Great Books #3: Poets and Prophets

So the Iliad is the foundation of Greek civilization, which is the greatest civilization in human history. The most creative, it gave us Plato, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles. Greek civilization is essentially the foundation for Western civilization. So the question we will look at today is how is it possible that one epic poem can give birth to a civilization. Okay. So the thing to understand about civilization is that there are two important concepts. The first is The second is eudaimonia.

So arete means virtue, excellence or character. It's something that makes you special, what you excel at. Okay. And traditionally there are two types: there's war fighting and there is speech making.

In Greek civilization, the paragon of the warrior is of course and the paragon of the great orator, the great speaker, is Odysseus. So we are reading the Iliad right now, and then after we finish the Iliad, we will read the Odyssey. Okay. So these are the two great characters in Greek civilization. Achilles the great warrior and Odysseus the great Okay. Eudaimonia means flourishing.

And the idea of eudaimonia is that you can only be happy, you can only be yourself, when you are achieving your when you are expressing your So for example, Achilles in the Iliad tells us that before he came to Troy he was given a prophecy. He could either die old at home or die young but a hero on the shores of Troy. And he said, "Well, duh. Of course, I'm going to die young in Troy because only by fighting, only by winning glory can I achieve eudaimonia." Okay? And that's why he's so unhappy when he gets in a fight with Agamemnon and he has to sit out the war and he figures out different ways of getting back into the battle because without fighting he can't be Achilles.

He is the paragon of the warrior. Okay. So that's the idea of eudaimonia. I can only be happy when I am my creative best, when I'm achieving my true Okay. Now for the Greeks, war fighting and speech making are really the same thing but through different means. Okay? So when you fight a war, what you're trying to do is impose your reality onto the world and make others believe what you believe, right? You do that through force. By brute strength, you show that you're superior and therefore others must obey you.

But speech making is actually trying to achieve the same thing. Okay. But through words, okay? So rather than through force, through beauty and through truth, you're trying to create a new reality that others submit to. And the example of course is the speeches between Odysseus and Achilles. Okay.

And Achilles. All right. So remember the context. Achilles gets in a fight with Agamemnon. He refuses to fight and the Trojans led by Hector are destroying the Greeks. So Agamemnon and Odysseus and the others, Nestor, have a war council and they agree that they'll go and beg Achilles to come back. Okay. And Odysseus and Nestor and others go to Achilles and they present an argument to Achilles and Odysseus gives a very long speech. Now the question for us is why are the speeches in the Iliad so goddamn long, right? Because Odysseus could simply say, hey Achilles, we'll give you a million dollars.

Will you fight for us please? He can also say, hey Achilles, we're losing a war. Stop being an Come fight for us. Okay, he can make it very, very short. Why is it so long? Right? And then Achilles' response can be like, no. Okay, but he also offers a very long and the answer is they're not trying to respond to each other. They're trying to create their own reality. Okay? So with a speech, what you're really trying to do is project a movie onto the world.

You're trying to create a new reality that others must inhabit. Okay? That's why speech making is like war fighting. You're trying to create your own reality and impose it on others. Right? So remember what Odysseus is doing. He knows that Achilles, for him it's really about face, right? He's lost face in front of the others and that's why he won't back down. That's why he insists on Agamemnon apologizing. Okay. But Odysseus also knows that Agamemnon himself won't apologize.

We can see this feast. Now, I want you to imagine the opposite of this feast. A great desert where we're all dying. We're all starving. And that's the war we're fighting right now against the Trojans. That's why we need you back. Okay, so it's a powerful image. And then he uses imagery to take Achilles to the present where Hector is this giant, this god running around killing all Greeks before Okay? And then he takes Achilles back to the past and says, "Remember your father Peleus? Before you came to the war, you promised him that you would win glory for him.

You promised that you would win glory for the Greeks. Okay. Then he takes Achilles to the future, which is, let's imagine what happens when we win this war. When we win this war, all the riches of Troy, all the treasures will belong to you, Achilles. Again, Agamemnon will give you his daughter for a bride, and you will be the glory of all of Greece. You have treasures and treasures. Think about the present. Think about the past. Think about the future. Okay? Expand your mind, Achilles. Right? That's what Odysseus is doing.

