WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.400 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:00.900 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:00:00.900 --> 00:00:03.445 align:middle line:90% This is the whopper. 00:00:03.445 --> 00:00:05.070 align:middle line:84% It's about eight minutes long, I guess, 00:00:05.070 --> 00:00:06.480 align:middle line:90% and it's called The Judgment. 00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:09.120 align:middle line:84% And I need, I guess, to say just a couple of things about it. 00:00:09.120 --> 00:00:12.117 align:middle line:84% There's some so-called classical references in it, 00:00:12.117 --> 00:00:13.950 align:middle line:84% but I think those are pretty straightforward 00:00:13.950 --> 00:00:15.367 align:middle line:84% and shouldn't create much problem. 00:00:15.367 --> 00:00:16.290 align:middle line:90% Socrates turns up. 00:00:16.290 --> 00:00:21.990 align:middle line:84% Orpheus, Aeneas, his father, Anchises, his girlfriend, Dido, 00:00:21.990 --> 00:00:24.348 align:middle line:84% and the river Lethe, which he visits, 00:00:24.348 --> 00:00:26.640 align:middle line:84% of course, in book six of the Aeneid in the underworld. 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:28.477 align:middle line:84% And as one goes through Lethe, depending 00:00:28.477 --> 00:00:30.060 align:middle line:84% on who you're listening to, you either 00:00:30.060 --> 00:00:33.090 align:middle line:84% lose all of your memories, or simply the painful ones. 00:00:33.090 --> 00:00:34.650 align:middle line:84% I should also say that Aeneas takes 00:00:34.650 --> 00:00:38.070 align:middle line:84% kind of a bum rap in the poem as the founder of an empire 00:00:38.070 --> 00:00:39.450 align:middle line:90% and the master of the future. 00:00:39.450 --> 00:00:42.420 align:middle line:84% I'm reminded of a story someplace in Ezra Pound's 00:00:42.420 --> 00:00:45.150 align:middle line:84% Cantos, where a guy is, in a sense, 00:00:45.150 --> 00:00:48.240 align:middle line:84% functioning as a kind of volunteer educator in a prison, 00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:50.370 align:middle line:84% and gives one of the prisoners the Aeneid to read. 00:00:50.370 --> 00:00:51.875 align:middle line:84% And comes in a week later and said, 00:00:51.875 --> 00:00:54.000 align:middle line:84% well, what did you think of the hero of the Aeneid? 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:55.020 align:middle line:90% And the guy says, hero? 00:00:55.020 --> 00:00:55.830 align:middle line:90% What hero? 00:00:55.830 --> 00:00:57.060 align:middle line:90% He says, Aeneas. 00:00:57.060 --> 00:00:57.990 align:middle line:90% He says, hero? 00:00:57.990 --> 00:00:59.190 align:middle line:90% Aeneas, hero? 00:00:59.190 --> 00:01:02.640 align:middle line:90% I thought he was a priest. 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:05.459 align:middle line:84% Anyway, so something of that sense of Aeneas, 00:01:05.459 --> 00:01:07.950 align:middle line:84% unfair no doubt, informs part of the poem. 00:01:07.950 --> 00:01:10.590 align:middle line:84% There's also a lot of stuff in the poem about painting, 00:01:10.590 --> 00:01:13.860 align:middle line:84% especially modernist painting and its flattening 00:01:13.860 --> 00:01:14.850 align:middle line:90% of the picture plane. 00:01:14.850 --> 00:01:17.470 align:middle line:84% And the idea I had in mind, I suppose, 00:01:17.470 --> 00:01:20.760 align:middle line:84% is that modernist paintings, giving up illusionistic depth, 00:01:20.760 --> 00:01:23.730 align:middle line:84% is in some way analogous to a kind of severe attitude 00:01:23.730 --> 00:01:25.390 align:middle line:90% toward the past and memory. 