29:42.490 align:middle line:90% And finally a deal is struck. 00:29:42.490 --> 00:29:47.110 align:middle line:84% And as we know, Hades makes a final passionate appeal 00:29:47.110 --> 00:29:50.110 align:middle line:84% to Persephone, which is quite compelling. 00:29:50.110 --> 00:29:52.430 align:middle line:84% He says if you're here in the Land of the Dead, 00:29:52.430 --> 00:29:55.450 align:middle line:84% you will be queen of everything that lives and moves about. 00:29:55.450 --> 00:29:59.260 align:middle line:84% And she is a bit titillated by that prospect, 00:29:59.260 --> 00:30:05.230 align:middle line:84% but nonetheless she does come back to the Earth. 00:30:05.230 --> 00:30:09.400 align:middle line:84% And after taking the pomegranate seeds 00:30:09.400 --> 00:30:12.190 align:middle line:84% that Hades feeds her, one for each month of the year 00:30:12.190 --> 00:30:14.320 align:middle line:84% that she will have to return to Hades. 00:30:14.320 --> 00:30:17.720 align:middle line:90% And the land will lie fallow. 00:30:17.720 --> 00:30:21.142 align:middle line:84% Demeter rejoices, makes the corn sprout spontaneously 00:30:21.142 --> 00:30:22.850 align:middle line:84% from all the clouds of the plowed fields, 00:30:22.850 --> 00:30:26.570 align:middle line:84% all the brood Earth to be heavy with leaves and blossoms. 00:30:26.570 --> 00:30:29.090 align:middle line:84% She shows everybody else how to do this. 00:30:29.090 --> 00:30:32.120 align:middle line:84% And then she returns with her daughter to Olympus. 00:30:32.120 --> 00:30:36.140 align:middle line:84% So strong for the Elusinian Mysteries as religious practice 00:30:36.140 --> 00:30:38.480 align:middle line:84% associated with agrarian practice 00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:41.270 align:middle line:84% that the faith persisted among Christian descendants 00:30:41.270 --> 00:30:43.490 align:middle line:84% at her sanctuary in Eleusis to the beginning 00:30:43.490 --> 00:30:45.080 align:middle line:90% of the 19th century. 00:30:45.080 --> 00:30:48.320 align:middle line:84% Crops depended on the presence of Demeter's image. 00:30:48.320 --> 00:30:51.140 align:middle line:84% Seeds would perish or the subsequent crop run 00:30:51.140 --> 00:30:54.590 align:middle line:84% afoul when the image was removed from the field or threshing 00:30:54.590 --> 00:30:56.450 align:middle line:90% floor. 00:30:56.450 --> 00:31:00.740 align:middle line:84% The religious importance of the practice is expanded. 00:31:00.740 --> 00:31:03.770 align:middle line:84% If nature is immortal and rises up after lying fallow 00:31:03.770 --> 00:31:07.430 align:middle line:84% in the ground, so too might the small self die, 00:31:07.430 --> 00:31:09.440 align:middle line:90% giving birth to the great self. 00:31:09.440 --> 00:31:12.110 align:middle line:84% And so the religious idea of death and resurrection 00:31:12.110 --> 00:31:16.310 align:middle line:84% in the pre-Christian world comes right out of our grain fields. 00:31:16.310 --> 00:31:19.550 align:middle line:84% Think of that next time you see a lovely field of wheat 00:31:19.550 --> 00:31:21.890 align:middle line:84% or barley or rye or the next time 00:31:21.890 --> 00:31:27.140 align:middle line:84% you savor a slice of delicious seeded multigrain bread. 00:31:27.140 --> 00:31:29.150 align:middle line:84% In the folklore of many European countries 00:31:29.150 --> 00:31:32.270 align:middle line:84% and far beyond are grain mother associations. 00:31:32.270 --> 00:31:35.180 align:middle line:84% And Frazer makes an astounding catalog of these. 00:31:35.180 --> 00:31:38.120 align:middle line:84% Germany's Corn Mother, who resides in the last sheaves 00:31:38.120 --> 00:31:38.900 align:middle line:90% in the field. 00:31:38.900 --> 00:31:42.620 align:middle line:84% Among the Slavs, the Rye Mother, a pea mother living in the last 00:31:42.620 --> 00:31:43.640 align:middle line:90% sheaves. 