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Morton Marcus: Good evening, everybody. This is Mort Marcus, this is the Poetry Show and a very special night tonight doing something we don't normally do: one, our guest, who is the wonderful Paul Lee, who I will just describe as a renaissance

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man, he has been helping the homeless here and leading scholarship. You probably heard announcements over the air. He is the head of the United Agency here in Santa Cruz, was up at UCSC in Religious Studies, Classics, History of

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Consciousness, and he is off very soon to The New School of Social Research in New York to teach several classes there this winter. We are going to sit around tonight and we are going to talk about some favorite passages of Paul's and mine in

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poetry, and have a roundtable discussion that two old friends who love the art of poetry would hopefully have. We hope this inspires you to go and read these poems, many of which you know, many of which you probably read. Paul, welcome to the

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Poetry Show, this is long overdue. Paul Lee: Hi Mort, and I'm so glad to be here. And what better than to go back and start with Homer. Morton Marcus: Great, let's do it. Tell us what you're going to

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do. Paul Lee: Well, Homer was opened up for me, even though I was teaching it at Harvard as a graduate student, they had a Humanities II course at Harvard called "The Epic and the Novel"

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and it started out with Homer. So there's no better way to learn something than to try to teach it. And there were terrific professors involved with the course: John Finley, who was a classics professor; and Cedric Whitman, who wrote an

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interesting- who's a classics professor and wrote a great book on the Iliad. So they were wonderful to teach under, and what opened up the Homeric similes for me, which are at the heart of the Homeric poems, was a single essay written by a guy

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who taught at The New School, Kurt Riezler. And the title of the essay is, "Homer's Contribution to the Meaning of Truth," which is and odd title but just rings a bell in terms of what he does for Homeric similes. He uses William

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Cooper's translation, which is a little arcane and flowery for our ear, but there's just no better given the passage that he interprets, and it's when Odysseus returns home to Ithica and is still disguised as a beggar and sits at Penelope's

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feet and sings songs about Odysseus and makes her cry not knowing that her husband is singing to her. And the passage in question is from the 19th book of the Odyssey, and goes as follows in the William Cooper translation:

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She, melting at the sound, with drops of tend’rest grief her cheeks bedewed and as the snow, by Zephyrus diffused, melts on the mountain top, when Eurus breathes and fills the channels of the running streams, so melted she, and down her lovely

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cheeks poured fast the tears, him mourning as remote, who sat beside her. There's nothing as tight in poetry that I know of, just those last lines, "Him morning as remote, who sat beside her,"

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I thought about that for a long time. It's a Latinate, in its efficiency and its power. And I haven't even looked up recently in Fitzgerald or the other guy that we like- Morton Marcus: Richmond Latimore.

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Paul Lee: Yeah, Latimore, just to see how they render the lines. But what Riezler does with this specific simile is to show how if you pause long enough to look at it, you see a dynamic that expresses Penelope's entire fate. In other

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words, she's grown hard and rigid and cold in the twenty year period that Odysseus has been away. And now that he's there disguised as a beggar singing songs, "The spring winds blowing across the mountain top to turn the snows into spring

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streams," are her tears. And what Riezler takes pains to show you is that she now is about to thaw and melt and turn into spring upon the return of her husband. And this simile in this reference to a mountain top and the spring streams coming

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because of the winds blowing on the snow and the ice is an expression of Penelope's face- fate. And he does that with a couple of similes and- Morton Marcus: It's also the coming of spring, which is the

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time of rebirth, which is what is actually happening here also. Paul Lee: Yep. Morton Marcus: And which will end with husband and wife together.

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Paul Lee: And this goes directly to your fascination with Odysseus' bed, which is one living olive tree- Morton Marcus: Right. Paul Lee: That you can kind of imagine is budding at the very

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moment that she's melting and feels the portent of spring. Morton Marcus: Well, we'll read that section in a second. But go on with this, we talked about this. Paul Lee: So what that opened up for me was to really pay

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attention and to stop down, you have to really be more patient than I think most readers realize to let the Homeric similes open up for you. You really must attend to them. They're so visual, so dynamic in their structure, that unless you

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pause long enough to capture what begins to move as a result of the simile, comparing Penelope to a frozen mountaintop, and the spring's streams that are her tears. You just have to sit there as it were, and look at her melting

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and her thawing, and this rigidity and hardness turning soft and opening her to welcoming her husband. Morton Marcus: Yeah, and as people out there probably know -- maybe some of you don't -- in the Odyssey, Odysseus returning

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from the Trojan War, which is the subject of the Iliad, is because of several angry gods, tossed hither and yon throughout the Mediterranean, and does not get home for twenty years. Penelope, meanwhile, has been inundated by a number of suitors

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who want Odysseus' land as well as his wife. And she has tried to figure every way to avoid them, dissuade them, and hold them at arm's length. And she has become this very, very statue-like, stone-cold woman who Paul is talking about. So

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shall we go on from there? Paul Lee: Well, what I want to do is switch to the Iliad, unless you want to go to the olive tree bed? Morton Marcus: Right, let's go to the olive bed, okay.

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Paul Lee: Okay, let me set it up for you. Morton Marcus: Sure. Paul Lee: Odysseus is adrift at sea for x number of days and he finally sees land in sight where he manages to win land and crawl

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ashore. [Caughs] Excuse me, clouded with brine, looking at the abyss behind that he's just escaped from. He thinks about whether he should just stay on the shore and be at the mercy of marauding animals or go up into an olive thicket and bed down

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under the fallen leaves, which he does. And then Homer has this great simile about a farmer who's way out in his field and saves a spark from his fire so he can make a fire the next day. So Odysseus hid himself, that he went home and so on, so on(?).

