1 20 111 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b7e04bd419d83ac6518790016c792369.pdf f427e7f792841043bfc56865460d933f PDF Text Text ihno(^ David Lawrence Le\ ine **/!/ the Very Center ofthe Plenitude" Frida\ Niaht Dean's Lecture, Ausust 29. 2003 Page 1 14.\ *'At the Very Center of the Plenitude^ Goethe^s GrandAttempt to Overcome the 18'^ Century' Or How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe From the General Sickness ofhis Age ""Nature has become the fundamental word that designates essential relations...to beings." Heidegger^ "We have failed to restore to the human spirit its ancient right to comeface toface with nature." Goethe"* "Goethe teaches coin-age...ihzi the disadvantages of an\' epoch exist only to the fainthearted." Emerson^ 1. Incidental Thoughts, Fniitfiil Life: To everyone: Welcome! To our freshman in particular a special Welcome! Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, we know him first as a poet and playwright—seniors will read his Faust ne.xt week. Yet there is another Goethe that is less well loiown but who, from his own point ofview, isofequal, if not greater consequence,^ the Goethe who spent his life studying nature—botan\'. zoolog}', geologv', meteorolog>', theory of color—^and is known, in this regard, for his work in morpholog\'. I would like to speak about this lesser known Goethe tonight. There are two subtitles to this evening*s lecture "At the Very Center of the Plenitude." The first is given to it by Friedrich Nietzsche, the second. m\- own curious invention. The first is "Goethe's Grand Attempt to Overcome the 18"' Centur}-." As we will see. from Nietzsche's perspective Goethe was a philosophical thinker of the highest order who inherited, as we all do, ideas from previous generations and thinkers, ideas that he thought were ill conceived and needed to be rethought. Thanks to these ideas, we had become, according to Goethe, "blind with seeing eyes." Similarly the second subtitle. "How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe from the General Sickness ofhis Age." This clearly reflects our unique studies here at St. John's. Here too we see something of greater moment than we might first have seen. Here we wall have a chance to see that his life work studying nature—^as seen in the paper that we read in freshman laboratory—has a far greater significance than just'science.' great though this is in its own right.^ For Goethe the smdy of namre was the necessary antidote to a growing tendency—"sickness'" he called it—^that needed to be countered for the sake of our lives and health. n U We have our work cut out for us this evening. " .LM? Lcc ! •-! ^ •i St. John's Colfe^"^ - Meem Library �Da^ id Lawrence Levine "At the Very Center of the Plenitude^" Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 2 14x Goethe's thinking, though philosophical, is not s\"stematic. and that means there's no one place where his deepest thinking is to be found. Just the opposite, his profoundest thought is to be disco\ ered throughout his works, and not just in his major works, but minor ones too, often just jottings here and there, on slips of paper, in the margins of books, the comers of newspapers, in brief letters, in short wherever occasion found a suitable surface for pen and ink to secure for a time his emergent thoughts. These were often then collected into "maxims and reflections." sometimes inserted as the thinking of one of the characters of his novels, sometimes collected under his own name. These occasional thoughts will provide much of the material for tonight's talk. But incidental thoughts are not necessariK" insignificant thoughts.' Not unlike flotsam and jetsam, thoughts appear throughout our da\". Are these daih' musings 'distractions of the moment' or 'disclosures of moment'? Such irrepressible thoughtftilness and imagination gives added dimension to the thin linearity of time. A da\' punctuated b>' the wondrous, sparked by light, is not just another day. DaiK^ discoveiy* is meat not spice. nourishmenL not just flavoring. And its joy is invigorating. The mundane is thereb>" transformed. Thinking happens. One such collection of thoughts is a book of selected conversations by his secretary Johann Peter Eckermann, a man of no small talent, who took it upon himself to record for posterit} personal con\ersations he had \%ith his world famous employer during the last nine >ears of his life. These are intermittenth* and imperfecth' recorded, often self-conscious, sometimes seem contrived, and are frequenth' without a definite outcome. There we find observations about passing acquaintances, deliberations about the wine list for the evening dinner, plans for journeys to be taken, personal estimates about famous and not so famous authors and statesmen. latter->'ear reflections and regrets about his youthful writings, plans for the reconstruction of the local theater that had burned down, conversation with his patron the Grand Duke of Weimar, observations about his wife and children, expressions of hope and disappointment about friends, frustrations about works of his that had been overlooked or were under appreciated. But throughout the rich array, there emerge as well recurrent themes and persistent questions of consequence. The same author mentioned above. Nietzsche, sa\s the following: "Apart from Goethe's [own] writings, and in particular Goethe's conversations M'ith Eckermann, the best German book there is. what is there realK" of German prose literature that it would be worthwhile to read o\'er and o\er again?'"'^' 'The best German book there is." worth "reading over and over again"? Hardly on the face of it. Though perhaps prone to hyperbole and "philosophizing with a hammer,'* Nietzsche was not prone to misrepresentation. What could he mean b\ such e.xaggerated praise? Perhaps what is remarkable is not the book per se. but what is portrayed therein? Perhaps what is notable is not its ultimate literaiy value—^the book is not on our program—^but the attempt to record a life that is in no wa>' ordinaiy? Indeed, even through Eckermann's eyes we glimpse new possibilities for a human life that aspires to what is extraordinary, a fullness of possibilit\" rarely seen. We glimpse a paradigm of a full\- engaged, e\ er creati\e. wholesome fecundit>. In shorL we see philosophy as a way of being in the world. not as a book bound between leather covers. 2. '•^Everything Nowadays is Ultrai In 1825. late in life. Goethe wrote a letter to his friend, the composer Zelter in which he reflected on the character of life as it had come to be lived in their lifetime: �Da\ id Lawrence Levine *'At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'" Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 3 14x Everything nowadays is ultra, [he \\rites] eren thing is being transcended continually in thought as well as in action. .Vo one hw^vs himselfany longer, no one can grasp the element in which he Ih es and works or the materials that he handles. Pure simplicity is out of the question; of simplifiers we have enough. Young people are stirred up much too early in life and then carried away in the whirl of the times. Wealth and rapidit>" are what the world admires.... Railways, quick mails, steamships, and every possible kind of rapid communication are what the educated world seeks but it only oxer-educates itself and thereby persists in its mediocrity. It is. moreover, the result of universalization that a mediocre culture [then] becomes [the] common [culture].... He then adds ruefully: "We and perhaps a few others \\ ill be the last of an epoch that will not soon return."" According to Goethe, a radical transformation of our wa\' of being has taken place: 1) a change in the character of human thought and action. 2) a change in our knowledge of ourselves, 3) a change in our sense of place, and finally, 4) a change in the character and efficacy of education. "Exeiything noM cidays is ultra " As earh' as the beginning of the nineteenth century, what was coming to characterize human life—^and thereb\" change the face and depth of human experience—^Nvas the speed [die Voloziferishe] at which life was lived, a hitherto unheard of, dizzying and disorienting pace suchthat \oung people—^but not only—could only be caught up in "the whir! of the times." "Being caught up" means living some other life than one's own, being inauthentic. "Railways, quick mails, steamships:" Ever faster communication changes the lived dimensions of life: time quickens, distance collapses. There is no delaj- between an event and its hearing. "It's as if we were right there.'* A leisureK^ walk is replaced by a carriage ride, thereafter b> a train ride, then a jet plane, and now b\"... a transporter (or at least in our imaginations). The \\ ait for "news" from the pon}' e.xpress. a telegram, a phone call, a pager continues to shrink. Our e-mail pings or our blackberry vibrates: we hear about an event "as it happens" no matter the distance. Life, in short, is lived in fast forward. Goethe asks "Who can possibly keep up with the demands of an exorbitant presentand that at ma.\imum speed?"'" This matter of life's ever accelerating pace in not a philosophically indifferent one for Goethe. "The greatest misfortune [L'nheil] of our time.'* he says elsewhere, "which let's no thing come to fruition, is that one moment consumes the next,"^'" While the speeding up of things may assist us in "keeping informed" and "staying in touch," it also subtracts from other essential dimensions once thought definitive of human life. It makes certain things more difficult, if not impossible, specificalh" those things that take time, for e.\ample, those that require slow assimilation and acclimation. abo\e all human learning and experience. It takes time cnxay from thoughtful reflection and other possibilities of human carefulness. For time and leisure (skole) are tlie proper gestational home of reflection, philosophy and human care. We hear too that our thought processes are affected: "e\'eiything is transcended in thought [as well as in action]." We have somehow been made to think different!)'. We live at a new level of abstraction, beyond the immediate, simple. ob\ ious. primary world, such that w-e no longer e\ en understand "the element in which we live." What could this mean? �Da\ id Lawrence Levine Page 4 '^'At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude^'' Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14.\ And most curious of all. Goethe sa\s ""No one knows himself an}- longer.** How is this even possible? Elsewhere he says: "Learning fails to bring advancement now that the world is caught up in such a rapid turnover: by the time }ou ha\e managed to take due note of eveiything. vou have lost your Are we not alwa\ s the same no matter our circumstances? Education too is thereb}- affected. It is suggested that we might even become "overeducated,"' mis-educated, that education itself has become, somehow, distorted. He reflects: "For almost a centuiy now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds of men engaged in them."'" Rather than distinction, we ha\e mediocrity: rather than a high culture, we have an ordinary one. What then of the rewards of "perspective." "balance" and "e.\cellence" once thought the outcome of an ennoblingeducation? The "whirl of the times" has only accelerated many, many fold since 1825. The author could not possibl}- have en\ isioned the pace at which we live our lives today. To be sure, on first hearing, one might be inclined to take the above obsenations as the grumbling of a man seeing the world pass him by (empt}- biographism). We might however, also take this as notice to think better about the character our li\ es in our ultra-ultra world. 3. "The General Sickness of the Agef "Life is our lot rather than reflection."'^ Goethe's exclamation that "nowadays... no one knows himself any longer" clearly needs further consideration. How could this be? Don't we kno\^• ourseh es? Throughout the modem disciplines—the ph}sical sciences, histon', even poetn- and literature—^was a growing trend, evident to Goethe, to what he called "subjecti>ity." Juniors and ' seniors will remember, in the Discourse on Method^ Descartes' identification of the "ego" as the primordial truth about which we alone can be immediatel}' "certain." The immediate evidence of this self-intuition then pro\ides the standard of truth for all else, now thought true only if "clearh and distincth" concei\ able to us. Odd though this ma}- sound, this new self-certaint}- leads to our world being reconceived as "the external world.'* about which we can now have only a small measure of certainly- and that of its radically stripped dow n mathematical qualities. To be sure, this made a "modem science" of such a world possible, yet it gave us a new- definition and sense of self that was problematic.' This excessivel}- polarized and reduced view- of the ego as "subject"—understood as standing "o\-er against"'^ some bare objective world—is what Goethe meant b\" "subjectivit}:'* polarized, withdrawn, exiled to its own interior world, and thereby alienated from an}- sense ofworld in which it could feel itself integrated or at home.'^ For Goethe the consequences of this influential (na}-, fateful) redefinition of self are now here better seen than in his own vocation, poetry-. We have all heard the caricamre of the modem "romantic" poet: a suffering recluse, retreating to his Paris garret, whose on!}- truth is his inner pain. But for Goethe there is. unfortunate!}-, an element of truth to be found therein: He observ es: "All the poets [toda}-] write as if the}- were ill and the whole wwld were a lazaretto [leper colon}-]. The}- all speak of the woe and misery- of this earth and the joy of a hereafter: all are discontented.... This." he adds, "is a real abuse of poetiy....""® "I attach no value to [such] poems ....'*"' From Goethe* s perspecti\'e, "whoe%-er descends deep down into himself will always realize he is onK half a being...,"" and being half will discover there limited resources for creati\-it}-. "...A subjecti\e nature has soon talked out his little internal material and is at last _ �David Lawrence Le\ ine Page 5 "Af the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'' Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14x ruined by mannerism [that is. excessive affectation],"" he notes regretfulh'. ""Such people look at once within: they are so occupied b>' what is revoi\ ing in themselves, [that] they are like a man in passion, who passes his dearest friends on the street without seeing them."""* With reduced openness to the world around them. the\" have become "blind with seeing eyes." This excessive one-sidedness. and consequent risk of self-absorption. Goethe named "the general sickness of the present age [heinigen Zeif]f" and led Doctor von Goethe to his famous diagnosis: ""What is Classical is healthy; what is Romantic is sick.'"^^ Sick? Unhealthy, unproductive, foundation less, and ultimately untruthful. We lose our fullest selves. Goethe thus found himself standing at the point of the di^•ide where, for all our efforts to think about each separateh". subject and object were being ever more pulled apart. This experiential breach was of fundamental concern because, when either is over-polarized—^when the soul is diminished as an isolated, worldless ego (psyche), res cogitans or when the Morld is diminished as external. e\ en foreign, barren res extensa—^both subject and object are diminished for want of their natural correlate. If I ma\' indulge in a somewhat dramatic image: like a man standing between two horses pulling him apart, Goethe found that—^for the sake of health"'—^he had everything he could handle to keep himself and the world whole."^ Goethe himself thus resisted being "caught up in his time:" he was not a "romantic." As he said. "m>- tendencies were opposed to those of my time, which were wholly subjective: while in m> objective efforts. I stood alone to m>' disad\ antage.""' His "objective efforts'? How could he resist the subjective tendencN? 4. "The Element in which we Live:'^ In all natural things there is something wonderfuL... So we should approach the inquiry...without aversion, knowing that in all of them there is something natural and beautiful.. Aristotle'® Surprising though it ma>' seem to some, the answer is nature. Thus it is apt that the Goethe we first meet is not the poet but the Goethe who spent his whole life researching 'the element in which we live." that is researching into nature. It is this "objective" involvement that saved him from the excesses of his—and our—^time. nor to mention giving him "the most wonderful moments of his life."*' So. what is nature?.... OK. a simpler question.... what is a plant? Which grammatical form best names its being, a noun or a \ erb (or a gerund, a verbal noun)? By plant do we intend a static state or an acti\ it}' alive with change, something that has grown or some process of growth?"'" Clearh' we need to name hotb. form that is also in the process ofself-formation. **G^o^^th is the point of life."'" For us here in the Southwest, sumac, oak. aspen, pinon. mallow and mullen are different kinds of plants. The principle at work is the same throughout the stages of the life cycle of a mallow, for instance, from seedling to flowering. fructil\ ing plant. Hence we name it one thing— a mallow—despite all these various stages and differing formal manifestations.'"* But it is not onlv this individual plant that is before us. so is the species "mallow." and e\ en further so is the kingdom "plant." and these, as Goethe will insist not as abstract concepts in the mind but somehow in the living instance itself. Thus Goethe sought to account for plant �Da\ id Lawrence Levine "At the Very Center of the Plenitude " Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 6 14x life as such, despite the dizz\ ing fact that they take infiniteh man>" and wondroush" different shapes. Sumac, aspen, mallow are in "inner essence" still "plants.""" What is needed in this view is to identify- the imify ing principle at work (not "underK ing') in each and every form at whatever stage of gro\\"th and complexit\- the>' might be. But how to do so? And how to find a language that captures this universalK" active principle of forms forming themselves? To do so Goethe had to depart radicalK -ffom his contemporaries and from their analvtical approach. But in so doing this departure brings him closer to us. We can see this at the outset of the Metamorphosis of Plants that we read in freshman laboratory, where he appeals, not to results of the latest scientific journals, but to our own untutored experience. He begins: "Anyone M-ho has paid a little attention to plant growth..."'^ [2.\]. This means that we. ordinary human beings, still have access to a realm of primaiy significance, one not to be diminished as "prescientific." if what is meant thereb> is "pre-insightful." Rather we, >ou and me, have deep access into what is before us." Indeed he is critical that, with all our education and learning, we ma}* on the contrary be closing ourselves offfrom this primary le\el of our experience. He often referred to a passage in one of his earh" plays to illustrate this eclipse ofexperience by theory: ...as it is said in my Goetz von Berlichingen. that the son, from pure learning, does not know the father, so in science do we find people w-ho can neither see nor hear, through sheer learning and Inpothesis. Such people look at once within: the>" are so [pre-] occupied b\' what is revoh ing in themselves, that the%are like a man in passion, who passes his dearest friends in the street without seeing them. [Rather] the observation of nature requires a certain purity of mind that cannot be disturbed or preoccupied b> an>thing....It is just because we carry- about with usa great apparatus of philosophy and hvpothesis, that we spoil all.*® "Like a man in passion:" Ideas, no less than passions, can take hold of our minds, preventing us from seeing what might othenvise be evident and therebv" preventing us from attending to our primary experience.'^ So overwhelming are our present-day theoretical preoccupations that—in one of his most shocking statements of all—Goethe claims that we no longer even concern ourselves with nature! "That nature, which is our [modem] concern. isn*t nature any longer....'" he says."*^ [2x] Extraordinary! What has been lost, in Goethe's view, is a sense of the wholeness of wholes and the interrelatedness and integration of all things, in short, Nature (capital N). This loss is the necessary consequence of an>- approach wherein wholes are but "b>-products"^' of uncoordinated, underh ing, isolated forces and elements ("mater in the void"). Looking at things in terms of their parts—elements, simples, particles, atoms—anaKtical ways of thinking stumble in the face of the Humptv Dumptv- problem: how to put the whole back together again."*" If we begin with parts, we end up with reconstituted conglomerates, aggregates, bunches, but the wholeness of things, the integral realitv-. remains a secondary phenomenon, a mystery, if not an accident."*' Here too we've become "blind with seeing eyes.'* Juniors are soon to read and seniors will remember Descartes' famous experiment with the wax at the end of Meditations n. There Descartes places a piece of fresh bees wa.\ near a burning candle, whereupon it melts and loses its original color and smell, te.xture and shape (i.e. primary as well as secondary qualities), that is loses all its original properties but res extensa, mere e.xtension (though this changes too). This experimental method is designed to bring us to see �Da\ id Lawrence Levine Page 7 "At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'' Fridav Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14.\ what is "elementar* (if not fundamental). Descartes then proceeds to claim that b\- "an act of intuition of reason" he—and we—^wouid know thistransmogrified, charred lump in front of us to be the same thing as before his infernal e.xperiment. He asks, yvho M ould not so conclude thus? (Aristotle, for one) Well... if that were a plant, and not an amorphous hunk of bees wax. M'ho M ould concur M idiDescartes that what remains is the same as what was putto the flameT*^ The anahtical flame dissociates or separates what originally was together. It "kills." So this method."*' The disfigured, deracinated, blackened carcass of the plant is anything but. the li\ ing whole, nowhere to be found. The mass of matter lying before Descartes is '^he same" only if life and death are not different, and if form is not an acti\e principle but a derivative by product. With this "lethal generality'"*^ we lose—and lose sight of—^"the spirit ofthe whole." as Goethe would say. For this reason, he claimed as well that the modem approach—subjecthelv predisposed to take the objects of our e.\perience in such a reduced way—loses its claim to "objectivity.""* The question for Goethe—and for us—is whether and how we can recover the whole. Is it still possible to begin elsewhere, think differently such that the whole is retained along with its manifold parts? Can we yet begin where we naturally begin, with what is "first for us" (Aristotle), with integral wholes? 5. Our Ancient Right: The spirit of the actual is the true ideal." ""No one who is observant will ever find nature dead or silent.""*^ Goethe thus sought "another way." in order, as he said, "to restore to the human spirit, its ancientright to comeface toface with nature." "*' [2x] He asks: "What does all our communion M-ith nature amount to... if we busy ourselves with analyzing only single portions, and do not feel the breath of the spirit that dictates the role of every part and restrains or sanctions all excess through an immanent law ?""® Thus "phenomena once and for all must be remo\ed from the gloomy empirical-mechanical-dogmatic [torture] chamber [Materkammer]." he said, "and [be] submitted [rather] to the jury of [common human understanding]."'^ But how^ are we to do this, to return to "common human understanding"? Since apparently we can live in more than one world. Goethe makes his bid—^"naively" yet knowingly"'—^to reclaim nature as our home-world. "If we are to rescue ourselves from the boundless muhiplicir\\ atomization and complexit}- ofthe modem natural sciences" he says, "and get back to the realm of simplicity [Einfache]. we must always consider [this] question: how would Plato [or any non-modern] have reacted to fundamentally one unity as it still is, how would he have \ iewed what may now appear to us as its greater complexity?"'* We need to remove what "now" stands in the way.'"* We need somehow to shuck off our modem predisposition to see all things as artificially reconstituted'" and see our world, rather, as one might whose \ ision was not so refracted. But how? Mindful that "the first stages of a discovery lea\-e their mark on the course of knowledge.*'"^ Goethe first seeks to reorient us. To begin with, "anyone who has paid a little attention" has to acknowledge that our primary and original experience of things is otherM ise than we've been brought to conceive. 'To nature," he said, ""we never see anything isolated: �Da\ id Lawrence Levine ""At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude*' Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 8 everything is in connection with something."* An\- account, then, of our experience must begin here M'ith the wiiTy and interrelatedness ofall things. Herein lays Goethe's unified field theoiy: "I abide bv what is simple and comprehensive, he says."^ (This he also calls his "stubborn realism."*'') As we heard, a certain kind of undisturbed purity of mind—clarit>-. breadth of sur\ e> . anention to manifest differences—is the pre-requisite to an>- genuine openness. In the garden, along a path, in the laboratoiy. we need first to see the things themselves, to recognize the ways and means that the plant [or whatever our object] uses.'*^ "...to follow it carefully throu^ all its transitions.'"^' in short. "...xo folloM- as carefully as possible in thefootsteps of nature.' ' "In the process.'' he sa\s. "we become familiar with certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting itself. From this point of \ iew everything gradually falls into place under higher principles and laws revealed not to reason through \%ords and h\potheses. but to our intuitive perception \Anschauiing^ through phenomena.^" In this way. our relationship to things is not at first "speculative." but what Goethe calls "practical." that is grounded in the concrete experience of individuals and the real.^ (Here have we a model of openness and e.xtreme care that will serve us well, not onl\- in the laboratoiy . but throughout our work at the college.) Given this, gi^•en observation that is undertaken with a"truly sj*mpathetlc interest."^* a remarkable transformation can then begin. We can be moved to insight. In an often quoted passage from the Introduction to his Outline ofa Theory of Color. Goethe addresses this process of natural ideation. He writes: An extremely odd demand is often set forth but never met...that [bare] empirical data should be presented without any theoretical context.... This demand is odd because it is useless to simpK" look at something. Everyact oflooking [naturally] turns into obsen-ation. every act of observation into reflection, eveiy act of reflection into the making of associations: tints it is that we theorize every time we look carefully at the world. The abilit\ to do this with clarity of mind^ with self-knowledge, in a free wa>, and (if I may venture to put it so [he adds]) with irony, is a skill we need in order to avoid the pitfalls of [modem scientific] abstraction.''^ Nature con\erses with us. Like an\" organic transition, thought is the natural and continuous outgrowth of its prior condition, the fmit ofconcrete experience. As such we are naturally led to a higher integration through *\..tbe practical and self-distilling processes of common human understanding"!'^ [2.\] "We theorize every time we look careful1\- atthe world." When we are able to sune\' an object in eveiy detail, grasp it carefully and reproduce it in our mind's e\e [he reflects, then] we can sa>- we have an intuitive perception [.•inschauimg] of it in the truest and highest sense. We can [rightfully] sa)' it belongs to us.... And thus the particular leads to the general [as well as] the general to the particular. The two combine their effect in eveiyobsen'atioD, in every discourse.^ As much as we take the lead in inquiry, then so too are we led by what we are inquiring into. Experience is bi-directional. Subject-object: object-subject. Tme sympathetic observation results in the recapitulation in our summary imagination of the originating principle. The object becomes for us as it is in itself. In this way the object "belongs" to us as much as we. in communion, belong with it. Our natural correlation is thereby reestablished, the Cartesian �David Lawrence Le\ ine Page 9 "/4/ the Very Center ofthe Plenitude*' Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14x subjective reduction of experience is offset, if not re\ ersed. and a kind of renewed originaiin* is returned to human experience, widening and opening our puniew®'. whereby we might be thought once again to come "face to face" with nature. Our ancient right is restored. 6. The Original World: "...the sublime tranquilit\' which surrounds us when we stand in the solitude and silence of nature. vast and eloquent." "A living thing cannot be measured b>" something external to itself."" ^ This reunion of obser\ er and world—^we should sa\' union—is possible because of a unique human facult}'—one out-rightK" denied " or at least overlooked by other modem thinkers—but to which Goethe again and again retums our attention. As we read: "When we are . able to sur\€y an object in every detail, grasp it carefulh^ and reproduce it in the mind's eye. we can say we have an intuitive perception of it in the truest and highest sense." This capacit>- for "concrete imagination" or summary "intuition" (intuitive perception, Anschauung) is our faculty for e.xperiential wholes wherein the acti\ ely unii} ing principles at work in the world manifest themselves. (Deny it and we haNe no wholes). They are not deduced, inferred, or synthesized. We do not ha\ e to go be\ ond or behind *the phenomena to see these at work. These are made known to us at the level of our primary e.xperience. We "see" them. There's a famous story: At. a meeting of the Society' for Scientific Research in Jena there was a 'Tortunate encounter" between Goethe and the poet Friedrich Schiller—^whose poetry at the time Goethe thought too romantic, too subjective. Goethe sought to explain to him his own attempt to articulate such a principle whereb\" the natural plenitude of plant life might be accounted for. His "idea" was. he admits, ''the strangest creature in the world**'^ wherein the whole range of plant formation might be seen as "stemming" or "derived'* from an aboriginal form that was in this regard the formal progenitor of the whole kingdom. Goethe named this the Urpflanze^y the original ororiginary plant. ^ Schiller's first response to this suggestion reflected his philosophical background, in particular his indebtedness to Kant. "This is not an obser\ ation from experience." he said. "This is an idea. " Schiller could not see what Goethe claimed he scnw He was disinclined—^as we ma\' be—^to grant that this was an\*thing but a "regulative idea" constructed b\" reason to help it organize its experience, not a principle at work in the world organizing the phenomenal arra\" of plant forms. It was mereh* an idea, merely "subjective." For him and for Kant, it couldn't be anything more, as in their \ iew phenomena are themseh es constituted b>' consciousness and are thus not things in themselves. Convinced, rather, that he had identified the objective generative source of all plant forms. Goethe replied: "Then 1 may rejoice that I ha\ e ideas without knowing iL and can even see them with my own eyes,"* For Goethe, perception and reason, as moments of a natural process, are not disparate faculties, but continuous. Thus this, and all other ITr-phenomena. immanent and at work throughout our experience, are real and hence must be available to us on the primary level of common human understanding ^. He wonders: "Why should it not also hold true in the intellectual area that through an intuitive perception of etemalK" creative nature we may become worthy of participating spiritually in its creative process?" He thus insisted that he �Da\ id Lawrence Levine Page 10 ""At the Ven' Center ofthe Plenitude" Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Hx could see with his eyes something to which others seern to have become blind. ^ (Despite this ftindamental difference, the two became close friends.) But more needs to be said about this "strangest" of all creatures that holds, in Goethe's words, "the secret of the creation and organization of plants" (or any family of phenomena). As we mentioned earlier. Goethe's interests were vast and not restricted to botany; he also did research in osteology" or bone formation. Indeed it was Goethe who discovered the role of the intermaxillaiy- bone, the missing link that alIo\\ed zoologists to connect man and ape anatomicalK'. In a passage from his work On Morphology, we see most clearly the point of origination of his thinking concerning £^r-phenomena: The distinction between man and animal long eluded discovery. Ultimately it was belie\ ed that the definiti% e difference between ape and man la\' in the placement of the ape's four incisors in a bone clearly and physically separate from other bones. [Goethe provides the link.]... Meanwhile I had devoted my fiill energies to the stud}' of osteolog}'. for in the skeleton the unmistakable character of ever}' form is preserved conclusively and for all time. The developmental history of an organism is not past; rather the history of successive generational transformations is preser\ed and encapsulated in the fullness of any present form. Just as osteogeny can now be seen to recapitulate ph} logen}'. so more generally can any such morphological account. This "pregnanc}"^' of the present form allows of a new kind of thinking to uncover the C/r-principle at work, a re\"erse thinking that ''traces the phenomena [back] to their [empirical] origins.''®" (This is the first methodological principle of the new science of morpholog}'"). In another context he reflects on this Ur-principle. now also called an "archetype:" •\.. an anatomical archet}pe will be suggested here, a general picture containing the forms of all animals as potential [2x], one which will guide us to an orderly description of each animal.'"®^ The £/r-principle is thus a kind of omni-potential in conversation with its environment and out of which the whole pohmorphic metamorphosis issues. "All is leaf" As such these are not ideas in the usual sense of Plato or KanL neither separate nor abstract. Rather the}' are like ideas in enabling us to give an account of the unify ing principles at the origin of the plenitude. They are like ideas, as well, in that they might ser\'e as a kind of "formula" providing a way to generate new forms—if only in imagination.®' (The "deri\'ation®^' is not ofhypothetical but real possibilities.) Though they are more like the eidos in Aristotle, an active principle embodying the manifold fruitfulness of nature, here ho\N'ever "the secret of the creation and organization" ofthe family of forms. (He sometimes called itentelechy} ) Thus whatever the family of phenomena—^botany, osteolog'. geology, meteorology, color—C/r-phenomena emerge. We come to see the unify ing principle, the spirit 'That dictates the role of e\'er}' part and restrains or sanctions all excess through immanent law." From this "empirical summit.®®" all things can be seen as unified. Thus we have order out of chaos®', integration where we might otherwise have discontinuity. The plenitude is comprehended. Therefore when you pick up Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants to read, or any of his other writings on nature, do not close yourseh es off when hearing its foreign language, rather attempt to hear its new \'oice and direction for the understanding of nature, "the element in which we live." Whether, indeed. Goethe has bequeathed us afi uirfidpath by means of which I ^ �Da\ id Lawrence Le\ ine Page 11 "At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'^ Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14x our ancient right might be restored or whether it is but a false porta. is for each of us to determine for ourselves. 7. Against Self-knowledge: "Eveiything that liberates our mind without at the same time impartina self-control is pernicious Where are we. then, in the midst of all this? Is there a lesson to be learned about ourselves from this "other \\ ay of studying nature"? As we'\'e seen there are two unities that are reestablished by Goethe's wa}- of thinking: there's the unit}' of wholes that had been fragmented, and the unit}' of obsen er and world that had been alienated. Let us think more about the latter. This unit}" of obsen er and world means that, like any organism, man cannot be known, nor know himself, apart from his world—his environment— which sustains him and of which he is an integral part. Given the polarized, inauthentic. and diminished sense of self that is the consequence of the di\ orce of the "ego'* from its world in modem thought, it is understandable, then, that to Goethe "no one knows himself an}' longer." This led him to his famous—if at first shocking—remark concerning the Delphic oracle: "I mustadmit.'" he said, 'ihat I have long been suspicious of the great and important sounding task: 'know-thyself.' This has always seemed to me a deception practiced b}' a secret order of priests who wished to confuse humanity with impossible demands, to divert attention from acti>it}' in the outer world to some false inner speculation.*'" Self-knowledge—or what we take to be such—can be misleading, indeed disabling. But how can we make it truthful...and enabling? As we would expect, for Goethe the success of our efforts to know ourselves depends on the degree to which we are willing to extend ourselves be}ond ourselves. "Man is b}' all his senses and efforts directed to externals—to the world around him....'"'* he stresses, and thus "the human being knows himself only insofar as he knows the world: he percei\ es the world onl} in himself and himself only in the world."'" This brings to mind his earlier obser\'ation: "WTioe\'er descends deep down into himself will always realize he is only half a being:" this thought was then completed with 'iet him find ...a world....and he will become whole."" In short, that we might be drawn out of our overly selfpolarized existence, we need to reestablish ourselves once again as "worldly beings, full}" engaged with and in our natural correlate "the outer w orld." Thus he answers the question "How can we learn self-knowledge?" in this wa}": ""'"Never by taking thought but rather by action."'" [2x] This reph' should not surprise us. for itwas our history that our very attempts to thwk about ourseKes and the world brought us to this unnatural polarization. Thus it is •'acti^'it}' in the outer world" alone that is necessary" to restore a balanced polarit}'and healthy equilibrium. We see this in Goethe's own ''objective activit} :" Without my attempts in natural science, [he said] I should never have learned to know mankind [including himself] as it is. In nothing else can we so closely approach pure contemplation and thought, so closeh' observ e errors of the sense and of the understanding, the weak and strong points of character. All is more or less pliant and wavering...but nature understands no jesting; she is always true. alwa}'s serious: alwa}'s severe... the errors and faults are alwa}'s those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her. she despises: and only to the apt. the pure and the true, does she resisn herself and res eal her secrets.'^ �David Lawrence Levine Page 12 "At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude" FridayNight Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Here we see Goethe learning lessons from nature that once were thought the fruit of introspection and the stud\' of the human sciences. The book of nature, as other texts, can serve as an occasion for self-reflection. 'The apt. the pure, and the true'* learn about themselves and other human beinas as the\ self-criticalK" open themseh es up to new fields and methods. The earlier passage. "For"almost a centuiy now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds ofmen engaged in them:" comes to mind. It is followed b>-: "it is a real piece of good fortune that nature inter>'ened. drew the essence of the humanities to itself and opened to us the way to a true humanitarianism from its side."^" The stud>- of nature can thus be a liberatingstudy, freeing us from the burden of blinding conceptions and enabling us to return to our original worldliness wherein we. once asain. can open oursel\"es to our fullest possibilities. In this wa\. the study of nature is properly a liberal art. 8. The Grand Attempt: "Where do we meet an original naturel Where is the man with strength to be true, and to show himselfas he is?"'® FinalK". certain questions emerged earlier about our modem way of life. How are we, given the ^'demands of an exorbitant present,*" not to get ""caught up" in the whirl of our times and to reclaim a sense of productive leisured For Goethe the answer is ...nature, whose rhythms, it was once thought, could not be accelerated, and through our study of which intimations of timeless self-sameness might prove a refuge and shape our own being in the world. How are we to regain afooting ""where everything is in flux of continual change"? Here too. the answer for Goethe is nature, our home world, whose inherent lawfulness, as evidenced in the unities of life forms, can thus provide a secure base upon which to take our next steps. How are we to know ourselves more completely? Nature is especially needed here to offset our tendency^ to over self-involvement and to return us to our original fullness of being. And how are we to educate ourselves more truthfully? Since modem education only brought us, in Goethe's view, to become "blind with seeing eyes." he sought in nature a complement—not to mention an antidote—^whose truthfulness would bring us "to see with seeing eyes" that fullness of view, perspective and measure that is the proper fmit of serious study. Our question: can our own sustained reflection on these questions, beginning with freshman laboratory, lead to lessons such as these as well?" B\ way of conclusion I would like to quote Nietzsche one last time. Toward the end of his life (1889). he himselftried to capture in one of his aphorisms "the European event" that was Goethe. This distillation lis es up to his well-known boast that he "wrote whole books in one sentence.""''