00:31:43.640 --> 00:31:46.520 align:middle line:84% Often these sheaves are made into dolls. 00:31:46.520 --> 00:31:49.850 align:middle line:84% In Poland the doll, it was called the Baba, the old woman. 00:31:49.850 --> 00:31:52.640 align:middle line:84% In the last sheaves sits the Baba. 00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:56.300 align:middle line:84% In Bohemia the last sheaf was a figure of a woman carried home 00:31:56.300 --> 00:31:58.070 align:middle line:90% on a harvest wagon. 00:31:58.070 --> 00:32:00.290 align:middle line:84% In Krakow a woman was bound up in the sheaf 00:32:00.290 --> 00:32:02.300 align:middle line:90% with only her head protruding. 00:32:02.300 --> 00:32:06.110 align:middle line:84% Similar practices occur in Peru with the Maize Mother, Cocoa 00:32:06.110 --> 00:32:09.050 align:middle line:84% Mother, and Potato Mother and in Malaysia and Indonesia 00:32:09.050 --> 00:32:10.580 align:middle line:90% with the Rice Mother. 00:32:10.580 --> 00:32:14.750 align:middle line:84% These figures had the power to shape the course of nature 00:32:14.750 --> 00:32:18.230 align:middle line:84% through the physical sympathy with water and grain. 00:32:18.230 --> 00:32:20.810 align:middle line:84% Some cultures threw the corn dough into the river 00:32:20.810 --> 00:32:24.800 align:middle line:84% to get rain and make her heavy to get a heavy crop. 00:32:24.800 --> 00:32:27.620 align:middle line:84% It's important to note that anyone could practice 00:32:27.620 --> 00:32:31.110 align:middle line:84% these rites anywhere, out in the fields or out in the woods. 00:32:31.110 --> 00:32:35.690 align:middle line:84% These were spirits not deities like Demeter and Persephone, 00:32:35.690 --> 00:32:38.780 align:middle line:90% who are urban temple dwellers. 00:32:38.780 --> 00:32:41.870 align:middle line:84% Some of us still keep bundles of corn stalks 00:32:41.870 --> 00:32:46.250 align:middle line:84% on the doorstep as decorations for Halloween and Thanksgiving 00:32:46.250 --> 00:32:48.630 align:middle line:84% though we have no idea why we do this. 00:32:48.630 --> 00:32:50.690 align:middle line:84% It is an echo of this long human habit 00:32:50.690 --> 00:32:53.960 align:middle line:84% of depositing the spirit of corn and fruition 00:32:53.960 --> 00:32:56.180 align:middle line:84% in a safe place for the winter so that it 00:32:56.180 --> 00:33:00.500 align:middle line:84% can be returned to the fields in spring as an animating force. 00:33:00.500 --> 00:33:04.820 align:middle line:84% In the Homeric hymn, Demeter loses herself to her grief. 00:33:04.820 --> 00:33:07.100 align:middle line:90% Is she a goddess or a mortal? 00:33:07.100 --> 00:33:09.770 align:middle line:84% When she's pissed off at her divine family, 00:33:09.770 --> 00:33:14.360 align:middle line:84% she enters easily into human life where her work is nurture. 00:33:14.360 --> 00:33:16.820 align:middle line:84% However, she does not seem to appreciate 00:33:16.820 --> 00:33:19.550 align:middle line:84% that a human family might not want its infant 00:33:19.550 --> 00:33:23.030 align:middle line:84% to pay the price required to become a God. 00:33:23.030 --> 00:33:25.070 align:middle line:90% They'd rather keep him as he is. 00:33:25.070 --> 00:33:28.040 align:middle line:84% And from this conflict, the recognition 00:33:28.040 --> 00:33:30.650 align:middle line:84% of the difference between mortal and immortal, 00:33:30.650 --> 00:33:32.540 align:middle line:90% Demeter's temple arises. 00:33:32.540 --> 00:33:34.280 align:middle line:90% Mortals cannot become gods. 00:33:34.280 --> 00:33:36.590 align:middle line:84% They can only participate in rituals 00:33:36.590 --> 00:33:40.070 align:middle line:84% that make them feel connected with the divine. 00:33:40.070 --> 00:33:44.270 align:middle line:84% And immortals cannot become mortals because they are too 00:33:44.270 --> 00:33:49.400 align:middle line:84% large and filled with fire to be safe inside our houses. 