00:01:25.390 --> 00:01:28.470 align:middle line:90% So the trope functions that way. 00:01:28.470 --> 00:01:30.690 align:middle line:84% So The Judgment-- there are two epigraphs. 00:01:30.690 --> 00:01:33.420 align:middle line:84% The first is from Coleridge, The Eolian Harp. 00:01:33.420 --> 00:01:36.510 align:middle line:84% "It should have been impossible not to love all things 00:01:36.510 --> 00:01:38.220 align:middle line:90% in a world so filled." 00:01:38.220 --> 00:01:41.280 align:middle line:84% And the second is from Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams. 00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:44.820 align:middle line:84% On waking, he is astonished at his lack of feeling. 00:01:44.820 --> 00:01:48.060 align:middle line:84% It shouldn't surprise you, though, the numbness rising up 00:01:48.060 --> 00:01:51.450 align:middle line:84% the arms from the fingertips with Socratic rigor, 00:01:51.450 --> 00:01:53.970 align:middle line:84% the gradual sense that waking had left you 00:01:53.970 --> 00:01:57.300 align:middle line:84% this time inside wherever the sleep had occurred. 00:01:57.300 --> 00:02:00.030 align:middle line:84% Like a frame you had thought to climb out of, 00:02:00.030 --> 00:02:03.850 align:middle line:84% only to bump like a moth against glass and learn, 00:02:03.850 --> 00:02:06.750 align:middle line:84% returned into icy reserve, the imperious 00:02:06.750 --> 00:02:10.139 align:middle line:84% integrity of the picture plane, the third dimension 00:02:10.139 --> 00:02:12.570 align:middle line:84% dreamed in all its depth behind you, 00:02:12.570 --> 00:02:17.220 align:middle line:84% losing itself inside this space which had no inside, for waking 00:02:17.220 --> 00:02:19.500 align:middle line:90% had flattened the recesses. 00:02:19.500 --> 00:02:21.780 align:middle line:84% But light streamed into them slowly, 00:02:21.780 --> 00:02:25.170 align:middle line:84% like an uncle's well-meant gift, and the child's face 00:02:25.170 --> 00:02:26.940 align:middle line:90% is suffused. 00:02:26.940 --> 00:02:29.370 align:middle line:84% Then you were the subject of the composition, 00:02:29.370 --> 00:02:31.320 align:middle line:84% while the uncle was one of the crowd, 00:02:31.320 --> 00:02:34.600 align:middle line:84% thronging the vantage point suggested by perspective, 00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:38.490 align:middle line:84% so that all who gazed on it stood in a single spot. 00:02:38.490 --> 00:02:41.850 align:middle line:84% They had long since gone home, though, Magi pleased 00:02:41.850 --> 00:02:44.490 align:middle line:84% with all they had seen, with their useful gifts 00:02:44.490 --> 00:02:46.020 align:middle line:90% and with themselves. 00:02:46.020 --> 00:02:49.440 align:middle line:84% And the gallery filled with the expectant hush of great art, 00:02:49.440 --> 00:02:52.020 align:middle line:84% for light had come to stand in their place 00:02:52.020 --> 00:02:54.330 align:middle line:90% like the blink of an eye. 00:02:54.330 --> 00:02:57.450 align:middle line:84% It cleared away the entire expanse of hubbub 00:02:57.450 --> 00:02:59.190 align:middle line:90% it reduced to rubble. 00:02:59.190 --> 00:03:02.820 align:middle line:84% Cluttered uncles, camels, Magi, gifts, 00:03:02.820 --> 00:03:05.790 align:middle line:84% the broods of brats who came to the gallery Sunday, 00:03:05.790 --> 00:03:08.730 align:middle line:84% towed by other broods, like wakes. 00:03:08.730 --> 00:03:12.000 align:middle line:84% The empty gallery was also like a wake. 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:15.180 align:middle line:84% Behind you lay all you had loved, stretched calmly 00:03:15.180 --> 00:03:18.750 align:middle line:84% into the impermissible and figmentary space of the valley, 00:03:18.750 --> 00:03:20.520 align:middle line:90% though you knew it not. 00:03:20.520 --> 00:03:22.620 align:middle line:84% You loomed and filled the foreground, 00:03:22.620 --> 00:03:24.780 align:middle line:90% since you were the foreground. 