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And so what this portends is that when he comes home and the recognition scene occurs, you will now indicate why there's this simile resonance between the olive thicket that saves him from the ocean and enables him to sleep at night so that he

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can- went home and so on, so on(?) to come home to his olive bed. Morton Marcus: Okay, described still posing as a beggar, he has worked his way into the palace, his own palace, and has made

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himself known to his son and has then killed all the suitors and many things happen. He now comes to Penelope who he has met once before in the scene that Paul just read to you. And now he says, look, I am really your husband, Odysseus. And she said,

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well, why should I believe you? Men have been trying to trick me for twenty years. But at the same time, he has tested her faithfulness, by making believe that he is a beggar who knew Odysseus. Now, she is going to test him and she denies him in

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many ways, refusing to allow him into the bedroom. And he has taken all this with a bit of agitation but understanding, but now she does something that absolutely infuriates him and it's very understandable as you can read this. And Eurycleia is

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the maid, the maid of the bedroom. So she says to Eurycleia when Odysseus is now before her, washed and beautiful: "Make up this bed for this man, Eurycleia, place it outside the

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bed chamber my lord built with his own hands, pile the big bed with fleeces, rugs, and sheets of purest linen." With this she tried him to the breaking point and he turned on her in a flashing rage. "Woman, by heaven you've stung me now, who dared

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to move my bed. No builder had the skill for that unless a god came down to turn the trick. No mortal in his best days could budge it with a crowbar. There is our pact and pledge, our secret sign built into that bed, my handiwork and no one else's.

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An old trunk of olive grew like a pillar on the building plot and I laid out our bedroom around that tree, lined up the stone walls, built the walls and roof, gave it a doorway and smooth-fitting doors. Then I lopped off the silvery leaves

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and branches, yawed and shaped that stump from the roots up into a bed post, drilled it, let it serve as model for the rest. I planed them all, and inlayed them all with silver, gold, and ivory, and stretched a bed between, a pliant web of oxide

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thongs dyed crimson. There's our sign, I know no more, could someone else's hand have sewn that trunk and dragged the frame away?" Their secret, as she heard it told, her knees grew tremulous and weak, her heart failed her. With eyes brimming

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tears, she ran to him throwing her arms around his neck and kissed him. Paul Lee: And then Homer goes on to give a simile about how a swimmer caught at sea is now safe at home, as they enclose

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one another in their arms. Morton Marcus: Right, and suddenly the olive has come back from what shielded him on the shore- Paul Lee: Yep.

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Morton Marcus: -to this wonderful image of this bed sprung from the earth, this powerful image of the natural world, which will now enfold them once more in the holy domestic bedstead.

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Paul Lee: So, what you have to understand here too, is that Homer represents the time when human beings were still enclosed in the natural world. He represents oral poetry, he's prior to literacy, he's prior to what we call rational

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self-consciousness, he's the poet of the nation singing the songs that teach what anyone needs to learn, and it's all done orally. So it's so strange for us to pick up, I think, on these similes in Homer because everything relates to everything

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else. And these natural forces, these natural powers, the names of springs, the names of streams, the names of mountains, the names of winds, are all powers, natural powers that, that impinge upon human life and give expression to various

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aspects of human life. We've lost that, I think, almost completely, namely, this reciprocity, this morphic resonance, with all of these natural powers that make up the simile and imply the intense and acute relationship of human

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beings with natural powers. Morton Marcus: Beautiful, that you can really see that going on when we now get to the Odyssey, which is really sort of going backward. The Odyssey of course occurs, chronologically anyway,

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after the writing of the Iliad. So now we're going back to the walls of Troy- Paul Lee: And the death of Patroclus, Achilles' alter ego who goes out wearing Achilles' armor, and is killed by Hector,

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and there's a prophecy that is like a red thread through the Iliad, that after Hector, you shall die. And whenever Achilles meets his mother, Thetis, in the Iliad, she laments, "Untimely born, my poor child, that you should be short-lived of all

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men." So this odd fate of Achilles to die at Troy is uniquely revealed to him and puts a kind of chip on his shoulder that he kind of forces Agamemnon to knock off, which produces the whole early opening of the poem, and their

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alienation, one from the other, where Achille sits in ruins by ships. Well, the Trojan forces are impinging on the Achaeans and so Achilles finally relents and lets Patroclus go in wearing his armor. Hector kills him and the prophecy reads, after Hector

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you shall die. So upon hearing of the death of Patroclus, his closest and dearest friend, he gave orders to his companions to set a great cauldron across the fire, so that with all speed they could wash away the clouded blood from Patroclus. They set

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up over the blaze of the fire a bathwater cauldron and poured water into it and put logs underneath and kindled them. The fire worked on the swell of the cauldron and the water heated and when the water had come to a boil in the shining bronze, then

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they washed the body and anointed it softly with olive oil and stopped the gashes in his body with stored up [unidentified], and laid him on a bed, and shrouded him in a thin sheet from head to foot, and covered that over with a

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white mantle. Now get the image of Patroclus prepared for burial in this way, with Achilles now going out to kill Hector for revenging, avenging the death of Patroclus, knowing that when he does so, he's sealing his own fate. And maybe the greatest

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words of the Iliad is when Achilles finally kills Hector and says, "Die and I will take my own death whenever the gods decree it," and accepts his fate in that moment. Andromache, the wife of Hector, hadn't heard that this fate had befallen her

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husband, because now Achilles has tied thongs into the tendons behind Hector's feet and is dragging him around the battlements of Troy and all that head that was one so handsome, is now tumbled in the dust. So she spoke in tears, but the wife

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of Hector had not yet heard, for no sure messenger had come to her and told her how her husband had held his ground there outside the gates. But she was weaving a web in the inner room of the high house, a red folding robe, and in working elaborate