® though in this case he is somewhat more loquacious, for it took him a whole paragraph to epitomize this extraordinary life: Goethe - not a German event but a European one: a grand attempt to overcome the eighteenth century through a retum to nature, through a going-z/p to the naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-ov ercoming on the part of that century. - He bore within him its strongest instincts: sentimentality, natureidolatiy. the anti-historical, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionaiy.... He called to his aid history, the natural sciences, antiquity , likewise Spinoza, above all practical activity; he surrounded himself with nothing but closed horizons; he did not sever himself from life, [rather] he placed himself within it [that is, ""at the very center of the plenitude"]; nothing could discourage him and he took as much as possible upon himself, above himself, within himself. What he ^ �David Lawrence Le\ ine ''At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude*' Page 13 Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29,2003 14x aspired to was rotaliry: he stro\ e against separation of reason, sensualit}'. feeling, will (—preached in the most horrible scholasticism b> Kant, the antipode of Goethe): he disciplined himself to the whole, he created himself...Goethe was, in an epoch disposed to the unreal, a convinced realist: ...Goethe conceived of a strong, highly cultured human being, skilled in all physical accomplishments, who, keeping himself in check and having re\ erence for himself, dares to allow himself the whole compass and wealth of naturalness, [one] who is strong enough for this freedom .... A spirit thus emancipated stands in the midst of the universe with a jojful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separate and indi\idual ma>' be rejected, that in the totalit>- everything is redeemed and affirmed - he no longer denies ... But such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name [...] Dionysus.— Those who've read more wideK" in Nietzsche will recognize this last act of baptism as extraordinary: there is no higher, nor deeper, nor more original mode of being for Nietzsche than this aboriginal and creative life force that he identifies in the person of Goethe: 1) this rare independence from it's times. 2) this extraordinary, if circumspect, positivity, 3) this unlimited and deep interest in all things. 4) this secure groundedness in practical, concrete reality-, 5) this insistence on our original, primary experience. 6) this noble distance from suffering, 7) this incomparable sense of measure, and of course 8) this Olympian courage. If not Dionysus, then what name or word would be appropriate? Goethe and Nietzsche saw that we modems ha\e a hard choice before us: between disaffection and engagement, between c\nicism'*'" and wonder. Goethe somehow was able to affirm life, to sav YESl'*^* So we ask you tonight to consider this figure, how he might move you to "discipline yourselves to the whole" and summon the natural fecundity of your inherence. .\nd we ask you tonight "to place yourselves within life." to seek out what is primary and original and. daring to speak the language ofdisco\'ery. to speak "poetically.'^" And we ask you tonight to "make time" for thoughtfulness. that you transform the mundane with thejo> s of daily discos eiy. that\ our life be rich and yourdays notordinary ones. One last comment: Eckermann observed that even until Goethe's last da>'S (that is. into his 83"^ year), he was continually learning. May this be so for you as well. Thank vou. �David Lawrence Levine ".4r the Very Center ofthe Plenitude" Page 14 Fridav Nidit Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14.\ Endnotes ' Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. .Maxim and Reflections. = 337: also 664 [hereafter MR]. Given as the annual Fridav niaht Dean's Lecture' to open the 37'" academic year at St. John's College. Santa Fe. See MR = 864. This talk is a further development of work begun in 1966 (see Levine. "The Political Philosophy of Sature. .4 Preface to Goethe s Human Sciences." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. XL 1986. pp. 163-178). It was Thomas McDonald who introduced me to the work of Eric Heller and Karl Lowith. and all three who introduced me to the depth of Goethe's thinking: m\ debt to them continues. For the ambiguiiv' and greatness of Goethe's "grand anempt." see Johann Petet Eckermann. Conversations with Goethe, translated by John Oxenford. London. 1951 [1850]. [hereafter ECK]. October.20.1828. .As alwa>s my deep gratitude to Jacqueline Levine and John Comell for their thoughtful suggestions. I " Nietzsche. Twilight ofthe Idols, Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, translated by R.J. Holilingdale. 1968 [1889]. = 49. p. 102[hereafterTl\. •' .Martin Heidegger. "On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in .Aristotle's Physics B. 1." Pathmarks, Cambridge. 1998. p. 183 [hereafter Phusis]. " .Analysis and Synthesis [hereafter .AS], in Goethe. Scientific Studies, vol. 12. edited and translated b\- Doualas Miller. The Colleaed ff'orks. Princeton. 1995. p. 48 [hereafter SS]. The publication of this collection of Goethe's disparate scientific workshas provided a new occasion for further reflection about his"grand anempL" • Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Goethe, or the Writer." Representative Men. New York. 1995 [1850]. p. 195. ^ ECK Januaiy 4. 1824. May2. 1824. Februaiy 18and 19. 1829. ECK Februaix 26. 1824: also .MR = 662. ' ECK March 1. 1830. ' Outline of a Theory of Color [hereafter OTC]. SS. = 743 see also note 21. 10 Nietzsche. "The Wanderer and His Shadow. " Human at! too Hunum, A Bookfor Free Spirits, translated by R. J. Hollingdate. Cambridge. 1986. Vol. II. Pt II = 109. p. 336 Lener to Zelier. June 7. 1825: in Ldwith. Karl. "The Historical Background of European Xihilisin." "The Fate of Progress." .Mature, History, and Existentialisnu and Other Essays in the Philosophy of History'. E\anston. 1966. pp. 4. 156-7: Front Hegel to Sietzsche. the Revolution in Sineteenth Century Thought. New YorL 1964. pp. 27-8. 177-181 [hereafterHN): also MR = 480. i MR =474. • MR = 479. '•* .MR = 770. HN p. 226. The EnterpriseJustified. On Morphology. SS. p. 61. The ego or modem selfis doubtful of all but bare existence, where even the e.xiemaliiv . the worldness of the world, is in question. Foran interesting reflection on the problem of the subject-object polaritv . see Heidegger. Phusis. p.188. .A modem ironv: man is least at home in a world of his own conception. �David Lawrence Levine Page 15 the Very Center of the Plenitude" Fridav Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14x ECK September 24. 1827. ECK September 18. 1823. Bj-contrast, all of Goethe's poetn* was insistently "occasional." that is objecti\ ely motivated: "The world is so great and rich, and life so full of \ ariet>*. that \ou can ne\er want for occasions for poems. But the\ must be occasioned [poems] [Geiegenheitsgediche]: that is to sa\. realin- {lVirklichkeif\ must give both impulse and material. .A panicular even becomes universal and poetic by the veiy circumstance that it is treated bv- a poet. .All mv poems are occasioned poems, suggested bv- real life, and having therein a firm foundation." ,A radicalh different orientation and tone is apparent here. See also January 29. 1826. MR ^ 337.393. 119. " MR = 935. ECK Januarv- 29. 1826: also .MR =1119. ECK .May18.24. - ECKJanuaiv 29. 1826. MR = 1031: ECK .Mav 2.1829. .A comparison wiih Nietzsche is appropriate here. ECK March. 14. 1830; also December 21. 1831: ITP p. 39. 29 ECK .April 14. 1824: also 77je Cement Prefaced. On Morphology. SS. p. 67. and HN pp. 6-7. On the Parts of.Animals, l.v. 645al6. 19-27. Fortunate Encounter [hereafter FE], SS. p. 18. "The Germans." Goethe notes, "have a word for the complex of existence present in the physical organism. Gestalt [or structured form]...[whereby] an interrelated whole is identified, defined, and fixed in character. But if we look at all these Gestalten [all these forms], especiallv- organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent nothing is at rest or defined—everything is in flux of continual motion. This is why the Germans fi-equentlv- and fininglv- make use of [another] wordBildung[formation] to describe [both] the end product and what is in process of production as well." The PurposeSet Forth. On .Morphology. SS. p. 63. Significant Help Given by an Ittgenious Turn ofPhrase [hereafter ITP]. SS. p. 40. See CP p. 69: also Eric Heller. "Goethe and the Idea of Scientific Truth." The Disinherited Mind. New York. 1959.p. 10 [hereafter Heller]. *' Metamorphosis ofPlant [hereafter MoP]. SS. ^ 60.67. MoP. p. 76. OTC - 743. ECK. .Mav- 18. 1824: also January 17. 1830. This is the "modem cave." We may not be disposed at first to include the philosophers among the "opinion makers" parading above and behind the chained onlookers in Plato's cave {Republic VII). But they are word smiths and as such we are indebted to them for our language and lenses as well: see also Hegel. "Preface." Phenomenology of Spirit, translated bv .A. \'. Miller. Oxford. 1977. =33. pp. 19-20: "In modem time the individual finds the abstract ready made.... Hence the task nowadays consists...in freeing determinate thoughts from their fixity so as to give actuality to the universal and impart to it spiritual life. " �Da\ id Lawrence LeN ine Page 16 '\4t the Ven' Center ofthe Plenitude*" Frida\- Niaht Dean's Lecture. Auaust 29. 2003 14x r^ MR = 1364. Lucreiius. On the yantre of Things. II. •*" "These anempts at division also produce many adverse effects when carried to an e.\ireme. To besure, what is ali\e can be dissected into its component parts, but from these pans it will be impossible to restore it and bring it back to life" (PSF p. 63). The natural plenitude is now compounded exponentially by the anahiical dissolution or decomposition of wholes; cp. Heidegger's characterization: the original "atomic bomb" is to be found here in our modem analuical disassociation or explosion of all things into bits, pans and panicles {"The Thing." Poetry, Language, Thought, ed. byHofstadter. New Tork. 1971, p. 170). .And thus the diminished realii>- of those who think that a home is bricks and monar. and humans their chemical makeup. ~ Rene Descanes. Meditations on First Philosophy. 11. .AT pp. 19-34. How someone could e\en think this is wonh fiinher thought. .A. science that had given up trying to e.\plain our e.\perience was simply incomprehensive—not to mention infuriating—^to one so firmly rooted in theactual ("at the very center of the plenitude"). The Extent to ff'Ttich the Idea 'Beauty Is Petfection in Combination with Freedom' May be .Applied to Living Organisms, SS 22: also ECK September 2. 1830: see also Goethe's longstanding debate with the Newtonian school and their tendenc\ to substitute secondaiyfor primary phenomena: OTC = 176. 718. TheEnterprise Justified. On .Morphology, SS p. 61. In this regard one might want to compare Goethe and Nietzsche's respective anempts to "sta\e off the nihilistic consequences of modem science" (Levine. .4 World ofWoridless Truths, .An Invitation to Philosophy). 4S OTC= 158. .AOS p. 48. ECK September2. 1830:also Heller, p. 16. MR = 430: gemeine Menschen verstand (not "common sense"): cf. Empirical Observation and Science, [hereafter EOSJ. SS p. 25. "" Naively Levine. "The .Antinomy and Irs Political Resolution." The Political Philosophy of.\ature. pp. 170-172. .MR = 664: also ECK January 29. 1826: "People alwa\s talk of the study of the ancients: but what does that mean, except that it sa\s. turn your attention to the real world....": see also OTC = 358. Yet as we shall see Goethe is not an ancient but seeks to car\e out a middle position between ancient and modem science. While there is deep asreement with .Aristotle about ourexperience of nature in terms of wholes, there isdisagreement aboutwhat is eternal. In making form eternal. .Aristotle, hesaid, was prone to "precipitousness" (....) By contrast forhim it is theprocess, not the form, which abides. "E\erything is in flux of continual motion." Goethe has sought to establish hisown "theory of relativity. a relational and immanent measure, amidst the ever-changing" (Levine. The Political Philosophy ofSature. p. 174)." *•' "There is no worse mistake in ph\ sics or an\ science than to treat secondary things as basic and...to seek an explanation for the basic things in secondary ones" (OTC = 718). It'sas ifwe were "toenter a palace b>" the side door and thereafter base our description of the whole on our firsL one-sided impression {General Observation [hereafter GO], SS. p. 42 and OTC p. 160): also. = 177. 716 and its application tothe "grievous" Newtonian error at= 176. " See Heidegger. Phusis: "The act ofself-unfolding emergence isinherenth" a going-back-into-itself. This kind ofbecoming present isphusis. But it must not be thought ofas a kind of built-in 'motor* that drives something nor as an oraanizer" on hand somewhere, directing the thing. Nonetheless, we might be tempted to fall back on the notion that p/»;iv(-detemiined being could be a kind that makes themselves. So easiK' and spontaneoush' does this idea suggest �David Lawrence Le\'ine "/4/ the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'^ Frida}' Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 17 14x itself that it has become normative for the interpretation of li\ ing nature in particular, a living being has been understood as an "organism." No doubt a good deal of time has yet to pass before we learn to see that the idea of organism' and of the 'organic' is a purel> modem, mechanistic teleological concept according to which "growing things' are interpreted as ariijbcis that make themselves. E\en the word and concept "plant' takes what grows as something "planted." something sown and cultivated (p. 195)" and "But is notphusis then misunderstood as some son of self-makingartifacti Or is this not a misunderstanding at all but the onl\ possible interpretation of phusis. nameh. as a kind of technel This almost seems to be the case, because modem metaphysics, in the impressive terms of ...Kanu conceives of "nature" as a "technique" such that this "technique" that constitutes the essence of nature pro\ ides the metaphysical ground for the possibilii>. or eN en the necessit>-. of subjecting and mastering nature through machine technology (p. 220)." 56 GO p. 42. ECK. May 12. 1825; also .AS p. 48. 58 ECK .April II. 1827. 59 FE p. 20. 60 The Influence of.Modern Philosophy, (hereafter IMP], SS p. 28. MoP = 77. 62 .MoP = 84. o r e = 175. 64 EOS p.25. OTC = 665. There are times when Goethe seems to anticipate Husserl's phenomenological approach, in panicular in The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject [hereafter EMOS]. p. 16. and LALO p. 22. where the rigor and thoroughness of something like "eidetic variation" seems to be proposed. The question is li\ ing form: ""...We cannot find enough points of view nor develop ourselves enough organs of perception to avoid killing it when we anahze it" that is. multiple adumbrations may give us a kind of whole but at the risk of rendering the outcome a "mental composition' (as in Kant). It would be interesting to see how Husserl and Heidegger treat life in its original vitality. See also OTC = 166. ^ Preface. OTC p. 159. We'\ e taken the liberty to add the specification "modem scientific" to abstraction. Throughout his OTC Goethe addresses the problems of scientific cognition and its tendency to excessive abstraction (== 310. 716. 754.and p. 162). ForGoethe, as for Hegel, this tendency is consequential and reckless. See note52. EOS. SS p. 25. 68 Polarity. SS p. 155: OTC = 175: Lenerto Herder. .May 17. 1778 (in Heller, p. 10). OTC = 732 (""expanded empiricism"). On Granite. SS. p. 132. .4 Study Based on Spinoza, SS. p. 8. Despite Kant's denial of such a human faculty in his Critique of Teleological Judgment. Goethe found a window ofopponunity. He wrote that Kant had "... a roguishly ironic way of working: at times heseemed determined to put the narrowest limit on our ability to know things, and at times, with a casual gesture, he pointed beyond the limits he himself had set." The passage in Kant that Goethe alludes to reads thus: "He can...think [of a kind of] understanding which [unlike our discursive one is}... intuitive, [and] proceeds from the synthetical-universal tthe intuition of the whole as suclu to theparticular, i.e. from the whole to theparts.... It is here notat all requisite toprove that such an iniellecius archerypous is possible, but only that ue are led to the idea of it—which too contains no �Da\ id Lawrence Le\ ine "'At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude" Friday Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 18 14x contradiction—in contrast to our discursive understanding, which has need of'images finiellectus ect}pust and to the contingenc}- of'its constitution." However. Goethe then drew the opposite conclusion: "Whyshould it not also hold true in the intellectual area that through an intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may become worthy of participating spirituallyin its creative process?." he wonders. "Impelled from thestart byan inner need. I had stri\ en unconsciously and incessantl>' toward primal image and prototype, and had even succeeded in building up a method of representing it which conformed to nature. Thus there was nothing ftinher to prevent me from boldly embarking on this "adventure of reason" (as the sage of Ronigsberg himself called it)." Judgment through Intuitive Perception [hereafter JIP]. SS pp. 31-2: also E.MOS. pp. 11-17. Contrast Kant's "aesthetic normal idea" Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, § 17. OTC = 177. Lener to Herder. .Ma\ 17. 1787:"...1 am ver> close to discovering the secret of the creation and organization of plants....The crucial point from which evetyihing else must needs spring.... The i'rpflanze is to be the strangest creature in the world.... .After this model [visual formula] it will be possible to in\ ent plants ad infininim. which will all be consistent...would possess an inner truth and necessity . .And the same law will be applicable to every thing alive (Heller, p. 10). .Also OTC ? 175. Polarity p. 155. "• Vrpflanze is often translated as"symbolic plant." While this rendering might behelpful if we keep a strictK" Goethean notion of symbol in mind (as in MR = 314). this translation more often misdirects us if it suggests to the reader either a mental abstraction or a literaiy device. Rather it seeks to embody the manifold fruitfiilness of nature "in potential" (Outline for a General Introduaion to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with Osteology [hereafter GIC.A]. SS. p. 118). ".All is leaf." .MoP =119: OTC = 120. Fortunate Encounter [hereafterFE], SS. p.20: ECK No\"ember 14. 1823. ^ Leners to Schiller. Februaiy 10. 14. 1787 (in Heller p. 20). Hegel too—who other\vise was well disposed to Goethe's project, indeed helped Goethe see how it fit into the larger scheme of the development of ideas—Hegel too nevenheless failed to see the i'rpflanze as anjthing but an abstracted archet> pe(See Hegel, The Letters, translated b> Butler and Seller. Indiana. 1984. pp. 681-711: HN. p. 11). ^ CP, SS. pp. 68-9. .And we read in the .Metamorphosis of Plants of the cal\-x that it "...betrays its composite origins in itsmore or less deep incisions or divisions. ITPp.41. OTC p. 166. This ma\ sound like "deconstruction." yet we would have to consider whether it represents a true break with anaKiical thinking, as Goethe seeks to do here. CP. SS p. 69. Just as it led to his "discovering" the Ur-principle of the plant kingdom, so Goethe is led in his other studies to "postulate" one for the mammal famih': "In the process 1 was soon obliged to postulate a prototype against which all mammals could be compared asto points of agreement and divergence. .As I had earlier sought out the archet>pal plant 1now aspired to find the archet> pal animal: in essence the concept or idea of the animal." S4 GIC.A p. 118. Letter to Herder. .Vlay 17. 1787; OTC = 175:Polarity p. 155. 86 ITP p. 41 ("...m> wholemethod relies on derivation...."). .Aristotle's eidos is not subject to metamorphosis. On the other side, in Darwin the metamorphosis of form is not an unfolding of immanent form but the haphazard "evolution of species" and creati\e adaptation on the pan of activ e wholes becomes ""random selection." See note 51. My thanks again to John Cornell for his helping me think this through. i,—^ f > �David Lawrence Levine "At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'' Page 19 Fridav Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 ss I4x OTC = 720. OTC = 109. 90 MR = 504. ITP p. 39. .Also "if we take the significant dictum 'know rhyself and consider it. u-e niitsm'r interpret itfrom an ascetical standpoint. It does not b>' an> means signifi" the kind of self-knowledge advocated by our modem hjpochondriacs. humorists, and 'Heatttotimontmens' [self-torturers], but quite simply means: pay some attention to yourself, watch what you are doing so that \ ou come to realize who \ ou stand vis-a-ris your fellows and the world in general. This needs no psychological self-torture'. an\-capable person knows and appreciates this. It is good advice and of the greatest practical advantage to everyone I.MR = 657)." He objects only to those isolating tendencies of the subjective sciences and psychologies thatare heirto the fateful alienation, if notdivorce, of the egofrom theworld. ECK.April 10. 1829: OTC# . ITP p. 39. See also Goethe's ad\ ice to the \ oung Schopenhauer ( ). MR = 935: the whole passage reads"...let him find a girl or a world, no matter which, and he will become whole." This is t>pical (see Eric Heller. "Goethe in Marienbad." ThePoet's Self and ThePoem. London. 1976). MR # 442 ("Try to do \our dut\- and \ou'll soon disco\er what \ou're like."): also #= 770. 935: ECK Januar\"29. 1826. 96 ^ ECKFebruar\ 13. 1829. HN p. 226: Levine. The Political Philosophy of Sature. p. 173. .Also ECK October 18. 1827: In a conversation with Hegel about the potential tor modem sophistry of the "dialectic disease." Goethe sa\s: "Let us only hope that these intellectual arts and de.vterities are not frequentb misused, and emplo\ edto make the false true and the true false The study of nature preserves me from such a disease. For here we have to deal with the infinitely and etemalb" true, which throws off as incapable e\'eryone who does not proceed purely and honestly with the treatment and observ ation of his subject. I am also certain that man\- a dialectic disease would find a wholesome remedy in the stud\ of nature." ^ ECK Januarv 2. 1824; also .March 12. 1828. ^ .And one lunher question: now that "nature" is at risk of being obscured b\" modem thought and being made artificial b\ modem technological advances, can it yet serve as a point of reference any longer, not to mention a standard? Twilight oftheIdols, or How to Philosophize l^lth a Hanmxer [1889). = 49. pp. 102-3: cf. MR=864. ECK January2. 1824: letterto Zelter.June 18. 1831 (in HN p. 27). See also ECK Januaiy 24. 1825. October 12. 1825: February 1. 1827; October 18. 1827; February 12. 1827; MR =191 and 1121. See Nietzsche. Zaraihustra This affirmation is what Nietzsche found most admirable, indeed he was envious of this, for it was not available to him. See Levine. Afterword: Goethe and Sietzsche. ".-I ff'orld of Worldless Truths, .An Invitation to Philosophy." KU A More Intense Chemical Activityin Primordial Maner, SS, p. 137. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 19 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "At the very center of the plenitude" : Goethe's grand attempt to overcome the 18th century, or how freshman laboratory saved Goethe from the general sickness of his age Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on August 29, 2003 by David Levine as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Levine, David Lawrence Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-08-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000772 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/177e7d835e68529d0827071656dd1221.pdf db06218ee0a36e8e148194fffd1fce19 PDF Text Text “We Shall Be Monsters”: Frankenstein and the Ugliness of Enlightenment [F]or a person who is altogether ugly in appearance, or of poor birth, or solitary and childless cannot really be characterized as happy. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1099b1-5. I hate books. Rousseau, Emile, CW 13:331. �Two hundred years ago, in January 1818, the first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published anonymously in London [F 311, 334].1 Over the next two centuries Shelley’s “hideous progeny” [F 173] grew to mythic size, siring offspring in film and print, birthing the science fiction genre, and updating the story of Prometheus, which cautions us about the dangers of science and technology, of ambitious philanthropy, and of ‘playing god.’ Here is a sketch of Shelley’s story. A young chemistry student named Victor Frankenstein makes and animates a monster.2 Horrified by his work, he abandons it, and the monster flees. A few months later, Frankenstein is called home by the murder of his youngest brother. He returns to see a household servant accused, tried, condemned, and executed for the crime; but he suspects that the monster is the real murderer. During a hike in the Alps, his suspicion is confirmed: the monster confronts him, tells his story, and demands that Frankenstein build him a companion. To Frankenstein the monster’s demand at first seems just, despite his crime. Frankenstein travels to England to do research and gather his materials. After several months, he nearly completes an artificial woman; but at the last moment he tears his work to pieces, fearing she will birth a species of monsters to war on humanity. Seeing this betrayal, the monster vows revenge and departs, leaving Frankenstein to return home. During his return he discovers that his friend Henry Clerval has also been murdered; he is accused of the crime and tried, but acquitted. Home at last, Frankenstein prepares to marry his childhood companion Elizabeth Lavenza, promising to share with her his dreadful secret once they are wed. The night of his wedding, he sends Elizabeth away in order to confront and fight the monster. But he has misunderstood the monster’s vow: he hears two terrible screams, and Elizabeth is dead. Frankenstein vows revenge, and pursues the monster north. 1 �Victor Frankenstein tells this story to an explorer named Robert Walton, whom he meets on the ice of the Arctic Ocean. Walton records the details, reporting some of them in letters to his sister in London. Though Frankenstein is close to catching the monster when Walton finds him, he is also near death. He is too weak to continue his pursuit, and once he has told his story he dies on Walton’s ship. Soon afterward, Walton finds the monster crouching over Frankenstein’s corpse. They speak briefly, then the monster exits the ship and disappears. Walton sails for London, bringing the story of Frankenstein and his monster back to society. Many monsters have been assembled from the materials Frankenstein furnishes. Mine is animated by what strikes me as Mary Shelley’s chief question in the novel: is enlightenment good? This monster’s homogeneous parts are ugliness, solitude, reading, science, ambition, philanthropy, beauty, family, and nature. To learn how to mix these materials, I will trace the four enlightenments depicted in Shelley’s novel: those of the monster, of Frankenstein, of Walton, and of Shelley herself. These enlightenments make up the four proper parts of this lecture, parts neither proportionate in size, nor ordered as in the novel. I mean to build this monster from the inside out. Part One: The Enlightenment of the Monster Enlightenment makes the monster a monster. So he tells Frankenstein on the alpine sea of ice. Abandoned by his maker, lacking other guidance, he is at first shaped only by his confused sensations. When he sees light, he closes his eyes; when he sees darkness, he feels pain, and opens his eyes again. When he wakes in Frankenstein’s apartment, he feels cold, and grabs some clothes to cover himself. When he feels hot, he hides in a forest. Then there is hunger, which leads to berries, thirst, which leads to a stream, and fatigue, which leads to sleep. 2 �At night, the dark and cold return, and he weeps in pain. But then he sees moonlight, feels pleasure, and wonders. All this happens mechanically in response to sensations. The monster’s mind is empty of distinct ideas [F 68]. But soon, distinct ideas follow his distinct sensations. The monster finds a fire that some travelers have abandoned. Its warmth is pleasant, but it burns when he touches it [compare CW 2: 12 note *]. He learns to feed the fire, to fan it to life, and to cook nuts and roots over it [F 69]. But food is scarce, so he must abandon his fire to forage. This brings him to a shepherd’s hut. The shepherd, seeing the monster, shrieks and flees, leaving behind his breakfast and another fire. The monster remembers this hut as a kind of paradise;3 but hunger forces him to leave it too. He comes to a village, where signs of food draw him into a cottage. The terrified villagers assemble to repel him with a hail of missiles [F 70]. Now the monster suffers the first of three accidents. He hides in a hovel, improving it so that it shelters and conceals him, like the shepherd’s hut. But this hovel happens to adjoin an inhabited cottage. This guarantees the monster a source of food and water; but it also allows him to observe the cottagers unseen [F 71-72]: a blind old man, a young man, and a young girl. They seem kind, sad, and poor, and their relations give him “sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature… a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or cold, warmth or food” [F 72]. This experience of beauty stops the monster from stealing their food; instead, he gathers wood for them while they sleep. He becomes an invisible family member. Noticing his benefactions, they call him “wonderful,” and “a good spirit” [F 77; compare 65]. The monster also listens to his cottagers, and learns that they can communicate pleasure and pain through speech. Observing with care, he begins to acquire this “godlike science”: the 3 �old man is “father,” the young girl “Agatha” or “sister,” and the young man “son,” “brother,” or “Felix” [F 75]. But he also contrasts “the perfect forms” of his cottagers, “their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions,” with his own ugliness, which he first sees in a pool of water. Terrified by his own looks, the monster begins to call himself ‘monster’ [F 76].4 This, the monster tells Frankenstein, is the less moving part of his story, explaining how he became what he once was [F 77] – namely, good. His survival and flourishing do not require him to harm others: he is a vegetarian who will not steal food from those worse off [F 99].5 He admires beauty and benevolence, wants to imitate them, and wants to be admired in return. The more moving part of his story, which tells how he became what he now is [F 77], begins when he learns how to read. One day, a beautiful woman comes to the cottage. The monster hears that her name is Safie, a form of Sophie. At the very middle of the novel, then, Sophie comes to the abode of Felix and Agatha, that is, wisdom comes to the happy and the good. This moment is the peak of the monster’s life. Since Safie can neither speak nor write the cottagers’ language, Felix teaches her, and the monster listens in. He boasts to Frankenstein that he improved more rapidly than she did: he is a quicker study than wisdom herself [F 79]. Felix’s lessons are readings from a book of history, Volney’s Ruins of Empires,6 followed by explanations. The monster wonders at the many stories of murder, and at humankind’s need for laws and governments. Vice and bloodshed disgust him, and when he hears of the fate of the native Americans, he feels sorrow [F 80]. He learns about “the strange system of human society” [F 80], based on property, social standing, and inequality. He learns about male and female, about the birth and growth of children, and about family. Since Felix and Agatha are brother and sister, and the old man is their father, it takes Safie’s arrival to teach the monster about sex.7 4 �These lessons make the monster reflect. He lacks both social rank and riches, the only possessions human beings esteem. He admires beauty, but he is “hideously deformed and loathsome” [F 80]. He may not even be human; he has yet to see anyone like him. He has no family, and remembers nothing of his previous life. “I can not describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted on me,” he says. “I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge,” and knowledge “clings to the mind… like lichen on a rock” [F 81]. He wishes he could shake off thought and feeling, and return to his life of sensations in the woods. But he knows only death can release him from his sorrow: a fate he fears and does not understand. Now a second accident befalls the monster.8 While seeking food and wood in the forest, he finds copies of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the first volume of Plutarch’s Lives, and Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther, all in the language he can read. He studies these books, taking each for a “true history” [F 87]. Reading Goethe, he judges Werther a divine being with a deep and honest character, wonders at his suicide for love, weeps at his death, and shares his opinions without understanding his fate.9 This book throws the monster into “despondency and gloom” [F 86], and renews his sorrowful reflections.10 Reading Plutarch, he finds “the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics,” and learns “high thoughts,” and “to admire and love the heroes of past ages” [F 86]. He prefers the peaceful lawgivers Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus to the violent founders Romulus and Theseus, but only by accident. Had he first observed humanity in the form of a young soldier, rather than of his cottagers, the monster tells Frankenstein, “I should have been imbued with different sensations” [F 87].11 But reading Paradise Lost moves the monster most strongly, because it depicts situations similar to his own. Like Adam, the monster sees himself “apparently united by no link to any other being in existence” [F 87]; though unlike Adam, “no Eve soothed my sorrows, or shared my thoughts” [F 88]. Like Satan, he envies the 5 �happiness of his cottagers [F 87]. About Eve’s fall, the situation that most resembles his own, the monster is silent. The monster also deciphers the journal pages he finds in a pocket of the clothes he grabbed from Frankenstein’s apartment [F 87; compare 68]. They detail his “accursed origin,” the “disgusting circumstances” that made his “odious and loathsome person” [F 88]. Frankenstein’s notes also make the monster think of Adam and Satan. “God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image,” he tells his maker, “but my form is a filthy type of your’s, more horrid from its very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested” [F 88]. Having tasted, through his reading, from the tree of knowledge, the monster quickly falls. He wants to become a visible member of his cottagers’ family, so he decides to reveal himself to them [F 85]. Since his “unnatural hideousness” causes the horror he inspires, while his voice, “although harsh, [has] nothing terrible in it” [F 89; compare 69],12 he plans to address himself first to the blind old man. He hopes the old man will defend him to the other cottagers, convey his admiration for them, and provoke their compassion, despite his looks [F 88]. When the old man is alone, the monster knocks, enters, and speaks with him. He argues sincerely that he is a victim of injustice, and throws himself on the old man’s mercy, just as the cottagers come home. Seeing the monster, Agatha faints, Safie flees, Felix attacks, and the monster retreats to his hovel [F 91]. This reception makes the monster rage and despair. He declares “everlasting war against the human species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery” [F 92]. To open hostilities he burns the cottagers’ home, and sets off to find Frankenstein, to demand pity and justice [F 94].13 6 �Now the monster suffers a third accident. Arriving in Frankenstein’s home town, and pondering how to address his creator, he meets a small child. He thinks, “this little creature [is] unprejudiced, and [has] lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity” [F 96]. If he can educate the child to be his friend, he will not be alone. He seizes the child, who screams, calls him “monster,” and threatens punishment from his father, “Monsieur Frankenstein” [F 9697]. Hearing the name of his maker, the monster makes the child his first victim. He grasps his throat, and William Frankenstein is dead. When the monster finds a locket on William’s body, he slips it unseen into the pocket of a nearby girl [F 97]. Soon enough this girl, Justine Moritz, is executed for the murder of Frankenstein’s brother [F 44-58].14 This concludes the more moving part of the monster’s story. Here he first refers to his own “malignity” [F 97]. These murders, he thinks, have completed his fall from goodness to wickedness. But while the hated name ‘Frankenstein’ provokes him to murder, he continues to hope for his maker’s pity and justice. The monster’s mere thought of Frankenstein is not enough to explain William’s murder. A contributing cause must be William’s revulsion at the monster’s ugliness, which shows the monster that the horror he inspires is not learned, but natural.15 And while the monster claims that “the lessons of Felix, and the sanguinary laws of man” [F 97] taught him how to frame Justine Moritz, the portrait of Frankenstein’s beautiful mother inside the locket teaches us why he frames her. He is ugly; the smiles of beautiful women are not for him. He is by nature cut off from human society. Concluding his story, the monster thus demands of Frankenstein, “create a female for me” [F 98]. He insists it is Frankenstein’s duty to comply, since a creator has a duty to make his creation happy; if Frankenstein does not comply, he will slaughter the rest of his family, as well as “thousands of others” [F 66].16 Frankenstein’s choice, he says, will determine whether he 7 �remains wicked, or returns to his original goodness [F 66]. He sees these possibilities in terms of Paradise Lost: “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed” [F 66]. Despite his fall, he is silent again about the resemblance of his story to Eve’s. He can be Adam or Satan; he sees no third possibility.17 Frankenstein agrees with the monster about his duty [F 67].18 But if he makes a female monster, he worries, “their joint wickedness might desolate the world” [F 98]. To reassure him, the monster promises he and his mate will quit human society. “It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world,” he says, “but on that account we shall be more attached to one another” [F 99].19 His words move Frankenstein to compassion, and he consents to make the monster a companion. He believes the monster’s claim that his wickedness is due only to his solitude [F 100].20 For his part, the monster does not touch Frankenstein’s family again until Frankenstein changes his mind, and destroys his second creation [F 115-116].21 Then the monster vows revenge, resumes killing, and drags Frankenstein to his death [F 152-154]. He kills because he is wicked, the monster claims; he is wicked because he is alone;22 and he is alone because Frankenstein did not make him a companion. But he is also alone because he is ugly. Can a companion be made for him? Human beings naturally find him ugly [F 98], he thinks; he even finds himself ugly [F 76]. As Frankenstein realizes later, even a companion created for the monster will likely find him ugly [F 114];23 and worse, soon we will see that such a companion will likely also be ugly.24 The monster’s hope for a companion is due to seeing himself as Adam in Paradise Lost, just as his later pursuit of revenge is due to seeing himself as Satan.25 His reading has hidden other possibilities, and this will ruin his life. The monster is alone, and must be alone, not by Frankenstein’s choice, but simply because he is ugly.26 But why is he ugly? 8 �Part Two: The Enlightenment of Victor Frankenstein Enlightenment also makes Frankenstein a monster. So he tells Walton aboard ship on the sea of ice. “No youth could have passed more happily than mine” [F 20], he says. His parents are tender, his father as indulgent and as little dictatorial as possible [F 19, 105]. Yet his family is strangely constituted. Victor’s mother Caroline is the daughter of a friend of his father Alphonse [F 19]. Caroline marries him after her father’s early death, so she is much younger than her husband. Victor is the eldest of his brothers: he is an only child until age six [F 19], when his brother Ernest is born. When Victor turns seventeen, his youngest brother William is still an infant [F 24]. Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s cousin, is the only child close to his age. She joined the family when Victor was four, because her mother – Alphonse’s sister – had died, and her father had remarried. Victor and Elizabeth grow up together, first as playmates, then as friends. His mother Caroline intends them to marry [F 19]. Victor’s practice of calling his family his ‘friends’ perhaps results from the differences in age this accidental family embraces [F 147].27 Alphonse Frankenstein is old, and has put politics before family [F 18]. But now that his family is started, he has retired, to direct his children’s education [F 19, 24]. He is thus the cause of the first accident to befall Victor. One rainy day, the thirteen year-old Victor finds a volume of Cornelius Agrippa, a sixteenth-century writer on alchemy and other subjects.28 The theory of chemistry and the other “wonderful facts” he finds in its pages dazzle him. But when tells his father, Alphonse replies, “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash” [F 21]. Had his father instead explained patiently how Agrippa’s system had been refuted and replaced by a more rational and powerful modern chemistry, Victor thinks, he 9 �would have thrown the book aside. Finding his father’s judgment to be ignorant, he instead acquires and reads Agrippa’s complete works, followed by those of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus [F 22].29 As Victor tells it, his father’s carelessness gave his ideas “the fatal impulse that led to my ruin” and made natural philosophy “the genius that has regulated my fate” [F 21]. The projects of these authors – raising ghosts and devils, and finding the elixir of life [F 22] – become his projects, and emulation combines with “bright visions of extensive usefulness” [F 21] to power his studies. Books like Agrippa’s appeal to him not only because they teach that materials have occult properties, but also because their teachings are esoteric, “treasures known to few besides myself” [F 22]. Their projects are private, but Victor’s successes will be public: “what glory would attend the discovery,” he fantasizes, “if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!” [F 22]. Later events loosen Victor’s attachment to his alchemical writers. He studies distillation, steam, the air-pump, and electricity, and his alchemical writers lose credit with him for their ignorance of these phenomena [F 22-23]. His father sends him to lectures on natural philosophy at the local school, but a second accident keeps Victor from all but the last few, and from understanding even these [F 23]. Victor’s home schooling ends with him disgusted with natural philosophy, and occupied instead with mathematics, German, and Greek [F 23].30 He does not learn a modern chemical system to replace that of his alchemical writers. Then, when he is about to leave for university at age seventeen, Victor’s mother Caroline dies from a scarlet fever contracted from Elizabeth [F 24-25].31 Losing his mother to death, “that most irreparable evil” [F 25], likely returned his thoughts to the alchemical pursuit of immortality. 10 �A final accident befalls Victor when he arrives at the University of Ingolstadt.32 Away from his family, alone in a “solitary apartment,” unable to make new friends, he pursues his ardent desire for knowledge [F 26]. He makes only two new acquaintances outside his childhood circle: Professors Krempe and Waldman.33 When Victor meets Krempe, and confesses his interest in alchemy, Krempe calls his reading “nonsense,” and says he must begin his studies anew, since “these fancies… are a thousand years old” [F 26].34 He fails to interest Victor in modern natural philosophy, however, because he says it means to annihilate the alchemists’ visions of immortality and power – the very visions that interest Victor [F 27]. But when Victor meets Waldman, he shows no contempt for Agrippa, and defends the alchemists as the founders of modern philosophy. Charmed, Victor heeds Waldman’s argument that modern science has traded the miraculous visions of alchemy for the “new and almost unlimited powers” promised by scientists like Harvey and Boyle [F 27-28]. Waldman defeats Victor’s prejudice against modern chemistry, and Victor decides to study under Waldman and Krempe [F 28], The day he met these professors, Victor tells Walton, “decided my future destiny,” since “natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry… became nearly my sole occupation” [F 29]. It did not hurt, Victor adds, that Waldman had a benevolent aspect and sweet voice, since it was also Krempe’s “repulsive countenance” that deterred Victor from taking his advice [F 29 and 27]. Victor’s sensitivity to beauty has terrible consequences when, at age nineteen [F 19] – nearly Mary Shelley’s age when she begins to write Frankenstein35 – he begins to build his monster. The desire to end disease interests Victor in the principle of life, and in physiology, anatomy, and the causes of decay. An “almost supernatural enthusiasm” [F 30] drives his solitary studies, which require dissections and vivisections [F 32]. His enthusiasm is almost supernatural because his father was careful to keep supernatural horrors from entering the young 11 �Victor’s mind [F 30]. He is not averse to his work because he fears divine punishment. Instead, his aversion is natural: he finds his continual occupation with dead things to be ugly. But at last, after “examining and analyzing all the minutiæ of causation” involved in death and birth, he is suddenly enlightened [F 30].36 He finds a secret reserved for him alone: “the cause of generation and life,” which gives him the power of “bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” [F 30 and 32].37 Since his newfound power is general – he could animate a worm or a human being – Victor must decide how to use it. He resolves to animate a being like himself. Even if the result of his first try is not perfect, he reasons, like any other invention it could be the basis for future improvements [F 31]. The only constraint on his choice is practical: since working on minute parts will slow him down, he further resolves “to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large” [F 31 and 32; see also 13 and 65]. The reasons for his haste are not clear. Perhaps he fears that another will animate a lifeless being before he does – though the novel gives us no evidence that others are pursuing his project. To gather materials, Victor frequents “charnel houses,” the “dissecting room,” and the “slaughterhouse” [F 32]. If he succeeds in animating his lifeless construct, he hopes that he might learn how to reanimate the dead – something as yet he cannot do [F 32]. Despite later depictions, this construct cannot be an assembly of corpse parts animated by electricity.38 No human corpse could furnish proper parts – hands, feet, heart – proportionate to an eight-foot humanoid. If Victor cannot reanimate a dead human being, furthermore, he likely also cannot reanimate their proper parts. It is more likely that the monster is built out of homogeneous parts – bone, muscle, skin – harvested from human and animal corpses – hence the need to visit the slaughter-house – and shaped into proper parts proportionate to the whole. The 12 �monster later tells Victor, “thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine; my joints more supple” [F 66]. When he compares himself to humans, the monster judges, “I was more agile than they, and could subsist on coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded their’s” [F 80; see also 89]. So Victor fails to make a being like himself; instead, he makes a being in many ways better than himself. He also intends this being to reproduce. Anticipating the completion of his project, he exults: “[a] new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve their’s” [F 32].39 Either Victor already plans to make his being a female companion, or he intends it to reproduce with human females. This mention of the gratitude he expects from his creations is the only thought he reports about their mental lives.40 Victor’s concern with beauty extends to his creation. “His limbs were in proportion,” he tells Walton, “and I had selected his features as beautiful” [F 34]. But as soon as he animates his being, his enthusiasm for his project dissipates, and he sees the monster as horribly ugly. Victor catalogs his “dull yellow eye,” “watery [and] clouded,” “his shriveled complexion, and straight black lips,” and his “yellow skin [that] scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath” [F 34; see also 126].41 The problem is not just that Victor failed to harvest enough skin. The monster is ugly especially because of the contrast his ugly parts make with others that on their own are beautiful: his “hair… of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness” [F 34]. He is so ugly that, “unable to endure [his] aspect” [F 34], Victor abandons him almost at first sight. “I had gazed upon him while unfinished,” Victor tells Walton; “he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived” [F 35; see also 48]. Perhaps Victor hoped that 13 �motion would beautify his monster’s matter, making a ‘he’ out of an ‘it,’ rather than the reverse. Only after seeing him move does Victor first call his work ‘monster’ [F 35]. The monster’s unintended ugliness is an image of Victor’s enlightenment. His combination of marvelous alchemical projects and powerful modern techniques is stitched together with the hope that form and matter can be separated from one another, and so too beauty and life, and ugliness and death. He hopes to shape the ugly leavings of charnel houses, dissecting rooms, and slaughter-houses into a beautiful living being. But this hope is suggested by a truth of metabolism: by eating we make ourselves out of dead materials. Frankenstein’s accidental reading makes for an accidental enlightenment, which makes an ugly monster, which will ruin Frankenstein’s life. Once the monster begins to move, Frankenstein begins to fall. He soon flees his laboratory. When he collects himself enough to return, the monster is gone [F 35 and 37].42 He does not see the monster again until he returns home after his brother William’s murder [F 48]; he does not speak with the monster until they are alone together later on the Alpine sea of ice [F 65]. Then, Frankenstein tries to kill his monster, presuming him guilty of William’s murder [F 65-66 and 60].43 But the monster persuades Frankenstein to hear his story, and to make him a female companion. This new project does not rekindle Frankenstein’s “almost supernatural enthusiasm” [F 30]. Instead, he is possessed by “a kind of insanity” that shows him “continually about me a multitude of filthy animals inflicting on me incessant torture” [F 101], as if he were undergoing, rather than conducting, his vivisections.44 Collecting his materials, he tells Walton, “was to me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the head” [F 109]. Constructing the female monster is a “horrible and irksome task,” a “filthy process.” “During my first 14 �experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment,” he reports; “my mind was intently fixed on the sequel of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands” [F 113].45 Qualms about his promise accompany Frankenstein’s disgust. It is “probable,” he thinks, that a female monster will think and reason; but what will be her character? If the male monster became wicked, a female one “might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness” [F 114] – something, he implies, the male monster does not do. While the male monster swore to quit human society, a female one might not keep a promise made before her creation [F 114].46 Even if she is good, a female monster might not provide the male the companionship he seeks. Frankenstein assumes she will turn out ugly; so the male monster might find his own ugliness more abhorrent in female form, while the female might turn from him in disgust to the superior beauty of man.47 This fresh insult to the male monster might return him to human society [F 114]. But if the monsters can stand one another, their intercourse will quickly produce children; thus “a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror” [F 114]. Without knowing exactly how his monsters reproduce,48 we cannot know whether Frankenstein imagines a species terrifying for its ugliness, or its superiority, or both. This last reflection shows Frankenstein the wickedness of his promise. Earlier he had dreamed of the blessings of mankind and of a new species [F 32]; now, he tells Walton, “I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price perhaps of the existence of the whole human race” [F 15 �114-115 and 118]. Overcome by disgust and doubt, Frankenstein looks up from his gore-strewn workbench to see the monster watching him. The monster grins. Frankenstein sees in this only “malice and treachery,” and tears the female monster to pieces [F 115; compare 35]. Once his Eve is destroyed, for the monster only the path of Satan remains. “I shall be with you on your wedding-night,” he swears [F 116], and departs. Hearing this, Frankenstein also thinks of Adam and Eve: “the apple was already eaten, and the angel’s arm bared to drive me from all hope” [F 131]. He expects to be banished from the paradise of marriage and family on the eve of his wedding to Elizabeth Lavenza; he expects to die then by the monster’s hand. Instead, the monster first kills his friend Henry Clerval, then, on the wedding-night in question, Elizabeth herself. Soon after, Alphonse Frankenstein dies from sorrow [F 137]. Now Frankenstein too compares himself to Satan, “the archangel who aspired to omnipotence” [F 147]. The monster’s reading has possessed Frankenstein as well. Revenge, he tells Walton, became “the devouring and only passion of my soul” [F 139]. Urged on by the monster, Frankenstein pursues him across Europe and north to the arctic sea of ice,49 where Robert Walton first meets the monster and his shadow. Part Three: The Enlightenment of Robert Walton Enlightenment nearly makes Robert Walton a monster. After an accident kills his father while Walton is still a child, his uncle raises him. By neglecting his education, this uncle leaves Walton free for solitary readings of tales of discovery, the only books in his uncle’s library. Young Walton loves above all tales of voyages to the Pacific over the North Pole. He reads them day and night. Poetry distracts him briefly from his youthful dreams of discovery, but then a second accident – inheriting a cousin’s fortune – returns him to his projects of exploration, and 16 �equips him to pursue them [F 8]. Walton does not say whether this second accident was his cousin’s death. But death shapes his family and his education, as it did Frankenstein’s. Walton writes all this in letters to his sister, where he calls his self-education an evil. “Now I am twenty-eight, and in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen,” he laments. “It is true that I have thought more, and that my day dreams are more extended and magnificent; but they want (as the painters call it) keeping,” or proportion [F 10]. Walton’s circumstances, like Frankenstein’s, have made him an imaginative and extravagant projector. But while Frankenstein had Clerval to regulate his mind, failed to confide in him, and lost him to his monster, Walton lacks such a friend, and feels this lack acutely [F 10 and 16].50 To Walton, the North Pole is “the region of beauty and delight” where “the sun is forever visible” [F 7] – a land of both literal and figurative enlightenment. “What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?” [F 7], he wonders: certainly new discoveries in geography and physics. “[Y]ou cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation,” he writes his sister, “by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine” [F 8]. To these philanthropic ambitions Walton adds a personal one: to be the first human to reach the pole. “I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man” [F 7]. Walton’s public and private motives recall the combination that moved Frankenstein to pursue the principle of life.51 To pursue his project, Walton learns seamanship by day; by night, he studies mathematics, medicine, and the physical sciences of naval use. He inures his body to hardship.52 17 �Then he travels to northern Russia, to a city named Archangel – he too is living in Paradise Lost – where he hires a ship, assembles a crew, and sails north into the sea of ice [F 8]. He reassures his sister by letter: “you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness wherever the safety of others is committed to my care” [F 11]. “I will not rashly encounter danger,” Walton promises; “I will be cool, persevering, and prudent” [F 12]. Despite his promise, many of his men will die [F 149]. Walton is also ready to risk his own life. His sister will be happy, even if he dies in the north, because she has a husband and “lovely children” [F 148]. Walton himself does not want a family, but a friend. With no one to share his joy at success, to temper his dejection at failure, to amend his faults, to supply proportion to his projects, when a third accident crosses his path with the monster’s and Frankenstein’s, and he takes the latter aboard, he is eager to regard Frankenstein as a friend. As Walton tells his sister, “I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart” [F 15]. Though Frankenstein approves of Walton’s desire, he declines to reciprocate, explaining, “I have lost every thing, and cannot begin life anew” [F 16; see also 147]. Yet Frankenstein does call Walton “my friend” [F 17], he helps him by suggesting useful improvements to his plan, and he rallies his sailors when their fear of death makes them demand that Walton sail for home [F 149].53 But the chief help he gives Walton is to tell his story. “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did,” he says, “and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been” [F 17]. His story will provide Walton “a view of nature, which may enlarge your faculties and understanding,” concerning “powers and occurrences, such as you have been accustomed to believe impossible” [F 17].54 When Walton 18 �presses Frankenstein to share the secret of the monster’s animation, Frankenstein rebuffs Walton for his “senseless curiosity.”55 “[L]earn my miseries,” Frankenstein tells him, “and do not seek to increase your own” [F 146]. His tale completed, Frankenstein corrects and augments Walton’s notes, especially of his conversations with the monster, and shows him Felix and Safie’s letters, received from the hand of the monster himself [F 146; see also 83].56 Perhaps Frankenstein’s final hope is to win glory and benefit mankind by making his story public. But the meaning of his story is ambiguous. Walton, for example, does not learn from him to give up on enlightenment, perhaps because of Frankenstein’s conclusion. “During these last days,” he says, “I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blameable” [F 151]. He does implore Walton to “[s]eek happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition, even… the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries” [F 152]. But then he recants: “[y]et why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed” [F 151]. ‘Succeed’ is Victor’s last word, one worthy of his name. His last request is that Walton catch and kill the monster, though he does not insist that Walton do so at the cost of his ship and crew. But Walton turns home. So did Victor succeed or fail? Even after hearing Frankenstein’s story, Walton tells his sister, “I had rather die, than return shamefully, – my purpose unfulfilled” [F 150]. Frankenstein’s last words do not change his mind. Instead, his crew compels Walton to return.57 Nor does he fulfill Frankenstein’s last request, though he has his chance when the monster boards his ship to see Frankenstein’s corpse. “Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness” [F 152], Walton writes his sister; but despite the monster’s ugliness Walton listens to him, and seems persuaded by his promise: “I shall… seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile, and 19 �consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch, who would create such another as I have been” [F 155]. The monster means to extinguish his light at the pole, by becoming a light at the pole. Not the monster’s ugliness but Frankenstein’s corpse angers Walton [F 154]. He lets the monster escape without trying to kill him [F 156]. Walton does not kill the monster, nor does he kill himself and his crew in his quest for the pole. But only the rebellion of his crew spares him the latter.58 Maybe the monster finds the pole in his place. Part Four: The Enlightenment of Mary Shelley Did enlightenment make Mary Shelley a monster? She pursued it with a vengeance. As the daughter of two famous writers, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and the lover and later wife of a third, Percy Shelley, she set herself an intense program of reading and writing, beginning at age seventeen, if not earlier. Starting with biographies, novels, and her parents’ books, later adding history and philosophy, she recorded each book she and Percy read, day by day and year by year, in her journal. Thirty-six books in the latter half of 1814, seventy-four in 1815, sixty-five in 1816, seventy-one in 1817 – all told she read well more than two hundred books in her late teens and early twenties, in the four years preceding the publication of Frankenstein.59 She read the Iliad, the Bible, the Aeneid, Plutarch’s Lives, Tacitus’ Annals, the Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s plays, Don Quixote, Paradise Lost – twice – and Gulliver’s Travels [J 48-49, 73, and 89-90]. Here is a typical journal entry, from Saturday, November 17, 1816: “Draw, write; read Locke and Curtius. [Percy] Shelley reads Plutarch and Locke; he reads “Paradise Lost” aloud in the evening. I work” [J 68]. At this point Mary’s second child is eleven months old [F 333]. 20 �Shelley herself tells us that Frankenstein is a warning about the dangers posed by science and technology, ambitious philanthropy, and especially ‘playing god.’ In her preface to the third, 1831 edition of the novel, she writes of Frankenstein’s success in animating his monster, “supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world” [F 172]. But in the first, 1818 edition, the supremely frightful thing is the monster’s ugliness. Perhaps marking this shift in emphasis, the frontispiece of the 1831 edition depicts a monster who, though goggling at his reflection in a mirror, looks positively beautiful. No character in the novel means to ‘play god,’ nor displays a lasting concern with doing so. Frankenstein and his monster mostly see themselves as Adam or as Satan. Theological claims that god’s providence is better than man’s, or that imitating his providence is hubris or sin, are notably absent. Instead, Frankenstein is more secular, personal, even autobiographical than Shelley’s 1831 preface suggests. Its foreground concerns are with the monster’s ugliness, the perils of solitary reading, the mundane risks of philanthropic ambition, the loss of the family, and the meaning of nature. The novel is a Paradise Lost without God, a Prometheus Bound without Zeus. The monster, Frankenstein, and Walton are all shadows of Shelley herself,60 and they repeat the novel’s fundamental question: is enlightenment good, or does it make us ugly monsters, cut off from family and nature? We have plenty of evidence that Shelley finds enlightenment to be costly. Take the monster: he is attracted to family life and sensitive to the beauties of nature, but his extreme ugliness cuts him off from both [F 77]. Were it not for his enlightenment, especially by Paradise Lost, he might have seen a possibility for his life other than retirement with a mate, or war with his maker. Solitary contemplation, masked social activity in person or in writing,61 and 21 �scientific inquiry do not occur to him. He does not consider a life of exploration, though his build would suit him, more than any other reasoning being, to such a life. Though he may be smarter than his maker, he does not build a wife or a child for himself. Take Frankenstein: he is also attracted to and suited to family and nature. But his enlightenment, at the hands of the alchemists and the modern chemists, makes him an ugly monster, and cuts him off from family and nature [F 43-44], before dragging him to death across the sea of ice. And take Walton: he longs for and is suited to friendship, if not to family, but his enlightenment through books about voyages of discovery has sent him and his crew to risk their lives at the edge of the world. These three neglect the rule Frankenstein proposes to Walton: if your study “has the tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind” [F 33].62 Percy Shelley, writing as the anonymous author, endorses this rule in his preface, claiming that the chief concern of the novel is “limited to the avoiding [sic] the enervating effects of the novels of the present day,63 and to the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue” [F 5-6]. At the book’s center is a family of the good, the happy, and the wise – but the monster scares them away and burns down their home. Still, we have Frankenstein’s first name, Victor, and his last words, “another may succeed” [F 152]; we have Walton, the audience of the story we are reading, who is deflected from the pole not by Frankenstein’s tale, nor by Frankenstein’s death, nor by his own interview with the monster, but by the near-mutiny of his sailors. Perhaps had he and his sailors all been monsters, he would have succeeded. Perhaps these details indicate that Shelley herself doubted “the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue.” Perhaps 22 �enlightenment shows us the truth about the family and nature, by showing us the extent to which death and chance, not life and providence, makes our families, nature, and us. Perhaps enlightenment reveals our world not as an amiable home, but as monstrous.64 When Frankenstein, hiking alone in the Alps, considers the “awful majesty” of the mountains, the “wonderful and stupendous scene” of the “sea, or rather the vast river of ice,” he calls out to the “[w]andering spirits” of the place. The spirit that answers his call is the monster [F 65 and 77]. Another lie Percy Shelly tells in his preface is, “[t]he opinions which naturally spring from the character and situation of the hero are by no means to be conceived as existing always in my own conviction; nor is any inference to be drawn from the following pages as prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of whatever kind” [F 6]. He, and perhaps Shelley herself, could fear a reader’s inference of prejudice against the theological doctrine of Milton, given the damage Paradise Lost does to Frankenstein, and above all to his monster. But a philosophical doctrine is also being judged throughout the novel, even though its author’s name is not mentioned. Consider: Victor Frankenstein is a Genevan who makes a “man born big and strong” [CW 13: 162, see also 189-190], but fails to educate him adequately. This being is born into a state of nature, and perfected by circumstances; he claims that he was naturally good, but society has made him wicked; he begins life as a savage, is mistaken for a savage [F 13], and wishes to end his life living as a savage with his mate in South America [F 99]. Consider further: in Shelley’s time, the park outside Geneva where the monster murders William and frames Justine featured an obelisk dedicated to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, before which the Genevans murdered their magistrates during the Revolution.65 Rousseau depicts himself as a modern Prometheus in the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, the first public writing of his philosophic career [CW 2: 2 and 179]. In Emile, his best and most important work [CW 5: 480], he mentions “another 23 �Prometheus” who had made a tiny man “by the science of alchemy” [CW 13: 436 note *].66 Rousseau claims in his Confessions to have abandoned five children to a foundling hospital [CW 5: 289, 299-301, 551-552], where they likely died. Later in life, when Shelley writes an encyclopedia article on Rousseau, she returns repeatedly to the subject of these children [F 545].67 But the monster claims five victims before Frankenstein himself: William, Justine Moritz, Henry Clerval, Elizabeth Lavenza, and Alphonse Frankenstein. The amiableness of domestic affection, the excellence of universal virtue, and the beauty of nature are themes of Rousseau’s novel Julie, or the New Héloïse. Lastly, among the more than two hundred books that Mary Shelley read in the four years before Frankenstein was published are Rousseau’s Confessions, Emile, Julie, and The Reveries of the Solitary Walker – and she read all but the last of these twice [J 47-49, 55, 64, 72-73, 85-86, 89-90].68 Frankenstein is thus a meditation on the doctrine of the modern philosopher who launched his career by questioning the goodness of enlightenment. Rousseau defended the amiableness of domestic affection, but abandoned his children. He lauded the excellence of universal virtue, but sparked the Revolution. “I have seen these contradictions,” Rousseau writes about his claims in the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, “and they have not rebuffed me” [CW 2: 4]. Nor is Mary Shelley rebuffed. The ambiguities of her “hideous progeny” suggest she is willing to pay the price of enlightenment. She pronounces her judgment in the voice of Frankenstein’s creation: “[w]e shall be monsters.” Jeff J.S. Black Annapolis, Maryland February 23, 2018 24 �Leftover Materials This lecture is dedicated to my father, Paul David Black. It was delivered on his birthday, March 2, 2018, at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thanks to Michael W. Grenke for the invitation to give this lecture. Thanks to the members of the 2016-2017 Mellon Study Group on Digital Technology for a galvanizing first discussion of the themes of Frankenstein. Thanks to Lise van Boxel and Brian Wilson, founding members of the Combat & Classics podcast team, for an animating discussion of the ideas in the lecture. Thanks to my sister, Katherine Melissa Watson, for her helpful comments on an earlier draft. The engraving on the lecture’s cover page is Theodore von Holst’s, and was the frontispiece to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein. See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frontispiece_to_Frankenstein_1831.jpg. Retrieved on February 15, 2018. 1 Citations in the text of this lecture follow these conventions: CW refers to volume and page numbers in JeanJacques Rousseau, The Collected Writings of Rousseau. Edited by Christopher Kelly and Roger D. Masters. Thirteen Volumes. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990-2010). F refers to page numbers in Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Edited by J. Paul Hunter. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), which contains the 1818 text. FN refers to part and page numbers in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Frankenstein Notebooks. Volume IX of Shelley’s Manuscripts, Two Parts. Edited by Charles E. Robinson. (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996). J refers to page numbers in Mary Shelley, Mary Shelley’s Journal. Edited by Frederick L. Jones. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1947). L refers to volume and page numbers in Mary Shelley, The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Edited by Betty T. Bennett. Three Volumes. (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). PL refers to book and line numbers of Paradise Lost, in the edition John Milton, Paradise Lost. Second Edition. Edited by Scott Elledge. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993). 2 In calling Frankenstein’s product a ‘monster,’ I am following both Frankenstein’s practice and the monster’s own. They each give reasons for using this term. They mean by it something so unprecedented in its deformity as to serve as a warning. 3 He says, “it presented to me then as exquisite and divine a retreat as Pandæmonium appeared to the dæmons of hell after their sufferings in the lake of fire” [F 70; see PL 1:710-730]. 4 “At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification” [F 76]. 5 The monster does taste the offal left behind by the travelers who abandoned their fire, finding it “much more savoury than the berries I gathered from the trees” [F 69]. But he apparently does not begin eating meat because of this experience. In the only case where he kills for food, he does so to feed Frankenstein [F 142]. See also Marilyn Butler, “Frankenstein and Radical Science” [F 311]. Since the monster was not born and did not grow, it is not entirely clear why he needs to eat. But Rousseau would endorse his vegetarianism [CW 13: 184-186 and 297-299], which might be obscurely connected with his construction: since he is made out of dead flesh, perhaps he does not want to add to his substance by consuming dead flesh. 6 Constantin François Chasseboeuf, Comte de Volney, Les Ruines, ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires, 1791. Published in English as Constantin-François Chasseboeuf, Marquis de Volney, The Ruins: or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires. Third Edition. London: J. Johnson, 1796. It is available in the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty at http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1706. Retrieved on February 2, 2018. There is no record in her journal of Mary Shelley having read this work. 7 The connection between sex and a woman named Sophie is a theme of Book Five of Rousseau’s Emile. 25 �8 Prior to relating this accident, the monster tells Frankenstein the history of his cottagers, which “could not fail to impress itself deeply” on his mind [F 81]. This is so much that case that the monster makes copies of letters Safie exchanged with Felix, letters which testify to the truth of their story, in order to offer them to Frankenstein to “prove the truth of my tale” [F 83]. Yet it is not clear what the monster learns from the history of the cottagers that is different from what he learns from Safie and Felix’s readings and discussion of Volney. Perhaps the former history teaches the same lessons as the latter, but is more striking because the monster can see the participants in the flesh. 9 When suicide later occurs to the monster as an alternative to demanding a mate from Frankenstein or taking revenge on him, he rules it out, claiming that life is dear to him, despite his misery [F 66]. Yet once it is clear he will not have a companion, and once Frankenstein is dead, the monster claims that he will commit suicide [F 155]. 10 One new element appears in these reflections after reading Werther: the monster tries to infer his origin and purpose from his physical constitution. “My person was hideous,” he reflects, “and my stature gigantic: what did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them” [F 86]. So far as I can tell, the monster makes no progress in this new line of inquiry. It seems that his other readings closed off this line of thinking for him. 11 Here we see the damage done by Frankenstein’s abandonment of the monster. Had he overcome his disgust and stayed to educate his product, Frankenstein might have imbued the monster with scientific and philanthropic ambitions. 12 This contrast is the basis of the only joke I have found in Frankenstein. When the monster confronts Victor Frankenstein to tell his story, he repeatedly demands that Frankenstein listen to him [F 66-67], likely because he knows that his speech is more attractive than his looks. Frankenstein responds, “relieve me from the sight of your detested form” [F 67]. “Thus I relieve thee, my creator,” the monster intones, while placing his massive hands in front of Frankenstein’s eyes. Enraged, Frankenstein flings them away. This was not the time for a joke. 13 The monster’s halfheartedness in seeking revenge is suggested by several details. He tells Frankenstein he could have torn Felix “limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope” [F 91], or destroyed the cottage and the cottagers, glutting himself “with their shrieks and misery” [F 92] – but he does neither of these things, though he could have. In addition, consider this episode that occurs on the road to Geneva. On an especially fine spring day, he sees a young girl fall in a river, and leaps in to save her from drowning. He is trying to revive her when one of the locals approaches him and snatches the child away. When the monster tries to follow, the man shoots him with his gun [F 95]. This bald ingratitude makes the monster renew his vow of “eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind” [F 96], but even this renewed vow does not prevent the monster from imagining that he might befriend William Frankenstein when he first encounters him in Geneva. 14 The story of Justine Moritz’s fate includes an anticipation of the question the monster means his story to answer. Ernest Frankenstein, the elder of Victor’s two younger brothers, asks “who would credit that Justine Moritz, who was so amiable, and fond of all the family, could all at once become so extremely wicked?” [F 50; see also 54-55]. No one should credit such a miraculous change, though, since Justine is not guilty of the murder for which she is accused. But Justine is beautiful [F 52]. The monster, who is ugly, is guilty of the murder; the question becomes how he, being benevolent and fond of all his cottagers, could become so extremely wicked. Reflecting on Justine Moritz’s execution, Elizabeth Lavenza says, “men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood” [F 61]. 15 In the immediate sequel the monster asserts to Frankenstein that “the human senses are insurmountable barriers” to any sort of union between the monster and a human being [F 98]. 16 In the end Frankenstein does not comply, and the monster only kills members of his family. So it seems that his threat to kill “thousands of others” was a bluff or an exaggeration. 17 “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous” [F 66]. 18 Frankenstein asks, “did I not, as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?” [F 99]. We might wonder, since some of us are makers of children, to what extent this rhetorical question should be answered in the affirmative. 26 �19 “Our lives will not be happy,” the monster continues, “but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now feel” [F 99]. If the monster is not content with harmlessness, and seeks happiness as well, then he will be drawn back to human society. 20 Shelley would have been familiar with the argument that links solitude with wickedness through the dispute between Rousseau and Diderot communicated by a footnote in Emile. Against this link, Rousseau writes, The precept of never hurting another carries with it that of being attached to human society as little as possible, for in the social state the good of one necessarily constitutes the harm of another. This relation is in the essence of the thing, and nothing can change it. On the basis of this principle, let one investigate who is the better: the social man or the solitary man. An illustrious author [Diderot] says it is only the wicked man who is alone. I say that it is only the good man who is alone. If this proposition is less sententious, it is truer and better reasoned than the former one. If the wicked man were alone, what harm would he do? It is in society that he sets up his devices for hurting others [CW 13:240 note *]. 21 Seeing Frankenstein destroy the inanimate body of his companion, the monster says, “You can blast my other passions; but revenge remains – revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food!” [F 116]. 22 “My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor; and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existence and events, from which I am now excluded” [F 100]. 23 The two monsters “might even hate each other,” Frankenstein muses; “the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species” [F 114]. 24 Indeed, the monster demands that his mate be “as hideous as myself” because “once as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects” [F 99, 97]. He gives no other indication of why he thinks the effects of his own ugliness can be overcome. His thought seems to be either that two solitary and isolated members of the same species will feel compelled to unite [F see 99], despite their ugliness, or that because his mate will have been created particularly for him, they will be connected in a way that overcomes the effects of their ugliness. The former thought seems naïve, while the latter thought depends on the monster’s identification with Adam. 25 After the monster recounts his failed attempt to reveal himself to his cottagers, he says, “I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me” [F 92]. See PL 4:73-75. 26 To be ugly is to have bad looks, to be dis-specied, without species. See Plato, Sophist, 228a. 27 One wonders whether it is the difference in age between Alphonse and Caroline Frankenstein, and the youthful acquaintance of Victor Frankenstein and Elizabeth Lavenza, that explains how unerotic these relationships are – or whether this simply should be attributed to authorial discretion. The lack of eros between these partners might also contribute to Victor Frankenstein’s easy elision between his family and his friends. The reason for this elision is that friends who are not family cannot be true friends. “Even where the affections are not moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds, which hardly any later friend can obtain,” Victor explains. “They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives. A sister or a brother can never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shown early, suspect the other of fraud or false dealing, when another friend, however strongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himselF be invaded with suspicion” [F 147]. Alphonse Frankenstein delicately mentions his romantic coolness to Victor when the latter postpones his marriage to Elizabeth Lavenza: “You, perhaps, regard her as your sister, without any wish that she might become your wife” [F 104]. Elizabeth sees no difficulty in this arrangement: “our union has been the favorite plan of your parents ever since our infancy. We were told this while young, and taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take place” [F 130]. The coolness of the connection between Victor and Elizabeth might explain why Victor does not realize that the monster’s threat, “I shall be with you on your wedding-night,” is 27 �directed against Elizabeth, rather than against himself – as his reply, “before you sign my death-warrant, be sure you are yourself safe” [F 116] indicates. Victor seems to lack self-knowledge when he later says, “if for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself for ever from my native country, and wandered a friendless outcast over the earth, than have consented to this miserable marriage. But, as if possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions” [F 133]. 