00:03:24.780 --> 00:03:27.990 align:middle line:84% These dwindled quietly toward the upper left-hand corner 00:03:27.990 --> 00:03:30.870 align:middle line:84% seeking solace in the vanishing point, 00:03:30.870 --> 00:03:34.410 align:middle line:84% as if moved with slow conviction into an afterlife, 00:03:34.410 --> 00:03:38.100 align:middle line:84% like objects slid purposely across dry ice 00:03:38.100 --> 00:03:41.910 align:middle line:84% into the Resurrection beyond the four corners. 00:03:41.910 --> 00:03:44.040 align:middle line:84% In the constantly failing light, it all 00:03:44.040 --> 00:03:46.800 align:middle line:84% appeared at the verge of being quenched 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:49.890 align:middle line:84% above a motto in needlepoint, "Make haste 00:03:49.890 --> 00:03:52.140 align:middle line:90% while the sun shines." 00:03:52.140 --> 00:03:53.820 align:middle line:84% That would be before it would all 00:03:53.820 --> 00:03:57.120 align:middle line:84% get flattened like you into the rigorous foreground, 00:03:57.120 --> 00:04:00.660 align:middle line:84% constituting the modern age as the single-mindedness 00:04:00.660 --> 00:04:03.960 align:middle line:84% of the most pious constituted Latium. 00:04:03.960 --> 00:04:06.390 align:middle line:84% Pinned like Socrates to his drugged bed, 00:04:06.390 --> 00:04:09.660 align:middle line:84% the unblinking stare looked forward, saw everything, 00:04:09.660 --> 00:04:11.760 align:middle line:90% and didn't blink. 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:14.280 align:middle line:84% But like Orpheus, the mind's eye turned, 00:04:14.280 --> 00:04:17.850 align:middle line:84% looking back into those spaces a final time. 00:04:17.850 --> 00:04:19.320 align:middle line:90% You saw them. 00:04:19.320 --> 00:04:22.830 align:middle line:84% The dust settling so finally on the winding road as almost 00:04:22.830 --> 00:04:25.890 align:middle line:84% to seem real, foliage shaken slowly 00:04:25.890 --> 00:04:27.870 align:middle line:84% and a little stiffly in the absence 00:04:27.870 --> 00:04:31.830 align:middle line:84% of its complementary colors, the distant animals like brush 00:04:31.830 --> 00:04:34.320 align:middle line:84% strokes quietly strayed through folds 00:04:34.320 --> 00:04:37.890 align:middle line:84% of a calm pastoral on which you gazed like a shepherd 00:04:37.890 --> 00:04:40.830 align:middle line:90% at the end of a very long day. 00:04:40.830 --> 00:04:42.960 align:middle line:84% At the edge, something moved though, then, 00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:46.770 align:middle line:84% a dot about to drop beyond the glowing, faintly vibrating 00:04:46.770 --> 00:04:49.200 align:middle line:90% horizon line forever. 00:04:49.200 --> 00:04:50.850 align:middle line:90% Was it a gleaner? 00:04:50.850 --> 00:04:53.760 align:middle line:84% Would he tumble off into a void, or slowly 00:04:53.760 --> 00:04:56.640 align:middle line:84% descend in invisible, dust-strewn valley, 00:04:56.640 --> 00:05:00.360 align:middle line:84% sure-footed, towards softening lights of a cottage 00:05:00.360 --> 00:05:03.690 align:middle line:84% now as he stood on the crest in his view. 00:05:03.690 --> 00:05:05.340 align:middle line:90% You'd never know. 00:05:05.340 --> 00:05:08.640 align:middle line:84% He hovered in his different flatness, briefly condensed 00:05:08.640 --> 00:05:12.690 align:middle line:84% to the clarity of miniature and chiaroscuro, 00:05:12.690 --> 00:05:16.890 align:middle line:84% a figure seeming vouchsafed from the rim of Achilles' shield. 