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figures, she called out to the house to her lovely haired handmaidens to set a great cauldron over the fire, so that there would be hot water for Hector's bath as he came back out of the fighting. "Poor innocent, nor knew how, fire

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from waters for bathing, Pallas Athena had cut him down at the hands of Achilles." Morton Marcus: "Pallas Athena had cut him down at the hands of Achilles," the gods of the natural world have taken sides

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and have caused, or seem to have caused, many of the events that happened. Athena, who of course is Odysseus' guiding spirit, has actually been a leading figure in causing Hector's death and- to cause the victory of the Achaeans. What interests me

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though, Paul, I'm not going to read any part of this because they're double and triple ironies that are the essence of this whole Homeric epic, not only this one, but also- Paul Lee: It's symphonic, it's symphonic, it mounts upon

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mounting as you get into it. Morton Marcus: Because Hector also goes out to face his death when he faces Achilles. And there are long talks between he and his father, Priam, who says you don't have to go out there.

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And Hector, who has everything to live for, is the father, the perfect married man, the great hero, the man of pure honor and courage, goes out. And the man who is sophisticated, who is civilized, goes out to meet Achilles, who is not married,

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who is a half barbarian, who complains, who is bitter and nasty. Paul Lee: I'd like to hack away your meat and eat it raw. Morton Marcus: Yes, he's not the sort of the person you have

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dinner with [cross talk], he's totally out of his head. Paul Lee: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And they both go out and meet that destiny, understanding that they must play this part on the world

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stage. Paul Lee: And one of the tenderest moments in Homer is when Hector is about to go into battle, he says goodbye to his son, and he's got his war, you know, armamentum on and then his

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helmet scares his son, who starts to cry and Hector laughs and takes it off. There's just a little moment between Hector and his son before he goes into battle. It's so tender and so- Morton Marcus: Well, just everything is so great. Hector

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is the great man, though he also likes to have authority, as a counsel before how they're going to treat some of the battles make very clear. But there is this wonderful scene when he finally gets out to face Achilles, he knows he has to do

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it. And here comes Achilles, the raging Achilles, I mean, he's like "Raging Bull," Jake LaMotta, someone like that. Paul Lee: He's on fire; he's on fire. Morton Marcus: And what does Hector do? He runs away.

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Paul Lee: Yeah. Morton Marcus: He is absolutely terrified and runs away, so even the great heroes face this cowardice. And then he turns around, faces Achilles and knows that he's facing his own death.

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Paul Lee: And that moment is one of the most dramatic moments in the Iliad because Hector says, I will give you the following ransom: I own seven cities, x number of women, gold weighed out according to your weight. I mean, he offers him like a- half

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the world, and he's got him by the knees, which is a way of getting the moment to make your entreaty to spare your life, and that's when Achilles says, "I'd rather hack away your meat and eat it raw." I mean, you die a dog.

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Morton Marcus: I mean actually, what also happens here is when Hector does face him, he throws the spear of long shadows and he hits him right in the center of his armor. Paul Lee: Yeah.

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Morton Marcus: But it is armor that his mother, Thetis, has had the god of the fourth- Paul Lee: Hephaestus. Morton Marcus: Hephaestus make up and it's invincible. So there

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is an irony too, actually at any other time, Achilles- well, Achilles wouldn't have died anyway because he is invincible himself, except for one area in his body, which is a further irony, this whole war has been caused because the gods have

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come down to a shepherd by the name of Paris, and asked him who's the most beautiful woman in the world. And instead of saying Hera, instead of saying Athena, instead of saying Aphrodite, he says Helen, and then-

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Paul Lee: The wife of Menelaus. Morton Marcus: The wife of Menelaus, and everything just goes on from there, but it will be the same Paris who will stand and shoot the arrow, which again will guided by one of the gods,

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and it will hit Achilles in the only vulnerable part he has, which is in his heel. So the irony is, it's almost like the circle has come around there. Paul Lee: So the ancient imagination where all of these

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figures and these gods, who are powers of being, lived with such immense power, I mean, it's- and to think that it was basically intact up until the last century. There was a guy at Harvard named Millman Perry, who went to remote areas of

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Yugoslavia in order to record the living minstrels who sang in the Homeric tradition. And that was one of the ways in which the Homeric poems were discovered according to their structure where they're mostly repetitive given the epithets and the stock

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phrases. So for instance, when I read the passage about Achilles calling out to his henchmen to set great cauldrons over the fire for Patroclus, that's simply repeated again when it's Andromache calling out to her lovely haired handmaidens to set

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water over the fire for Hector's bathing, and then "the poor innocent nor knew how far from waters for bathing." So you have these stock formulae that are varied according to the situation, but continue throughout the poem that gives

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it its structure and its power. I mean, it's amazing that this repetitive thing should still be so lively and vivid. Morton Marcus: You know, it is amazing. Shall we leave the- Paul Lee: We'll have to or we're going to get stuck here forever.