00:33:49.400 --> 00:33:51.860 align:middle line:84% We are left with our fallible selves 00:33:51.860 --> 00:33:57.760 align:middle line:84% in a mortal world filled with wounds and misunderstanding. 00:33:57.760 --> 00:34:00.260 align:middle line:84% I've always been more interested in Persephone than Demeter. 00:34:00.260 --> 00:34:01.760 align:middle line:84% After all, hers is the love story. 00:34:01.760 --> 00:34:03.650 align:middle line:84% She's taken by a lover who possesses 00:34:03.650 --> 00:34:06.080 align:middle line:84% dark and powerful passion, the Lord who 00:34:06.080 --> 00:34:08.810 align:middle line:84% receives many guests, who can make her queen of all 00:34:08.810 --> 00:34:09.980 align:middle line:90% that lives and moves. 00:34:09.980 --> 00:34:13.130 align:middle line:84% I was irritated by Demeter because she seemed paralyzed 00:34:13.130 --> 00:34:14.690 align:middle line:90% by anger and grief. 00:34:14.690 --> 00:34:16.880 align:middle line:84% But only in her acute suffering did 00:34:16.880 --> 00:34:19.909 align:middle line:84% she come to live among the humans and bring to them 00:34:19.909 --> 00:34:21.116 align:middle line:90% her wisdom. 00:34:21.116 --> 00:34:22.699 align:middle line:84% The more I thought about her, the more 00:34:22.699 --> 00:34:25.550 align:middle line:84% I saw in her the nature of Mother Nature 00:34:25.550 --> 00:34:27.739 align:middle line:84% as both nurturing and withholding, 00:34:27.739 --> 00:34:31.070 align:middle line:84% creating and destroying, overwhelmed with weeping, 00:34:31.070 --> 00:34:33.739 align:middle line:84% and then rejoicing, each in its season. 00:34:33.739 --> 00:34:38.960 align:middle line:84% Even a goddess, it appears, suffers mood swings. 00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:41.510 align:middle line:84% Surely this is a bit of wisdom that has trickled down 00:34:41.510 --> 00:34:43.760 align:middle line:90% from the old matriarchy. 00:34:43.760 --> 00:34:46.610 align:middle line:84% But what sticks in my mind as I think of the peril of the world 00:34:46.610 --> 00:34:50.210 align:middle line:84% today is that the old corn is powerless unless there 00:34:50.210 --> 00:34:52.250 align:middle line:90% is a promise of new corn. 00:34:52.250 --> 00:34:55.639 align:middle line:84% So too our lives dwindle into powerlessness 00:34:55.639 --> 00:35:00.410 align:middle line:84% unless we have a sense of a future worth living. 00:35:00.410 --> 00:35:03.490 align:middle line:84% The sense of the continuity in agrarian cycles of nature 00:35:03.490 --> 00:35:07.730 align:middle line:84% has been sown into the human psyche for about 10,000 years, 00:35:07.730 --> 00:35:10.960 align:middle line:84% which is about when agriculture allowed people in the Fertile 00:35:10.960 --> 00:35:13.780 align:middle line:84% Crescent, in China, Africa, and the Americas 00:35:13.780 --> 00:35:16.840 align:middle line:84% to stop being nomads and settle down so 00:35:16.840 --> 00:35:20.380 align:middle line:84% that we could go to the opera and movies and cafes. 00:35:20.380 --> 00:35:22.360 align:middle line:84% One of the most frightening aspects 00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:25.270 align:middle line:84% of environmental destabilization and collapse 00:35:25.270 --> 00:35:28.270 align:middle line:84% is the loss to us of a sense of a future 00:35:28.270 --> 00:35:30.940 align:middle line:90% both physically and psychically. 00:35:30.940 --> 00:35:33.580 align:middle line:84% Louise Glück's poem sequence "Averno" 00:35:33.580 --> 00:35:36.310 align:middle line:84% taps into the psychological dimension through the story 00:35:36.310 --> 00:35:40.630 align:middle line:84% of Persephone when she writes of her desire to restore to Earth 00:35:40.630 --> 00:35:44.830 align:middle line:90% its ability to console. 