00:05:16.890 --> 00:05:19.290 align:middle line:84% There were others there, too, then, or near there, 00:05:19.290 --> 00:05:23.550 align:middle line:84% for the gradually accustomed eye, small but intensely bright 00:05:23.550 --> 00:05:26.940 align:middle line:84% in their diminished space on the far side of the river, which 00:05:26.940 --> 00:05:30.310 align:middle line:84% worked its way up slowly from left to right. 00:05:30.310 --> 00:05:33.360 align:middle line:84% So this was like reading book six of the Aeneid, 00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:36.960 align:middle line:84% where those beyond Lethe strayed, illumined and free 00:05:36.960 --> 00:05:41.040 align:middle line:84% of the hurdled, careening private trains of association 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:43.440 align:middle line:84% which had bound them in the foreground. 00:05:43.440 --> 00:05:47.460 align:middle line:84% They, too, had had their faces glued to the austere parameter, 00:05:47.460 --> 00:05:50.460 align:middle line:84% the glass beyond which moved a world attired 00:05:50.460 --> 00:05:54.120 align:middle line:84% in its own banal and shifting exoticism. 00:05:54.120 --> 00:05:57.420 align:middle line:84% But now they were beyond the river, changed into distance 00:05:57.420 --> 00:06:01.290 align:middle line:84% and a strange lassitude, neither waking nor turning back 00:06:01.290 --> 00:06:04.800 align:middle line:84% into the dreams like you who beheld them. 00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:06.870 align:middle line:90% Above them moved their star. 00:06:06.870 --> 00:06:09.000 align:middle line:84% The sign of their changed freedom, 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:12.090 align:middle line:84% it blinked far away and in regular fashion 00:06:12.090 --> 00:06:15.900 align:middle line:84% through variegated thicknesses of arriving night. 00:06:15.900 --> 00:06:17.850 align:middle line:84% It was like the receding tail light 00:06:17.850 --> 00:06:21.330 align:middle line:84% on a jetliner carrying passengers to Bangkok or Sri 00:06:21.330 --> 00:06:24.900 align:middle line:84% Lanka, or a firefly surrounded by weaving hosts 00:06:24.900 --> 00:06:28.140 align:middle line:84% of his brethren through your neighbor's garden, suddenly 00:06:28.140 --> 00:06:32.880 align:middle line:84% returned, wafted back blind and estranged in the familiar wind, 00:06:32.880 --> 00:06:35.910 align:middle line:84% trailed in now with dark, like mist condensed, 00:06:35.910 --> 00:06:39.390 align:middle line:84% and driven landward off a bay itself light years away, 00:06:39.390 --> 00:06:42.690 align:middle line:84% but winking its rolling lights at you now. 00:06:42.690 --> 00:06:46.620 align:middle line:84% This also called you back, a barely visible grace moving 00:06:46.620 --> 00:06:48.270 align:middle line:90% under the blown branches. 00:06:48.270 --> 00:06:51.810 align:middle line:84% It wasn't, strictly speaking, an arbor, but you didn't mind. 00:06:51.810 --> 00:06:54.690 align:middle line:84% The hushed face arrived and receding back 00:06:54.690 --> 00:06:57.570 align:middle line:84% into dimness where light lost its way after wind 00:06:57.570 --> 00:06:59.920 align:middle line:90% in the leaves exhalation. 