28 The editors of the Norton Critical Edition of Frankenstein supply here “Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), German physician, author of De Occulta Philosophia (1531), and reputed magician” [F 21 note 6]. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy adds that Three Books on Occult Philosophy (1510 and, reworked and enlarged, 1533) is “a comprehensive treatise on magic and occult arts,” and that Agrippa was also known for On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Arts and Sciences: An Invective Declamation, “a rigorous refutation of all products of human reason.” See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/agrippa-nettesheim. Retrieved on February 2, 2018. Is it a coincidence that Agrippa’s other major work resembles, in its title at least, the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts? Is Agrippa a stand-in for Rousseau? 29 Paracelsus (1493-1541) was, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a German-Swiss physician and alchemist who established the role of chemistry in medicine. See https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paracelsus. Retrieved on February 4, 2018. Consider also CW 13: 436-437. According to the same source, Albertus Magnus was a teacher of Thomas Aquinas and a proponent of Aristotle who established the legitimacy of the study of nature for Christians. See https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Albertus-Magnus. Retrieved on February 4, 2018. 30 Though his disgust is not so great as to prevent him from studying Pliny and Buffon at this point [F 23]. Victor also learned Latin and English when he was much younger [F 20]. 31 Louis Pasteur did not succeed in spreading the germ theory of disease until the 1870’s. Frankenstein is set sometime in the eighteenth century. See https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Pasteur/Vaccinedevelopment. Retrieved on February 16, 2018. 32 Shelley may have chosen Ingolstadt for Victor Frankenstein’s education because the secret society of the Illuminati was founded at this university in 1776 [F 24 n 1]. 33 This childhood circle includes Victor’s friend, Henry Clerval [F 21], who later studies with him at Ingolstadt [F 36], and ends by being murdered by the monster [F 122]. There is not enough time in this lecture to treat Clerval in detail, let alone Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s other companion from childhood [F 26]. But it is worth nothing that, even though Shelley presents Clerval’s favored subjects as a kind of antithesis and antidote to Victor’s reading [F 44] – Clerval recalls Victor to his friends, his family, and his love of nature [F 43-44] – Victor is quite familiar with the kind of works Clerval reads [F 15-16, 31, 35-36, 101, 107-108, 143, 146-147], and this familiarity on its own is not enough to deflect him from his path. 34 Krempe seems to be tracing the projects of the alchemists back to the eighth century, whereas the writings he is criticizing date from the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. It’s not clear to me why he does this. 35 Mary Shelley was born on 30 August 1797, and began writing Frankenstein sometime in June 1816 [FN lxxvi and lxxviii]. 36 Compare Rousseau’s account of his sudden illumination on the road to Vincennes in the second of his Letters to Malesherbes [CW 5: 575-576]. 37 Almost immediately, Frankenstein tells Walton, he forgot the steps that showed him the cause, but retained the power [F 31]. It is puzzling that Frankenstein does not use this detail as an excuse when Walton asks him later for the secret of the monster’s animation [F 146]. 38 Shelley’s claim that Frankenstein uses his “instruments of life” to “infuse a spark of being” into the monster [F 34] may be metaphorical, since there is no other reference to electricity in the account of the monster’s animation. 39 The mention of the gratitude due to a father in this passage could give the impression that Victor intends to supplant the role of the mother in generation, and to claim the gratitude that is her due. While there is something to 28 �this reading, I am more struck by the contrast between the mention of the father in this sentence and the mention of the creator in the previous sentence. To say nothing about the pagan gods, the Hebrew one has already twice supplanted the role of the mother in generation. Most striking, however, are the reflections Victor’s exultation encourages about gratitude. Compare Rousseau’s reflections on gratitude in Book IV of Emile [CW 13: 387-388]. 40 Victor later admits to himself that he “thoughtlessly” bestowed life on the monster [F 60]. 41 The lack of skin also argues for the theory that the monster is not an assemblage of proper parts, taken from corpses. Each of these parts would have had skin of its own, and more than enough, had they been harvested as wholes. 42 As he sleeps after animating the monster, but before his flight, Victor has a horrible dream: I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel [F 34]. Not only does this dream depict the thought that we are all made of dead materials, and so in a sense dead things, but it connects this interpretation of metabolism and growth with sex and generation. 43 Frankenstein infers the monster’s guilt directly from his ugliness. Seeing a figure in the trees, he says, “its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy dæmon to whom I had given life. Could he be,” Frankenstein asks, “the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth… […] Nothing in human shape could have destroyed that fair child. […] The mere presence of the idea,” he concludes, “was an irresistible proof of the fact” [F 48]. 44 Frankenstein realizes that he cannot create a female monster without “again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition” [F 103]. In particular, “I had heard of some discoveries having been made by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to my success” [F 103]. Since it is hard to imagine that Frankenstein needs additional anatomical information, which he acquires in any case through direct experimentation, this comment might indicate that he has, reasonably, started to think about the moral formation of a female monster. Perhaps the English philosopher Frankenstein has in mind is Mary Wollstonecraft, author of Thoughts on the Education of Daughters and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and Mary Shelley’s mother. This would also explain why he puts such weight on the uncertain character of a female monster in his ultimate decision to destroy his second creation. However this may be, Frankenstein’s need for additional study is another indication that he might not have planned from the beginning to make a female monster, perhaps because he intended his monster to interbreed with human women. 45 Even cleaning up the aftermath of his interrupted work is sickening to Frankenstein. “The remains of the halffinished creature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost felt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being” [F 118]. 46 Frankenstein thus anticipates a problem that arises in Paradise Lost: Adam is prohibited from eating from the tree of knowledge before Eve is created. She does not hear the prohibition directly, but from Adam; this inclines her less to obey it. See PL 8:323-333 and 9:758-760. We will soon see that Frankenstein too seems to have read Milton’s epic poem [F 131 and 147]. He does not voice, but presumably could have anticipated, a similar but greater problem regarding the monsters’ offspring, whom the monster has said nothing to bind. 47 Perhaps this also indicates that, if Frankenstein makes his monsters capable of reproduction with one another, he also makes them capable of reproduction with human beings. 48 Frankenstein’s fears are another indication that he does not manufacture his monsters from the proper parts of corpses. If they were assemblages of corpse parts, would not their offspring be human? 29 �49 The monster encourages Frankenstein to pursue him in order to draw out his revenge. As Frankenstein tells it, “sometimes he himselF who feared that if I lost all trace I should despair and die, often left some mark to guide me” [F 141]. Oddly, Victor adds, “yet still a spirit of good followed and directed my steps, and, when I most murmured, would suddenly extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Sometimes, when nature overcome by hunger, sunk under exhaustion, a repast was prepared for me in the desert, that restored and inspirited me… I may not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that I had invoked to aid me” [F 141]. Since the monster occasionally leaves food for Frankenstein [F 142], it seems likely that he is also responsible for the activities of Frankenstein’s ‘spirits of good.’ Frankenstein’s meeting with the monster on the alpine glacier is preceded by his invocation of “Wandering spirits” [F 65]. 50 As Walton tells his sister, “I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavor to regulate my mind” [F 10]. Later, he adds that his desire for friendship is “one want I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil” [F 10; see also 16], 51 Walton asks his sister: “do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose. My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path” [F 9]. 52 Frankenstein also claims to have superior physical endurance: “I had ever inured myself to rain, moisture, and cold” [F 63]. But there is some reason to doubt this: he is forever swooning, for example, or struggling with madness [F 37 and 122]. In his superior endurance Walton more resembles the monster; the same resemblance can be found in their respective longings for a companion. Walton may be a chimera of Frankenstein and his monster. 53 “Are you then so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition?” Frankenstein asks them. “You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species; your name adored, as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and the benefit of mankind. […] Oh, be men, or be more than men” [F 149]. Frankenstein himself has encountered death for glory and the benefit of mankind; he has been a man and made more than a man; and he has suffered greatly for it. It is striking that he is willing to repeat an appeal that has cost him so much to heed. 54 If the monster is the gratification of Frankenstein’s wishes, then by calling him a “serpent” here Frankenstein anticipates the later moment when, certain he will not receive a mate from Frankenstein, the monster compares himself to a “snake” [F 116]. The image is Biblical, if it is not once again from Paradise Lost. 55 This is odd, since in his story Frankenstein claims to forget “all the steps” that “progressively led” to his discovery, and to be left with “only the result” [F 31]. He clearly thinks he can continue to animate dead matter, since otherwise he would have begged his incapacity in reply to the monster’s demand for a mate. But can he teach this power to others? 56 Walton says, “the letters of Felix and Safie, which he shewed me, and the apparition of the monster, seen from our ship, brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and connected” [F 146]. 57 Nor can we say he is secretly relieved by their compulsion. He writes to his sister, “The die is cast; I have consented to return, if we are not destroyed. Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess, to bear this injustice with patience” [F 150]. 58 In an early letter to his sister Walton considers the possibility that he might find a friend among his crew. “My lieutenant,” he writes, “is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory. He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity” [F 10]. Walton also tells his sister a lengthy story about the heroic generosity of his master, but adds, “he has passed all his life on board a vessel, and has scarcely an idea beyond the rope and the shroud” [F 11]. Walton concludes, “I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen” [F 10]. His crew is thus composed not of family nor of friends, but of associates made necessary by Walton’s inability to reach the pole alone. 30 �59 Since Shelley read a few of these books twice during this period, and since she sometimes gives several works a single entry in her journal – for example, “Shakespeare’s Plays” – this is only a rough count [J 32-33, 47-49, 71-73, 88-90]. 60 The defect mentioned by at least one modern critic, that the novel’s three major characters all sound the same, is thus not a bug but a feature, an indication that they are repetitions of the same person. See Germaine Greer, “Yes, Frankenstein really was written by Mary Shelley. It’s obvious – because the book is so bad,” The Guardian. April 9, 2007. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/09/gender.books. Retrieved on February 4, 2018. Greer complains, “There are three narrators: Thomas Walton, Victor Frankenstein and the monster himself. The three of them, including the inarticulate monster, speak in paragraphs, with the same tendency to proliferating parallel clauses and phrases and the occasional theatrical ejaculation.” It’s not clear why Greer thinks that the monster is, or should be, inarticulate. 61 “It seems that all great things,” Nietzsche tells us in Beyond Good and Evil, “in order to inscribe themselves with eternal demands upon the heart of humanity, must first stalk the earth as colossal and fear-inducing masks” [Preface, see also Sections 25 and 40]. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil / On The Genealogy of Morality. Translated, with an Afterword, by Adrian Del Caro. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). Even if the fear and disgust the monster inspires are natural rather than learned, it does not follow that his ugliness expresses the truth about his interior, nor that his ugliness is a disability. Since the monster’s vengeful path is ultimately due to his accidental reading, since he was born good but was made wicked by society, Shelley can refer to Frankenstein in one of her letters as “a book in favor defence of Polypheme” [L I: 91]. 62 “If this rule were always observed,” Frankenstein continues, “if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed” [F, 33]. 63 Rousseau discusses the arguments for and against novels in the dialogue that serves as the Second Preface of Julie [CW 6: 7-22]. 64 In the Critique of Judgment, Kant asks us to consider bold, overhanging and, as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds piling high up in the sky and moving about accompanied by lightning and thunderclaps, volcanoes with all their destructive power, hurricanes with all the devastation they leave behind, the boundless ocean heaved up, the high waterfall of a mighty river, and so on. Compared to the might of any of these, our ability to resist becomes an insignificant trifle. Yet the sight of them becomes all the more attractive the more fearful it is, provided we are in a safe place. And we like to call these objects sublime because they raise the soul’s fortitude above its usual middle range and allow us to discover in ourselves an ability to resist which is of a quite different kind, and which gives us the courage [to believe] that we could be a match for nature’s seeming omnipotence [Ak. 261]. Note that the ability and the courage Kant mentions in this passage are not dependent on our safety from nature. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment. Translated, with an Introduction, by Werner S. Pluhar. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), 120. 65 In a letter to Fanny Imlay, Mary Shelley describes the promenade of Plainpalais, outside of Geneva: Here a small obelisk is erected to the glory of Rousseau, and here (such is the mutability of human life) the magistrates, the successors of those who exiled him from his native country, were shot by the populace during that revolution, which his writings mainly contributed to mature, and which, notwithstanding the temporary bloodshed and injustice with which it was polluted, has produced enduring benefits to mankind, which all the chicanery of statesmen, nor even the great conspiracy of kings, can entirely render vain [F 174 or L I: 20]. 66 “Would anyone believe, if he did not have the proof,” Rousseau writes in the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, 31 �that human foolishness could have been brought to this point? Amatus Lusitanus affirmed that he had seen a little man an inch long, closed up in a bottle, whom Julius Camillus, like another Prometheus, had made by the science of alchemy. Paracelsus, De natura rerum, teaches the way to produce these little men and maintains that the pygmies, the fauns, the satyrs, and the nymphs were engendered by chemistry, Indeed, I do not see anything that further remains to be done to establish the possibility of these facts, other than to advance that organic matter resists the heat of fire and that its molecules can be preserved alive in a reverberatory furnace “ [CW 13:436-437 note *]. What would Rousseau have his Vicar say if the alleged generation did not require the use of fire? 67 For more on Shelley’s concern with this matter, see James O’Rourke, “‘Nothing More Unnatural’: Mary Shelley’s Revision of Rousseau,” in ELH. Volume 56, Number 3. (Autumn, 1989), reprinted in in F, 543-569. O’Rourke quotes from Shelley’s 1838 encyclopedia essay on Rousseau: Our first duty is to render those to whom we give birth, wise, virtuous, and happy, as far as in us lies. Rousseau failed in this, – can we wonder that his after course was replete with sorrow? The distortion of intellect that blinded him to the first duties of life, we are inclined to believe to be allied to that vein of insanity, that made him an example among men for self-inflicted sufferings [F, 547]. 68 It is difficult to be sure exactly what Shelley read of Rousseau in the years before the publication of Frankenstein, mostly because she does not name Rousseau’s works consistently in her journal. In 1815 she records reading Rousseau’s Confessions, Emile, and Nouvelle Heloise [J, 47-49]. In 1816 she adds Rousseau’s Reveries, over four days in late July and early August [J, 55]. She was writing Frankenstein at this point, having begun in June [F, 333]. She also reads something she calls the “Letters of Emile” over two days in September 1816 [J, 64]: could this refer to Emile and Sophie? In the summary of her reading for that year, she repeats these titles, listing the Reveries and the “Letters of Emile” [J, 72-73]. Shelley turned to correcting and transcribing Frankenstein in April, May, and October 1817 [J, 78-79, 85]. Over six days in late June and early July 1817, she records re-reading Rousseau’s Julie, having completed Frankenstein in May that year [F, 334]. She re-reads the Confessions over three days in October 1817, followed by three days on something she calls “Rousseau’s Letters” – perhaps those referred to in the Confessions, which would have included the April 20, 1751 letter to Mme. de Francueil where Rousseau discusses his treatment of his children [CW 5: 551-552; J, 85-86]. She lists the Nouvelle Heloise and “Confessions et Lettres de Rousseau” in her reading for 1817 [J, 89-90]. 32 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 33 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "We shall be monsters" : Frankenstein and the ugliness of enlightenment Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on March 2, 2018 by Jeff J.S. Black as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Black, Jeff J. S., 1970- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-03-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24004715 Relation A related resource <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3733">Sound recording</a> Subject The topic of the resource Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851. Frankenstein Deans Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/68f3a583cf9504ada28f749bfce5ffd2.pdf a42e69f5025bff2259b3a06065dd6733 PDF Text Text ��������������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 33 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A background for perplexity : some fundamentals of quantum theory Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on September 26, 1986 by Hans von Briesen as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Von Briesen, Hans Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-09-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Quantum theory Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000221 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8181547ef4ead9780876e1d33aa8a91c.pdf 6de439a070d30d8e9ea7111345cf2057 PDF Text Text �������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 18 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A community of learning... in a land of Cartesians? Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on August 30, 2002 by David Levine as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Levine, David Lawrence Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859. Descartes, René, 1596-1650. Plato United States -- Intellectual life Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000652 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0b3a8cdc2d42ba167d69e9b6f615bf71.pdf 3a3e1f44fd7f17bb44c770927e0de8f0 PDF Text Text ������������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 23 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A ghost story Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on April 26, 2002 by Robert Sacks as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sacks, Robert D. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-04-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Lobachevskii, N. I. (Nikolai Ivanovich), 1792-1856. Apollonius, of Perga. Plato. Meno. Euclid. Elements. Geometry -- History. Language A language of the resource English. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000640 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/201603cbe162b46ae372d9d12efc065c.pdf 2a7b1ae38e4628ea621248532cc6fbb8 PDF Text Text ������������������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 29 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A parable of scandal : speculations about the "wheat and the tares" Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given in 1997 by John Cornell. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cornell, John F. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Bible. Matthew -- Criticism, interpretation, etc. Parables Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24003292 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ac24fd8868984eaad5b6abf44060b9b6.pdf 9c37a0183f9094799914a5c8d29bcfb0 PDF Text Text This material may oe protected by Copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code) A Ran1ble on Fern Hill Jonathan Tuck Tutor St. John's College, Annapolis A Lecture Given at St. John's College Santa Fe, New Mexico April 8, 1994 �I A Ramble on Fern Hill I want to do several things at once: To give a partial reading of "Fern Hill," by Dylan Thomas, and to catch myself in the act of giving such a reading in order to reflect on what it means to give a reading. When I say "give a reading," I do not mean only that I want to read the poem aloud-- although I do want to do that too-- but to give an analysis, an interpretation, an exegesis. It's interesting that the lit. crit. locution "to give a reading" should mean this: almost as if to read the poem is to analyze it, or to analyze it is only to read it. But I think there's a particular appropriateness to this locution when applied to a lyric poem: Whatever "lyric" means--and in our day it seems to mean nothing more than a pretty short poem-- its etymology suggests that we should be thinking of an utterance which is to be sung, and even accompanied by music. If the poem comes first to our ear, not our eye, it remains there in some way even through every act of cutting it up and surrounding it with commentary. The concrete presence of the sung or spoken poem unifies and holds together all the discursive particularities in an interpretation. When we interpret at length, we distance ourselves from this presence, but only temporarily: for in my experience there is no such thing as ruining a poem by analysing it. We cannot "murder to dissect"; the poem is resurrected each time we read it again. But if our act of interpreting has been fruitful, it is not the same poem now; �2 this new presence holds together more particulars, more complexities, more internal articulations. So the purpose of interpreting the poem is to be able to read it again, and also to come to know part of it for the first time. It is in this sense that I intend to "give a reading" of "Fern Hill," and to watch myself closely in order to see how I do it. In teaching lyric poems, I have found that certain students are aware of having a certain kind of "blind spot" (actually, it would be better to say a "deaf spot") when it .comes to the appreciation of poetry. They are genuinely puzzled by what others find to interest themselves in while reading a great lyric poem; and they are alarmed at having to try to write anything substantive about it. I cannot aspire to opening blind eyes or deaf ears; but I hope to try to give some practical counsel to such people about possible ways to open up what has been a closed-off area for them. They may not be able to find the same immediate appeal in poems that other readers do, but I would like them to see how a poem can be discussible. Why do I choose "Fern Hill" as the specimen for this how-to-do-it demonstration? Certainly not because it is an "easy" poem; in fact, an easy poem, whatever that is, would be exactly the wrong kind for a demonstration. My motive for choosing "Fern Hill" is alarmingly simple: I believe that it is the greatest lyric poem in the English language-- at least among those I am aware of-- and I have a kind of evangelistic zeal to share it with others and to display it as the greatest. But what on earth can I mean by the preposterous claim that "Fern Hill" is the greatest English lyric poem? It seems clear that I have yet another task: To think about what makes a poem good, or great. It is not �3 that I want you to agree with me in my evaluation of "Fern Hill"; but perhaps what makes this poem great for me is what may make some other lyric poem great for you. In the process, I want to show that "Fern Hill"'s relation to the theme of time is not accidental but is part of what makes the poem so good; that all poetry, or at least certainly all lyric poetry, is concerned with time because time is one of the conditions within which it comes to light. And this presupposes that poems are characte1istically about poetry, whatever else they are also about. This reflexive property of poems gives a clue to what kinds of things to look for in analysis, in "giving a reading": instances where the theme of the poem is somehow mirrored in the poem's form, so that in the course of being about something else, the poem can also be about itself. This is a \Vay of poems' being about poetry that is I think more substantive than the less interesting sense in which each poem necessarily redefines the possibilities of the form, genre or tradition within which it is working. In the course of "giving a reading," I am reviving into the present an entity which has two kinds of temporal extension: (1) First: At every "performance" of the poem, every reading-through of it, whether silent or aloud, I am reminding myself of the poem's emergence through time-- not only in the way that every spoken language does (since only one sound can be spoken at a time) but also in the special way that poems, by their rhythm and measurement of time units, formalize and almost spatialize repetition-- that raw temporality of language. -- through (2) Second: The other form of temporal �4 extension is the endurance through several different renditions or performances of the "same" poem-- the several often spread out over years, decades or centuries. It is in this way that a poem can be a monument more enduring than brass or stone, as Horace and many others claim. Clearly, it is problematic how these several performances "belong" to the "same" poem-- in somewhat the same way that the relation of a given production or performance to the Shakespearean text, or of a playing of a symphony to its notated form on paper, are also problematic. One might ask what sort of existence the "poem" has when it is not being "performed." Is it only potential? And why, strangely, does it show signs of having changed for us when it reemerges into actuality at our next reading? But instead of addressing these issues, I think we should make actual the particular poem we are to look at. It follows from what I've said, as well as from all of my experience with poetry that the right way to approach a poem, whether by oneself or in the company of a class, is to read it aloud initially--perhaps several times; and then, after talking about it or thinking about it, to read it aloud again, to "put it back together again." (This seems comparable to the actions of analysis & synthesis in mathematical proof.) Here,then, is my first practical counsel to those who find poetry hard to enjoy: The lyric poem, in particular, does not exist until it is read aloud, preferably several times. It is better still if you can memorize it and recite it aloud from memory--though this may come only after many oral readings . Now , in approaching "Fern Hill," there's a special condition which does not exist in approaching a poem by Donne or Keats or Shakespeare-- namely that we have a recording of Thomas himself reading his poem. �5 Should I read it myself, or play his version? And if both, when shall I do which? It seems dramatically right to start with Thomas 's reading, which, like the printed version on the page, is part of the "received" form of the poem as it comes to us. But then if time permitted, I should really read it aloud myself, as each of you should: Only in this way would the poem begin to become ours, to sound on our inner ear as we proceed to think about it. Then after analyzing it and in some way making it more fully "mine," I should read it aloud myself at the end. The hope is that the second reading aloud will contain or embody much of what is gained or learned in the intervening analysis-- contain or embody both for me the reader and for those co-readers to whom I am reading. Choosing this order reflects a literary-theoretical allegiance of my own, in favor of appropriating the artwork, making it new and making it mine, rather than trying as an archaeologist to arrive at the author's intention. So that is what I will plan to do, and here is Dylan Thomas's reading of "Fern Hill": Fern Hill Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light. 5 �6 And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams. All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise. And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace, Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 �7 Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land . Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea. 50 Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) Though it's not always best for an analysis to start at the first line, or the first word, and proceed diachronically through the text, in this case I will do so, almost in despair: There is so much richness, so many logical starting places that lead straight into the heart of the poem. The poem's first two \Vords are "Now as." Each is ambiguous, and there is some connection in their ambiguities. "Now" may be sheerly a temporal indicator , in which case we must think of the poem as referring to the present time in which it is spoken by its speaker. There's a difficulty here, though, since the first line goes on to refer to the past: "Now as I was young and easy." But we might still think that the purpose of the initial "Now" is somehow to recreate or reenact the past, real or imagined, that is portrayed in most of the poem. The innocence of that past is perhaps regainable in some vicarious way; and it is true that one of the effects of the poem seems to be to make us feel the experience of Thomas's innocent childhood visits to his aunt's farm at Fernhill. But the other possible meaning of" now" is almost exactly opposite to this one: It may be a transitional particle, used to introduce an antithetical idea, as in the following imaginary statement: "As an adult I know and feel my mortality and my fallen state. �8 Now when I was a boy, I never did; I thought I would live forever." The "Now" in the poem's first line gives the utterance that is the poem a very concrete conversational context: Breaking away from the thought of how he thinks and feels at present, the speaker turns his attention to his childhood, as specifically opposed to the present. In this reading of "Now", the poem is a statement of the finality of loss, rather than an evocation of paradise regained. Of course the poem as a whole is both. My point is that the one word "now" holds together these two possibilities, containing in a small compass many of the largest themes and issues in the whole poem. We find a similar phenomenon when we look at the poem's second word, "as." What among many possibilities does "as" mean here? Even as I ask the question, I am unable to forget that the word "as" recurs in the poem, especially in constructions implying comparison or similitude: "happy as the grass was green"; "singing as the farm was home"; "the hay fields high as the house"; "fire green as grass"; "happy as the heart was long." If similes and metaphors are the essence of poetry, transforming our vision by pointing out correspondences between the world we know and some imagined, invisible one, then our consideration of the power of "as" becomes a kind of referendum on the power of poetry. Can it in fact transform our vision as it claims? Does "as I was young and easy" mean "at the time when I was young and easy"? or "because I was young and easy"? or "in the same way that I was young and easy"? or "to the same degree that I was young and easy"? or "as long, and only as long. as I was young and easy"? It is clear that each of these variant readings produces a different sense of the power of time and of the power of imagination to triumph over time. "Happy as the grass �9 was green" sounds comfy and proverbial, like "happy as the day is long" or "happy as a clam." (Actually, neither of those similes will bear much scrutiny either, will they?) Taken in this simple-minded or innocent way, the speaker means that he was happy to the same degree that the grass was green. Comparisons like this usually make use of a vehicle of comparison that is supposed to be unproblematic: "strong as an ox" means very strong because an ox by its nature is very strong. Grass is very green, but the grass by its very nature does not stay green forever; is it in the nature of things that the speaker will not stay happy forever? Only if "happy as the grass was green" also means happy in the same way that the grass was green, naturally, unreflectively-- and temporarily. Because the greenness of the grass is implicitly localized in time, it may seem diminished: That which doesn't stay green might seem to be less green, or only apparently green. Was the speaker less happy than he thought he was, only apparently happy? In this way the vehicle of the simile-- the thing used for purposes of comparison--makes more complex our notion of the tenor of the simile, the thing being compared to something. One of our readings of the ambiguous word "as" leads us to other readings: happy at the time when the grass was green, and only at that time; happy as long as the grass was green. An additional complication enters when, in the next stanza, it is not the grass but the child that is green: "as I was green and carefree." Here "green" must be able to mean not only "young, fresh" but also "inexperienced, raw, naive"-- as in the expression "greenhorn." At this point the tenor and the vehicle of our original simile have collapsed into each other: The child and the grass come together in their greenness, and perhaps we remember the words of the First Epistle General of Peter: �10 For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. (I Peter 1:24-25) We have been noticing ambiguities in the words "Now" and "as." I induce from this another practical precept for the poetry-blind: Seek out ambiguities and try to spell them out patiently and deliberately, almost literal-mindedly. Because the language of poetry has a kind of life of its own, the natural lexical range of a word is brought into play whenever that word is used. It is especially fruitful when the ambiguous readings even seem to contradict each other more or less directly: Seeing the meaning as problematic makes it possible to connect alternative meanings to different ways of feeling. I think I am assuming that language may not always be ambiguous, but feelings almost always are; so that complexities in the language may bring it closer to the reality of our feelings. Another precept for the uninitiated reader of poems: Look hard for repetitions of the same word, or the same image, or the same sound. In our case, we segued into the poem's second use of "as" from considering its first use. Part of the formality of a poem, part of its architecture, is the use of repetition; even the ideas of meter and rhyme presuppose this. But repetition is never pure, as Heraclitus and Kierkegaard remind us; it is always a re-evocation, containing both sameness and difference. Hence one of the activities of reading a poem is comparing and contrasting. Jumping back and forth in a poem to compare and contrast usages of the same word or image, holding them up together, is a way of treating the poem as a simultaneous structure rather than merely a flowing-in-time. �11 But noticing differences is a reminder that pure repetition is impossible because the poem exists in time. This kind of comparing and contrasting is the very theme of "Fern Hill": The speaker juxtaposes scenes from his past with his present altered condition, and poses the question of whether he can renew or retain his youth somehow-- perhaps through poetry itself? For this reason "Fern Hill" is extraordinarily concentrated and unified; it almost seems like pure lyricism because it both is and is about the very things that constitute the "lyric moment." Let us take our own advice and go on looking for other usages of the word "as." When we next meet a comparable phrase, in the third stanza, "fire green as grass" makes little obvious sense; fire is not typically green. The fire seems to be there in order to continue the catalogue of the elements, begun in "air/ And playing, lovely and watery." The earth would seem to be absent from this list, except that it is present everywhere, not only in the "grass" but in the fields, the pebbles in the streams, and in the whole subject at hand: "it was all ... " The lower element of earth is transformed into higher elements: the flowing water, emblematic of time's motion; air, which by a pun is also song, the "tunes from the chimneys"; and fire, highest and simplest, connected with warmth and light. We still don't see how the fire can be green; perhaps the peat or coal used in that part of Wales burns with a greenish flame? Or perhaps "green" here means "new" or "young" or "innocent," like the childhood of the narrator-- in the case of fire, "closer to the time of Creation," and therefore more elemental. (This might also help us to account for the "whinnying green stable" in line 35). Or perhaps the problematic fact that fire normall y lacks greenness makes the simile into a "dissimile," of the same negative form as that famous slogan, "A woman needs a man as a fish needs a bicycle"; and if so, �12 perhaps this problematic form of the simile is meant to cast doubt on other uses of the word "as." Let's look at some more: The hay fields were of course not as high as the house, except to the child's innocent eye, which makes things so only by the imperatives of desire: "My wishes raced through the house high hay." Listening to the sounds at the end of that line, we realize that the comparison between the hay and the house has gone from measurement into a pure exclamation of joy. Like the child's seeing, the poem's sounding has the power simply to enact its wishes. Parallel to "happy as the grass was green," in the second stanza, is the more peculiar "singing as the farm was home." It is peculiar because we would normally think that the farm either is or isn't home; unlike the greenness of grass, the farm's identity as home does not admit of quantification, which seems to eliminate some of our possible ambiguous readings. But if we are told that the farm was not, in fact, home to Thomas-- he visited there during the summers-- the eliminated variant reading comes back in a more sinister form: The boy was singing in the same way, or to the same degree, that the fann was home-- that is, only temporarily or not at all. Singing has already been attributed to the house: "the lilting house," "tunes from the chimneys." It will come again in the poem's last image, another simile: "I sang in my chains like the sea." These are "morning songs," with all the poignancy of the pun hammered home by the word "such." They are "morning songs" spelled without the "u" because they belong to youth, both the boy's youth and the youth of the world. They are "mourning songs," spelled with the "u" and with the qualifications of "such" and "so few," because even our youthful singing is an unknowing presage of our own funeral music. It is clearly not an accident that the topic of song, like the transforming power of similes, is the �13 poem's reflexive comment on poetry itself. It is not only phrases with "as" that are repeated frequently throughout the poem; one of its most prominent features is the repetition , with crucial variations, of words, images, and even whole syntactic structures. (The first two stanzas, especially, display a high degree of this syntactic parallelism.) But moving to smaller units of meaning, it is very noticeable that there is much repetition of sounds. Thomas is known as a poet for whom flashy sound effects almost take on a life of their own-- as if abstract patterns of vowel and consonant repetition could make some kind of musical pleasure for us, regardless of the meanings of the words. But in this poem at least, I think I can show that the repetitions are purposive, and that they are directly related to his theme. Look for example at the poem's beginning: "Now as I was young and easy under the wple boughs." The stressed syllables "I", "eas-", "un-" and "ap-" all alliterate, since any word beginning with a vowel alliterates with any other. "Boughs" alliterates with the "b" in "about" and assonates both with "about" and with "house." "House" alliterates with "happy," whose first syllable assonates with "grass," which alliterates with "green." The alternating links of alliteration and assonance form a chaining effect. We see it again at the end of the stanza in And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light. The purpose of this chaining of sounds, this singing in chains, is to imitate the "trailing" stream of the daisies and barley, to connect the various parts of this paradise of sense-stimuli into a single manifold of sound, or light, or time. The boy's world has a coherence that came from �14 innocence, or from his infantile perception of himself as not separated from the objects of his seeing and hearing. The unity of this world is later reflected in the third and fourth stanzas, in the poem's use of the word "it" without any obvious antecedent. And within this world, the boy also has a child's fantasies of omnipotence: It was he who had the trees and leaves trail. This omnipotence corresponds both to the power Adam and Eve are said to have had over nature while still in a state of innocence, and also to the power that the poet still has over his little created world, even in a fallen state. Through playing with patterns of vowels and consonants, Thomas too "has" the trees and leaves trail. Does this mean that poetry can restore innocence and conquer Time? But as the last line says, the poet sings in another set of chains, not of his own making. It seems clear that sound-effects can be imitative in an almost iconic way. They can act less directly as well. Notice a pattern of internal rhyme in the first stanza: Now as I was young and easy under the apple bQJJghs About the lilting house ... And again: Time let me hail and climb. In each case these internal rhymes act to frame and enclose either a line or a phrase, giving a sense of secure self-containedness and self-sufficiency. "Time let me hail and climb" is parallel with the second stanza's "Time let me play and be." The self-enclosed character of the first of these lines leads us to expect the second to be self-enclosed too-- and it seems to make sense that �15 way: Time let me play and time let me be-- either let me exist or left me alone. The word "Golden" thus comes as a shock; we had not expected that the line would be enjambed, even though "Golden" in the second stanza is parallel with the same word at the same position in the first stanza. But as it turns out, the two are not syntactically parallel: The first "Golden" is part of a parenthetical adjectival phrase, modifying "me"; the second "Golden" is a predicate adjective with "be." This difference throws into relief a difference in meaning: The "Golden" of the first stanza seems to be unambiguously favorable, while the second "Golden" carries a hint of another possibility: The speaker is not already golden, a fair-haired lad smiled on by Fortune and befriended by Time . Rather we see Time letting him be golden. From here it is not a long jump to another possible meaning of "golden," which certainly comes into play in the following line: "And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman." Here "golden" suggests the important difference between spring and harvest time; the latter is still a prosperous, auspicious time, but it is a time of ripeness and intimations of autumn and encroaching death. We see this in the way the phrase "green and golden" develops in the fifth stanza: Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace. The pairing of "green and golden" becomes, in the last stanza, explicitly, "green and dying . " Even in the first moments of childhood, we have started on our journey toward death; as the Clovm says in As You Like It, . .. from hour to hour we ripe and ripe And then from hour to hour we rot and rot And thereby hangs a tale. �16 (A YLI, Il.vii.25-27) As "golden" becomes "dying," as a state of ripeness or of being specially favored-- a "golden boy"-- turns into its opposite, we remember that "green" also means Hence "green and dying" comes to mean not just 11 naive or unknowing. growing and rotting" but 11 unaware of mortality, and yet mortal. 