WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.920 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.920 --> 00:00:04.480 align:middle line:84% But they're an odd relation to that sense of, 00:00:04.480 --> 00:00:08.109 align:middle line:84% that flow of people conceived as a public. 00:00:08.109 --> 00:00:10.480 align:middle line:84% I mean I'm not sure that the private life isn't very 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:13.120 align:middle line:84% like that, the way you look out at a public life, 00:00:13.120 --> 00:00:15.020 align:middle line:84% there's something streaming in you too that 00:00:15.020 --> 00:00:20.170 align:middle line:84% strange, and changing, and seems unidentifiable somehow. 00:00:20.170 --> 00:00:23.620 align:middle line:90% 00:00:23.620 --> 00:00:26.410 align:middle line:84% In a way, it's just not what people 00:00:26.410 --> 00:00:30.010 align:middle line:84% mistake an artistic relation to the world for, 00:00:30.010 --> 00:00:34.510 align:middle line:84% I mean, it's often thought of as a self-obsession, 00:00:34.510 --> 00:00:37.510 align:middle line:84% but to the extent that it's a self-absorption, 00:00:37.510 --> 00:00:40.630 align:middle line:84% it's an absorption into something such 00:00:40.630 --> 00:00:43.750 align:middle line:84% that you lose the sense of self, it seems to me partly. 00:00:43.750 --> 00:00:45.880 align:middle line:84% I mean, when you look at Cocteau's movie 00:00:45.880 --> 00:00:50.300 align:middle line:84% or say that the poet in that is savaged, right? 00:00:50.300 --> 00:00:54.580 align:middle line:84% This guy is utterly self-centered and in the most 00:00:54.580 --> 00:00:55.930 align:middle line:90% conventional sense. 00:00:55.930 --> 00:00:59.140 align:middle line:84% I mean a guy who says, the public loves me, 00:00:59.140 --> 00:01:02.740 align:middle line:84% and then his wiser friend says, the public is alone. 00:01:02.740 --> 00:01:07.060 align:middle line:90% 00:01:07.060 --> 00:01:11.560 align:middle line:90% Nice and nasty reply. 00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:13.300 align:middle line:84% One thing in Gerald Stern's house right 00:01:13.300 --> 00:01:16.600 align:middle line:84% now, I don't know why that segue happened exactly, 00:01:16.600 --> 00:01:19.270 align:middle line:84% except that he has this wonderful book from Umberto 00:01:19.270 --> 00:01:22.780 align:middle line:84% Saba, in which Saba is trying to describe poets 00:01:22.780 --> 00:01:25.660 align:middle line:84% and you can tell that he's not sure he has a taste for them 00:01:25.660 --> 00:01:31.000 align:middle line:84% either entirely, I mean he said once at a meal, "I was sitting, 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:34.570 align:middle line:90% I heard a critic describe-- 00:01:34.570 --> 00:01:39.430 align:middle line:84% praise a poet, Montale, to another poet who was seated 00:01:39.430 --> 00:01:46.420 align:middle line:84% at the table, and we were just at the pasta," he said. 00:01:46.420 --> 00:01:47.920 align:middle line:90% Italian. 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:51.370 align:middle line:84% And he said, "And this poet proceeded to poke out 00:01:51.370 --> 00:01:55.000 align:middle line:90% the critic's eye with a fork." 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:58.030 align:middle line:84% His indignation is more that they were just at the pasta, 00:01:58.030 --> 00:02:00.250 align:middle line:90% than anything else. 00:02:00.250 --> 00:02:03.040 align:middle line:84% He says, "With this fortunately thwarted act, 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:06.730 align:middle line:84% the young and slightly drunk Ungaretti demonstrated how much 00:02:06.730 --> 00:02:10.720 align:middle line:84% of a poet he was, and how irremediable infantile they 00:02:10.720 --> 00:02:12.430 align:middle line:90% are." 00:02:12.430 --> 00:02:14.890 align:middle line:90% I don't know, I'm not sure. 00:02:14.890 --> 00:02:27.440 align:middle line:90% 00:02:27.440 --> 00:02:29.810 align:middle line:90% Scenes from a Death. 00:02:29.810 --> 00:02:35.300 align:middle line:84% This is a poem, to which you just heard an allusion out of. 00:02:35.300 --> 00:02:40.280 align:middle line:84% It mostly owes its occasions and even much of its refrain 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:44.780 align:middle line:84% language to the Platonic account of the death of Socrates. 