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Morton Marcus: Forever. I mean, Homer wouldn't mind. Where should we go from here? Paul Lee: I don't know. You want to go to MacNeice? Morton Marcus: Let's go to Louis MacNeice. But first, I think

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this is a good time to take a break. And what we will do is I'll make my announcements very quickly here, and then we will get on to the 20th century and Louis MacNeice. And if you haven't heard of Louis MacNeice, we'll be introducing you to a

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new poet who is becoming more and more eminent in English letters- Paul Lee: Oh, really? Morton Marcus: -the year since his death. First of all, the

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Poetry Santa Cruz series at the Bookshop Santa Cruz this coming Tuesday is William Olsen and Nancy Eimers at the Bookshop at 7:30. They are both published poets, they both have books out and they are this month's Poetry Santa Cruz series. William

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Olsen, Nancy Eimers, at the Bookshop Santa Cruz at 7:30 on Tuesday. You can also learn more about them and the reading by going to your computer and going to www.PoetrySantaCruz.org. Also, tonight, and I will announce this again right after

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the Poetry Show, stay tuned for "From the Bookshelf" hosted by the inimitable Billie Harris. Tonight Billie brings us local author Eliza Livingston, reading excerpts from her novel, "Bittersweet." That's nine o'clock tonight, and now we're

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back here with Louis MacNeice. Now, you want me to give a bio of him real quick? Paul Lee: Yeah, why don't you do that. I just want to say that we got two poems now: one is a section from a long poem by

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MacNeice called, "Autumn Journal," and this is a part 13 which is usually called, "Goodbye now, Plato and Hegel," which is the closing line of the poem. And the other poem is, "The Holy Office," by James Joyce. They're actually

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companion poems. One is MacNeice resentful about his Oxford education which made him ill equipped to live in a world like we've got, and the Joyce poem, "The Holy Office," is his resentment against being born and raised a Roman Catholic and

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how grandmother church left him severely in the lurch. So both these poems have been a kind of haunting- I don't know what. I mean, I read them when I was in college, and I somehow saw them as comparable and that they were somehow expressive of my fate.

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And when I was denied tenure at the university and sort of half-mockingly called myself a failed intellectual, it's these poems that express that fate that I have fulfilled. Ha, no kidding! [Laughs]

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Morton Marcus: Wow. Paul Lee: Really, they were prophetic and, you know, it's so odd to read them that I see them kind of come true in my own life.

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Morton Marcus: Well, let me give a quick introduction to our dear SOAPSUDS by Louis MacNeice, written late in his life in friend Louis MacNeice. MacNeice as born in 1907, yep, and was orn in Belfast, Northern reland. He grew up and went to

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xford and became associated ith the Oxford poets, which ere Auden, Spender, and Day-Lewis. He is different from them because they reall developed a political bias 1963, which was the year of his death.

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which was very leftist durin the 30s, which was very much i fashion, and then most of th m became very conservati e thereafter. Louis MacNeice nev r adopted the left or the rig t politically. In fact, to me, e is really a poet almost

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f melancholy. He is a poet wh always talks about thing This brand of soap has the same smell as ones in the big house ending, and has a definite s nse of the limitations of the h man being. In many ways he al ost is a perfect bridge be

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ween Homer and them. But he al o has Auden's sense of the pla n language, which he gives ver , very vivid images for. The oth r thing about him -- and I'm goi g to read a short poem bef re Paul reads what he's goi g to read by him -- the oth

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r thing is, he is really in lov with things of this world. And it is the things of this wor d, of course, that do depart, an so there is this tension wi hin him. Let me read him, the po m, "Soapsuds" by him, and not ce how it reminds him of his chi

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dhood. And notice what hap ens to the image of playing cro uet at the end of this poem it becomes very, very meta hysical and very, very movi g. Here is: he visited when he was eight. The walls of the bathroom opened

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to reveal a lawn, where a great yellow hall- where a great yellow ball rolls- [Commentary] Let me fit- star this over. First of all, he i in the bathroom as an old man - I should tell you this isn'

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revealed till the end -- he's i the bathroom as an old man an the smell of this soap bring him back talking in the thir person to when he was eight y ars old. So, let's go ag SOAPSUDS

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This brand of soap has the same smell as once in the big house he visited when he was eight: the walls of the bathroom open to reveal a lawn where a great yellow ball rolls back through a hoop to rest at the head of a mallet held in the hands of a

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child. And these were the joys of that house: a tower with a telescope; two great faded globes, one of the earth, one of the stars; a stuffed black dog in the hall; a walled garden with bees; a

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rabbit warren; a rookery; a vine under glass, the sea. Through hoops- oh! To which- the sea- To which he has now returned. The day of course is fine, and a grown up voice cries, "Play!" The mallet slowly swings, then

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crack, a great gong booms from the dog-dark hall, and the ball skims forward through the hoop, and then through the next, and then Through hoops where no hoops were and each dissolves in turn,

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and the grass has grown head high, and an angry voice cries, "Play." But the ball is lost and the mallet slipped long since from the hands under the running faucet that are not the hands of a child.

00:29:04.190 - 00:29:23.480

And very simply that is an old man actually in the year of his death remembering his youth. And suddenly the image of the game of croquet becomes an endless series of these little wickets, which go on for eternity as sort of a resonance of a life that is

00:29:23.480 - 00:29:37.350

about to be lost. Paul Lee: So it's exactly the case with this passage from, "Autumn Journal," where he looks back on his education and regrets it. I mean, he's full of resentment over it, and it still

00:29:37.350 - 00:29:54.520

prepared him for the world that he finds himself in. And it picks up all the themes that- that you said, Morton. Which things being so, as we said when we studied the classics. Now, I ought to be glad that I studied the classics

00:29:54.520 - 00:30:10.360

at Marlborough and Merton, not everyone here having had the privilege of learning a language that is incontrovertibly dead, and of carting a toy box of hall-marked marmoreal phrases around in his head. We wrote compositions in Greek, which

00:30:10.360 - 00:30:26.380

they said was a lesson in logic and good for the brain. We marched, counter-marched to the field marshal's blue-pencil baton. We dressed by the right and we wrote out the sentence again. We learned that a gentleman never misplaces his

00:30:26.380 - 00:30:42.340

accents, that nobody knows how to speak, much less how to write English, who has not hob-nobbed with the great-grandparents of English, that the boy on the Modem side is merely a parasite. But the classical student is bred to the purple, his training