00:35:44.830 --> 00:35:47.170 align:middle line:84% And speaking of the environmental crisis 00:35:47.170 --> 00:35:49.390 align:middle line:84% as the defining issue of the age, 00:35:49.390 --> 00:35:52.990 align:middle line:84% I do not mean to leave the issue of social justice 00:35:52.990 --> 00:35:55.150 align:middle line:90% as the also ran. 00:35:55.150 --> 00:35:57.940 align:middle line:84% This is a false dichotomy as we are 00:35:57.940 --> 00:36:01.630 align:middle line:84% coming to see more clearly as the effects of global climate 00:36:01.630 --> 00:36:06.080 align:middle line:84% increasingly call us to have empathy for people, places, 00:36:06.080 --> 00:36:09.370 align:middle line:84% and species that suffer the most deleterious effects 00:36:09.370 --> 00:36:10.930 align:middle line:90% of these changes. 00:36:10.930 --> 00:36:13.930 align:middle line:84% Environmental ethics, as Aldo Leopold taught us 00:36:13.930 --> 00:36:16.960 align:middle line:84% in his Land Ethic, asks us to expand 00:36:16.960 --> 00:36:22.060 align:middle line:84% the sphere of our moral regard beyond family, culture, nation, 00:36:22.060 --> 00:36:24.670 align:middle line:84% race, class, gender, sexual orientation, 00:36:24.670 --> 00:36:27.340 align:middle line:90% to the entire biosphere. 00:36:27.340 --> 00:36:30.490 align:middle line:84% All creatures deserve the opportunity 00:36:30.490 --> 00:36:37.190 align:middle line:84% to find their full evolutionary potential, which brings me 00:36:37.190 --> 00:36:39.740 align:middle line:84% to my closing metaphor, The Drunken 00:36:39.740 --> 00:36:45.160 align:middle line:84% Mother, a metaphor from the short Wallace Stevens poem 00:36:45.160 --> 00:36:47.782 align:middle line:84% "Meditation, Celestial and Terrestrial." 00:36:47.782 --> 00:36:48.490 align:middle line:90% And I'll read it. 00:36:48.490 --> 00:36:49.810 align:middle line:90% It's a really short poem. 00:36:49.810 --> 00:36:52.180 align:middle line:84% And you may not be familiar with it. 00:36:52.180 --> 00:36:54.310 align:middle line:84% Meditation, Celestial, and Terrestrial. 00:36:54.310 --> 00:36:58.420 align:middle line:84% The wild warblers are warbling in the jungle of life 00:36:58.420 --> 00:37:02.230 align:middle line:84% and spring and of the lustrous inundations flood 00:37:02.230 --> 00:37:05.590 align:middle line:90% on flood of our returning sun. 00:37:05.590 --> 00:37:07.930 align:middle line:84% Day after day throughout the winter, 00:37:07.930 --> 00:37:12.520 align:middle line:84% we hardened ourselves to live by bluest reason 00:37:12.520 --> 00:37:17.350 align:middle line:84% in a world of wind and frost and by will unshaken 00:37:17.350 --> 00:37:20.590 align:middle line:84% and florid in mornings of angular ice 00:37:20.590 --> 00:37:24.340 align:middle line:84% that passed beyond us through the narrow sky. 00:37:24.340 --> 00:37:31.210 align:middle line:84% But what are radiant reason and radiant will to warblings early 00:37:31.210 --> 00:37:35.770 align:middle line:84% in the hilarious trees of summer, the drunken mother? 00:37:35.770 --> 00:37:38.900 align:middle line:90% 00:37:38.900 --> 00:37:41.840 align:middle line:84% Here mother nature in the figure of wild warblers 00:37:41.840 --> 00:37:45.260 align:middle line:84% in early summer is just a bit out of control, cheerfully 00:37:45.260 --> 00:37:48.020 align:middle line:84% so as the original meaning of hilarious 00:37:48.020 --> 00:37:51.230 align:middle line:84% simply meaning cheerful, not how we feel when we watch 00:37:51.230 --> 00:37:51.830 align:middle line:90% Jon Stewart-- 00:37:51.830 --> 00:37:54.830 align:middle line:90% 00:37:54.830 --> 00:37:57.650 align:middle line:84% just a bit out of control cheerfully so certainly 00:37:57.650 --> 00:38:01.100 align:middle line:84% out of the range of control by human reason and radiant will. 00:38:01.100 --> 00:38:05.240 align:middle line:84% It's an odd image suggesting that nature's cheerfulness lies 00:38:05.240 --> 00:38:08.000 align:middle line:90% beyond the reach of human grasp. 