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:02.940 align:middle line:84% Your surface is waking like land rubbed over land 00:07:02.940 --> 00:07:05.760 align:middle line:84% and floated like leaves in their bed of wind. 00:07:05.760 --> 00:07:08.790 align:middle line:84% Then the sounds of water, as if from all around, 00:07:08.790 --> 00:07:12.240 align:middle line:84% or from no source outside you, and later, the cool, 00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:16.050 align:middle line:84% rising filter of daylight where birds called, and you both 00:07:16.050 --> 00:07:21.540 align:middle line:84% woke slowly, quieted and released in the pallid dawn. 00:07:21.540 --> 00:07:24.790 align:middle line:84% How strange that Aeneas turned from Carthage, 00:07:24.790 --> 00:07:27.870 align:middle line:84% which was to be ruins, from Dido, illumined soon 00:07:27.870 --> 00:07:31.800 align:middle line:84% after into the fierce specific immortality of the icon, 00:07:31.800 --> 00:07:35.580 align:middle line:84% from Anchises, borne long on his shoulders through many lands, 00:07:35.580 --> 00:07:38.880 align:middle line:84% and from Lethe and beyond the field of the blessed 00:07:38.880 --> 00:07:42.600 align:middle line:84% forgetfulness, he blessedly taught himself to forget. 00:07:42.600 --> 00:07:46.500 align:middle line:84% Like an autodidact, he tortured over the unmapped road forging 00:07:46.500 --> 00:07:50.190 align:middle line:84% Latium, from a wall-eyed stare moved forward constantly 00:07:50.190 --> 00:07:53.880 align:middle line:84% with nose pressed hard against the glass. 00:07:53.880 --> 00:07:57.300 align:middle line:84% You, too, woke into a different, decisive, and numbing sense 00:07:57.300 --> 00:07:58.380 align:middle line:90% of justice. 00:07:58.380 --> 00:08:01.650 align:middle line:84% It would soon get to the heart of all of it. 00:08:01.650 --> 00:08:04.950 align:middle line:84% The dreams were behind you then, as they were behind Aeneas 00:08:04.950 --> 00:08:08.310 align:middle line:84% when he turned from them, turned forward into the space he 00:08:08.310 --> 00:08:10.320 align:middle line:90% created as he moved. 00:08:10.320 --> 00:08:13.890 align:middle line:84% The large but determinable monogrammed plane, 00:08:13.890 --> 00:08:18.240 align:middle line:84% flat as a handkerchief, dry as the parched bed of Lethe, 00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:21.810 align:middle line:84% a personalized dispensation of forgetting and remembering, 00:08:21.810 --> 00:08:25.440 align:middle line:84% like sand traversed like a turned hourglass, 00:08:25.440 --> 00:08:27.570 align:middle line:84% beyond which gleamed his country, 00:08:27.570 --> 00:08:30.540 align:middle line:84% blinking with his name and the names of his race, 00:08:30.540 --> 00:08:33.240 align:middle line:90% as if prefigured in neon. 00:08:33.240 --> 00:08:35.880 align:middle line:84% As elsewhere in neon at night, the lights 00:08:35.880 --> 00:08:40.140 align:middle line:84% would gleam blue, then red, then blue across your river. 00:08:40.140 --> 00:08:42.659 align:middle line:84% They were mirrored and dazed by water 00:08:42.659 --> 00:08:44.760 align:middle line:90% and kept saying something. 00:08:44.760 --> 00:08:49.140 align:middle line:84% You won't say what it was, but it was one thing in red, then 00:08:49.140 --> 00:08:51.360 align:middle line:90% another in blue. 00:08:51.360 --> 00:08:54.270 align:middle line:84% That world is gone now, though, and no one it seems 00:08:54.270 --> 00:08:56.610 align:middle line:90% remembers that birthplace. 00:08:56.610 --> 00:08:59.190 align:middle line:84% You would journey forward like Aeneas toward that land 00:08:59.190 --> 00:09:03.720 align:middle line:84% if you could and found it, but you found it long ago. 00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:06.090 align:middle line:84% You have been waked into a space like the sleep 00:09:06.090 --> 00:09:09.570 align:middle line:84% beyond dreams, beyond the world in which wisdom 00:09:09.570 --> 00:09:12.090 align:middle line:90% was to know you did not know. 00:09:12.090 --> 00:09:14.810 align:middle line:84% Here, wisdom is to know you know. 00:09:14.810 --> 00:09:17.000 align:middle line:90%