00:30:42.340 - 00:31:00.820

in syntax is also a training in thought and even in morals, if called to the bar or the barracks he always will do what he ought. And knowledge, besides, should be prized for the sake of knowledge: Oxford crowded the mantlepiece with

00:31:00.820 - 00:31:04.600

gods -- Scaliger, Heinsius, Dindorf, Bentley, and Wilamowitz. As we learned- [cut-off] [our genuflexions for Honour Mods. And then they taught us philosophy, logic and meta-physics, The Negative

00:31:04.600 - 00:31:13.090

Judgment and the Ding an Sich, And every single thinker was powerful as Napoleon And crafty as Metternich. And it really was very attractive to be able to talk about tables And to ask if the table is, And to draw the cork out of an old conundrum And

00:31:13.090 - 00:31:22.780

watch the paradoxes fizz.] And it made one confident to think that nothing really was what it seemed under the sun, that the actual was not real, and the real was not with us, and all that mattered was the

00:31:22.870 - 00:31:39.820

One. And they said "The man in the street is so naive, he never can see the wood for the trees. He thinks he knows he sees a thing but cannot tell you how he knows the thing he thinks he sees." And oh how much I like the Concrete Universal. I never

00:31:39.820 - 00:31:52.100

thought that I should be telling them vice-versa that they can't see the trees for the wood. But certainly it was fun while it lasted and I got my honors degree and was stamped as a person of intelligence and

00:31:52.100 - 00:32:06.410

culture forever wherever two or three persons of intelligence and culture are gathered together and talk, writing definitions on invisible blackboards and non-existent chalk. But such sacramental occasions are nowadays

00:32:06.410 - 00:32:25.400

comparatively rare. There's always a wife or a boss or a don or a client disturbing the air. Barbarians always, life in the particular always, dozens of men in the street and the perennial if unimportant problem of getting enough to eat. So blow

00:32:25.400 - 00:32:38.960

the bugles over the metaphysicians, let the pure mind return to the Pure Mind. I must be content to remain in the world of Appearance and sit on the mere appearance of a behind. But in case you should think my education was wasted, I hasten

00:32:38.960 - 00:32:57.560

to explain that having once been to the University of Oxford, you can ever really again believe anything that anyone says and that, of course, is an asset in a world like ours. Why bother to water a garden that is planted with paper flowers? Or the

00:32:57.560 - 00:33:15.440

Freedom of the Press, the Late Night Final, to-morrow's pulp; one should not gulp one's Port but as it isn't poured, I'll gulp it if I want to gulp. But probably I'll just enjoy the color and pour it down the sink

00:33:15.560 - 00:33:35.720

for I don't call advertisement a statement, or any quack medicine a drink. Goodbye now, Plato and Hegel, the shop is closing down. They don't want any philosopher kings in England, there ain't no universals in this man's town.

00:33:38.270 - 00:33:55.730

Morton Marcus: Well, it certainly does fit in with a lot of things that I said about him, and really just an attempt to accept the world, this world of appearances in a great personal voice. He's very witty and actually was one of the- for our

00:33:55.940 - 00:34:10.100

art here, which is the art of radio, he was one of the first experimenters of radio, he spent more on the last twenty-five years of his life from World War II on at the BBC producing shows and actually directing them.

00:34:10.190 - 00:34:24.110

Paul Lee: I didn't know that. Morton Marcus: Yeah, yeah, so we were reading the poems of a radio pioneer. And anyways, why don't we go on to, "The Holy Office," which is so related to that. It's amazing.

00:34:24.000 - 00:34:38.670

Paul Lee: It is amazing. This is a big gulp. This is a big- Morton Marcus: Okay, I'll let you take a gulp. This is James Joyce, who many of you out there know as the great author of a book of short stories called, "Dubliners," and then one of the

00:34:38.670 - 00:34:52.170

great masterpieces of the 20th century, which is called, "Ulysses." After that, he wrote one of the most difficult novels to read, and one of the most fun, though I've only read parts of it because then I have to be sent away for a couple of months

00:34:52.440 - 00:35:07.440

and calm down, and that is called, "Finnegans Wake." But what people do not know was that he wrote poetry, and he wrote some beautiful lyric musical poetry, of which I may read one or two, but he also wrote some wonderful, satiric poetry after

00:35:08.130 - 00:35:22.010

Jonathan Swift, the great author of, "Gulliver's Travels," and an Irishman himself. And this is one of them: THE HOLY OFFICE that Paul is now going to talk about and read. Paul Lee: Myself unto myself will give this name,

00:35:22.550 - 00:35:41.360

Katharsis-Purgative. I, whose dishevelled ways forsook to hold the poets' grammar-book, bringing to tavern and to brothel the mind of witty Aristotle, lest bards in the attempt should err must here be my interpreter: wherefore

00:35:41.360 - 00:36:03.860

receive now from my lip peripatetic scholarship. To enter heaven, travel hell, be piteous or terrible one positively needs the ease of plenary indulgences. For every true-born mysticist a Dante is, unprejudiced, who safe at

00:36:03.890 - 00:36:24.770

ingle-nook, by proxy, hazards extremes of heterodoxy, like him who finds joy at a table pondering the uncomfortable. Ruling one's life by common sense how can one fail to be intense? But I must not accounted be one of that mumming

00:36:24.770 - 00:36:44.540

company -- with him who hies him to appease his giddy dames' frivolities while they console him when he whinges with gold-embroidered Celtic fringes -- or him who sober all the day mixes a naggin in his play -- or him whose conduct 'seems to own'

00:36:44.780 - 00:37:05.420

his preference for a man of 'tone' -- or him who plays the ragged patch to millionaires in Hazelpatch but weeping after holy fast confesses all his pagan past -- or him who will his hat unfix neither to malt nor crucifix but show to all