11 What defines the boy's innocence is not so much a lack of sin as a lack of knowledge, the knowledge of his own mortality. That knowledge itself is a kind of dying, as it was for Adam and Eve in the garden. Now the interplay of the images of color-- green, golden, white with the dew, sky blue, Iamb white-- is a very conspicuous feature of the poem, one that few readers are likely to miss. But my specific claim is that the use of the internal rhymes, by setting us up for the prominence of "Golden" in the second stanza, triggers our awareness of this pattern. And if so, we can educe two more precepts for the novice analyst of poetry: (1) Listen hard to the sound effects, and when in doubt, assume they are significant. (2) Look at the ends of lines, to see places where the Iineation is a way of manipulating our successive responses. We have seen two instances of unexpected enjambment, in lines 7-8 and in lines 13-14. These are the most conspicuous, but there are others. But how do we listen to the sounds of poems, and what sort of significance do we listen for? Apart from phonemic repetitions like alliteration, assonance, consonance and rhyme-- each of which may make a pattern, whether imitative or abstract, there is the clearly imitative �17 phenomenon of onomatopoeia, the "making" (poieia) through a word (onoma) of something we otherwise encounter in the world. We don't see much in this poem of sheerly imitative sound, like Tennyson's "murmur of innumerable bees." Perhaps the chaining effect I described in the first stanza can be considered an example. But there is a chronic difficulty in the attempt to read sound as directly mimetic or imitative. Take the sound pattern of line 12, "In the sun that is young once onJy." Do the repetition of the "uh" sound and the orthographic and etymological redundancy of "once only" imitate the persistence through time of a sun that is the same each day-- truly young once only-- or do these sound effects imitate the periodicity of a series of several suns, as in line 39's "the sun born over and over"? Or does the sound by its ambiguity raise for us the same question that the poem raises: How to reconcile continuity with change and repetition, the enduring infinitude of our desire with the finitude of our lives, with the passage of time? Sound repetitions can be local, within a line or a few lines, or they can be the architectonic by which the form of the poem is defined. Thomas used the unobvious measurement of syllabic count to define the pattern of his stanzas. He was steered to this choice by the precedent of the medieval Welsh technique known as cynghanedd ("king' ha neth"), which I will not even attempt to spell for you; in other words, by a precedent from a language other than English, unearthed by Thomas in a fit of Celtic historical nostalgia. In "Fern Hill," the six stanzas are of nine lines each. In the general form of the stanza, the first, second, sixth and seventh lines are of fourteen syllables each, the third and fifth lines are of nine syllables, and the fourth line is of six. (I'm guided here by Thomas's own pronunciation, which renders "fire" in line 22 as a �18 disyllable, and "blessed" in line 25 as a single syllable.) The last two lines of the stanzas vary, but in a purposive way: In the first, second and last stanzas the eighth line is seven syllables, while the ninth line is nine. In the third, fourth and fifth stanzas the eighth line is nine syllables, while the ninth line is six. In effect, the flip-flopping of the long and short lines defines two cuts in the poem, after stanza two and after stanza five. On inspection, this seems appropriate, since the result is to set off the third, fourth and fifth stanzas as a separate part. In these stanzas we are given a flashback into the particularity of the rhythm of day-night alternation as it then seemed to the young boy protagonist: In this prui of the poem, the sun is "born over and over," "green and golden" can coexist, and there is no double awareness, until the end of the fifth stanza, that only by Time's mercy does all this happen. In the last stanza we get a return to the divided perspective of the first two, in which our view of the child's innocence is mediated by our own and the poet's experience of age and mortality. The cycle of "riding to sleep" and waking, described in detail in stanzas three and. four, is recapitulated in stanza six from a different viewpoint: Instead of coming back "like a wanderer white/ with the dew," the farm in this stanza is "forever fled from the childless land." The slight variation in the forms of the stanzas makes the change explicit, but almost unnoticeably. An even more subtle pair of demarcations in the poem comes from the only two variances in the syllable counts I gave above. I said that the sixth and seventh lines of each stanza are regularly of fourteen syllables. But the sixth line of stanza one and the seventh line of stanza six have fifteen syllables each. There is a kind of logic to these cuts too: The first five lines, which precede the first metrical variation, can be seen as a kind of introductory or general statement, before we descend into the �19 specificity of the fairy-tale "once below a time." Similarly, the last three lines are signalled as a new gesture of summation by the metrical variation in line 52. In these last lines we get a repeating of several elements from the first two stanzas: "as I was young and easy" from line 1 (although the "Now" disappears); "in the mercy of his means" from line 14; "Time held me" echoing "Time let me" in lines 4 and 13; "green and dying" echoing "green and golden" from line 15. It is not only the extra syllable in line 52 that signals this last demarcation: Here alone we get a departure from the scheme of rhyme, near-rhyme and assonance that has unobtrusively shaped each stanza. All previous stanzas had the general pattern ABCDDABCD. Here in the last stanza, the sixth and seventh lines exchange their rhyme-sounds, pointing out a break from what has gone before. ("Dying," which corresponds with "rising," comes after "means," which corresponds with "sleep. 11 ) As if in compensation, the vowel sound symbolized by 11 D 11 --"sleep," 11 fields, 11 11 sea" --is the same in this stanza as that symbolized by "A 11 - - 11 me" and "rnea ns 11 --so that the first and sixth lines assonate not only with each other, but with lines 4, 5, and 9. Who on earth would notice these features, except me, the critic busily counting away? Do you hear them as they go past you? I doubt that even the syllabic regularity of the stanzas comes out to the casual listener, let alone the variations therefrom. But are we sure that we are not affected by what we do not consciously notice? And when we do notice it, doesn't it make the poem better for us? In a poem of almost limitless coherence, I think the assumption has to be that nothing happens by accident. If we notice a feature of the poem that seems to cohere with the others we have noticed, the burden of proof is on the person who seeks to exclude this insight, to deny that it is part of the poem's meaning. I am arguing that \Ve adopt �20 the interpretive maxim of St. Augustine that in cases of doubt, we take the reading that conduces to the reign of charity . Practically speaking, this means that we incline towards the inclusion of whatever complexities we find, unless they make the poem worse, less coherent, less concentrated. In the present case, there is a fittingness about the subtlety with which the poem's formal variations work on us. We are not accustomed to syllabic verse in English; our prosody is almost universally accentual-syllabic. Syllabic verse, in our experience, tends to be in languages like French, where there is a certain uniformity of stress. Our first impression in listening to Thomas is of strongly marked accents or stresses, which tempts us to try to measure his verse as purely accentual. But if we start counting stresses, we end up with a stanza pattern more illusory than real; there are too many variations for us to be able to say with confidence what the paradigm is. Thomas's poem sings in its syllabic chains, but those chains are so light that they are almost unfelt. As listeners we are as innocent as the boy depicted in the poem; time-- or more precisely, the measurement of time in syllabic units-- lets us play and be. The moral of the story seems to be, "Never read any poem for the first time." In fact, the experience of a poem's sound grows more specific, more itself, the longer we have listened to it, memorized it, learned the relation of part to part and of cadence to cadence. My thirty years of friendship with "Fern Hill" constitute yet another temporal perspective in my reading of the poem . The poem concerns itself with several different expanses of time: the finite lifespan of the speaker, the cyclical and repetitive time-scheme of nature, the sacred historical time of creation, pastoral innocence, and fallenness. The first of these is replicated in my life-span as a reader, and the second in my repeated experience of the poem. The poem as an utterance �21 takes time to say or to hear; its own elapsed time somehow becomes identified with all of time-making the poem a capacious summation but also isolating it. If all of time is within it, there is nothing beyond it. In this way the poem reminds me of my essential solitude as a timeconscious being. At any moment I look forward and back and contain an infinity within me; but metaphysically 1-- we-- live as we die, alone. This reflection might apply equally to all lyric poems, as a description of the "lyric moment"; it is especially true of "Fern Hill" because there are no other humans within the poem apart from the speaker of it. The child's solitude in the poem is qualified only by the presence of personified animals and other natural beings-- like the "apple towns" -- and by the personified presence of Time. But of this latter presence, the child is unaware. His solitary consciousness is absolute and selfdetermining; his sense of himself is as ari unmoving, stable point around which the delightful variety of the world moves. Thus as he falls asleep, the diminishing sound of the owls' hooting signals their having moved away from him, taking the farm with them. When the child awakes, it is not that he returns to the farm, but that it returns to him: like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder. It is a characteristic of very young children, we are told, that they do not perceive objects as permanent, perhaps because they do not feel themselves as distinct from, standing over against, the objects in their environment. But this slightly older child does in one way realize that the motion is his, not the farm's: He sees himself as riding to sleep. As his account of the farm's motion makes clear, however, the implication of this phrase is not known to him: the �22 implication that sleep is a second death, that in moving through our lives, in aging we are all "riding to sleep," as we hear in the last stanza. Yet in the last stanza the question remains: Did he leave the farm or did the farm leave him-- or both? The persistence of the question is signalled by the ambiguity of the phrase, "And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land." "Fled" seems to modify "farm," but it is hard in any literal way to imagine the farm fleeing from the land. It seems possible for "fled" also to modify the subject, the speaker "I." The ambiguity is reiterated by the difficulty of "fled from the childless land." One would think that the land is only "childless" because the speaker has fled from it, or because the farm, in some idealized sense, has fled from it. Yet it is already the childless land from which the fleeing takes place . There is a suggestion here that the speaker may have physically tried to return, found the place sterile and unhomelike, and fled from it in some more literal way. But if the farm has fled, then he himself is the childless land. In either case, the doubt about who is in motion suggests that the naive perspective of the child is not entirely lost even in the imprisoned present time of the speaker's singing in his chains. This relativity of motion in space-- this uncertainty as to whether he or the farm is moving-is connected with a relativity of motion in time. The child feels time as the streaming past him of a river of light-- He does not yet know that the light is a \vindfall, that his life is a fragile gift bestowed by the grace of another. Time is measured only by the motion of the heavenly bodies: "all the sun Jong," "all the moon long." He himself is not aware of moving in time, of growing older. And yet the world itself is unmoved: It is perfectly new and unaltered, as at the moment of Creation: �23 it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. "That very day" is emphatic: it is the same day, the true day, etymologically, of Creation itself. But the next words confuse the situation. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise. Our first reading is likely to take "so" as inferential" Therefore, it must have been just after the birth of the simple light, on the first day of Creation. But this makes little sense-- as if we were discovering now, through a process of reasoning, that the time of his youth was literally the youth of the world. We cannot be discovering it now, since this was how it seemed to him then. So we see that we were pronouncing the word wrong, that "so" is to be· stressed: It" means not "therefore" but "like this." "So it must have been after the birth of the simple light"; the feeling at the remote time of creation must have been similar to the child's felt sense of newness in the rebirth of the morning. But this is a very different assertion. To be like something is not to be it, its very self: As Wallace Stevens said, "Identity is the vanishing point of resemblance." If the morning is only like the time of Creation, then the vision of the child or of the poet is not powerful enough to annihilate time. We can only speculate on what creation "must have been" like; that nev-lness and innocence is removed from us. The vagueness �24 of the phrase, "afier the birth of the simple light" can now be seen as purposive: \Ve are not told how long after. Creation itself is implicitly linked with the activity of song. The horses are "spellbound," held by magic spells, charms or enchantments. But as the etymologies suggest, "charm" and "enchantment" are words for singing. If the spell or charm is the creating word of God on the sixth day, when the animals were made, then the "fields of praise" would refer to God's looking on his work and finding it good. Like a poet, like Amphion with the walls of Thebes, God sings the world into being; we might think of the picture of creation in C.S. Lewis's Narnia tales. In Thomas's poem Creation is linked to music again in the phrase "And the Sabbath rang slowly/In the pebbles of the holy streams." But if we're tempted to think that all Nature is holy because it comes good from the hands of the Creator, we need to recall that the omnipotent being who holds us "in the mercy of his means" is not God here, but Time. The music of time's "tuneful turning" includes morning songs (without the "u "), songs of newness, innocence and Creation; but also mourning songs (with the "u"), songs of aging, .experience, evening and death. I have not begun to exhaust the resources of the poem in this very partial reading of it. But the Time which has been letting me play in the fertile fields of "Fern Hill" now hurries me toward a stopping place, if not a conclusion. I said that our criterion for the validity of a particular interpretive insight into any feature of the poem should be, does it make the poem better for us? But why should it be that a poem improves upon analysis? The implication is that complexity itself is a poetic virtue, perhaps the distinctive virtue of poetry that is good or great. �25 In the realm of feeling, verbal complexity is always truer than verbal simplicity, because of the incommensurability between our feelings and our thoughts. Not only must the additional complexities I notice make the poem seem better, they must also endure in later readings, to the point where they now seem native to the poem's core of meaning, not added ornaments found out by ingenuity and imputed to it. The complexities of meaning and form that I find must seem to be relatable to mixtures of feelings that the poem awakens in me. In this way, analyzing a poem, "giving a reading" of it, is a kind of introspective psychological exercise, trying to find things in the form or external content of the poem that correspond to feelings that I already have. And I impute a kind of causative power to these formal complexities that I find: I say that they are the reason that my feelings were mixed, though I have only discovered it now. Complexity is thus interesting to us--it speaks to us of ourselves-- and so it allows a poem of finite size and scope to go on interesting us as we read and reread it. But the complexity must not be merely given at the outset: Instead, the poem, to be a good poem, must move toward greater complexity as we continue to encounter it over and over in time. A great poem must improve with age, but unlike a wine or a quarterback, it should never peak and decline: and this very inexhaustibility of poems is an interesting and puzzling phenomenon. My claim for the particular greatness of "Fern Hill" is thus partly an empirical one, resting on my continued experience of its ability to grow. "Fern Hill" is not the most complex poem I have ever read, nor even the most complex that Thomas wrote-- Many of his sonnets, especially, are notably obscure and even unintelligible on first reading. But I do claim that "Fern Hill" has exhibited the most increase in complexity as I continue to read it, unlike �26 gnomic, riddling poems that remain static once they are deciphered. But the increase in complexity is always contained and governed m a mysterious way by the finite sensuous experience of the spoken text of the poem, as if the moments of its sounding were the congealed presence to me of ever-increasing intervals of Time itself. The musicality of the poem's surface does not disappear or cloy as I go on reading; instead it animates, accomodates, and brings into the foreground a steadily increasing number of complexities and internal articulations. The poem deepens although its surface does not change; and the character of its depths is consistent with that of the surface. Thus it is that we can often recognize the greatness of a great poem even on first reading, long before we have unpacked it and made it our own. The spoken text is like the finite sum of an infinite series. The specific greatness of "Fern Hill" is not however an accidental fact in my autobiography. This poem addresses itself precisely to the encounter between innocence and experience that constitutes the successive experiencing of poems and this poem. Each time we read it, the poem's theme readdresses the question of how we can connect this reading to our previous ones. The poem's identity as it subsists in the face of change and age is like my own, making me identify not only with the time-bound speaker but with the time-bound poem itself. And then I am brought to reconsider questions like, Who am I now? Can I ever prescind from my location in space and time, to consider \Vhere I end and my world begins? Can I distinguish among successive me's in time, so as to think meaningfully about what I think, feel and see now, as opposed to \Vhat I remember thinking, feeling and seeing? How can even these questions keep their meaning for me, unreconciled as I am to the implacable fact of my own �27 awaiting death? ************ We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. That was T.S. Eliot, in another very great poem which shares its subject with "Fern Hill," and with this lecture. All are about time, and it is now about time that I end by reclaiming "Fern Hill" for myself, as I said I would, by putting it back together, singing it in my chains, speaking it into being one more time: Fern Hill Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Go!den in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light. And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams. 5 10 15 �28 All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sk.-y gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise. And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun -born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace, Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea. ***************************** 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 29 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Ramble of Fern Hill Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on April 8, 1994, by Jonathan Tuck. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tuck, Jonathan Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1994-04-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Tuck 1994-04-08 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3ba36aaaad35823e4f1f69ab2ac9343a.pdf 128b64c6262e25b5dc4aff999f464a58 PDF Text Text A WALK THROUGH ANDREW MARVELL'S GARDEN A Lecture by William Darkey lit O- S/(p St. John's CollegQ - Meem Library- �A WALK THROUGH ANDREW MARVELL'S GARDEN I was introduced to Mr Andrew Marvell and taken to visit his Garden for the first time many years ago by one of my tutors who became my good friend. He was William Gorman. I was a freshman at St John's, very green and quite intoxicated by English poetry, which I was just discovering. Mr Gorman taught me that there were ways to go about understanding what I already knew I loved. I should like here and now to acknowledge my great and longstanding debt of gratitude to him for this. Once in a conversation with Mr Gorman about, I suppose, some tentatively offered enthusiasm of my own — Matthew Arnold, perhaps, or Robert Browning — he asked me if I knew Andrew Marvell. I said I heard of him. He said, didn't. The fact was "You should." So I I'd never went home and read — or tried to read — some of Marvell's poems. I didn't understand them. By a normal mutation, I expressed this to myself as, "I don't like these." Later, when Mr Gorman asked me what I though of the poems, I tried a more diplomatic formulation and said, don't really get them." generously, He said, "I think you will, "I "Hmm." Then he added, if you stay with them." Since then, I have returned regularly in times of certain kinds of need to Mr Marvell's poems. And very often have I visited his Garden. This evening I should like to take you there with me to meet Mr Marvell and to walk through his Garden . A sort of guided tour. Not that I think I understand everything that went into the planning and planting of it. But I have no intention of "explaining" The Garden. That isn't, after all, what one does with gardens (or with poems either, for that matter.) I have, however, paid many visits there over the years, and I have seen some things that you might not notice for yourselves right off on your first visit unless somebody V points them out to you. �Of course, you may hate guided tours and people chattering at you. I do myself. But they ^ often save time. Besides, you can always come back later by yourself. Indeed, you should. For that is the whole point of gardens. (And of poetry, I might add.) I should also tell you before we start that The Garden is much more extensive than it may seem at first glance. I myself have never managed to see all there is to it. GARDENS Before we go into The Garden I must prepare you a little in advance. We ought to think together about What a garden is at all? as the Irish would put it; and about what sort of garden Mr Marvell had in mind when he made his. For there are many kinds of gardens. We have flower gardens and kitchen gardens, truck gardens, botanical gardens, zoological gardens and even kindergartens. But Mr Marvell was thinking of the kind of garden that in his world — which is to say England in the 17th century — was made to perfect a palace or a great country house. Francis Bacon in his essay. Of Gardens writes this: God Almighty first planted a Garden. And it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handyworks; and a man shall ever see that when ages grow to civility and ele gancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection. I shall come back to Bacon, but let me draw my point. The art of gardening — of horticulture — differs from farming — agriculture -- as roses differ from turnips; as flowers differ from vegetables; as labor differs from leisure, as practice differs from contemplation; as work differs from pleasure. Now it is true that if there is to be a garden, work must be performed constantly; but such work is �performed for the sake of leisure. As Michelangelo labored mightily to paint the Sistine ceiling, even though his paintings are perfectly useless. They are good for nothing but to be looked at. Contemplated. And so with gardens, though a garden differs from a painting in that to contemplate it you literally walk into it. But the garden, like the painting, has no use at all, except to be contemplated. I would add another observation about gardens that may not be ordinarily thought of. We can classify the Fine Arts in two groups: (1) those which are realized in Space, as Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; and (2)those which are realized in. Time, as Poetry, Drama, and Music. Now Gardening, which is usually taken to be an adjunct and a part of Architecture, cannot really be so. Gardening is essentially one of the arts of Time. For a garden is composed of living plants which, whether they be trees or shrubs or herbs or the flowers of a day, exist, like ourselves, in Time. Each plant or tree or flower lives in a garden. Each is, so to speak, an actor who comes on stage to perform his solo part in the right season and in consort with lifetime other and his actors l i k e himself. Each has his season. Bacon puts i t this way: I do hold that in the royal ordering of palaces there ought to be gardens for all the months in the year; in which severally things of beauty may be then in season. I quote a little further to let you see what he has in mind: For December and January, and the latter part of November, you must take such things as are green all winter; Holly; juniper; ...rosemary; ivy; bays; lavender.. I have abridged this passage — reluctantly — for i t has its own poetry, as all catalogues have that are composed �with the love of each item that is named. All good gardeners make their own lists for their own climates. The great seed houses mail out to us now in the dark time of the year their own catalogues, lavishly illustrated, to tempt us with visions of spring. Order now! But my point here, which I do not want to lose, is that the fine art of gardening is one of the arts of Time; and that its time, unlike that of, say Music or Poetry, is the Time of the year itself, the Time of the Sun and the Seasons. It is the same Time which counts off the time of our lives. This is why the time in gardens is measured by sundials, which portray Time itself as "the moving shadow of Eternity." And, as Andrew Marvell will say, as "a fragrant Zodiack." EDEN GARDEN One more thing I must mention before I come to Mr Marvell's Garden. I mean, of course, the t i t l e . The t i t l e is, so to speak, the gate, the entrance-way. Titles of books and poems in general are meant somehow to get us into the work. They do this in various ways — by naming the hero, as Tom Jones or Don Quixote or The Brothers Karamazov; the great central event or situation or problem, as The Book of Genesis, Time; or the Iliad or War and Peace or In Search of Lost and so on. I have mentioned here great big poems — or maybe I mean big great poems. But the same thing is true of little great poems: Upon Westminster Bridge, Ode on a Grecian Urn, The Windhover. Frequently the title alludes, either explicitly or obscurely, to one of our great myths. All of the works I have named explore or meditate some central mystery, because that is the nature of many a poetry itself. "Great myths answer mystery." And so with Marvell's Garden. Anyone who has been raised even vaguely in Western culture, upon hearing the title. The Garden, without further context, surely thinks, "0, you mean that garden?" THE Garden, taken generally, is surely Eden Garden. Paradise. �I remind you of Bacon's first sentence, "God Almighty first planted a Garden." It is the place which God made for Adam (which is to say, Man) and which Man was made for. Likewise, it is the place that Adam lost for himself and for us all. Since that loss, we have been permanent exiles. So goes the myth, speaking to the universal feeling of "homesickness for Eden would be, ...another and different world." if there were such a place, sacred place of any on Earth. I the most mean by a sacred place, a place on earth in which an encounter has taken place between God and Man. Many places are thought to be sacred, but Eden as the first shining place, would be the most sacred of all. And even if there is no such geographical place, that place nevertheless dwells in the memory of everyone living. It is a kind of innate memory in our imagination. It is the land of our heart's desire. This universal memory almost assures us of its real existence by a kind of implication that is something like Anselm's ontological argument. And, although this argument may be more dependent upon the Memory and the Imagination and the Heart than upon the Intellect, we may find it the more persuasive for that very reason. Every garden is made in the image of Eden arid every garden remembers Eden. It is, thus, a most powerful image, and the invocation of i t produces a host of associations. is the place where we were innocent, free of toil, with — not at odds with — Nature. A kind of life It at one that we can scarcely imagine except by such negatives as I have just used. According to the myth, when we lost Eden, we had to live by the sweat of our brow. have leisure. And, Yet sometimes we labor in order to strangely, we toil in our gardens to enjoy the image of Eden, to realize that memory. One more thing I would say about gardens. They are places of solitude. Places for solitude. Solitude is not in good repute these days, but i t is a deep human requirement. being alone, but i t is not loneliness. Loneliness is an It is �intense craving for the society of others. Solitude is being alone for thought, or prayer or as Bacon put it, for refreshment of the human spirit. TOPOGRAPHY Suppose we begin with the ground plan of The Garden. You can see on your sheets that i t is laid out with formal elegance, in nine eight-line stanzas which are end-rhymed in couplets. The meter throughout is iambic tetrameter, a hard meter to handle, but don't worry — Mr Marvell handles it as well as any English poet ever did. As I read the poem, it has three principal parts. These are not indicated on your sheets. This is a greater matter than the stanzas, and Mr Marvell has left it up to the reader to discover them for himself. As a tour-guide, however, I must try to say something helpful, so I propose that the first four stanzas comprise the opening movement, the next three the middle movement; final and the last two the movement. By speaking of "movements" I have slipped into a musical analogy here, first of all because the distinctions are heard in the music of the words; second, because the development of the poem seems to me to be quite like that of a concerto — finally, say of certain Mozart piano concertos; and because, as I have already said, I gardening itself, like music, kind of events in think that is an art of disposing its own time. The First Movement seems to me to be a fast, brilliant, witty and complex sonata-allegro with two subjects and ending in a return to its beginning. It is evidently in major. I The Second Movement is the slow movement, an Andante, think, and also in major. It is constructed linearly in three parts. The Third Movement has two sections, beginning in minor and changing to the parallel major. The tempos are moderate. SCENARIO The tripartite structure suggests that the action of the �poem will have a beginning, middle and end. I shall try to show how the action of the poem works itself out in these three movements. I say action because like most good lyrics poems, this one is a drama in small. A scenario of the poem would go something like this: The Poet, work-weary and world-weary, his forces scattered, makes a retreat into a great garden to escape from Society and to refresh his spirits in solitude. As he reflects upon the world he has left and responds to the one he has entered, he undergoes a mystical experience in which he transcends this garden and seems to find himself alone in that other garden that is out of Time and Place and to experience that first state that Adam knew. Then, the vision fading, he finds himself back once more in the garden in England in the 17th century. We are given no account of either translation. I suspect that the Poet himself could not give an account. I think it could not have been through any effort of his own or of any other human agency. Perhaps the Garden did it. The movements then are: Garden; (1) Out of the world and into the (2) Out of the Garden and into THE GARDEN; (3) Back into the Garden and, by implication, back into the world. "The Garden" Let me now read The Garden. Gorman's dictum that, In doing so, I am heeding Mr "a poem exists only in the sounding." For Poetry is one of the arts of Time, and its very nature is to be realized, if at all, only in the passing of time. To be understood, it must come to us by way of the voice and the ear. Properly speaking. Poetry does not exist onfsheet of paper as a drawing does. So let me, as well as I can, try to find a voice and a music for The Garden. �^ The Garden How vainly men themselves amaze To win the Palm, the Oke,or Bayes; And their uncessant Labours see Crown'd from somesingle Herb or Tret. Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less. Withdraws into its happiness: The Mind, that Oceanwhere eachkind Does streight its own resemblance find; Whose short and narrow verged Shade Yet it creates, transcending these. Does prudently their Toyles upbraid; Far other Worlds, and other Seas; While all Flow'rs and all Trees do close Annihilating allthat's made To weavethe Garlands of repose. To a green Thought ina green Shade. Fairquiet, have I found thee here. And Innocence thy Sister dear! Here at the Fountainsslidingfoot. Mistaken long,I sought you then In busie Companies of Men. Your sacred Plants, if here below. Onlyamong the Plants will grow. Society isall but rude, To this delicious Solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous asthislovelygreen. Fond Lovers, cruel as their Flame, Cut in these Trees their Mistress name. Little, Alas, they know, or heed, How far these Beauties Hers exceed! FairTrees! wheres'eeryour barkes I wound. No Name shall but your own befound. Or at some Fruit-trees mossy root, Casting theBodies Vest aside. My soul into the boughs does glide: There like a Bird it sits,and sings. Then whets, and combs its silver Wings; And, tillprepar'd for longer flight. Waves in its Plumes the various Light. Suchwasthat happy Garden-state, While Man there walk'd without a Mate: After a Place so pure, andsweet. What other Helpcould yet bemeet! But'twas beyond a Mortal's share To wander solitarythere: Two Paradises 'twere in one To live in Paradise alone. When we have run our Passions heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. How well the skilful Gardner drew Of flow'rs and herbes this Dial new; Where from above the milder Sun The Gods, that mortal Beauty chase, Does through a fragrant Zodiack run; Still in a Tree did end their race. And, as it works, th' industrious Bee Apollo hunted Daphne so. Computes itstime as well as we. Only that ShemightLaurel grow. And Fan did after Syrinxspeed, Not as a Nymph, but for a Reed. How could such sweet and wholsome Hours Be reckon'd but with herbs and flow'rs! What wond'rous Life in this I lead! Ripe Apples drop about my head; The Luscious Clusters of the Vine Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine; The Nectaren, and curious Peach, Into my hands themselvesdo reach; Stumbling on Melons, asI pass, Insnar'd with Flow'rs, I fall on Grass. �FIRST MOVEMENT I have already said that in terms of the "scenario" the First Movement is an entry into the garden, although we don't discover that until the second stanza with the words, Fair Quiet, have I At that moment we realize that found thee here the Poet has entered the garden and has been looking around at everything, sinking into the quiet and letting it sink into him. Throughout the movement, he is looking backward, viewing the "busie companies of Men" that he has just fled, and breathing deep sighs of relief. Neither he nor we know how he came to find himself in the garden. This movement develops two themes, the vanity of worldly pursuits and the frustration of romantic pursuits. A word about the style. It is brilliantly witty. Now wit in Mr Marvell's sense is out of fashion with our age which prefers a sequence of "one-liners" followed by guffaws. So a word about wit. It is "a tough reasonableness under a slight, lyric grace", to quote T.S Eliot. It requires thought. It works with imagination and turns on surprise and delight at the unexpected. Marvell, like Mozart, never goes where we expect him to go, but always surprises and delights us with something infinitely better than we could have thought of for ourselves. This leaves me in an awkward spot. thankless enough — Explaining a joke is no one ever laughs when you do. Pointing out the witty is probably even more useless. I shall do my best and try to be brief. For someone should point out these things -- i t ' s what tour guides are for. �stanza 1 How vainly men themselves amaze To win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes; And their uncessant Labours see Crown'd from some single Herb or Tree. Whose short and narrow verged Shade Does prudently their Toyles upbraid; While all Flow'rs and all Trees do close To weave the Garlands of repose. After reading the first stanza a few times it dawns on us that there is something odd about the diction. All the words are quite ordinary words that we all use, and all seem to be used with precision.