The Sense of Poetry; 3; The Ecstasy. Part 2

That sense of poetry an introduction to the appreciation and understanding of poetry with a richer University professor and local television like Europe or a good university. On this program Professor Richards will conclude his discussion on the ecstasy by John Donne. In a minute or two. I'm going to read the ecstasy through it and have been out shopping and breaking out to look at passing strange news and Lanny asked me to go on what it's all about. Let's listen to something in Tad went and changed the tone. Let's get that as live in the present as we can. And then holding that let's look at the other side thinking this is not that much that might help us make up our minds what it's doing what it's meaning what it really is. And. There have been

little biographical material that it will and a few lines of the writing that might have a bearing. Now before I read it. Let's recollect that this problem is addressed at line 16 as you'll see when I read it says. So Twixt me it's not the dress of the day a lot of people have gotten Bush and that impression and more important much more important and this is really at the heart of the prime time line 29 today and you will see the quotation marks. But some people have a look that in many texts. You will see the Lapis speaking jointly. Because both banned. Both say the same. Now that's been an uncommon situation.

And where. It's a great read it. And it's because it's such a random attack. I'm a bottom line from Shakespeare as Phoenix in the title that we will be coming round to the end of the cities. Built through and read it today. It's the read it to this that makes this. So blissful. Now I'm going to try to read with you the ecstasy. When I like a pillow on a bad. A pregnant bank swelled up. To rest. In a reclining hand set we two were not not those best. On hands with the Mantid but the fast which dance to spring. I twisted and

did thread dies a. While doing. So trying to grasp hands. As yet. It was all the means to make us laugh. And to get well propagate. As Twix to me is fate Peyton's out victory. So which to advance this state. But gone out. Twixt and me. And whilst also negotiate that. We like sit close. Tattoo day. The same posture as well. And we said nothing all day. It's

so refined that he loves so language around us to him and by good luck. And within convenient distance toward. He. Though he knew not which because both men both thank the say. My then the new oxygen tank and he came. It's this fan. This is like we said. And tell us what. We see by this. It was now six. We see we saw it not want to move. About. That's all several mixture of things they know

not what. These mix so that mix again and makes both. Each this and that. A single trans blonde. The strength and the size all of which it was but and can. Read Davos till that multiplies when with one of those so into an inmate to say that. So which then stop it then stop. Can. We then who are this new so know of what we are composed and made for the atom is which we grow. No change going in.

But so long so why do we bad. No they are not we we the intelligence is they the. We owe them thanks because they did us to let us convey yielded their forces sands to us. No OB dropped to us but I lay. On Man have been seen and wax not so but that it first imprints the. So so into the so made that we took a bus trip. As Blood labors to began it it was like So is

this it because such big goes need to knit but not which makes us man. So must love us. So to say and to affection and to faculty is which may reach an angry and else the great prince in prison lies. To our bodies. Turn read and that weak man on love reveal may look love's mystery is it and so do grow but yet the body is his book. And if so such as we have this dialogue let him still mock us. He shall see small change when the body is gone. Did I manage to read it. I wonder. So the but I call it last

time. The summit the climax of the 0 5 that came out really clearly. You don't just start right out of the pages of the book. So fast. So to say and to affections and to faculties which sends may reach an affray hand. And also a great Prince and Princess Di's. Don't know too well how important the last line the last two lines of the prime are. Many people ignore them leave the party before they get there. That small change let him still mark us see small change when we have to. Body's gone. You see it doesn't the GOING TO BUY THIS is the thing the prime is concerned with not a bit. It's the part played by the affections and the faculty. How so and we have a perhaps you might call them. That's what matters.

Now for the biographical detail too. For about that where. In sixteen. Hundred and One died and smashed up what had no black pepper to promising career he'd been a private secretary to Thomas and to turn the people of the great sea. And he smashed up his career advice secretly manning the Stefani's Thomas and the hostess the Thomases great. Dynamos dismissed instant stand and was found. So George managed to have him booked in the Fleet prison for a while. It meant a lot of hardship and and positive positive. Yeah so when done right. We had John thought and so cheap rate that we should have a bit wary of what I'm not up to me in the something that belongs to reality is that maybe do that again. We had each other so

cheap a rate as that we should add it when it went on. And. Died three years later 16 17. And not long afterwards Don wrote sonnet 7. And here are the opening lines. Let's look at them. Then she would. Have paid US debt to nature. And to. And my good is dead. And so into heaven. Ravishing. Lay on heavenly things. My mind is set. I wonder do you feel that the end of the second line. On the screen. And my good is dead. Could that have been ing to

do with the line of the ecstasy sat one another's best. Now the ecstasy I remember was written it's thought probably about 16 11 10 years after the Matt age 60 has before and died. Calling my good quite simply like that could mean a lot couldn't it. But it's the next two lines that have been most noticed and discussed and they are really very extraordinary. That means on. Here. They are maddening. My mind went to seek the god so streams to show that and. Where. And I should go shopping or something like a size shopping appetite quickening. I went. And I had the courses the headwaters the source of the stream or river.