00:37:05.420 - 00:37:25.100

that poor-dressed be his high Castilian courtesy -- or him who loves his master dear --or him who drinks his pint in fear -- or him who once when snug abed saw Jesus Christ without his head and tried so hard to win for us the long-lost works of

00:37:25.100 - 00:37:45.530

Aeschylus. But all these men of whom I speak make me the sewer of their clique. That they may dream their dreamy dreams I carry off their filthy streams for I can do those things for them through which I lost my diadem, those things for which

00:37:45.530 - 00:38:09.800

Grandmother Church left me severely in the lurch. Thus I relieve their timid arses, perform my office of Katharsis. My scarlet leaves them white as wool: through me they purge a bellyful. To sister mummers one and all I act as vicar-general

00:38:09.800 - 00:38:27.680

and for each maiden, shy and nervous, I do a similar kind of service. For I detect without surprise that shadowy beauty in her eyes, The 'dare not' of sweet maidenhood that answers my corruptive 'would', whenever publicly we meet she never seems

00:38:27.680 - 00:38:47.450

to think of it; at night when close in bed she lies and feels my hand between her thighs my little love in light attire knows the soft flame that is desire. But Mammon places under ban the uses of Leviathan and that high spirit ever wars on

00:38:47.450 - 00:39:04.370

Mammon's countless servitors nor can they ever be exempt from his taxation of contempt. So distantly I turn to view the shamblings of that motley crew, those souls that hate the strength that mine has steeled in the school of old Aquinas.

00:39:05.390 - 00:39:24.680

Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed I stand, the self-doomed, unafraid, unfellowed, friendless and alone, indifferent as the herring-bone, firm as the mountain-ridges where I flash my antlers on the air. Let them

00:39:24.680 - 00:39:45.890

continue as is meet to adequate the balance-sheet. Though they may labour to the grave my spirit shall they never have nor make my soul with theirs as one till the Mahamanvantara be done: and though they spurn me from their door my soul shall spurn

00:39:45.980 - 00:39:58.580

them evermore. Morton Marcus: A very interesting poem in relation to what you're reading with MacNeice, certainly real bitterness in that satire.

00:39:58.630 - 00:40:12.710

Paul Lee: Ressentiment, it's interiorized aggression, it's- They're eating their heart out and it pours out with such pure venom. It's just amazing. Morton Marcus: And in this case, of course, the target is the

00:40:12.710 - 00:40:26.940

church, the target is the whole Aristotelian- or the corrupted Aristotelian worldview which Aquinas brings in and makes almost holy in medieval times. Paul Lee: Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.

00:40:29.060 - 00:40:46.160

Morton Marcus: The other thing that Joyce was really unhappy about was how this attitude had taken over even the uneducated in Ireland itself, who would follow blindly along in a conformity to the way things should be, and what- The other

00:40:47.540 - 00:41:05.060

satiric couplet poem that he wrote he writes in the voice of a publisher. And what happened was, when the only book he actually wrote in Ireland that became a major book, which was, "Dubliners," was given- he gave it to an Irish publisher, who

00:41:05.300 - 00:41:22.880

set it in type, then read what was going on in the type and decided he would destroy the plates, which he did. And this was sort of the last straw for Joyce, out he went and he never returned to Ireland again. He not only wrote the books I

00:41:22.880 - 00:41:34.880

mentioned, but of course, the next one was, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," where Stephen reflects this bitterness. But let me read this poem. The names I'm giving here are the names of the great Irish Renaissance writers and

00:41:34.880 - 00:41:51.800

playwrights. But you will see Joyce's attitude and he takes the part here of the publisher, so he's speaking through the mask or the character of the publisher. GAS FROM A BURNER

00:41:53.490 - 00:42:09.660

Ladies and gents, you are here assembled to hear why earth and heaven trembled because of the black and sinister arts of an Irish writer now in foreign parts. He sent me a book ten years ago, I read it a hundred times or so, backwards and

00:42:09.660 - 00:42:27.720

forwards, down and up, through both the ends of a telescope. I printed it all to the very last word but by the mercy of the Lord the darkness of my mind was rent and I saw the writer's foul intent. But I owe a duty to Ireland: I held her honour in my

00:42:27.720 - 00:42:46.140

hand, this lovely land that always sent her writers and artists to banishment and in a spirit of Irish fun betrayed her own leaders, one by one. 'Twas Irish humour, wet and dry, flung quicklime into Parnell's eye; 'tis Irish brains that save from

00:42:46.140 - 00:43:03.270

doom the leaky barge of the Bishop of Rome for everyone knows the Pope can't belch without the consent of Billy Walsh. O Ireland my first and only love where Christ and Caesar are hand and glove! O lovely land where the shamrock

00:43:03.270 - 00:43:21.540

grows! (Allow me, ladies, to blow my nose) to show you for strictures I don't care a button I printed the poems of mountainy mutton and a play he wrote (you've read it I'm sure) where they talk of bastard, bugger, and whore and a play on the word

00:43:21.540 - 00:43:38.550

and Holy Paul and some woman's legs that I can't recall written by Moore, a genuine gent that lives on his property's ten per cent: I printed mystical books in dozens: I printed the table-book of cousins though (asking your pardon) as for the

00:43:38.550 - 00:43:54.420

verse 'twould give you a heartburn on your arse: I printed folklore from North and South by Gregory of the Golden Mouth: I printed poets, sad, silly and solemn: I printed Patrick what-do-you-colm: I printed the great John Milicent