00:02:44.780 --> 00:02:48.530 align:middle line:90% 00:02:48.530 --> 00:02:51.940 align:middle line:84% The Platonic line that is cited at the beginning 00:02:51.940 --> 00:02:56.065 align:middle line:84% goes, I wrapped my face in my cloak and wept for myself. 00:02:56.065 --> 00:03:03.130 align:middle line:90% 00:03:03.130 --> 00:03:07.660 align:middle line:84% The women had been sent away so there would be no scenes, 00:03:07.660 --> 00:03:09.340 align:middle line:84% but when their friend had actually 00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:14.320 align:middle line:84% drunk the cup of poison, then the men broke down like women 00:03:14.320 --> 00:03:15.085 align:middle line:90% and they wept. 00:03:15.085 --> 00:03:19.190 align:middle line:90% 00:03:19.190 --> 00:03:22.520 align:middle line:84% The death of earth is to become water, and the death of water 00:03:22.520 --> 00:03:26.030 align:middle line:84% is to become air, and the death of air is to become fire, 00:03:26.030 --> 00:03:29.300 align:middle line:90% and reversely, Heraclitus says. 00:03:29.300 --> 00:03:37.150 align:middle line:84% I say the death of us is to become a plane appeared 00:03:37.150 --> 00:03:41.140 align:middle line:84% in the water, and a sail in the air, the lichen on the crag 00:03:41.140 --> 00:03:44.800 align:middle line:84% was a gold version of the greens you could see upright 00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:49.120 align:middle line:84% in the oncoming sea, the tide was timed just right, 00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:52.720 align:middle line:84% and in our eyes the brown and the blue things bloomed. 00:03:52.720 --> 00:03:56.940 align:middle line:90% 00:03:56.940 --> 00:04:00.060 align:middle line:84% "The universe is transformation." says the stoic, 00:04:00.060 --> 00:04:02.280 align:middle line:90% in a mystic moment. 00:04:02.280 --> 00:04:05.520 align:middle line:90% Life is only an opinion. 00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:08.340 align:middle line:84% It's philosophy he loves, not poetry, 00:04:08.340 --> 00:04:11.580 align:middle line:90% which he adjudges ornamental. 00:04:11.580 --> 00:04:14.280 align:middle line:84% What he does deem necessary though is just 00:04:14.280 --> 00:04:16.709 align:middle line:84% exactly what I'd swear a poet does, 00:04:16.709 --> 00:04:20.880 align:middle line:84% make for yourself a definition or description of the thing 00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:24.600 align:middle line:84% which is presented you, so as to see distinctly what kind 00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:28.020 align:middle line:84% of thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, 00:04:28.020 --> 00:04:30.750 align:middle line:84% in its completeness, tell yourself 00:04:30.750 --> 00:04:33.450 align:middle line:84% its proper name, and the names of the things 00:04:33.450 --> 00:04:37.050 align:middle line:84% of which it's been compounded, and the others into which it 00:04:37.050 --> 00:04:38.970 align:middle line:90% will resolve. 00:04:38.970 --> 00:04:44.460 align:middle line:84% Look at things, so as to see what kind of universe this is. 00:04:44.460 --> 00:04:48.390 align:middle line:90% 00:04:48.390 --> 00:04:52.770 align:middle line:84% The day somebody dies, you want never to go to sleep, 00:04:52.770 --> 00:04:57.180 align:middle line:84% you want the day in which he was alive never to end, 00:04:57.180 --> 00:05:02.280 align:middle line:84% this darkness fall, or does the movie house of our mentality 00:05:02.280 --> 00:05:07.020 align:middle line:84% just open, and it's a sense of inside spread. 00:05:07.020 --> 00:05:09.720 align:middle line:90% Doesn't darkness escape from us? 00:05:09.720 --> 00:05:11.880 align:middle line:84% To comprehend the world as a whole, 00:05:11.880 --> 00:05:16.680 align:middle line:84% take it or leave it in other words, so we can fall asleep. 00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:20.820 align:middle line:84% Some weird bird worried the dormant EEG, 00:05:20.820 --> 00:05:23.850 align:middle line:90% small hours in the scullery. 