(The tidy four-foot lines and the neat rhymes of the couplets lend to the effect of precision.) Yet we find ourselves wondering how to take some of the words. Consider. How vainly men themselves amaze Take "vainly." Does Marvell intend "to what little real purpose"? Or does he mean "with what absurd conceit"? Or again take "amaze". It can mean "to astonish", as it does for us; but in the 17th century it also meant "to perplex" of "to bewilder" or "to lead astray", as in a labyrinth or maze. And finally, what about "themselves", the most ordinary word of the doubtful three. As you think about it in its context, you wonder. Is it a reflexive or a reciprocal pronoun? Do men amaze one another in their pursuit of fame — as Achilles amazed Alexander and Alexander, Caesar? Or do they amaze themselves — as in the case of the famous harpsichordist who, after hearing the tape of her most recent recording, exclaimed, "It is incredible how well I play!" Now to write a line in which three out of the five first words are equivocal must mean either that the poet has no ear for language or else that he knows exactly what he is doing and intended everything — that he is using the �10 equivocations brilliantly. We know intuitively that the latter is the case. Twenty-seven differing meanings follow upon the possible combinations of these equivocations. And all are compatible. The Poet means a l l of them. yourselves at leisure — You can work i t out for i t would be tedious to do here. But you don't really need to because you know intuitively that the line works. illustrate I can make an awkward paraphrase to thus: With what futility, or with what conceit, or with how much of both, men astonish, both astonish and or both or bewilder, bewilder themselves themselves and one or or one another another...etc. If you did not see all of this intuitively, Marvell's line would have failed. But it does not f a i l . It succeeds brilliantly, effortlessly. Clearly, then, we hare a masterful and witty poet to work with, a man of virtuosity and imagination. A poet who wants you to think, to be aware, and, as you can, to match his own wit and intelligence. Of course the rest of the poem must be worthy of this beginning. This line is only an opening chord. Stanza 1 The first stanza as a whole, like any good opening,is a statement in b r i e f of the whole work. I t moves from the busyness of the great world, the world of athletic, civic and poetic accomplishments, signified by crowns of Palm, Oke, or Bay leaves, to the crowns braided of all Trees and Flow'rs, which he calls "the Garlands of repose." The motion is from busyness and toil to peace and Quiet. This is a serious piece of wisdom, but one which stated flatly would hardly attract your serious attention. However, without departing from the underlying wisdom, Marvell attracts us and delights us with his invention; which is that Men by toiling unceasingly, discover that their crownin reward is a stingy little wreath of leaves that doesn't even �11 give much shade — which is exactly what anyone in the full glare of fame most desperately needs. If the hero's taste were more catholic, goes the argument, he could have cultivated for himself a more generous crown of all trees and flowers, and could be enjoying peace and quiet. In line six there's a lovely pun. He rhymes ...narrow-verged shade" with ...prudently upbraid. Upbraid, of course, means to reproach and criticize severely, but Marvell pretends — and we delightedly go along with him — that it also means to braid up into a crown. Thus the crown itself tells the hero while he's wearing it, that he has wasted his life's time on such nonsense. There's also a learned joke, that I dare allude to, since you have all have read Herodotus. When Demaratus tells Xerxes that in the Greek games the prize is an crown of leaves, he cannot believe it. "Nothing more than that?", he says and wonders at the strange Greeks who are content with the honor of winning the contest and do not care about golden trophies. Marvell takes Xerxes' part in disparaging the frugal crown, but he gives it another turn by proposing that nicer leaves and flowers would be a far better reward. Observe that Marvell has managed to say all of this in exactly 64 syllables, while I have plodded clumsily through more words than I care to count. Quickness and a flashing insight are the very nature of wit. (His, not mine.) I promise now to move more rapidly — this is, after all an allegro we're talking about — through the rest of the movement, now that you've seen what sort of a Poet we're dealing with. �12 Stanza 2 Fair Quiet, have I found thee here. And Innocence thy Sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busie Companies of Men. Your sacred Plants, i f here below. Only among the Plants will grow. Society is all but rude. To t h i s delicious Solitude. This stanza picks up on the note of repose, the last word of the preceding stanza. The Poet confesses — to himself, and to Quiet and Innocence whom he apostrophizes — his hitherto inveterate error of seeking for the good life in worthy works among his fellow men. Now he professes to recognize that Quiet and Innocence dwell only in the precincts of the Garden, far from from human company. The final couplet is again a splendid — double and courteous -- entendre. Society is all but rude To this delicious Solitude. At first, he seems to mean that Society is barely courteous to those who would desert her for solitude. (You recall Aristotle's remark in the Politics that one who lives to himself is either a beast or a god. And in practice society does feel uneasy with those who go apart. Such withdrawal seems a condemnation.) I think that the lines mean "All Society is merely rude/(compared) To this delicious Solitude." Social condemnation of solitude i s universal, condemnation of solitude i s universal. And notice now the quality of the last line. To this delicious Solitude. It is impossible to articulate this line at all without almost tasting the words in the mouth. It is a taste of what is to come. For the real subject of the poem is Solitude. Stanza 2 raises the question. Can that Innocence which �13 was lost in a garden, be regained? The answer is, If so, only in a garden. Stanza 3 Stanza 3 shifts from the pursuit of fame to the of romantic love. If we flee Society, should we not, pursuit so to speak, consider sharing our Solitude with one other, with a beloved? This thought has, after all, occurred to others. "Come live with me.and be my love/ And we will all the pleasures prove..." Alceste, who is not a true solitary,no matter what he thinks, offers to marry Celimene, if only she will go off with him alone and apart from the "busie companies of Men." But this Poet has already decided against that. And for the astonishing reason that green of the trees is far more amorously engaging than rosy lips and cheeks. No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous as this lovely green. What a surprise again is the first couplet! We have always known that white and red are love's colors. Red lips; rosy cheeks;"white-armed Andromache";"her neck is like the swan." 0 the red rose breathes of passion And the white rose breathes of love. But Marvell sings. No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous as this lovely green. He has already confessed to a love of gardens. Like most other people he loves Trees. But amorously? as he professes? The trees, he says, are more beautiful than any mistress. His wit verges towards extravagance. We think of Orlando solitary, moaning and mooning about the Forest of Arden, carving Rosalind on the beech trees and hollies. And I suppose that Marvell would have us think in fun, of the love-sick Andrew mooning about the garden carving "Beech" and "Holly" in their barks. Of course �14 Orlando will pay no attention to him as Andrew urges that Holly is far more beautiful than Rosalind. Green is a very good color, to be sure, and this is one of the greenest poems in English. For green is the color of Life, of living Nature. Here in "The Garden", under the greenwood tree, we've been dimly imagining green all along. Still, it's not a very good color for a girl. In Twelfth Night Viola tells the lovesick Duke of her pretended sister, She never told her love. But let concealment, like a worm in the bud Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought. And with a green and yellow melancholy. She sat like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. You see, green both is and is not amorous. It's a very good color for a tree or an herb, but not so good for a mistress — unless Stanza she be lovesick. 4 Develo^img the theme of the pursuit of love. Stanza 4 concludes the First Movement with a bravura passage, by suggesting that when we have run our passion's race — and presumably — have lost it, the weary and chastened lover should make a retreat into the solitude of the Garden. He reminds us that the gods themselves did so, and cites two parallel examples from Ovid's Metamorphoses to make his point, namely the famous cases of Daphne and Apollo and of Syrinx and Pan. Since we no longer read Ovid in the course of our program, i t is possible that you don't know these stories. I shall condense them for you. Each god had fallen in love with a mortal girl. Both girls were prudently reluctant to yield to the importunacy of their divine lovers. But occasions arose when each god, encountered his beloved alone in the forest. Each pursued her as hard as he could in a running race. And each god both lost and won his race. For as each was on the point of �15 overtaking the girl, she prayed the local water-nymphs to save her. The nymphs responded in the only way they could and metamorphosed the girls beyond even the gods' powers. Daphne was transformed into a laurel tree just as the pursuing Apollo touched her shoulder. Syrinx, her flight impeded by a river, was changed into a clump of reeds growing on the bank. Both gods, having run their "Passion'heat made the best of the situation. Apollo, god of Poetry, vowed that henceforth the Laurel would be sacred to his arts, and that supreme Poets would be crowned with Laurel, that is. Bay leaves. Pan, god of all Nature, is also necessarily a musician; Pan, so that when Syrinx was metamorphosed into reeds. to solace himself, make a panpipe — cut a bunch of them and sat down to still called a syrinx -- on which he mourns his lost love with those melancholy little tunes that you can hear, if you listen carefully, in any upland meadow where the wild goats graze. This is a bravura ending to the First Movement. Notice those the two themes — love — crown that of the pursuits of fame and of have been brought together at the end. The Laurel has not only returned here, but has been explained by an origin myth. The pursuits of the divine passion began indeed amorously, but have in the end been univeralized in those leafy crowns which reward poetic or public virtue. Best of all, those nymphs with their flashing white limbs, their rosy lips and cheeks, have ceased to flee, and have turned a lovely "am'rous" green. And yet. And yet... The Gods, Still Listen carefully. that mortal Beauty chase. in a Tree did end their race. Can you hear in that couplet an echo of Eden in solemn counterpoint to the playfulness joke about Apollo and Pan? ^dam and Eve, like the gods of the Greeks, were immortal Vntil they chose to eat �16 . . . t h e Fruit Of that Forbidd'n Tree, whose mortal tast Brought Death into the World, and all our woe. With loss of Eden... thus ending their race in that Tree. SECOND MOVEMENT Stanza 5 We know at once from the music of the Second Movement that we have entered into a quite different world from that of the First Movement. This world hardly remembers that other one from which we have been so suddenly translated. All that seems to carry over is the continuing rhyme of the preceding couplet, "speed/reed", "lead/head." The Poet here speaks simply, directly, and in the first person. These stanzas are no longer clever. To be sure, we are — again, or perhaps still — in a garden; but this is a very different garden, overflowing with the ripest and most varied fruits. After a moment, we recognize i t as Paradise. What wond'rous Ripe l i f e is this I lead! Apples drop about my head; The Luscious Clusters of the Vine Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine; The Nectaren and curious Peach, Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on Melons as I Insnar'd by Flow'rs, I pass, fall on Grass. The quality of verse that we tasted earlier in Stanza 2, To this delicious Solitude is here sustained almost to the point of cloying. We seem to taste the Fruits as we voice the words. But they do not cloy, because their effect is not achieved for its own sake; and i t has besides its own tang of wit. The Poet sees himself to suffer willingly the urgings of pleasure. all, After i t is the vines and the fruits that thrust themselves ��18 I don't think Marvell made up the color. I am reasonably confident that he simply saw it that way. For him Thought was green. And maybe our thought experiment lends some confirmation to the conceit. But let's return now to the beginning of the stanza. Mean while, the Mind, from pleasure less. Withdraws into its happiness: I think we feel that the Mind, somewhat fastidiously, withdraws for the time being, from any further association with the Body lying there on the grass in such a deplorable condition. The Body's pleasure seriously diminishes the Mind's; and in any case, the Body is not now in any shape to support serious thinking. Probably the Mind is glad to be rid of the Body for a while. But where does the Mind withdraw If into itself, this would mean that the Mind is capable of existence separated from the Body and from the Soul. Its existential status would then seem to be different from that of either the Body ^ or the Soul. The Body, after all, is simply lying there on the ground "at the Fruit-trees mossy root", while the Soul, "like a Bird" ascends into the tree. But where does the Mind go? It seems significant that Marvell says "the Mind" rather than calls Mind." Marvell himself, reflecting on the Mind, it ...that Ocean where each kind Does streight its own resemblance find. To me this suggests an ocean in which the forms of things dwell, and whenever we reach out with the understanding to grasp something in the world, that thing finds its own form in the Mind; and so we know it. For the thing known and its form in the Mind by which it is grasped are formally identical. At least in the Aristotelian teaching i t is so. I remark in passing that the Ocean is often green when we look at its surface, and that, when we see from below the surface, it is a is a cool, green, translucent shade. And of �19 course i t is filled with all sorts of resemblant things, as sea lions, and seahorses, and starfishes. But for Marvell, the Mind has a further faculty. I suspect that i t is Imagination, both sensible and Intellectual, whereby it can (and does) invent other worlds that are quite different from the one created by God and given by Nature. t h a t ' s made and In so doing the Mind may annihilate all construct other worlds of its own imaginings. Such worlds bear a doubtful relationship to the real world. Indeed, they may become confused with real world and under certain circumstances, even be preferred to it. It seems to me that Marvell was here thinking of Decartes' teachings. And I feel a strong contrast between the French Philosopher sitting in his warm Dutch room, shut off from the outer world, wondering about the nature of things, wondering, even, if those things that he can see out of his window passing in the street below are indeed men like himself, or automata made to resemble men in order to deceive him. And then there is Marvell, meditating in his undoubted English garden and seeing somehow in a vision the constituent parts of his own being in terms of the manifest garden. Stanza 7 Here at the Fountains sliding foot. Or at some Fruit-trees mossy root. Casting the Bodies Vest aside. My soul into the boughs does glide: Here all the motion is upward. The Body has stumbled and fallen down. The Mind has withdrawn. But,"Casting the Body's Vest aside,/My Soul into the boughs does glide." The motion of the Soul is swift, graceful and upward. tree, which I Into the take to be the Tree of Life. There like a Bird it sits, and sings. Then whets, and combs its silver Wings; And, t i l l prepar'd for longer flight. Waves in its Plumes the various Light. �20 ^0^ Released from the Body, the Soul takes the form of a winged creature and ascends into the tree, where i t sits and sings. Its singing is the first — and the only — sound in the poem. For Marvell, singing is the proper activity of the Soul. But before we think about what the singing might signify, let us think about activity of the Soul. For Aristotle, the highest activity of the Soul is thinking. I have in mind the wonderful and mysterious passages that most of you know from Metaphysics XII, in which he says that divine thought thinks on thinking. Or again of Descartes, for whom Man is by definition a thinking being. I am not entirely sure what either philosopher means, though I do not think they meant quite the same thing, And I do not believe that Marvell saw i t their way. It may be that this is what the Mind, withdrawn into its happiness, is doing — thinkng on thinking, I mean — but it is not what Marvell sees the Soul to be doing. For the Soul sings. Or i t sings first of all. Marvell has in mind the image of a bird singing and obviously pouring its whole being into the act of song. Birds singing look like that. And so do human singers. Art does not deliberate. It simply does. A singer fully engaged in song is not thinking, but singing. She has become the music while the music lasts.(I think, for instance, of Elly Ameling.) The Bird here is the figure of Soul simply being what it is. Or doing what i t is. I think that, like the Bird, the Soul sings without words, for words are the product of the Mind and serve as go-betweens between ourselves and the world. But the Bird here is not thinking, i t is only aware, and aware not of itself and the world as two things, but aware of the being of everything. Of the world and of itself, not separately, but a l l at once. In such a state one i s not lost in the self, isolated and withdrawn, but the self is discovered along with all of the other beings in the world. And all are �21 felt to be a universe, a one-in-many. It is not same and other/ but everything together in a whole. I think the reason Marvell felt the Mind had to withdraw is because Mind cannot get up into that tree. Nor does it sing. It does not get you all the way to being. The Bird does other things too besides singing.. It dresses its plumes/ and reflects and refracts in its wings the different colored lights. For a moment, the color of the poem is no longer green, but iridescent. The Bird, no longer wholly beneath the Green shade (under the greenwood tree), has gpne up into fuller light where it plays with the colors of the rainbow. All seven colors. A pleasure of seeing. Of vision. The Bird is silver. And i t is preparing for longer flight. To a place, I take it, beyond the earthly paradise. THIRD MOVEMENT Stanza 8 Now, in another abrupt transition, we find ourselves back in the English garden where we began, and we don't know how we got there. But in terms of the myth, we know what has happened. Paradise has been lost again, as Paradise always is, and we are left in the world with memories of Eden. To follow once more our musical analogy, this third movement is in two parts, the first in the minor, and the second in the parallel major. I believe, though I am not absolutely sure, that the minor is rather slow, another andante, followed by an easy allegro. Their subjects are, first, a reflexion on the middle movement, and then a turning to the English garden and a resolution of the melancholy in a reflection on Time again and on works. �22 Such was that happy Garden-state, While Man there walked without a Mate: After a Place so pure and sweet, What other Help could yet be meet! But 'twas beyond a Mortal's share To wander solitary there; Two Paradises 'twere in one To live in Paradise alone. It is often assumed that this stanza is an easy essay at wit, this time the tired conventional jibe by a man at Eve and at women in general. Marvell allows you to think that, if you want to miss the point. But it isn't really likely that a poet of Marvell's gift would fail so easily. The error arises from another equivocation, but this time we are required to reject one meaning of the equivocal word. Mate, namely, a spouse, and to take its other meaning, a fellow-worker, a companion, an assistant. Marvell's plaint in the second couplet is not at all that Eve was a woman, but that she was another. AN OTHER. All of the distresses and perturbations of life in Society arise from other people, by no means only from other people of an opposite sex. and No, the issue here is between Society Solitude. Solitude was restored temporarily to our Poet in his ecstasy and now has been lost again. For he will have to leave the garden. Residence in any garden is at best but temporary, for always the curse of work lies upon us. Our only solace is that we can sometimes retreat from Society, put the world behind us for a while, and recover a kind of wholeness. It is quite true that the world would have you believe that there is something perverse about such behaviour. It is called anti-social, so-called leisure This stanza, I and this is why our must be crammed with distractions. think, does not need further commentary. �23 Stanza 9 Another abrupt change/ but here we see quickly that the Poet has simply turned from the memory of the other Garden to the present/ and is looking around him. He eyes fall on a sundial which/ as he considers it/ becomes allegorical. How well the skilful Gardner drew Of flow'rs and herbes this Dial new: Where from above the milder Sun Does through a fragrant Zodiack run; And/ as i t works/ th'industrious Bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholsome Hours Be reckon'd but with herbs and flow'rs! But a word about the Dial is needed. A correctly mounted sundial tells the time of day by casting the shadow of a small gnomon upon the numbers of the hours marked around its circumference. In Marvell's garden the Gardner has made a circular flowerbed centered on the column that supports the dial/ and has divided the circle into pie-shaped sectors. He has planted these with flowers of different hues and scents/ so that as the Sun moves the shadow of the column moves too from bed to bed and tells the time of day. Thus/ in Marvell's witty perception/ the Sun runs through a fragrant Zodiack. Instead of Ram/ Bull/ Twins/ we might have carnations, lavender and sweet Williams. We could tell the time of day by smelling the flowers, and the season of the Year as well by the scents of the blossoms. At first it seems strange — perhaps even irrelevant — to conclude this poem with this stanza about "th'industrious Bee who works by the hour around the flow'ry Zodiack. But, puzzling on not, the stanza feels right — or perhaps I mean sounds right in its music and its images. And it is right. Who is the Bee? He is, of course, a personification of industry. Marvell has told us that much. And his work, his proper act, if I may put it so, is to make honey. Unlike human toilers, he works not by mechanical and clock time. �24 but by the hours and the seasons of the year. Which is to say that he computes his time, not only as well as we do, but far better. Furthermore, the Bee is the most social of animals. In his own society, which seems not to be onerous to him, his labour work is to gather nectar from the flowers, elaborate i t into quintessential sweetness, and store i t for the use of himself and his fellows. His work is sweet to him, whereas ours by Adam's curse has been made bitter and often vain as well. We cannot live alone nor can we avoid the curse of labour, but we can, perhaps, temper these limitatations in some measure by rejecting vainglorious pursuits and by acknowledging only the legitimate claims of society. Or to put it more simply, we should retreat often into a garden, which "is the purest — note well — the purest of human pleasures ...and the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man." And I think a real garden is meant, no figurative one, By the end of the poem I think Andrew Marvell is ready to accept his exile from Eden and to go back to work in the world. Where, by the way, — worked, first, and I haven't said this — he in the civil service and then for the last twenty years of his life was a member of Parliament. He was a man of impeccable honesty for all that. He did not write his poetry for publication, and it was not published until after his death. Very probably he would not have wished this. If there is any more to be said about The Garden -- and of course there is, as I cautioned you at the beginning — much more —let us see what we find to ask and say about it in the Question Period. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A walk through Andrew Marvell's garden Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given in 1997 by William Darkey. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Darkey, William A. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to add this item to its collections. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Marvell, Andrew,1621-1678 -- Criticism and interpretation. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000316 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b227db32913978575ac398583d8bd9cb.pdf da0c883f6eacef07a660e0b643760a2f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Alternating Current Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given by tutor Howard Fisher on April 26, 2023 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "The technology of alternating current was developed almost entirely in response to the emerging demands of large-scale power generation and transmission. Perhaps for that reason, educational institutions tend to treat it as a subject of practical rather than theoretical interest: alternating current is studied extensively in engineering schools, more perfunctorily in physics departments. But alternating current reveals a number of perplexing electrical phenomena that carry deep theoretical significance. Maxwell understood these phenomena through several remarkable analogies, couched in a highly metaphorical terminology that later generations viewed with suspicion and disdain. Maxwell, though, understood that analogy and metaphor are the most intellectually responsible forms of expression when we are reaching towards theories that lie, as yet, beyond our grasp." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J., 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Electric currents, Alternating Maxwell, James Clerk, 1831-1879 Relation A related resource https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7751 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FisherH_Alternating_Current_2023-04-26_text https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a4275500f36cd16d9b13e585a2305b37.pdf 4c9baf08af78bec734de11f3240a685c PDF Text Text ����������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 16 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An ennobling innocence : the founding of Socrates' Republic Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on August 2, 1995 by David Levine as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Levine, David Lawrence Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-08-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Plato. Republic Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000405 Graduate Institute https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ca698e5400e8cdc307dde0479171a7e3.pdf 86fcb74798920eb76700bd820b75d121 PDF Text Text ������������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 24 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Anatomy of a scandal : self-dismemberment in the Gospel of Matthew (and in Gogol's "The Nose") Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on October 27, 2000 by John Cornell as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cornell, John F. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000-10-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Gogol, Nicolaĭ Vasil'evich, 1809-1852. Bible. Matthew -- Criticism, interpretation, etc. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000597 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a354a0adfdb1da43adcc827bfefa35c1.pdf 4487c49e4f4e32224cb6383a1b64338d PDF Text Text ����������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Aristotle on the principles of natural beings : Physics, book 1 Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given in 1995 by David Bolotin. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bolotin, David, 1944- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Aristotle. Physics. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000280 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b871b982dc33697e2d48a850a4add2df.pdf 5868bcc2aaf1f9ed163c6ac0e9e610f3 PDF Text Text ��������������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 33 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Aristotle's Politics : common good and forgotten excellence Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on April 2, 2010 by Janet Dougherty as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dougherty, Janet Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-04-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Aristotle. Politics. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24003867 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9807f1e7e1a81b5dbe665ad6c27fdceb.pdf 2e1b33ff4b11c25585b0ec9e2c31d35e PDF Text Text ����������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 9 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Beyond passion : the inner quest of J.S. Bach Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on April 10, 1998 by Peter Pesic as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Pesic, Peter Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-04-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Bach, Johann Sebastian, 1685-1750. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000419 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a7536e940d4589ea40709e1a1f95cc01.pdf e73ecc8b4c78be056e5a86a3b5c81e40 PDF Text Text ������������������������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Books, a balance and the tongues of men and angels Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on August 25, 1995 by Stephen Van Luchene as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Van Luchene, Stephen R. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-08-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Education, Humanistic Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 25051889 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/274fe4b15080f353b6f7e68bf921ed25.pdf 8d1ec494b7e407030402e87c31182af9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broadcast Radio Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given by tutor emeritus Howard Fisher on April 29, 2026 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "This talk will recount the paths by which the basic techniques of wireless signaling were adapted to make possible the wireless transmission of voice and sound—the technology we now call radio. Essential in this endeavor were additional capabilities of the vacuum tube: oscillation, which enabled production of electromagnetic waves having a defined frequency, and modulation, which varied the properties of electromagnetic waves. I will conclude by suggesting that technologies should not be viewed as being chiefly solutions to problems, but might also be seen as practical extensions of speculative thinking." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J., 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-04-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Radiotelephone Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FisherH_Broadcast_Radio_2026-04-29 Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/8182">Broadcast Radio audio recording</a> https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8b651a21d35fe61381a296383111e927.pdf 6fe021b1a25896ff88038036e5e15d71 PDF Text Text ����������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 29 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cartesian certainty, or awakening from the dreams of a slave Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on September 15, 2006 by Janet Dougherty as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dougherty, Janet Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006-09-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Descartes, René, 1596-1650. Plato. Meno. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24003551 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/77251badd14068e406dbf3a9c206f5a8.pdf 5e348c1aa618114ba471832c5e9c72f4 PDF Text Text ����������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 17 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Children of Orpheus : the dialogue between ancient and modern music Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on October 16, 1992 by Peter Pesic as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Pesic, Peter Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-10-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Music Music -- History and criticism Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000150 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d400f01b6f70d2cf52fe3aaa349b4938.pdf b30c4673b1f9be95f122bb769e87dc7e PDF Text Text Clima(c)tic Change: Twenty Million Hands and the Living, Wavering Globe [Mia slides] Last August, I heard an NPR discussion1 of climate change in relation to the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill designating almost $800 billion to energy security and climate change. The show’s host emphasized that, per the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), fossil fuel usage must fall dramatically within ten years to keep Earth’s warming by 2100 below 1.5°C.2 She asked the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning, “Is this process that we’re currently following going to get us there?” To my astonishment, Ms. Stone-Manning replied, “Yes. Yes is the answer.” The unequivocal answer was surprising given the BLM’s equivocal charge: as manager of federal lands, one of its responsibilities is to award oil and gas leases.3 So, somehow, partly as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, we will as a nation, albeit a politically divided one, meet requirements to limit warming to 1.5°C while still doling out oil and gas leases and without asking our citizenry to make substantative behavioral changes. Ms. Stone-Manning’s response reminded me of the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, which the United States initially joined, before withdrawing under President Trump and re-joining under President Biden. These Accords set as their upper target 2°C of warming by 2100 and their ideal target as 1.5°C. The latter requires a 50% cut in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. What distressed me about the 1 The show was “1A,” hosted by Jenn White. It aired on August 12, 2023. What Ms. White actually said is this: “The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly said that the world has to phase out fossil fuels quickly to keep earth’s warming below 1.5 °C increase, which we are currently not on track to do… Time is of the essence. We have a limited amount of time – again by 2035, the UN Intergovernmental Panel says we have to phase out fossil fuels to keep the earth’s warming below that 1.5 °C increase.” Per the IPCC 6th assessment report, fossil fuel emissions need to be reduced 50% by 2030 and 100% by 2050 to limit warming to 1.5 °C by 2100. Ms. White’s imprecision is symptomatic of a broader problem: the implication that fossil fuels have to be entirely phased out by 2035 can only signify how little she has imagined the difficulty of merely reducing them by half in that time period. And, by the way, what happens after 2100? 3 An even more egregious example of such ambivalence (the word is mild) is how the United Arab Emirates, host of the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), planned, per a BBC review of leaked documents, to use that conference to pursue oil and gas deals with foreign governments. But is this really surprising when the President of the COP28 happens also to be the CEO of the UAE’s giant state oil company? 2 1 �Accords, however, was that the agreed-upon means in no conceivable way could meet that goal. The modeling studies grounding the Accords clearly showed that. In fact, annual global greenhouse gas emissions are higher now than they were in 2015.4 The Accords set 2030 as their deadline for a 50% cut; over half of that time has elapsed; and we are further from that goal now than when we started (slide).5 Fundamental reasons explain why we’ve made so little progress cutting greenhouse gases, reasons which we haven’t seriously confronted politically or socially. We may think, for example, that electric cars will save us; we even call them, falsely, “emissions-free vehicles.” This falsehood epitomizes the problem. We are too comfortable imagining vehicles have no emissions if we see no tail pipes. We forget that the missing tail pipe is actually a power plant’s smokestack. Such forgetfulness is encouraged by those who understand that part of what they’re selling is a clean conscience, moreover one which allows us to get on with our lives without substantively changing them. Even if we correct this forgetfulness, we too comfortably believe the gases causing climate change are mostly the consequence of vehicles and residences; hence the solution is electric cars and solar panels. Globally, however, ground transportation and residential sources account for only a third of annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Our fossil-fuel dependence goes well beyond vehicles and homes.6 4 There’s discrepancy among reported global greenhouse gas emissions, in part depending on whether only CO2 is considered or CO2 plus other gasses and actions (which collectively are called “CO2 equivalents [CO2e]”). In terms of CO2, 2022 estimates range from 36.1 (Liu, Deng, Davis and Ciais [2023] Nature Reviews Earth and Environment 4: 205 – 6) to 36.8 Gt CO2 (the International Energy Agency’s 2022 report, “CO2 emissions in 2022”). Preliminary 2023 data suggest CO2 increased another 1.1% from 2022 (https://globalcarbonbudget.org/fossil-co2-emissions-atrecord-high-in-2023/). As for CO2e, the UN’s emissions gap report (https://doi.org/10.59117/20.500.11822/43922) gives a 2022 value of 57.4 Gt. Whether measuring CO2 or CO2e, these reports agree that the corresponding 2015 value was lower (e.g., 35.6 Gt CO2 or 47 Gt CO2e). Differences in estimates may also reflect treatment of natural but extraordinary emissions, as from forest fires. For example, the 2023 Canadian forest fires collectively burned an area the size of Washington state and produced ~3 times the CO2 emitted annually by all of Canada, but some approaches would omit these sources as extraordinary and natural. Yet it is foreseeable that such sources will soon become ordinary, and whether a source is “natural” or not will have no effect on how much the planet warms. 5 Put otherwise, it’s estimated that we can afford to add a cumulative total of about 250 Gt of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere to give ourselves a 50% chance of keeping warming below 1.5 °C; we’re currently on pace to emit that much carbon dioxide within ~ 7 years. Lamboll et al. (2023) Assessing the size and uncertainty of remaining carbon budgets. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01848-5. 