00:43:54.420 - 00:44:12.840

Synge who soars above on an angel's wing in the playboy shift that he pinched as swag from Maunsel's manager's travelling-bag. But I draw the line at that bloody fellow that was over here dressed in Austrian yellow, spouting Latin

00:44:12.840 - 00:44:31.110

by the hour to O'Leary Curtis and John Wyse Power and writing of Dublin, dirty and dear, in a manner no blackamoor printer could bear. Shite and onions! Do you think I'll print the name of the Wellington Monument, Sydney Parade and Sandymount tram,

00:44:31.230 - 00:44:52.170

Downes' cakeshop and Williams's jam? I'm damned if I do -- I'm damned to blazes! Talk about Irish names of places! It's a wonder to me, upon my soul, he forgot to mention Curly's Hole. No, ladies, my press shall have no share in so gross a libel on

00:44:52.170 - 00:45:12.630

Stepmother Erin. I pity the poor -- that's why I took a red-headed Scotchman to keep my book. Poor sister Scotland! Her doom is fell; she cannot find any more Stuarts to sell. My conscience is fine as Chinese silk: my heart is as soft as

00:45:12.630 - 00:45:31.470

buttermilk. Colm can tell you I made a rebate of one hundred pounds on the estimate I gave him for his Irish Review. I love my country -- by herrings I do! I wish you could see what tears I weep when I think of the emigrant train and ship. That's

00:45:31.470 - 00:45:49.050

why I publish far and wide my quite illegible railway guide, in the porch of my printing institute the poor and deserving prostitute plays every night at catch-as-catch-can with her tight-breeched British artilleryman and the foreigner

00:45:49.050 - 00:46:11.580

learns the gift of the gab from the drunken draggletail Dublin drab. Who was it said: resist not evil? I'll burn that book, so help me devil. I'll sing a psalm as I watch it burn and the ashes I'll keep in a one-handled urn. I'll penance do with farts

00:46:11.580 - 00:46:30.990

and groans kneeling upon my marrowbones. This very next lent I will unbare my penitent buttocks to the air and sobbing beside my printing press my awful sin I will confess. My Irish foreman from Bannockburn shall dip his right hand in the

00:46:31.020 - 00:46:50.060

urn and sign crisscross with reverent thumb memento homo upon my bum. So, he knows he's destroying a work of art, and this is how our friend Joyce gets even with him. There are other- there are very

00:46:50.060 - 00:47:06.620

beautiful poems by Joyce also, which I won't go into reading now, but there are books called "Pomes Penyeach," or Poems for a Penny Each, and another one called, "Chamber Music," which are really poems to be sung, and they're really just beautiful.

00:47:06.620 - 00:47:18.560

The sounds, the vowel sounds are just gorgeous, they just are, they're like water rolling off crystal rock. They're gorgeous. But we want to end our evening with Dylan Thomas. Paul Lee: Yeah, let's.

00:47:18.590 - 00:47:30.760

Morton Marcus: So we're going to go into, "Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child." Paul Lee: And think of it as refusal to mourn the death of those who died in New York with a- [cross talk]

00:47:30.800 - 00:47:37.360

Morton Marcus: Very good. Paul Lee: It's- I don't know, if I had to pick one poem, I think it'd be this. Morton Marcus: Okay.

00:47:37.390 - 00:47:52.870

Paul Lee: Okay. I mean and to hear him read it- I mean, I'm ashamed to read it, but once you hear Thomas read it, it's- He had the gift. I mean, not only was he one of the great poets of the 20th century, but his voice must have been the greatest

00:47:52.900 - 00:48:02.380

voice of poetry that maybe ever lived. Morton Marcus: Well, one of the things that it did do was that there was very little poetry being read publicly- Paul Lee: Yeah.

00:48:02.960 - 00:48:11.330

Morton Marcus: -until he came over to the United States and he was the one who really started poetry readings. Paul Lee: And then John Gielgud did it and, you know, other- Morton Marcus: Other actors did it.

00:48:11.330 - 00:48:20.090

Paul Lee: Yeah, Morton Marcus: But in America, it really starts the ball rolling. Kenneth Patchen, the jazz poets will come out of this, everyone will be so inspired by his coming to the

00:48:20.090 - 00:48:29.300

United States and reading, and I hope what you do when you read this poem is you will imitate him. Paul Lee: Okay, I'll try, but it's very hard to do. Morton Marcus: This, by the way, is an amazing poem technically

00:48:29.300 - 00:48:50.570

speaking. If you do not hear Thomas read it, it is almost impossible to find out how the first sentence works. Because though it is very controlled in metrics and rhymes and a stanza scheme, it sounds like this great outpouring of anger more

00:48:50.570 - 00:49:05.770

than grief, and only when Thomas read it did I find out how it should sound. So, our guests Paul Lee will read Dylan Thomas': Paul Lee: A REFUSAL TO MOURN THE DEATH, BY FIRE, OF A CHILD IN

00:49:05.770 - 00:49:27.270

LONDON Never until the mankind making bird beast and flower fathering and all humbling darkness tells with silence the last light breaking and the still hour is come of the sea tumbling in

00:49:27.270 - 00:49:46.710

harness And I must enter again the round Zion of the water bead and the synagogue of the ear of corn shall I let pray the shadow of a sound or sow my salt seed in the least valley of sackcloth to

00:49:46.710 - 00:50:04.010

mourn The majesty and burning of the child's death. I shall not murder the mankind of her going with a grave truth nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath with any further elegy of

00:50:04.010 - 00:50:26.870

innocence and youth. Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter, robed in the long friends, the grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, secret by the unmourning water of the riding Thames.

00:50:29.030 - 00:50:45.030

After the first death, there is no other. Morton Marcus: No, Paul, that was very elegiac. And I say that because I read this in a completely different manner. Paul Lee: No kidding.