00:05:23.850 --> 00:05:28.200 align:middle line:84% The darkness rose, it didn't fall to keep us all in mind, 00:05:28.200 --> 00:05:33.300 align:middle line:84% where we can't tell branch from branch, or time from time, 00:05:33.300 --> 00:05:37.080 align:middle line:84% but dot by dot we needle our way back into the sky, 00:05:37.080 --> 00:05:39.360 align:middle line:84% we reconstruct the-- count them-- 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:43.840 align:middle line:84% 88 constellatory big ideas starring animals first, 00:05:43.840 --> 00:05:47.130 align:middle line:84% then a hunter whose weaponry sparkles, 00:05:47.130 --> 00:05:50.070 align:middle line:84% then the mind bends down to its abode 00:05:50.070 --> 00:05:54.060 align:middle line:84% and puts a chained woman near a winged horse. 00:05:54.060 --> 00:05:57.300 align:middle line:84% Now we have a story again, one we can live under, 00:05:57.300 --> 00:06:01.860 align:middle line:84% because lines lead to points, because points lead to lines. 00:06:01.860 --> 00:06:05.370 align:middle line:84% We thought the big was strong, the little weak, 00:06:05.370 --> 00:06:09.420 align:middle line:84% but couldn't stop the bird from screaming or the knight 00:06:09.420 --> 00:06:14.290 align:middle line:84% from shaking in that brainstorm's beak. 00:06:14.290 --> 00:06:19.670 align:middle line:84% The women had been sent away, so there would be no scenes; 00:06:19.670 --> 00:06:23.750 align:middle line:84% when their friend had actually drunk the cup of poison, 00:06:23.750 --> 00:06:26.570 align:middle line:84% then the men broke down like women and they wept. 00:06:26.570 --> 00:06:30.670 align:middle line:90% 00:06:30.670 --> 00:06:34.060 align:middle line:84% It rains all day, and small birds 00:06:34.060 --> 00:06:37.870 align:middle line:84% tremble in the cliffside tree that's called a mountain ash, 00:06:37.870 --> 00:06:41.440 align:middle line:84% its leaves are feathery as ironed filings, 00:06:41.440 --> 00:06:46.660 align:middle line:84% radiant around a field of force, the birds sit there in all 00:06:46.660 --> 00:06:50.320 align:middle line:90% that shivering, and shiver. 00:06:50.320 --> 00:06:53.980 align:middle line:84% Easiest to call it weather, tree with wind trouble, 00:06:53.980 --> 00:06:58.930 align:middle line:84% ran with rain, but nature's nowhere without weather, nowhere 00:06:58.930 --> 00:07:02.260 align:middle line:84% outside ripples of relation, shifting, 00:07:02.260 --> 00:07:05.470 align:middle line:84% shimmering, showering, still, the air 00:07:05.470 --> 00:07:08.620 align:middle line:90% is parted, then departed. 00:07:08.620 --> 00:07:13.870 align:middle line:84% Seaming soaks the fabric of it, the physical fact, 00:07:13.870 --> 00:07:17.080 align:middle line:84% where I'd always loved the thought of God, 00:07:17.080 --> 00:07:19.900 align:middle line:90% without material, he has no act. 00:07:19.900 --> 00:07:23.890 align:middle line:90% 00:07:23.890 --> 00:07:27.520 align:middle line:84% The cars approach and then get swallowed up in wet hedge, 00:07:27.520 --> 00:07:31.060 align:middle line:90% shine transmogrified to hiss. 00:07:31.060 --> 00:07:36.100 align:middle line:84% The hedge grows fast and faster, on this diet of wet traffic 00:07:36.100 --> 00:07:39.700 align:middle line:90% deepening an eye and ear. 00:07:39.700 --> 00:07:42.700 align:middle line:84% The kids arrived by air from several thousand miles away. 00:07:42.700 --> 00:07:46.180 align:middle line:84% They wore their Walkman even when they slept. 00:07:46.180 --> 00:07:50.110 align:middle line:84% They made a mental map of airwaves: "You get KISS here," 00:07:50.110 --> 00:07:51.730 align:middle line:90% said the 12-year-old. 00:07:51.730 --> 00:07:54.258 align:middle line:84% I said, "I fear it's not the same." 00:07:54.258 --> 00:07:56.050 align:middle line:84% "You should have sent them somewhere else," 00:07:56.050 --> 00:07:57.940 align:middle line:90% said the Bulgarian. 00:07:57.940 --> 00:08:02.200 align:middle line:84% "He isn't famous," I said kidward, "for his tact." 00:08:02.200 --> 00:08:04.660 align:middle line:84% "He's not a lot of things," the eight-year-old replied, 00:08:04.660 --> 00:08:07.930 align:middle line:84% "You should have thought of that, before you married him." 00:08:07.930 --> 00:08:10.570 align:middle line:84% I wanted them to tell the children everything, the ins 00:08:10.570 --> 00:08:12.760 align:middle line:84% and outs, the ups and downs, beginning with it, 00:08:12.760 --> 00:08:15.325 align:middle line:84% wasn't want the thought that got me married? 00:08:15.325 --> 00:08:18.720 align:middle line:90% 00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:23.000 align:middle line:84% What was it Angelus Silesius was said to have remarked? 