6 The children’s book Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream describes some of the dramatic changes in our everyday lives should fossil fuels abruptly disappear or not be used. It has been widely criticized as Big Oil’s attempt to brainwash 2 �In particular let me call attention to four material mainstays of modern civilization which are fossil-fuel intensive: plastic, steel, concrete and ammonia fertilizers. Collectively they require ~20% of the world’s primary energy supply and generate at least 25% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.7 Consider all the plastic you handle every day. Consider the steel and plastic required for even an electric car. Consider the steel, plastic and concrete needed for solar-panel installation and building construction, including LEEDcertified green buildings. Consider projections that plastic production will double by 2045 (slide) and the world’s building stock by 2060. That latter is equivalent to building a new New York City every month of every year between now and then.8 Consider the immense quantities of fertilizer needed to sustain 8 billion people and their animals.9 Consider how energy-intensive food production in the western world is, where every calorie of food requires about a dozen calories of fossil fuels, and where in the United States, 30-40% of that food is thrown away.10 Consider, in short, how fossil-fuel intensive a transition to a green economy will necessarily be. Now ask yourself: what dream are we dreaming, which says we can go green without really changing? That message is loudly proclaimed by many on the left: “Let’s have a green revolution,” they say, “so we don’t have to change!” Can there be revolution without profound change? Many on the left say, make fairly minor changes so you don’t really have to change. Many on the right say, it’s all an exaggeration or a hoax, change isn’t needed; if anything, we should change back. Instead of focusing on the disagreement between right and left, notice their substantive agreement. The difference is between not changing and changing very little.11 kids. This criticism is undoubtedly true – but that doesn’t make the cascading effects of our fossil-fuel dependence, to which the story calls attention, untrue. To conclude the latter from the former is its own kind of brainwashing. 7 Smil, How the World Really Works, p. 78. 8 The NYC analogue is from Reilly O’Hara around the 10-minute mark in Peter O’Dowd’s “A ‘concrete’ solution to climate change”: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2023/12/07/concrete-climate-change-solution. 9 ~15% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are due to livestock farming, to satisfy our desire for meat. 10 For the dozen calories claim, see Ghosh (2016), The Great Derangement, p. 147. 30-40% is the USDA’s estimate. 11 Right and left often arrive at opposite conclusions from the same premise, or, as in this case, (basically) the same conclusion from opposite premises. Such phenomena are marks that something other than thinking is happening. 3 �Should we take seriously that climate change is an exaggeration, a hoax, mere, self-interested alarmism? On the one hand, of course we should. The computer models which divide the earth into enormous numbers of grid squares and try to calculate the consequences of every significant biological, chemical and physical process in each square are beyond the critical ken of a human mind. A projection 100 years into the future requires a million billion calculations (slide). Many are simply parameterizations of phenomena we don’t understand. The interdisciplinarity upon which climate research rests is also often authority-driven – collaborative in the mode of deference more than of criticism. Major incentives to jump on the climate-change bandwagon exist, including career and funding incentives. We’d be naïve to imagine all that away, as, even more importantly, we’d be naïve not to wonder about the competence which synthesizes so much specialized knowledge, assuming we can tell what is and isn’t knowledge. On the other hand, warranted skepticism does not deliver us to the knowledge that it’s all a hoax. Far from it. We’ve had warnings, growing in clarity and urgency, since a pioneering paper by Arrhenius in 1896.12 In 1938, Callendar calculated that the planet had warmed ~0.25°C over the previous half-century due to CO2 production by fuel combustion. He then developed a basic model which predicted that around 420 ppm atmospheric CO2 we should expect ~1°C of warming relative to 1938 (slide).13 We are now around 420 ppm CO2 and we’ve had ~1°C of warming relative to 1938. Since then models have become more complicated and refined, offering high-resolution predictions of what global temperature increases mean at regional scales; they’ve added ocean and atmospheric circulation and positive and negative feedbacks; they’ve incorporated responses of the living world; they’ve even charted possible social and political responses. But the problem’s basic contours, the relation of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion to planetary warming and the consequent dangers, have 12 Arrhenius’ Swedish colleague, the mostly forgotten Arvid Högbom, actually called attention to the problem in 1894, which in part stimulated Arrhenius to examine it more carefully in his theoretical 1896 paper. By 1904, Arrhenius concluded that the planet would warm due to human activities, though probably in a beneficial way. 13 See Callendar (1938) Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 64: 223 – 40, particularly Fig. 2. 4 �been reasonably well understood for decades. To some degree we’ve allowed ourselves to be distracted by seeking ever-greater refinements of the simulacra by which we make this problem visible, as if simulacra could stand in for the world where that problem must be addressed and as if the indefinite pursuit of knowledge weren’t itself a deferral of behavioral change. Accepting then that climate change is real, how alarmed should we be? After all, the world has had higher CO2 concentrations than now. The last time the planet had comparable CO2 concentrations was 4.3 million years ago in the mid-Pliocene; the planet was about 3°C warmer than now. That may not sound like a lot, given diurnal temperature changes in New Mexico of ~15°C and seasonal ones of ~20. But those 3°C corresponded to a planet many would find unfamiliar, with sea levels 75 feet higher than today, Florida a mere nub and southeastern Mexico under water (slide). Our nearest relative 4 million years ago was Australopithecus; it would be another million years before the genus Homo appeared. Obviously, there weren’t 8 billion people on earth. Human civilization 4.3 million years ago was still roughly 4.3 million years in the future – a reminder that civilization is young. Besides different atmospheric CO2 concentrations, earth has also had dramatically different past temperature regimes. It has been much colder – I’m not talking Pleistocene ice ages, but something more extreme – Snowball Earth episodes 600 to 700 million years ago when the planet was close to globally glaciated (slide). The planet has also been much warmer, including during the Cretaceous hothouse 110 million years ago and, 56 million years ago, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when the poles were ice-free and alligators swam in an Arctic lined by palm trees. If it comforts you to know the planet can handle much colder and warmer temperatures, if you think that means there’s nothing to worry about, consider rates of change.14 During the Cretaceous hothouse, the planet warmed about 0.000025°C per century, for a total warming of 5°C over millions of years. During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the rate of warming was a thousand times 14 The rates which follow are from Kump (2011) Scientific American July: 56 – 61. 5 �faster: 0.025°C per hundred years, again for a total warming of 5°C over tens of thousands of years – a warming coincident with an extinction event.15 In contrast, we’ve already warmed about 1°C in the last century, with future warming projected at as much as 5.7°C by 2100, depending on what we do (slide). That 5.7°C, equivalent to the warming which occurred over millions of years during the Cretaceous hothouse and tens of thousands of years during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, is according to the IPCC’s least optimistic emissions scenario, but that scenario is the one which most accurately matches actual cumulative emissions since 2005, predicting them within 1%.16 The, to-my-eye unrealistic, goal of the Paris Climate Accords is to limit warming to a mere 1.5-to-2°C this century. We’re banking on that, with most of us not realizing how dramatic a rate of planetary warming that actually is, to say nothing of what may happen after 2100.17 These numbers make even more sense from another angle: it took hundreds of millions of years to accumulate fossil fuel reserves which we’ve injected into the atmosphere over a few centuries (and most in one century). In terms of biogeochemical cycles, that’s a discrepancy in rates of six orders of magnitude. In short, the rate of planetary perturbation is extraordinary, especially in the context of the relative stability of climate which has pertained for most of the period civilization has flourished.18 That 15 It’s not surprisingly unclear whether or how the extinction event (which was marine) and the warming are linked. Another dramatic change in planetary temperature occurred during the Eocene-Oligocene Transition between 33.9 and 33.4 million years ago, when the planet cooled as much as 0.01 °C per century (Paleoceanography 11(3): 25166, 1996). This also coincided with a significant terrestrial and marine extinction event. 16 Schwalm, Glendon and Duffy (2020) RCP8.5 tracks cumulative CO2 emissions. PNAS 117 (33): 19656 – 7. 17 The Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events during the last glacial period are the closest analogues to our current situation of which I’m aware, in terms of scale and rate of warning. Ice-core evidence suggests that, around 11,500 years ago, the Greenland ice sheet warmed ~ 8°C in about half a century. How this extreme warming event in Greenland corresponded to the planet as a whole is uncertain; contemporaneous ice cores from Antarctica show less and slower warming. If we assume nonetheless that the warming was global in extent, we can do a back-ofthe-envelope comparison as follows: since the Arctic is currently warming ~ 4 times faster than the global average, an 8-degree warming over Greenland in 50 years is roughly comparable to ~ 4 degrees of present-day global warming in a century – well within what’s possible per current projections. The warming 11,500 years ago was short-lived, however (half a century, followed by centuries of slower cooling) in contrast to present expectations, which anticipate up to 5.7°C by 2100 and quite possibly further warming thereafter. 18 Indeed, abrupt civilization collapses, as occurred nearly synchronously with the Akkadian (Sargonic) empire, the Egyptian Old Kingdom and possibly the Indus Valley civilization, are strongly correlated with abrupt climatic shifts (e.g., Weiss et al. [1993] Science 261: 995 – 1004). 6 �rate of change is a more threatening aspect of climate change than the fact of warming. We are not just facing a world of enhanced drought and intensified storms, where the Great Salt Lake becomes an empty basin and metropolises drain dry the aquifers on which they rely and rest,19 while sea levels gradually rise and forest fires rage. We are facing a world which is fundamentally and rapidly reorganizing; where the last calendar year, 2023, was possibly the hottest in the last 100,000 years but likely won’t hold that record for long;20 where, in most of our lifetimes, the Arctic’s radiation-reflecting, heat-reducing toupee of sea ice, whose maximum extent twenty years ago was 14 million square kilometers, will disappear seasonally;21 and where, partly as a consequence of the melting sea ice, a major conveyer of heat on the planet, the Atlantic Meriodonal Overturning Circulation, will dramatically weaken or even shut down,22 fundamentally changing the distribution of heat on earth (slide). This will matter not just to us but to innumerable organisms who, like us, depend on fairly predictable patterns which already are becoming unreliable. It’s not clear that most organisms and ecosystems can respond fast enough. In the Pleistocene ice ages a primary response was migration – moving north and south and up and down mountains as ice advanced and retreated. But those migrations typically occurred over longer timescales than we face, and, perhaps even more importantly, 19 Per a recent study of ~ 75% of global groundwater withdrawals, aquifer declines have accelerated dramatically in the last 40 years for a third of all regional aquifers, while groundwater declines > 0.5 m/year are widespread (Jasechko et al [2024] Nature 625: 715 -21). Major metropolises, such as Tehran (population 13 million) and Mexico City (22 million), are seeing subsidence rates of up to 50 cm/year due to groundwater depletion, with projections that large sections of Mexico City will be without reliable water within months (which pertains already to some parts of the city; Paddison et al., 2/25/24, “One of the world’s biggest cities may be months away from running out of water,” CNN). Subsidence due largely to water withdrawal is also being measured not in inches but in feet in parts of California’s Central Valley (Dan Charles, All things considered [NPR], 7/23/21), source of over half of all nuts, fruits and vegetables grown in the US. Subsidence poses obvious risks to infrastructure, but even these risks are dwarfed by the impending, local exhaustion of freshwater in large parts of the world. 20 Schmidt (2024) Nature 627: 467. 21 When I started graduate school in 1999, a seasonally ice-free Arctic was predicted for around 2100. When I finished graduate school in 2006, a small number of studies suggested it could happen by 2050. Now it’s looking increasingly likely that it could happen in the 2030’s: e.g., Kim et al. (2023) Nature Communications 14: 3139. 22 Zhu et al. (2023) Nature Communications 14: 1245; van Westen et al. (2024) Sci. Adv. 10, eadk1189. 7 �on a planet much less fragmented by human-created barriers.23 We are currently in the midst of the 7th mass extinction event24 in earth’s metazoan history, with extinction rates a thousand times greater than background. We should worry, how much worse will it get?25 In lieu of imagining all species as rugged individuals with independent fates, we should also worry about how interconnected the ecological world is and how linked many of our fates may be. So here we are, faced with an ongoing mass extinction event and dramatic rates of planetary change. What are we doing? We are persisting in the dream that we can carry on more or less as we imagine we always have, that necessary changes are only on the fringes. Indeed, the Inflation Reduction Act sets aside $161 million to restore landscapes to historic conditions, because, according to the BLM Director, “a restored landscape is more naturally in balance… [T]hat natural cycle that has been with us for the millennia, that’s what we need to strive to restore...”26 Setting aside the question of whether nature has ever really been in balance, setting aside as well the question of what we mean by nature (slide), we still should confront the smaller question – why are we trying to restore natural cycles of past millennia in a dramatically changed and changing world? I see groups dedicated to eradicating alien species. I hear in the ecological register a disturbing echo of a terrifying political project. It really worries me. But I also don’t understand what our thinking is, to eradicate immigrant species when the scale of planetary change likely can be met for many organisms, probably including humans, only by massive 23 One political response to challenges partly due to climate change has been to reify borders – to build walls – and not just in the US (e.g., Poland’s 185-km wall on its border with Belarus; Hungary’s 320-km wall separating it from Serbia and Croatia; Lithuania’s 480-km wall, also on its border with Belarus; Finland’s proposed 1300-km wall on its Russian border; and India’s ongoing efforts to wall 75% of its 4000 km border with Bangladesh.) The Akkadian empire did the same thing, building a 180-km wall to repel migrants, in its failed effort to stave off its own climatechange-associated collapse in the early bronze age. Walls will be catastrophic not only for humans but other animals. Moreover, walls will wall in as well as wall out; in a changing world a wall will inevitably be two-edged. 24 Accepting the Capitanian as a mass extinction event in the mid-Permian. 25 Even seemingly small changes in planetary heat can have surprising consequences. A marine heat-wave of between +0.5 and +3°C in the bottom waters of the eastern Bering Sea in 2018-19 is thought to have led to the deaths of >10 billion snow crab – not because they couldn’t endure the heat, but because the higher temperatures enhanced their metabolic requirements, leading to famine and cannibalism. A water temperature change from 0°C to 3°C can double a crab’s caloric requirements in the laboratory. See Szuwalski et al. (2023) Science 308: 306-310. 26 As quoted in the NPR interview cited earlier. 8 �migration – and I wonder, what is it exactly that we’re trying to preserve, and why? Is this another manifestation of how we want to have a revolution without changing, of how we want, as it were, to spin our wheels? I observed earlier that civilization is young. In roughly 10,000 years, we’ve gone from Neolithic clusters to New York City, while the global human population has exploded (slide). When Socrates lived, the world probably hosted about 100 million people, roughly the same number as now live in just three cities: Tokyo, Jakarta and Delhi. It took all of human history to reach a billion people around 1800; and another century-plus to reach 2 billion when my grandmother was born. When my mother was born, 2.5 billion people lived on earth. When my sister was born 25 years later, there were 4 billion. In 2022 we hit 8 billion, with 11 billion expected by 2100. Let me state the obvious: this enormous growth has occurred in nearly exact conjunction with our intensive utilization of fossil fuels.27 This should impress upon us our extreme dependence on fossil fuels, even while we imagine we can painlessly switch to new energy sources without substantively changing our lives. In fact, per the Inflation Reduction Act, we plan to restore natural cycles to patterns from the last millennia, as if the dramatic transformation of earth by human activities over those same millennia doesn’t really count. If we wish to be serious about climate change, we must do much more. We must let go of many familiar things. We must understand that restoration is mostly off-the-table, or else is a nostalgic aesthetic illusion. We must stop pretending we can achieve a transformation without parallel in human history on the back of only minor inconveniences. Two paths stretch before us (slide). One relies almost exclusively on technology, whether existent technology yet to be built to scale, or technology that doesn’t even exist, in the hopes that it will deliver us from having to make substantive changes (as if technology itself weren’t a substantive change) – and, further, in the hopes that it doesn’t have unforeseen consequences, though history is rife with 27 Likewise, India’s and China’s rise as global powers is not coincidentally linked to their intensive use of fossil fuels. 9 �those consequences – not least of which is climate change. I call this path the path of techno-theology. Rather than praying to the storm god to have mercy on us, we will pray to AI.28 This path leads, inevitably, to geo-engineering – or rather, to further geo-engineering.29 For, against the backdrop of our increasing awareness of its planetary consequences, what has our massive utilization of fossil fuels become but a kind of geo-engineering? The oceanographers Revelle and Suess observed in 1957 that “human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment … that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future. Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic matter stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years.”30 Doesn’t such a large-scale experiment sound like geo-engineering? That is not to say it’s a geo-engineering with a master engineer in charge. Like every human endeavor it’s been some combination of chosen and fallen into, conscious and unconscious. But so will any future geoengineering be as well. I dread the day when a rogue nation or trillionaire unilaterally commits earth to another uncontrolled experiment in the name of salvation. I dread the mind-set which imagines we’re sufficiently self-present to undertake the governance of the natural world, the dominion over the universe which Bacon prophesied,31 or which imagines that dominion is instead the province of AI. I dread the ideologies, so many already in circulation, which will justify any action in terms, not of the existential threat of a changing planet, but of the absolute supremacy of human beings and of sub-groups among them. It seems to me this is the track we are most likely to follow, because of that Sirens’ song it sings to 28 This possibility is already nascent in Bacon, for example in the 129th aphorism of Book I of the New Organon, with its emphasis on the divine honors owed inventors and its claim that the benefits of these inventors’ discoveries serve all mankind and last all time. 29 My objection to geoengineering is in the metaphysical comportment underlying it, as I will discuss later. Insofar as we foresee that our actions necessarily have planetary consequences and modulate (or don’t) those actions in accordance with the consequences we anticipate, we are in some fashion geoengineers – as I am suggesting here. 30 Tellus (1957) 9(1): 18 – 27. 31 Aphorism 129 of Book 1 of The New Organon. 10 �us that we won’t have to change – though that promise is a lie, and we will eventually discover ourselves as changed as Milton’s fallen angels. Among the forms of this techno-theology is the technological creation of illusions we desire – the technological creation of a cave we like. We don’t want just to geo-engineer the world; we want to retreat from the world that is into one of our own devising. This comes to mind when I consider the Fabian allure of massive climate simulations, but no less when I consider the aptly-named Marvel Cinematic Universe. Or when I watch parents at playgrounds engrossed not by children but by phones.32 Or when I ponder why cars are so important to us, those wheeled would-be biospheres with their own entertainment systems and climate control. These are all, at least in part, escapes, caves we retreat to in order not to stare at the sun or to feel its heat. Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, thinks Virginia Woolf’s character Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares her party and contemplates her mortality; fear no more the heat o’ the sun, thinks another of Woolf’s characters, Septimus Warren Smith, even as he is about to plunge holding his treasure (slide). They’re both quoting a line from a funeral dirge in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline; and this retreat I’m describing, this techno-theological embrace of the cave, this path which I think we’re mostly following, is in equal measure that song of sorrow which declares we are afraid to live. Well we should be! It takes gigantic courage to live even a single day. That’s the techno-theological path stretching before us – the path of technological illusion and of god-like faith in technology, but also of retreat into made-up worlds, the bubbles of social media, CGI and cars, while in our hearts suspecting this also deforms us and tears us apart. The other path, the more difficult and the more hopeful one, places the burden of response and responsibility not only on technology, though we will need it, but on ourselves. It rejects that we are helpless to change or that our 32 We can no longer imagine even taking a neighborhood stroll without a computer in our pockets whose memory is millions of times, and processing speed hundreds of thousands of times, that of the computers which first put a man on the Moon. 10% of worldwide electricity generation goes into information and computing systems – according to Roy Scranton (Learning to Die in the Anthropocene), roughly the same amount of electricity as was needed to illuminate the globe in 1985. 11 �only hope of change is to convince politicians and corporations to make changes for us. We have become shockingly accustomed to imagining ourselves as mere followers and our politicians, for whom we frequently express disdain, as nonetheless leaders. They’re not necessarily leaders; in this country, they are first and foremost our representatives. The difficult, more hopeful path begins by taking seriously that they do represent us; that corporations do too; that what we behold in them is a representation of what we are. While it’s comforting and not wholly false to imagine tycoons making gzillions of dollars off of us helpless dupes, we must take seriously that what they sold us we also wanted. Let me underline this point with a recent example. Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, excited outrage last month when he blamed the public for climate inaction: “The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who’s willing to pay for it. The people who are generating those emissions [i.e., all of us – LW] need to be aware of and pay the price for generating [them]. That is… how you solve the problem.” Setting aside the likely hypocrisy, self-interest and poor faith of Woods’ claim, we nonetheless need to hear its truth, rather than quickly condemning it as, according to The Guardian newspaper, “[an] attempt to skirt climate accountability.”33 Such condemnations are their own variety of skirting accountability. Indeed, the climate activist group 350.org specifically exonerated all of us when it used Woods’ claim to motivate a petition which read, “Fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil are to blame for the climate crisis – not us. If you agree, add your name” (slide).34 Likewise The Guardian article cited a climate economist who compared Woods to a drug lord “blaming everyone but himself for drug problems.” But if a drug lord is culpable, does that mean drug users are not? I am alarmed by so limited a notion of freedom, according to which we accept ourselves as powerless rather than endure even a modicum of responsibility – as if freedom didn’t imply responsibility but instead was freedom from 33 I am referring to the article by Dharna Noor and Oliver Milman published on 3/4/24 in The Guardian I’m quoting their 3/15/24 email with the subject line “Exxon CEO just blamed the climate crisis on the public.” A subsequent email on 3/23/24 expanded the list of the guilty: “Last month was the ninth consecutive hottest month on record, ever. The climate crisis is here, and the culprit is the fossil fuel industry. But they are not alone – utility companies are also responsible.” Once again, however, we consumers are off the hook. 34 12 �responsibility. This desired freedom from responsibility fuels the dream that we can meet the extraordinary challenges facing us without having to change substantively. We too easily accept that our civic responsibility is to consume rather than sacrifice, to vote on occasion, to write a check to a political candidate, PAC, party or charity or, less often, to go to a protest, even while none of these demands what is more fundamentally needed: that each of us change. Our response can’t be an exception from our normal lives; it has to be what’s normal about them. The assumption that the heavy-lifting can be accomplished only by governments or corporations exculpates us. It’s not entirely untrue, which is why voting, donating and protesting matter, but it also basically assures the status quo while delivering us from having to consider how those governments and corporations truly represent us. Part of what can be recognized in those representations is despair. It seems that we don’t in our hearts believe we can change; it seems that in our hearts we accept that this representation, whether corporate or political, and despite regularly communicated contempt for it, still expresses the dark truth of who we are and of all we can become. We might as well resort to CGI creations of god-like superheroes because, despairing, we can’t imagine ourselves as powerful agents otherwise. We have more faith in technology, including technological illusions, than in ourselves. What if we were to put faith elsewhere than the technological divine? What might that look like? I have three suggestions, each both simple and on the far side of human possibility. If we take them seriously, we must also take seriously why they’re on the far side of possibility. The three suggestions are: Live small, not large. Live slow, not fast. Think differently. Rather than accepting the nihilistic premise that nothing you do matters, consider the exhilarating, terrifying premise that anything you do may matter. You may not know the ways it matters, to whom or to what. Mattering may not be reducible to meaning. But anything you do may matter, at least insofar as anything you do is matter. This is a consequence and expression of finitude. If we and our world were infinite, we could 13 �subtract or add to that infinity without changing it. But we and our world are finite; we and it must change.35 We are like that dream of Pierre described near the end of Tolstoy’s War and Peace,36 where he sees a living, wavering globe consisting of drops tightly packed together. Every drop which moves and shifts causes other drops to move and shift in turn. So it is in our lives: not one of us can move without moving something else. That seeming accident is a condition of possibility of every motion we make. Think about yourself finitely, pushing the earth to push off from it. An oil rig is not just ExxonMobil’s; it also expresses you who are but several drops away. When you drive, your gasoline has travelled vast distances, and that’s now part of your motion. That gasoline was once a fossil-fuel deposit; before that, it was a living being. Its carbon cycled many times through the food web, before getting buried and, over millions of years, being compressed and transformed into something else, which one day we sucked from the earth and transported across the globe so that the controlled oxidation of it would propel your vehicle while once again accomplishing a new transformation, spiritualizing what was once alive into the gas trees breathe and you and I exhale. Being finite means being part of this enormous web which you can’t control or fully foresee, but within which you are not without freedom or responsibility. This web, this unavoidable mediation which finitude implies, is what geo-engineering forgets. It’s arguably what Descartes forgot.37 Both secretly infinitize us; both imagine us as subjects fully present to ourselves for whom absolute agency is possible. For them, the drop each of us is doesn’t shift or get shifted by other drops but is isolatable; no web inextricably entangles us; and hence, surveying all that is, a subject can act with full consciousness. A subject can command itself to doubt; it can doubt away the 35 As recognized by Pascal: “We are floating in a medium of vast extent…; whenever we think we have a fixed point to which we can cling and make fast, it shifts and leaves us behind… Nothing stands still for us. This is our natural state and yet the state most contrary to our inclinations” (Pensées 199, ‘Disproportion of man,’ translated by Krailsheimer). Physical conservation laws can also be interpreted as consequences of the finitude of the world. 36 Vol. IV, Part 3, Chapter XV, pp. 1064-5, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky. 37 It’s also what our ideology of perpetual growth forgets – an ideology central to capitalism. As for Descartes, his forgetfulness was not shared by his contemporary and critic, Pascal, who regularly linked finitude and mediation (or middleness), as in Pensées 199. 14 �entire world; and having found the seat of certainty in its own thinking, a disembodied and hence definitized thinking, it can then re-create and author the world. This is Descartes’ trajectory in the Discourses and Meditations. It’s also the trajectory of technological illusion, which would replace the world that is with the illusion of a world we author.38 It’s finally the trajectory, if not task, of geoengineering. A famous climatologist39 argued that, given climate’s susceptibility to small changes of initial conditions, the so-called butterfly effect – where the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one place contributes to a hurricane elsewhere – given this susceptibility, he said, all we had to do was “tame this butterfly.”40 Were this climatologist more of a poet, we might hear irony in his claim; but what we might hear poetically as articulating a hubristic and hopeless project can also be heard as the assignment. It imagines every butterfly can be tamed; but even more dangerously, it posits a tamer outside the web of mediations, a disembodied, decontextualized knower whose command to the legion of tamed butterflies is itself beyond the jostle of any neighboring drop (slide). Think differently. Picture yourself as a drop jostled by and jostling its neighbors. We must relentlessly re-imagine ourselves thus. We must accustom ourselves regularly to undertake the thought experiment Rousseau challenges Emile with, in the book of that title:41 “We [i.e., Emile and his teacher] go to dine in an opulent home. We find the preparations for a feast… All this apparatus of pleasure and festivity has something intoxicating about it… While the meal continues, while the courses follow one another, while much boisterous conversation reigns… I lean toward [Emile’s] ear and say, “Through how many hands would you estimate that all you see on this table has passed before getting here?” What a crowd of ideas I awaken in his brain…! Instantly all the vapors of the delirium are dispelled. He dreams, 38 We tend to confuse our mediated and necessarily partial access to the world that is with our authorship of it. Finding ourselves in a synecdoche, we assume we’re the poet. 39 The climatologist was Kerry Emanuel; he made these comments during an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, August 1st, 2007. An audio file is available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12421331. 40 “Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars and spreads its wings out to the south?” Job 39:26. 41 Emile, Book III, p. 190 in Bloom’s translation. 15 �he reflects, he calculates, he worries. While the philosophers, cheered by the wine, perhaps by the ladies next to them, prate and act like children, he is all alone philosophizing… [W]hat will he think of this luxury when he finds that every region of the world has been made to contribute; that perhaps twenty million hands have worked for a long time; that it has cost the lives of perhaps thousands of men…?” We must think in terms of twenty million hands and thousands of lost lives – not all of them human – and indeed those numbers are surely underestimates. Even when simply walking the placita, we should imagine that what energizes our steps were once living beings who stretched themselves toward the sun.42 We must as best we can make choices worthy of the sun-stretching creatures who enabled them, of twenty million hands and thousands of lost lives. This is not an exhortation not to live, to deny ourself life, to do nothing because there is nothing untouched by twenty million hands and thousands of lost lives. Instead it’s an exhortation to live up to those hands and lives. Derrida described such a comportment in these terms: “Il faut bien manger” he wrote, but also “il faut manger le bien”43 – which as a play on words means several things: it means, of course we must eat, but we must also eat well – and not only that, we must eat the good. We must eat the good well. We must do it because we can’t not do it. To be finite implies, inexorably, that we must eat the good, that no action is without reaction, no gain without loss. We can’t not eat the good, we can’t act in the world without the possibility of harm, we can’t self-consciously leave no trace, nor is the trace which we may leave simply up to us. So what we can’t not do let us do as well as we can (slide).44 If this is not an exhortation not to live, neither is it an exhortation to embrace extravagance, to 42 Mary Oliver’s “Wild geese” comes to mind, especially the last sentence: “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.” 43 See Derrida’s conversation with Jean-Luc Nancy entitled “Eating well, or the calculation of the subject” in Points, edited by Elisabeth Weber, especially pp. 277-87. 44 The French uses the impersonal expression “il faut” where I use the pronoun “we.” The “we” is problematic; there is a question of what or who “we” is, as there should also be a question of what eating is. Eating is not simply what subject does to object; eating changes both eater and eaten. The referent of “we” thus necessarily changes. 16 �pronounce, like Louis the XVth, “After me the flood.” Look to the future: look not only at the hands and lives of those who have touched what is already before you, but also to the hands and lives of those yet to come, who not you but your choices will touch. What entangles us stretches from past to future. Our actions may memorialize and prophesize. It is in this context of an imagined future, moreover one which no longer includes you or me, as well as in the context of imagining our global contemporaries who even now live lives much less replete than ours, that it makes sense to live small and slow. Put simply, if you do, you will use less and leave others more.45 What I’m suggesting may sound naïve, as if I’m unaware of the notorious problem of collective action. If each of our contributions is a mere drop in the ocean, why worry about my drop if no one else worries about theirs? This argument of apathy, however, is just the flip side of the infinitization I’m critiquing. It posits that the only options are to be infinite or nothing. Such a coarse dichotomy has long characterized our thought. For example, we have long believed we could dump waste into the ocean or atmosphere and that, in effect, it would be infinitely diluted – that the vastness of ocean or atmosphere would reduce it to nothing. But it was, in fact, finitely diluted. Slowly those drops accumulated, so that now, for example, plastic, invented in 1907, is found in every region of earth from the Himalayas to the deepest ocean trenches, as well as in our food, our bodies and our mothers’ milk, to say nothing of the atmosphere’s rising greenhouse gases (slide). This whole lecture is about taking that disproportion between nothing and the infinite, a drop,46 seriously, about admitting that yes, you are a drop, but every drop matters, you matter. The pretense that drops don’t matter expresses, in one mode, a deluded if aggrandizing infinitization, as if we count but only as infinite; but in another mode, the complement of our aggrandizing delusion, it confines each of us to a cell of impotent isolation, where our drops don’t collectively constitute a wavering globe, much less our exalted, lonely individualities a world. But there is 45 You’ll eat less good more well. “For, after all, what is man in nature? A nothing compared to the infinite, a whole compared to the nothing, a middle point between all and nothing…” Pascal, Pensées 199. 46 17 �a world, a living, wavering globe of drops, in which each of us is a single drop who matters.47 Live small and slow and think differently for that world. This advice is more dramatic than it sounds. We easily dream of circumstances which will enable us to live as we imagine we like without unwanted consequences. This is like imagining ourselves disembodied, mattering without being matter, meaning immaterially. It articulates a desire that we not be finite or mortal. I suspect that we live large and fast partly to distract ourselves from that finitude, from the death which awaits, as a substitute for the gigantic courage it takes to live even a single day. Yet such a response accelerates catastrophe. The illusion that we’re infinite, that change can happen without us changing, is not a salve for our fragile mortality but a destructive expression of it. It secretly confesses that none of us really believes we will die, as perhaps none of us really believes in climate change. There is another option: that we try to believe; that, trying to believe, we make an offering to the future and of the future; 48 that we not insist that future be ours; that we let it be someone else’s.49 The talk of a new green revolution sometimes sways this direction, but so long as it promises immense change which won’t require us to change, it’s a pipedream if not something more malevolent: 47 This may signal a return to the sacred, if we accept Amitav Ghosh’s suggestion (op. cit.): “It is impossible to see any way out of this crisis without an acceptance of limits and limitations, and this in turn is, I think, intimately related to the idea of the sacred…” (p. 161). 48 The French scholar Rémi Brague gave a lecture at St. John’s (Santa Fe) many years ago in which he identified as one of the crises of modernity the decline in the human birth rate. He interpreted this decline as expressing despair about the future, as articulating that we no longer believe in a future worth giving. I agree with such a diagnosis of despair; I agree as well that it behooves us to believe in a future worth giving, and to do the hard things such a belief demands, but, contra Brague, I think it imperative that we appreciate that the recipients of such a gift are not, and cannot be, restricted to human beings. Indeed we can no more know the recipients than the future. 