00:50:45.330 - 00:50:59.190

Morton Marcus: And so what I would like to do is read it the way I see it here. And what I'd like the people out there to realize is the first two stanzas and the first line of the third stanza are all one sentence.

00:50:59.250 - 00:51:05.160

Paul Lee: And like one breath. Morton Marcus: And they fall in one breath. Paul Lee: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And then the sentences become shorter and

00:51:05.160 - 00:51:18.900

shorter until finally the last line is one sentence in itself. Morton Marcus: So it's like, to me he is getting control of Paul Lee: Yeah. himself after this explosion of anger, so here is my reading of

00:51:18.900 - 00:51:34.830

Dylan Thomas', "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a A REFUSAL TO MOURN THE DEATH, BY FIRE, OF A CHILD IN LONDON Child in London," and this is during World War II. And I should tell you that Dylan Thomas was a fire- what was he?

00:51:35.160 - 00:51:50.550

What do we have during World War II again that would stop- like an air raid warden. Yeah, he wa - he was like an air raid warde . So here we g Never until the mankind making bird beast and flower fathering

00:51:50.670 - 00:52:02.400

and all humbling darkness tells with silence the last light breaking and the still hour Is come of the sea tumbling in harness And I must enter again the round Zion of the water bead and the

00:52:02.400 - 00:52:17.640

synagogue of the ear of corn shall I let pray the shadow of a sound or sow my salt seed in the least valley of sackcloth to mourn The majesty and burning of the child's death. I shall not

00:52:17.640 - 00:52:36.450

murder the mankind of her going with a grave truth nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath with any further elegy of innocence and youth. Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter, robed in the

00:52:36.450 - 00:53:00.270

long friends, the grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, secret by the unmourning water of the riding Thames. After the first death, there is no other. Paul Lee: Yours was better.

00:53:01.380 - 00:53:07.680

Morton Marcus: [Laughs] Paul Lee: No, you're right, I mean, it's like- you have to come down like that. Morton Marcus: And it's really a-

00:53:07.680 - 00:53:18.170

Paul Lee: I just kind of want to listen to the words. Morton Marcus: Oh, just gorgeous. Paul Lee: But yours is more of the spirit of the poem, I think. Morton Marcus: It seems to me so much of Thomas and so much- many

00:53:18.170 - 00:53:26.110

poems that are considered lyrical are really dramatic poems; they're taking place in a dramatic situation. Paul Lee: Yep. Morton Marcus: And this is a man now who has come upon the body

00:53:26.140 - 00:53:42.490

of this young girl and he is so outraged by it, that it just causes this explosion of language. And that's what we hear there. As I've also told you in private conversation, it also almost destroys itself because Thomas could not

00:53:42.670 - 00:53:56.410

hesitate to pun, which almost destroys the seriousness of the poem with the words, the grave truth. And I just sort of cringe whenever I- Paul Lee: You punctured the poem when you brought that to my

00:53:56.410 - 00:54:08.080

attention. I had never seen it before, I just thought grave truth, that's okay with me. And then you had to show it up for the weird metaphor that it is, or pun. Morton Marcus: I'm sorry.

00:54:08.080 - 00:54:10.840

Paul Lee: Thanks a lot, Mort. Morton Marcus: Paul. Paul Lee: That's okay. Morton Marcus: I'm sorry.

00:54:11.440 - 00:54:22.320

Paul Lee: I like the way you read it. Morton Marcus: We've got around one or two minutes more. Would you just like to read us a farewell poem? Paul Lee: Sure. It's:

00:54:22.710 - 00:54:39.480

SHAKESPEARE'S 15TH SONNET, which Alan Chadwick put up next to his bed when he died. And so it takes on that kind of meaning for me. When I consider everything that grows holds in perfection but a

00:54:39.480 - 00:55:05.070

little moment, that this huge stage presenteth nought but shows whereon the stars in secret influence comment; when I perceive that men as plants increase, cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky, vaunt in their youthful sap, at height

00:55:05.100 - 00:55:29.340

decrease, and wear their brave state out of memory; then the conceit of this inconstant stay sets you most rich in youth before my sight, where wasteful time debateth with decay to change your day of youth to sullied night; and all in war

00:55:29.340 - 00:55:44.030

with time for love of you, as he takes from you, I engraft you new. Morton Marcus: And that was Paul Lee, who has been gracious enough to come in and share the microphone with me tonight, and

00:55:44.030 - 00:55:53.690

give us some of his brilliance as both scholar, interpreter, and Renaissance man. Long overdue, and Paul, I do want to invite you back when you get back from New York, and do another evening.

00:55:53.720 - 00:56:09.080

Paul Lee: I'd love to come back. Morton, Santa Cruz is better for your presence. I was thinking in terms of anticipating being on the show with you tonight, that you are the embodiment of poetry in this town. Every town needs a resident poet who is really the

00:56:09.080 - 00:56:23.660

poet laureate, and you are that person because if anyone wants to think of poetry, they think of you. And how you've represented and borne witness to poetry is something I'd like to commend you for and I'm happier to live in Santa Cruz because of

00:56:23.660 - 00:56:33.110

you. Morton Marcus: But Paul, I feel the same way about you. Paul Lee: [Laughs] Morton Marcus: It's- I don't know what to say. Everyone says

00:56:33.110 - 00:56:46.100

I should accept these compliments which I don't know how to do. But thank you so much for being on. Great evening, I hope everyone enjoyed it out there. Stay tuned for "From the Bookshelf," which I do have right over here. The inimitable

00:56:46.100 - 00:56:54.110

Billie Harris will bring us local author Eliza Livingston, who will read excerpts from her novel, "Bittersweet," that's coming up within twenty seconds.