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:26.360 align:middle line:84% The eye I see God through is the same eye 00:08:26.360 --> 00:08:29.150 align:middle line:90% through which God sees me. 00:08:29.150 --> 00:08:32.690 align:middle line:84% It shakes the ground of human beings. 00:08:32.690 --> 00:08:36.380 align:middle line:84% Ultimately what is underlying us? 00:08:36.380 --> 00:08:39.500 align:middle line:84% Stretch of ordinary landscape can 00:08:39.500 --> 00:08:42.530 align:middle line:84% become a luxury, the grains of greens, 00:08:42.530 --> 00:08:48.300 align:middle line:84% the ripples off the headland, ground as figure's emanation. 00:08:48.300 --> 00:08:53.420 align:middle line:84% The women had been sent away, so there would be no scenes, 00:08:53.420 --> 00:08:54.920 align:middle line:84% but when their friend had actually 00:08:54.920 --> 00:08:58.920 align:middle line:84% drunk the cup of poison, then the men broke down like women 00:08:58.920 --> 00:08:59.710 align:middle line:90% and they wept. 00:08:59.710 --> 00:09:02.970 align:middle line:90% 00:09:02.970 --> 00:09:08.220 align:middle line:84% In time, the saying that, "Is you there in the mirror?" 00:09:08.220 --> 00:09:13.270 align:middle line:84% turned to, "This is me," for who can bear the proper, this is I, 00:09:13.270 --> 00:09:15.660 align:middle line:84% when is embarrassed almost, putting oneself 00:09:15.660 --> 00:09:18.060 align:middle line:84% in the nominative, there where it is not entirely 00:09:18.060 --> 00:09:20.160 align:middle line:90% the objective's opposite. 00:09:20.160 --> 00:09:24.540 align:middle line:84% The mirror is the marriage, or the language is. 00:09:24.540 --> 00:09:29.380 align:middle line:84% We put ourselves in it, it put ourselves in it. 00:09:29.380 --> 00:09:31.860 align:middle line:90% We put itself in it. 00:09:31.860 --> 00:09:33.870 align:middle line:90% It put ourselves in us. 00:09:33.870 --> 00:09:36.630 align:middle line:90% 00:09:36.630 --> 00:09:39.720 align:middle line:84% "Tell me what I'll have to do," he asked the man who bore 00:09:39.720 --> 00:09:41.640 align:middle line:90% the cup. 00:09:41.640 --> 00:09:46.050 align:middle line:84% "You drink it, you walk around until your legs feel heavy, 00:09:46.050 --> 00:09:48.150 align:middle line:90% then lie down. 00:09:48.150 --> 00:09:52.230 align:middle line:84% You'll feel the coldness in your feet, and then your groin, 00:09:52.230 --> 00:09:56.310 align:middle line:84% and when it reaches to your chest it will be over." 00:09:56.310 --> 00:09:59.070 align:middle line:84% "Only wait, there's time, don't do it yet," 00:09:59.070 --> 00:10:01.650 align:middle line:90% the friends began to beg. 00:10:01.650 --> 00:10:05.370 align:middle line:84% He answered, "No, it's better I face up to this at once." 00:10:05.370 --> 00:10:09.270 align:middle line:90% 00:10:09.270 --> 00:10:14.670 align:middle line:84% His floatings, fluttering, these scraps 00:10:14.670 --> 00:10:19.260 align:middle line:84% of utter delicacy, petal tissue, white with sunlight in them, 00:10:19.260 --> 00:10:22.860 align:middle line:84% filled to the cells with definition, all they are 00:10:22.860 --> 00:10:26.910 align:middle line:84% is pairs of pure appearance, little flappers 00:10:26.910 --> 00:10:28.680 align:middle line:90% in the grasses of a summer. 00:10:28.680 --> 00:10:32.790 align:middle line:84% What comes over us to see such butterflies, 00:10:32.790 --> 00:10:37.110 align:middle line:84% where no bulldozing yet has drowned their soundings out, 00:10:37.110 --> 00:10:40.050 align:middle line:84% comes over us as something monstrous. 00:10:40.050 --> 00:10:43.350 align:middle line:84% It's a tenderness, the kind I felt abroad 00:10:43.350 --> 00:10:47.910 align:middle line:84% in nations, seeing all the human variations 00:10:47.910 --> 00:10:51.750 align:middle line:90% on a theme of vulnerability. 00:10:51.750 --> 00:10:54.040 align:middle line:84% "Can't you tell us anything else?" 00:10:54.040 --> 00:10:56.310 align:middle line:90% asked Crito. 00:10:56.310 --> 00:10:59.220 align:middle line:84% But the cold had risen to the face, 00:10:59.220 --> 00:11:02.490 align:middle line:90% and frozen every answering away. 00:11:02.490 --> 00:11:08.556 align:middle line:84% When Crito saw it, then he closed his mouth and eyes. 00:11:08.556 --> 00:11:12.900 align:middle line:84% And so, we owe god an animal became 00:11:12.900 --> 00:11:15.500 align:middle line:90% the final words of Socrates. 00:11:15.500 --> 00:11:16.000 align:middle line:90%