49 One is always at risk of re-infinitizing the subject. Letting the future be someone else’s still secretly assumes the future is mine to yield. Even just letting the future be may fall into this conundrum. It’s reminiscent of the catch-22 in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, where Isaac – whose apt Biblical name invokes the possible sacrifice of both past and future – endeavors to relinquish his patrimony but can’t escape thinking that it is his to relinquish. As a result, his may still be a version of thinking infinitely, albeit in a negative mode, rather than thinking finitely. Perhaps Molly comes closer to the latter, she who “dont want nothing” (p. 97), mistrusts a divination which has become of gold rather than god, and at the end of the book keens for her Benjamin, sold into slavery and dead. But the spiritual “Go Down, Moses,” for which the book and the last tale are both named, still suggests a future organized by a promise, a promise clearly not met by the book’s end but, like Isaac’s patrimony, not truly relinquished either. 18 �a future we pretend to yield to an other while secretly and stubbornly insisting it remain ours.50 That pipedream pretends that massive solar arrays, nuclear power, windmills, hydrogen, etc., will allow us to build for the future without giving up that future to someone else;51 it pretends we can be responsible to the future without really changing our present, including without decreasing our consumption. Take energy for example. We may dream that someday it will be boundless and free, but it won’t be. Energy will always come with consequences. Its production and use will require a material infrastructure likely including fossil-fuel-intensive steel, concrete and plastic. It will generate waste, including, for nuclear energy, dangerous radioactive products whose half-lives can far exceed the history of human civilization.52 We shouldn’t overlook that hydrogen, if it’s to be our panacea, is a highly explosive panacea. And if a butterfly can cause a hurricane, what can a windmill do (slide)? Put otherwise, don’t look to get something for nothing;53 that only amounts to the illusion of a good conscience.54 Don’t trick 50 Such a situation, including its unfurling ramifications, is well-described again in Go Down, Moses, as in this passage from “The Bear” (pp.257-8): “…old Carothers’ bold cramped hand far less legible than his sons’ even and not much better in spelling, who while capitalizing almost every noun and verb, made no effort to punctuate or construct whatever, just as he made no effort either to explain or obfuscate the thousand-dollar legacy to the son of an unmarried slave-girl, to be paid only at the child’s coming-of-age, bearing the consequence of the act of which there was still no definite incontrovertible proof that he acknowledged, not out of his own substance but penalizing his sons with it, charging them a cash forfeit on the accident of their own paternity; not even a bribe for silence towards his own fame since his fame would suffer only after he was no longer present to defend it, flinging almost contemptuously, as he might a cast-off hat or pair of shoes, the thousand dollars which could have no more reality to him under those conditions than it would have to the negro, the slave who would not even see it until he came of age, twenty-one years too late to begin to learn what money was.” 51 Hence the college’s thoughtless slogan campaign tying “Building for the future” to “St. John’s forever.” 52 Iodine-129 has a half-life of almost 16 million years, for example. 53 To get something for nothing implies an infinity, while suggesting simultaneously how nigh nothing is to anything. 54 Consider carbon offset programs. The science behind these has always been suspect, with concerns about whether they can be done at the necessary scale in the right places, how long-lasting savings will be and whether savings can accurately be determined. Yet worse is the world’s largest carbon offset firm, South Pole, selling carbon credits for reductions which they knew didn’t exist (Blake, “The great cash-for-carbon hustle,” The New Yorker 10/16/23). More broadly, however, the problem lies in our failure to recognize that responsibility is always excessive. To measure and delimit it is to turn any responsibility into the alibi for irresponsibility, as we saw above in the 350.org petition. Appreciating responsibility as necessarily excessive is a corollary of understanding that what we eat, what we internalize and make our own but also at the same time destroy, is in fact the good, for the loss of which there is no compensation. The pretense at the core of capitalism (but also of prevailing notions of justice), that no loss is without compensation (whether in the mode of offsets or criminal penalties) implies irresponsibility. 19 �yourself into believing you can give to the future without giving something up.55 Here’s a more tangible form of this advice: we must pair attempts to choose energy sources more wisely with concerted efforts to use them more wisely – and specifically to reduce how much energy and matter we use. I’m ambivalent but partly glad that the St. John’s Santa Fe campus has gone solar. I’d be more glad and less ambivalent if our solar conversion were accompanied by a campaign to reduce our energy use, if our murals enjoined us to take the next step rather than extolled the step already taken (slide). Per capita energy consumption in the United States is among the highest of any nation. If we want to limit ourselves to “only” 1.5 or 2°C of warming – as dangerous as that may be – if we want to reduce global fossil fuel emissions by 50% in the next 6 years, we can’t do it without dramatically reducing how much energy we use in ways which will present real but surmountable problems. Other first-world countries56 consume per capita half the energy which Americans consume. I grant substantive differences exist between us and them, but it seems to me the most stubborn impediment to making real reductions in our energy consumption is not those differences but our unimaginative and fantastical insistence that we shouldn’t have to change. As a result, so much of the rest of the world strives to live like us, when we desperately need to live more like them. Gandhi worried in 1928, “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West… It would strip the world bare like locusts.”57 But India and China and much of the world have taken to westernstyle industrialism, and that stripped world which Gandhi dreaded is increasingly the reality before us, as the rest of the world follows our example while we refuse to follow theirs (slide). My argument for living small and slow is not just that there’s no other way to face the 55 Technology is the claw by which we bring the future closer. It’s a way of materializing time, even commodifying it. We should wonder whether the technological solution isn’t always at the expense of the future. If we admit, however, that technology is an inevitable aspect of what we are, we will also have to admit that we are always expending the future in some form. This again comes down to eating the good but endeavoring to eat it well. 56 For example, Germany and France. 57 As quoted by Amitav Ghosh (op. cit.), p. 111. 20 �extraordinary challenges before us and no better way to accustom ourselves to the lives we will eventually have to lead. It’s also not just an ethical argument about living up to twenty million hands and thousands of lives past and future. The third prong of my argument is what I’ve been saying about how the world reflects us. As much as we may want to blame governments, corporations, even capitalism, and as much as none of those are without blame, we still must take seriously that these reflect us. They express something that we must take responsibility for as our own. Our words may say, “End fossil fuels,” but our actions take for granted their ready abundance. The only way I see to change that is to change how we consume (eat), live and think. We can’t just talk about this; we have to do it. That means recognizing no one is without responsibility for our predicament. Typically, if no one is without responsibility, no one is held responsible. But I’m saying each of us must hold ourself responsible.58 Change is coming, whether we give assent or not. If we try to affirm it, we need to do more than vote, donate, protest or go solar. We need to change. This may not sound revolutionary compared to a new green revolution – but of the two (which aren’t mutually exclusive), I’m advocating the essential one. I’m not saying it will be sufficient if enough of us do our small part. Other things need to happen, including at corporate and political scales. But those things will not happen if enough of us don’t do our small part. As much as we may like to believe we are victims of capitalism run amok, of ExxonMobil, of politicians, these also mirror us. They show us versions of ourselves.59 They give us what we, at least in part, ask for. Ask for something else. Become something else. Corporations, governments and economic systems aren’t simply controlling us; they’re also expressing us. Any revolution without that admission is just a spinning of wheels. Some of the dread darkness of the political era into which so much of the 58 To suppose that I should not act until those act who have behaved even less responsibly than me is to place the burden of our collective response on those who have behaved the absolutely least responsibly. 59 My insistence, or at least invitation, that we recognize our corporate, political and economic reflections runs the risk of becoming a kind of consumption or subsumption, a gobbling up of the other as secretly, within a naïve idealism, the same; yet the other which reflects us in myriad ways need not only be our reflection, nor is it clear that in a reflection what is seen is same and not other. 21 �world is falling stems from our propensity first to alienate, then to vilify, our own reflections – while also believing that it is only those reflections which have the freedom, power and burden of responsibility.60 What I’ve said today is not just about climate change. It’s about how we are using up and running down the earth and, in parallel, exalting and diminishing ourselves. We see the earth as a pantry for us to raid; and as various stocks within it become depleted, we don’t question our behavior or assumptions but merely look for new stocks. For the most part we have not interrogated our prejudice that we are entitled to the earth, that it is ours to exhaust, that no other beings besides human beings – and perhaps even among them only some – truly matter (slide). This exaltation we’ve implicitly bestowed upon ourselves is a kind of self-infinitization, whereby even the governance of the natural world falls under our thinly secularized techno-theological sway; but in lock-step with it comes our diminishment as isolated individuals, impotent and unfree, incapable of response and of responsibility, in effect nullities. Cast between these overtly dueling but secretly linked poles of the infinite and nothing, climate change becomes an avatar of our finitude. Ignore the avatar and the threat will not retreat; but neither will it retreat should the avatar be addressed. That desired retreat follows from the false premise that our finitude is escapable. It is not. We are neither infinite nor nothing but, drop-like, between the two. We need a response which endures that disproportion rather than, through fantasy and denial, embraces one end member or the other, thereby accelerating and compounding catastrophe. Some will hear me as prophesying doom, but I am actually advocating hope – not an easy hope, not a hope without effort or struggle or loss, not an empty hope which consoles by anesthetizing, but the harder and truer hope which admits that we must change – and that we can. Something new is coming, just as it did at the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago in the form of an asteroid. That asteroid augured both calamity and immense possibility, the end or 60 If we live in a benighted age, the question still remains: how far advanced is the night? Could we perhaps even now be on the cusp of dawn? 22 �transformation of the dinosaurs,61 and the rise and transformation of the mammals. From it was born the once-new world we recognize and sometimes love. A thin layer of the element iridium is sprinkled across the planet, marking that event and the boundary separating a world familiar to dinosaurs from one more familiar to us. Many now claim that we’ve entered a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene. Since epochs typically last hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of years, I’m struck by the sheer optimism of that designation, which I find both endearing and repellent. How innocent and how hubristic that we think it’s an epoch! It strikes me as far more likely that the Anthropocene will have been a boundary event like the impact at the end of the Cretaceous,62 marked by a layer not of iridium but of plastic, and distinguishing yet another new world from our now-old and familiar one. This new world may not be ours. It doesn’t need to be ours. A new world which includes us can’t only be ours. Like the dinosaurs, if we63 are to persist, we must become something different, something smaller, something which, though almost as light as air, nonetheless greets mo(u)rning with song (slide).64 61 How to read “or”? Transformation may be an alternative to extinction, to an end, but it is also a specific form of the end. The first reading reads continuity where the second reading reads discontinuity. 62 The Anthropocene as a boundary event was initially suggested by Scott Gilbert, per Donna Haraway (2015) Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities 6: 159 – 65. 63 Don’t overlook that the pronoun in this final sentence, despite its seeming stability, refers to things in flux. Its referent is changing (as is characteristic of pronouns). See also the footnote on p. 16 about translating “il faut (bien) manger (le bien).” 64 Every new beginning also marks a loss. 23 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 23 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Clima(c)tic Change: Twenty Million Hands and the Living, Wavering Globe Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given by tutor Llyd Wells on April 19, 2024 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Climatic change demands of us climactic change. We have yet fully to admit it. Perhaps we never shall. Can we be serious about climate change? How? That's the core of this lecture, which will try to be serious scientifically, philosophically and literarily." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wells, Llyd Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-04-19 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Climatic changes Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7925" title="Audio recording of lecture">https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7925</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_WellsL_Clima(c)tic_Change_text_2024-04-19 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/475e77346471eb8b8d17111a59ad06cb.pdf e7795fa0d668289e15620ac4c85c0693 PDF Text Text Constructible Numbers Grant Franks June 3, 2019, revised September 21, 2019 Introduction Recapitulation Two weeks ago, we saw that Rafael Bombelli confronted the possibility that the square root of negative one might have some positive significance when he solved the cubic equation x 3 - 15 x - 4 = 0 and, using the formula Cardano stole from Tartaglia, got x= 3 2 + 11 -1 + 3 2 - 11 -1 which he was then able to solve by intuiting that 2 + 11 -1 = 2 + 3 -1  . Last week, we followed Caspar Wessel in developing a graphic understanding of the arithmetic of complex numbers. In particular, we saw that (i) complex numbers can be expressed in polar coordinates by giving a distance (modulus) and an angle (argument); (ii) multiplication of complex numbers amounts to (a) multiplication of their distances (moduli) and (b) adding their angles (arguments); and (iii) the solutions of equations of the form x n - 1 = 0, known as the “Roots of Unity,” appear graphically as the vertices of an equilateral n-gon in the unit circle on the complex plane. So far, so good. Today’s Agenda �2 ��� 3 Constructible Numbers.nb Today, we’re going in different direction. Today, we will talk about constructing numbers and the emptiness of the Euclidean plane. The Geometrical Plane The Awkward Question “Are there holes in the geometric plane?” This is a question that rarely gets asked when doing geometry. There is no reason to raise such a question until some awkward questions get asked, and there is no way to answer the question without being able to step back from intuitively given geometrical space by thinking algebraically. Construction In Euclid’s geometry, one begins with five postulates, three of which authorize constructions: Postulate One: to draw a line between any point and any other point; Postulate Two: to continue a line indefinitely; and Postulate Three: to draw a circle with any center and radius. The references to “any point,” “any center” and “any radius” give the impression that the Euclidean plane contains all possible points. But that isn’t quite true or, to be more precises, there are many points in a plane to which Euclidean geometry provides no access. For instance, suppose you wanted to “square the circle.” This is a classical problem that amounts to drawing a rectangle with an area equal to that of a given circle. Archimedes shows that such a rectangle would have a height equal to the radius of the circle and base equal to half its circumference. If you can draw a circle with any center and radius, could you draw one whose radius is equal to the semicircumference of the circle you are trying to square? If you could do that just by saying it, your problem would be solved. That would not satisfy a mathematician. She or he would want to know how to get that radius length, that is, how to construct it. Beginning with the one length that is given -- the radius of the circle to be squared -- and using only permissible manipulations, how can we construct the desired straight line with a length equal to the semi-circumference of the given circle? The Meno Problem This problem sounds a little like the geometrical problem of the Meno: Socrates asks the slave boy, “If you are given this square with these sides, can you show the side of a square with double the area?” The slave boy is stumped. Some modern students think they have a better answer than the slave boy and say, “That’s easy! It’s the square root of two!” They don’t realize that they are not giving an �3 Constructible Numbers.nb ��� 3 answer at all. The phrase “square root of two” is just a slightly shortened version of “the magnitude which, when multiplied by itself, gives two.” So, to Socrates’ question, “What is the magnitude which, when multiplied by itself, yields two?” they have answered, “The magnitude which, when multiplied by itself, gives two.” True, no doubt, as any tautology is true, but it doesn’t really advance our knowledge of, well, anything. Socrates provides what is really needed: a geometrical construction for finding the square root of two by looking at the diagonal of a square with sides equal to one. (Really, he gives the construction for 2 2 because his original square had sides equal to two, but that is minor detail.) For the squaring of the circle, we want a construction for a straight line whose length is equal to the semidiameter of the given circle. Alas, not all that humankind desires does it obtain! There is no Euclidean construction for that length. The story that leads to that result culminates in the late nineteenth century. It involves Ferdinand Lindemann’s demonstration of that π is not just an irrational magnitude -- that had been known for over a century (Johann Lambert 1761) -- but that it is a particular kind of irrational magnitude. Getting to that result, if anyone here is interested in it, would require work that goes beyond what this series of talks will cover. If it is any consolation, however, the ideas we will cover tonight are necessary preliminaries to that work. The Delian Problem Once upon a time, a long time ago, a great plague afflicted the city of Delos. The citizens consulted Apollo’s oracle at Delphi who told them that the god was dissatisfied with the altar of his temple. The altar was made in the shape of a cube, and the oracle said that the god wanted an altar twice as big. The citizens, eager to be rid of the plague, got a great piece of marble and built an altar twice as long, twice as deep and twice as tall as the one that was there. The plague continued. The priest of the oracle corrected the people saying the god wanted an altar with twice the volume of the present one. The newly built altar had eight times the volume, and was not what was wanted. The people were understandably annoyed, but everyone in the ancient world knew that gods love to mess with people by issuing weirdly misleading oracular pronouncements. Gods are cruel, that’s all there is to it. Geometers realized immediately that what was needed was, in effect, an altar whose side was 2 times bigger than the present one. When they set out to design it, however, they found that the god had been even crueler than expected. They couldn’t figure out how to construct the altar. Finding a construction for 2 was easy, but finding one for the 2 was surprisingly difficult. 3 3 To get to the bottom of the problem that they faced, we have to sketch out a new kind of algebraic operation, finite field extensions. Ordinarily this would be a semester-long study, but since this is St. John’s College, I will try to compress it into about fi�een minutes. �4 ��� 3 Constructible Numbers.nb Rational Operations What is a Field? To begin, we need to define “a field.” For our purposes, a “field” is a collection of objects -- we’re going to be talking about numbers -- that are closed under the operations of addition (and its inverse, subtraction) and multiplication (and its inverse, division). Consider first, then, the whole numbers: 1, 2, 3, …. These are closed under addition, that is, if you add any two whole numbers you get a whole number. But they are not closed under subtraction. Although you can subtract 5 from 7 to get 2, you cannot subtract 7 from 5. So set aside the whole numbers and take up the integers: … -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3, …. Now you have closure under addition and subtraction. You also have closure under multiplication but not division. 10 divided by 5 is 2, but 10 divided by 3 is not among the integers. So set aside the integers and take up the rational numbers: … -1 -1 -2 , 5 , 11 , 3 …0… 1 , 2, 5 10 7 3 …. That is, all the numbers made up by ratios of integers with one another (forbidding division by zero). Now we have it: this is a field. It is closed under addition and subtraction, it is closed under multiplication and division. For convenience’ sake, we will give the rational numbers a symbolic name, Q. (Why Q and not R? Because R is reserved for the real numbers. Alas.) Euclid’s Operations Allow Us to Form a Field The operations of Euclid’s geometry allow us to construct lengths on a line that correspond to the field of rational numbers. If we begin with a given length that we will call the “unit,” we can with straightedge and compass easily make a double length, a triple length, etc. If we define “negative” to be mean motion in one direction from an arbitrary starting point and “positive” to mean going in the opposite direction, we can construct lengths corresponding to all integers. By an easy construction, we can also divide our given unit length into equal parts corresponding to any whole number. Thus we can make lengths corresponding to any positive proper fraction; by multiplying these we can make any proper or improper fraction, and by directing them toward the negative side of our arbitrary zero point, we can identify places corresponding to any rational number. The lengths from zero to these points can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided at will and the result will always be another rational length. We have a field. If we erect two such lines at right angles to one another, we can locate and label any point on a plane �3 Constructible Numbers.nb ��� 5 that corresponds to (a, b), where a and b are rational numbers. As my grandfather used to say, “Now we’re cookin’ with gas!” Other Lengths All points with rational coordinates is a lot of points, but we know that there are other lengths that can be found in Euclidean geometry. There is, for example, 2 , which is the diagonal of the square with sides of unit length. In fact, we can construct lengths equal to the square roots of any lengths we can find through other means. D A C B If you want to find a length equal to r , draw line AB in length equal to r + 1. Here, let Ac = r and let CB = 1. Erect a semi-circle on line AB and a perpendicular at C meeting the semicircle at D. Join AD and DB. Triangle ADC is similar to triangle DCB and to the combined triangle ADB. Therefore: AC : CD :: CD : CB AC × CB = CD2 But AC = r and CB = 1; therefore: r × 1 = 2 = CD2 r = CD. Combinations A little examination will show that these are all the operations that are available to us. We have addition, subtraction, multiplication, division -- these are sufficient to find any rational lengths. In addition to this, we can take the square root of any length that we can find. Not only that: we can do so as many times as we please. So, can construct 2 , or 5 , or 17 3 , or of any rational length. And that’s not �6 ��� 3 Constructible Numbers.nb all! We can construct 2 . Or 2+ 2 . Or 17 3 + 2+ 7 3 … or any sequence or combina- tion of the rational operations and repeated extraction of square roots. With these techniques in hand, someone might easily jump to the conclusion that these Euclidean operations can construct any length whatsoever. That’s probably what I would have said if anyone had asked me back when I was a Johnnie Freshman more years ago than I care to think about. But I would have been wrong. Jumping to Conclusions When I learned about the Pythagorean theorem and irrational numbers (or their equivalents, incommensurable lengths), I didn’t take time to think about these new numbers as carefully as, in retrospect, I should have. Looking back, I think my understanding ran something like this: “We had the whole numbers, but they weren’t enough to do subtraction so we added the negative numbers and got the integers. But the integers weren’t enough to do division, so we added the fractions and got the rational numbers. But even the rationals weren’t enough to account for all the lengths we could find in geometry -- the 2 is irrational! (Hey! I was just as surprised by this as the Greeks were!) -- so we added the irrational numbers to the rational numbers and now we have all the real numbers, which is all that there are!” That understanding didn’t get challenged for decades until I began working on a preceptorial on Galois Theory and Professor Charles Hadlock, author of Field Theory and Its Classical Problems, introduced me to finite field extensions. It was here that I learned the humbling lesson that not all irrational numbers are the same. Some numbers are more irrational than others, and lumping them all together blurred together distinctions that are best kept separate. Baby Steps Let’s start over. Go back to when we had just the rational lengths and could find any point with rational coordinates. Now, we read the Meno and find out about 2 . Instead of pretending that we are now able to generate all possible irrational lengths, look carefully at what we have. We can make any rational length, and we can make the square root of two. If we continue now to use just with our rational operations (+, -, x, ÷) on the two lengths we have at hand, 1 and 2 , we can make any number that looks like this: a+b 2 where a and b are rational numbers. Notice something important about these numbers: we can add them, subtract them, multiply them, and divide them any way we please and we always get other �3 Constructible Numbers.nb ��� 7 numbers of this same kind. So, if we have: 3 + 5 2  + -1 + 7 2  = 2 + 12 3 + 5 2  × -1 + 7 2  = -3 + 21 2. or 2 -5 2 2 + 35  2  = 67 + 16 2 Division is a bit more complicated, but it works as well. The upshot is this: the numbers a + b 2 form a field of their own. This new field is called an extension field. Because we added a finite number of elements to form it (in this case, just one), it is called a finite field extension. And because the element we added was a solution of a polynomial with elements of the original field as coefficients -- in this case, x 2 - 2 = 0 -- it is called a finite algebraic field extension. And because it was made by adding an element that is the square-root of a member of the original field, it is called a quadratic finite algebraic field extension. Let’s call it F1 and write F = Q( 2 ) to signify that F was formed by appending 2 to Q and making all the numbers of the form a + b 2 where a and b are elements of Q. F is big. It’s bigger than Q, the rational numbers. It includes Q as a subset, so we write: F1 ⊃ Q. But F does not include all the numbers (lengths) that we can construct because we can adjoin other elements if we wish. We can even take the square root of some squirrely element of F1 that already has a square root of two, say: 3+7 2 We can append this element to F1 and form the numbers: c+d 3+7 2 where c and d are elements of F. This is a quadratic finite algebraic field extension of F1 . Let’s call it F2 and write F2 = F1 ( 3+7 2 ) to signify that F2 was formed by appending ing all the numbers of the form c + d 3+7 3+7 2 to F1 and mak- 2 where c and d are elements of F1 . F2 is big. It’s bigger than F1 and much bigger than Q. It includes F1 as a subset, so we write: F2 ⊃ F1 ⊃ Q. Do you see where this is going? We can continue this process as long as we wish. �8 ��� 3 Constructible Numbers.nb … F5 ⊃ F 4 ⊃ F 3 ⊃ F 2 ⊃ F 1 ⊃ Q When I put them all together, I have a tower of finite quadratic field extensions. Every number that corresponds to every possible constructible length is somewhere in that tower. Altogether, they are called the constructible numbers. The set of constructible numbers is very big. But it’s not everything. There are Non-Constructible Numbers There are, as it turns out, non-constructible numbers, as can be shown in several ways. For instance, 2 (the real cube root of two) is not a constructible number. It does not belong to any tower of quadratic field extensions over the rationals. 3 For, proceeding in the time honored way of reductio ad absurdum, suppose that 2 were constructible. Also remember that, since in the real numbers y = x 3 is strictly increasing, there is only one real cube root of two. Now, if 2 were constructible, it would belong to some quadratic field extension of a field that was itself part of a tower of quadratic field extensions leading back to the rationals. 3 3 2 ∈ Fn 3 That means that include 2 . 3 where 2 =a+b Fn ⊃ Fn-1 ⊃ Fn-2 ⊃ Fn-3 ⊃ … F1 ⊃ Q c , where a, b and c are all parts of Fn-1 , but where Fn-1 does not itself 3 Cube both sides of this equation. 3  2  = a + b 3 3 c  = a3 + 3 a 2 b 2 = (a3 + 3 a b2 c ) + ( 3 a2 b + b3 c ) c + 3 a b 2 c + b3 c c c The number 2 is a part of Fn - 1 ; we know this because it is a member of Q. Therefore, it has no component multiplied by c , which means that ( 3 a2 b + b3 c ) = 0. Next consider (a3 + 3 a b2 c ) - ( 3 a2 b + b3 c ) c (notice the minus sign). Since 3 a2 b + b3 c = 0, this 3 has the same value as (a3 + 3 a b2 c ) + ( 3 a2 b + b3 c ) c . But it unpacks into a - b c  . So we have two cube roots of 2: a+b c a-b c But there is only one value ; therefore b = 0. That means that a + b c is really just a, and 3 2 is in �3 Constructible Numbers.nb ��� 9 Fn - 1 . By the same reasoning, it is a member of Fn - 2 and Fn - 3 and so on until we discover it is a member of Q, that is, that it is rational. But 3 2 is NOT rational. (Those who doubt this can see Appendix 1.) Thus, 2 is NOT in ANY tower of quadratic field extensions beginning with the rationals. It is not constructible. 3 The Delian Problem is Thus Solved At this point, the architects and engineers at Delos should despair: if 2 is not constructible, then they cannot double the size of the altar of Apollo with Euclidean mathematics. The gods are cruel, but they are are mathematically well-informed. 3 There are Lots of Non-Constructible Numbers. The demonstration that the 2 is not constructible is all well and good, but it is rather ad hoc. It doesn’t immediately produce any broad conclusions about constructible vs. non-constructible numbers. 3 A slightly more detailed investigation of field theory allows broader conclusions. It is possible to characterize the size or “degree” of one algebraic field extension over another. Compare, for example, the quadratic extension that results from adjoining 2 to the rationals with what would be called the “cubic” extension that occurs when you adjoin 2 . In the first case, we can express any number in the extended field by an expression that looks like this: 3 2. a+b These numbers form a field. You can add, subtract, multiply and divide to your heart’s content and never leave the field. If you try this with 2 , however, a problem arises. Form a number like: 3 a+b 3 2. You can add and subtract alright, but as soon as you start multiplying, you’ll find yourself running into: 3 2 × 3 2 = 3 4 The cube root of four is not the same as the cube root of two. It can’t be expressed by combinations of rational numbers and the cube root of two. It is outside of the (purported) field. This problem did not arise with 2 because 2 × 2 =2 �10 ��� 3 Constructible Numbers.nb which is within the field defined by a + b 2 . With the cube root, it is not enough to add one term; you need to add two. To get a field that includes 2 , you need numbers of this form: 3 a+b 3 2 +c 3 4. A little experimentation will persuade you that these numbers do form a field. Notice that when you formed a extended field with 2 , your new numbers had two terms, a + b 2 . With 2 of two, your new numbers have three terms. The quadratic extension is of “degree two,” while the cubic extension is of “degree three.” Field extensions can be compounded: an extension of degree two followed by an extension of degree three will yield an extended field of degree six over the original field. Field extensions can get remarkably complex, but for our purposes it will be enough to focus on relatively simple extensions of relatively small degrees. 3 3 The degree of an extension is measured by complexity of the minimal polynomial needed to produce the new elements whose addition to the original field leads to the extension. Determining whether a polynomial is “minimal” poses some problems, but this approach can produce sweeping knowledge about whole classes of extensions. So, for instance, every quadratic field extension over the one before it, so that a tower of quadratic field extensions -- that is, the collection leading to any constructible numbers -- will have powers 2, 4, 8, 16 … 2n over the rationals. At the same time, it can be shown that for equations of the form: xn - 2 = 0 the number n gives the degree of the extension resulting from appending one of the solutions of the equation to a field. This result allows is to know that Solutions of Appended to Q are of degree And thus are generally 2 2 Constructible 2 3 Not Constructible - 2 4 2 4 Constructible - 2 5 2 5 Not Constructible x6 - 2 6 2 6 Not Constructible x7 7 2 7 Not Constructible x2 I.e. - 2 2 x3 - 2 3 x4 x5 - 2 Also, it can be show that the solutions of the equations for the nth roots of unity, a�er factoring out (x 1), are minimal when n is prime. So Roots of structible Roots of structible x3 - 1 = 0 appended to Q are of degree 2 over the rationals, so con- x5 - 1 = 0 appended to Q are of degree 4 over the rationals, so con- �3 Constructible Numbers.nb Roots of structible Roots of structible Roots of structible Roots of structible Roots of structible etc. ��� x7 - 1 = 0 appended to Q are of degree 6 over the rationals, so NOT con- x 11 - 1 = 0 appended to Q are of degree 10 over the rationals, so NOT con- x 13 - 1 = 0 appended to Q are of degree 12 over the rationals, so NOT con- x 17 - 1 = 0 appended to Q are of degree 16 over the rationals, so con- x 19 - 1 = 0 appended to Q are of degree 18 over the rationals, so NOT con- 11 Many -- indeed, most -- of these create extensions whose degrees are not powers of two over the rationals. Thus they create field extensions filled with numbers that are not constructible. Literally infinite fields of non-constructible numbers emerge. Hierarchy of Irrationals Viewing all the irrationals as an undifferentiated mob is a mistake. We can distinguish between those irrationals that are constructible and those that are not. The constructible numbers are built by successive quadratic field extensions starting from the rationals. Non-Constructibles Constructibles Rationals The distinction between the constructible and non-constructible numbers is interesting enough, but situation is even stranger than that. As we have seen, the Constructibles are made from towers of field extensions all of degree two. We �12 ��� 3 Constructible Numbers.nb have just seen that many polynomials have solutions which, when appended to a field, give an extension of degree other than two; the equation x 3 - 2 = 0, for instance, has solutions of degree 3, which takes us away from the powers-of-two towers of constructible numbers. Suppose we toss away that restriction. Suppose we consider all algebraic field extensions of any degree. What if we allow ourselves to build towers in which each step can be of any degree -- that is, to append to a field the solutions of a polynomial of any degree. In this way, we could make towers of fields that include the solutions of any finite polynomial equations. That would include all the constructible numbers and much, much more. This immense collection is known as the algebraic numbers. It includes the rational numbers and the constructible numbers and much, much more. It does not, however, include everything. There are numbers that are not included among the algebraic numbers. You know a few: π is not an algebraic number. Neither is e, the base of the natural logarithm system. Leibniz and later Euler called these non-algebraic numbers “transcendental numbers,” a wonderfully mystical “woo-woo” name that stuck and is in common use today. Transcendentals Algebraics Constructibles Rationals There are LOTS of Transcendental Numbers When I name π and e as transcendental numbers, you may be misled into thinking that there are only a few such numbers and that each of them is a precious rarity, much treasured by mathematicians like these two specimens. Au contraire! Far from being scarce, the transcendental numbers not only surpass all other numbers in �3 Constructible Numbers.nb ��� 13 quantity, they do so by an infinite amount. Of course, to characterize one infinity as greater or lesser than another is a controversial project first pioneered by nineteenth century mathematician Georg Cantor. According to Cantor, the smallest sort of infinity is like that of the natural numbers which can be ordered in such a way that one can count off the members of an infinite set sequentially and be sure eventually to encounter every member. The natural numbers are obviously countable in this way, as are the integers if we number them like this: 0 +1 -1 +2 -2 +3 -3 … 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th … It takes a little more work to see that the rationals can be placed in countable order (they can), and a bit more still to figure out that the algebraic numbers can also be ordered and counted. But they can. Cantor designates this infinity by the symbol ℵ0 . The complete collection of real numbers -- and also the collection of all complex number a + b i where a and b can be any real number -- cannot be so ordered. These numbers, according to Canto, form a higher degree of infinity, the infinity of the continuum, ℵ1 which is widely take to be equivalent to 2 ℵ0 , a quantity distinctly different, and distinctly bigger than ℵ0 -- insofar as “bigger” is a concept applicable to infinities. From this perspective, the relation of the algebraic numbers to the entire set of complex numbers is pretty much what Ptolemy would call “the ratio of a point to a line.” The whole realm of all our manipulations, geometric and algebraic, occur in a vanishingly small subset of the totality of real numbers. Yet though we speak of infinities, do not imagine that these transcendentals are far away. They are not far away in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get them?” Nor are they beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get them?” No, they are very near to you always on every side, crowding about with incredible density. And the net of constructible numbers seems now to spread across the Euclidean plane like ever-thinning gossamer network of barely perceptible points, each separated from the next by gulfs teeming full with inaccessible points. While we all contemplate the miserable smallness of all our endeavors, let us take a brief break and then there will be time for questions. Appendix 1: Irrationality of 2 3 This result follows from Euclid, Book X, proposition 9. It can also be shown from arithmetic principles as follows: Suppose that 3 2 is rational. Then it can be expressed as a fraction numbers. We may assume also that the fraction a b a b where a and b are finite whole is expressed in lowest terms, so that a and b have no �14 ��� 3 Constructible Numbers.nb factors in common. We have: 3 a b 2 = 2= a3 b3 2 b3 = a 3 That means that a3 is even, which means that a is even; thus a3 is divisible by 8. Let it be 8 c3 . 2 b3 = 8 c 3 b3 = 4 c 3 That means that b3 is divisible by 4, which means that b is even (and that b3 is in fact divisible by 64). But we began with the hypothesis ab was a fraction where a and b have no factors in common. Therefore, 3 2 cannot be expressed as a fraction ab . � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 14 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Constructible numbers Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on September 24, 2019 by Grant Franks. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Franks, Grant H. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-09-24 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Number theory Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FranksG_Constructible_Numbers_2019-09-24