Well. How do you feel as I do that this goes along with it when I was giving the ecstasy a pretty straight and serious interpretation. Taking it in fact as being the exposition of a philosophy of. A very deep and full philosophy of life which is what after all it purports to be letting a lighted match. We see we saw an art. What did I mean we see now. But formally We did not see what the real sauce on our engine of our love for one another is. But don't be in a hurry now and don't let me wish anything on new with all this. Don't be in a hurry to decide anything about this. I've been lecturing on this but I've my Come to think of it. Since 1920 three of a century. And this last week I've been reading about 68 papers written the ecstasy

by the grand plan graduate people of all sorts and degrees. Have experience with poetry and other things and their comments have been shifting my opinion since I first read this script. I can tell because I can see the changes I've been making. That's not the changes of not all risk being in the direction that the people who wrote the scripts meant me to take. Not always. I've had to look again at things in the poem which I got used to. And. That happens when an anti-body sort of job has a packet of scripts out of prime to go out. It's always active that they will make a difference. Makes life a little less routine. As a teacher. You have to grade papers somehow that is you have to try to understand the fat to the very things that

people somehow find to say about what they read. And about this say especially you can't instantiate that variety of things going on. Now applying leaches is illimitable as that is something isn't it. It's going to be like a mirror. What's seen depends a lot on who's looking in. Well I am. Looking at the authorities that it's opinions. Let me I want to look at one point especially if it's a platonic doctrine about the three parts in the make up of a man on the make up of the state and in this diagram is extraordinary helpful. So I concocted a kind of diagrammatic picture it's not Akram it depend of modern analog to play to that. GRAHAM I don't think it will set its limits lead at least I hope not. Now to a man so.

Plato taught and to think there's that which loves knowledge or wisdom. There's that which is that which loves profit and then yes God is found in my background so I had thought of X and A and a man. The head tries to know Has the distance receptors eyes and yes and it has the brain as a veteran mountain. The thought of X is the place for play to spit. It has been long. It's where Bennett and. And. Go to work and it has a heart and as we say high hearted low spirited it's the abode of the affections in this language. Passions emotions sentiments we say and of the fact is I've checked up without the use is down and shakes make of that and I think about that my friend you may be all right.

Their faculties might be the active side. Feeling something like when aspiration and resolve decision commitment. It's through the affection that we move but through the fact that we act and characteristic and typically in such an act is becoming true. I rather stressed the word true because I'm going to play later in the set is that the way trope and true. It's very relevant to truth and beauty. Now the fact that this man in the home of the appetites of every saw the sun provides and waste to all the energy sources on which the tractor. Exxon had rest and relax I can do nothing without energy. And so here we have the three parts of a man three parts of the state.

Rule executives and the government being to the executives and the executives to the economic providers and to the spirit and the spirit to the Creator name season after the three things they live with them. Profit. And that's the story of the time bartering from the Republic we find this incidentally pretty useful when we get to the dark and even more tonic time next time. Now. One of the things perhaps all this may help us to say about that is that trying to become one of the things that is. How to a nice. Man. By the infections and the fact is why. Because such a thing doesn't need to knit that subtle knot which makes us mad. Now that makes the body very much a friend. Well

there are all sorts of things to be found planted in town just as many things are more than can be found today and. And all sorts of other things. There's an enormous this strong volume of opinion powerful kind of which takes the body as just being an impediment top hindrance to an enemy to it. Not the sentiments of an enemy that counts in the tenth book as much as anyone else but it is not two inches thick. Here lies a play which the other day in close Sam savage. But now is free and confined she said and left behind in two lived in this house in which is it. Now notice the son is seven and that's quite important. And all this is happening now that's the kind of opinion against the got it done

most highly aware and up he could express it perfectly well of himself for example in the first half. And half the land stripped bodies they let banish it. Now that's not what the ecstasy is saying is it. I rather think that this problem is deliberately indelicate deride the kind of the traditional universal opinion against the body. However when you take all this they said if they are not there to see if it helps us at all to an overall sort of position from which we can look at and compare what our differing authorities have found to be in the prime and strangely different ways in which they judged it. According now and I'm going to state them on the card table and going to book the father to the west. This side and