00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:10.400 align:middle line:84% But a drunken mother is very likely 00:38:10.400 --> 00:38:13.280 align:middle line:84% to be a neglectful and abusive mother. 00:38:13.280 --> 00:38:16.190 align:middle line:84% So all is not quite right in the Denmark 00:38:16.190 --> 00:38:18.680 align:middle line:90% of this breezy little poem. 00:38:18.680 --> 00:38:22.190 align:middle line:84% Taken in the present context, the poem 00:38:22.190 --> 00:38:24.320 align:middle line:90% raises another specter. 00:38:24.320 --> 00:38:27.800 align:middle line:84% If we are not separate from nature but rather are 00:38:27.800 --> 00:38:32.480 align:middle line:84% the loudest manifestation of nature inhabiting the planet, 00:38:32.480 --> 00:38:37.220 align:middle line:84% then we are the drunken mother, a bit hilarious, a bit out 00:38:37.220 --> 00:38:42.050 align:middle line:84% of control, our judgment clouded by our inebriated state 00:38:42.050 --> 00:38:47.130 align:middle line:84% but, oh, so much mindless fun to listen to as we warble on. 00:38:47.130 --> 00:38:49.860 align:middle line:84% We're not quite up to the task of understanding 00:38:49.860 --> 00:38:52.170 align:middle line:84% the enormity of the damage we're doing 00:38:52.170 --> 00:38:56.640 align:middle line:84% to the planet though reason and will do seem to be taking hold. 00:38:56.640 --> 00:39:01.140 align:middle line:84% Still the problem will remain too large and too abstract 00:39:01.140 --> 00:39:05.040 align:middle line:84% for us to see clearly until art joins science 00:39:05.040 --> 00:39:07.530 align:middle line:84% in helping us understand what's going on 00:39:07.530 --> 00:39:12.210 align:middle line:84% and how we might help the drunken mother to sober up. 00:39:12.210 --> 00:39:15.210 align:middle line:84% We've seen how magical and religious thinking have helped 00:39:15.210 --> 00:39:18.120 align:middle line:84% people in the past to read the nature of Mother Nature 00:39:18.120 --> 00:39:20.940 align:middle line:84% and figure out their right relationship with her. 00:39:20.940 --> 00:39:24.690 align:middle line:84% Now science is our greatest ally in understanding what's 00:39:24.690 --> 00:39:26.820 align:middle line:90% going on around and in us. 00:39:26.820 --> 00:39:29.160 align:middle line:84% We live in the story that science has given us 00:39:29.160 --> 00:39:31.290 align:middle line:90% about the nature of our lives. 00:39:31.290 --> 00:39:33.850 align:middle line:90% But science isn't enough. 00:39:33.850 --> 00:39:37.470 align:middle line:84% We need art to show us what we feel and what we value 00:39:37.470 --> 00:39:41.250 align:middle line:84% and what to care about and what not to care about. 00:39:41.250 --> 00:39:44.280 align:middle line:84% We need art to educate our emotions 00:39:44.280 --> 00:39:49.020 align:middle line:84% and extend our compassion beyond the narrow self-interest that 00:39:49.020 --> 00:39:50.820 align:middle line:90% has led us here. 00:39:50.820 --> 00:39:53.100 align:middle line:84% One doesn't have to write about this subject 00:39:53.100 --> 00:39:54.420 align:middle line:90% of the end of the world. 00:39:54.420 --> 00:39:57.090 align:middle line:84% But one can be attentive to this larger 00:39:57.090 --> 00:40:01.290 align:middle line:84% story as the context for the personal narrative 00:40:01.290 --> 00:40:06.060 align:middle line:84% bearing accurate and truthful witness to the world 00:40:06.060 --> 00:40:11.550 align:middle line:84% as it unfolds before us, a world unlike one that has ever 00:40:11.550 --> 00:40:15.250 align:middle line:90% been apprehended before. 00:40:15.250 --> 00:40:17.130 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:40:17.130 --> 00:40:24.000 align:middle line:90%