he would be opposed to it now that I thought it to equal a great and distinguished. Who are the east. And after that in will come north who unfortunately is sort of representing you and I don't mean anything that much but that. And South will come in and speak from the side. So between them that all this data makes it clear post as they possibly can be to one another and they don't exhaust the field a million more different than that if they oppose positions possible for the planet like this. That's part of the nature of the sentence right. Well yeah. Now let me begin with Wes who's here. He says the author evidently intends to offer our guy an intellectual definition of the ecstatic state of Tussaud's which emerge from their bodies and so completely that they become one. Well look is it an intellectual definition after all isn't the prime doing much more than giving an intellectual definition isn't speaking for the man

intellect body and. Feelings and all the rest. But to go on with commentary that. He says is. The Greek text. Hey sis going off is literally paraphrased in line for kids. So switched to advanced test got out. Alive which must be contrasted with the final one small change when we had about is gone. When we return to an extent to normal lives. Well now look at that top of them and look at that when we return to an expected normal man. How about that is that how you understand it. An ecstatic normal life two bodies God author goes on to explain. He continues. In the interpretation I have just suggested. Now this isn't surprising. It is hardly necessary to state that I am totally opposed to the opinion often by the late Professor

the postseason OP I'm a sophistical and then said Yes please it's a physical consummation. Look at that. Now in order to justify such a carnal interpretation Negri is interpreted line 50 days why do we fall back as if all bad meant not to tolerate as I have understood it. But restrain and control some of them on the bus sides say this when we have two bodies God we tried to explain this referring to the inevitable return from X state to everyday life for X since we have been denied. He evidently sees no allusion to a physical. Basis for such Gallic well that wisdom suffers from merely added to it the stratagems of results for seducing. How naive my own man is to Vioxx may have. Yeah. How perfectly charming. Who wouldn't rather be with spit on the side like this

rather than with North. But alas I find my stuff equally opposed to them both and possibly even more opposed to know who follows. And here comes. I trace in his poetry Don's criteria three levels of sentiment on the lowest level that is an order of complexity we have the celebration of sin for appetite. As in Elater 19 to his mistress going to bed on the highest level we have the parliaments of our tent. Take To us the undertaking a valediction forbidding mourning and the Ecstasy ostentatiously virtuous laugh intended to be pretty damaging phrase isn't it. However the ecstasy is in very good company. Now north continues. You may deny us perhaps some do but the romantic conception of pure passion

has any meaning. But if there is such a thing it's not like this. It doesn't prove itself by talking about the other team but rarely is that what the poem has been doing. You can jog to go on. It doesn't keep on drawing distinctions between spirit and flesh to the detriment of the latter. And then explaining why the flesh is off their own to be used again does the poem really say and do all that. Anything in the least but this is well done and the result is singularly blasphemes. The more he legged knows that deep down is in the mind and it is quite occupied with the ecstasy is a much nastier than she intended. Prompt any sensible woman who now asks what then a sensible woman would make of such a thing. It is difficult to imagine all would be if we forgot the amazing

protective facility with which we treat sex princesses are not listening to them. We need to give their right I think and not for that last remark. As to a sensible woman. Well don't you think our last ought to be sensible woman. Well you know she comes. Sat. Down is attempting to explain that the union of spirit with spirit expresses itself in the flesh just sort of lives in the body and in this way cannot exist without it. A man and a woman united by love may approach perfection more nearly than could do. Yes yes. But of course as this last speaker will agree with me. This doesn't really explain it doesn't all. It's got to be something and mean something and invite it to

be something and mean something accordingly. Now some people have said that if this plan gives rise to such a thing that he that that answer must be something wrong at the heart of it. But I wound up my own suggestion is that perhaps it's just waiting for a better moment up them next time. I've been reading and talking about and you have been mocked platonic time. He'll find it in almost an anthology if I can. Andrew was in the garden. Andrew my God. This has been the third in the series the sons of poetry an introduction to the appreciation and understanding of poetry with Richardson's University professor and local television like Europe or a good university. This there is a resentment by the Lowell Institute co-operative broadcasting. So in the

studios of WGBH TV Boston. Produced and directed by Lewis Barlow. But its next program proposal Richards will begin a two part discussion on the garden by Andrew Marvell. This is a National Educational Television.