He's trying to expand Achilles' imagination. And once you enter this world that Odysseus has created, then you will be convinced to join him. Okay? So that's what speech making is. Speech making is projecting a movie onto the world that everyone can observe and then absorb this new reality. Okay, internalize this new reality, right? And Achilles knows this and Achilles refuses to be beaten, right? So Achilles answers this with his own reality, which is a very self-absorbed reality. Okay. Right. So rather than expanding outwards, Achilles continues to contract inwards.

Right. He uses the word I, I, I a lot, right? Me, me, me, me, me. He never uses I or we. He's always like we. Okay. So Achilles says, "Hey, I understand that nefar to you is a god, but when I saw him, he ran away from me." Right. Oh, Peleus, my dad. I should go home to see him. So, goodbye, guys. And I got on his daughter for my wife. I spit on her. I don't want this crap. Okay. So, he contracts in words.

Okay. So, and that's why the speech is so long, because in speech making it's a war of realities. It's a war of narratives. And you create narratives through speeches. Okay. But not only that, but there are certain techniques to speeches because the goal of speeches is not just to paint a reality, but you want to paint a reality in which it is internalized by others. And therefore, you must make it memorable. Okay? So remember in the beginning of class, I had you do an assignment which is write down the speech, right?

And even though you didn't force yourself to memorize it, you're able to memorize a lot. Okay? And that shows you the power of the speech, the question is what makes the speech so powerful. And the answer is because it's poetry, guys. Okay? Poetry. And the elements of poetry of course are imagery. And this is what Odysseus does well. This is what he specializes in. Okay? Drawing pictures for you to see, okay? Connections, okay? Metaphors is what we call connections and connections are things that help you clarify reality. Okay?

And which shows you things that you couldn't see before. So for example, if I say the sky is like the sea, that doesn't really surprise you. Okay? If I say the sky is like a snail, well, that surprises you. And because it surprises you, you remember it. Okay, when you remember it, it reorders the way you see reality. All right. You also have diction, choice of words, syntax.

Okay. And these are things that both Odysseus and Achilles specialize in, especially Odysseus. Okay? Does that make sense? All right. So they're trying to create these narratives through their speeches and they have these techniques and guess what, the Greeks, their education system was very simple. All they had to do was memorize the Iliad. Okay? Because when you memorize the Iliad, you learn how to make a great speech, right? And you understood that for me to make a great speech, I need to have impact. I need people to remember what I say.

I need to imprint myself on All right? And this system becomes the very basis of civilization, right? Speech making, where to get things done you have to go in front of people and make a speech and create a reality for people to accept. Right? And this is what leads to democracy. Okay? Are we clear? Okay. Now I want to talk about how in fact Homer creates civilization. Okay.

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and he's primarily concerned with how we understand reality. Why do we see the things that we do? Why do we think the thoughts that we have? And he wrote a very good book called the Critique of Pure Reason in which he outlines this theory. Okay. So what he tells us is this. Traditionally we've understood ourselves as passive observers of reality. Okay. This thing is before us. We stand before it and we try to understand it. Okay. What Kant teaches us is that no, we are in fact active participants in reality and we shape and form the reality before us.

Okay. So Kant divides the world into two. The first world is the world of objective reality, the things in themselves, or the noumena. Okay. And what's the noumena? They're just vibrations. Okay. We talked about this, right? The entire world is sound vibrations, frequencies. So, we can actually see these things. So, what we do is we filter the world around us and turn it into things that we can understand, called the phenomena.

Which are the things to us. Okay? Things to us or the things that seem to us. All right? And we do so through a filter called time and space. So time and space do not exist outside of us. They exist inside of us in order for us to understand reality. Okay. So time, what does time mean? Time just means sequence, right? Sequence is just like 1 2 3 4 5. We put things in sequence, we create Space is the idea of sensation.

Okay. Sensation is just basically the five senses, right? All right. Now, time and space exist outside of us because everything outside of us is just pure energy. Okay. But our minds can't perceive pure energy. Therefore, we use time and space, sequence and sensation, to understand the world around us, to order the world around us.

So, what this means is that if we're able to control time and space, we can control reality unto itself. Okay? Does that make sense? And what is this thing that controls time and space? This thing is called language.

Before, we would just each perceive our own time and space with Okay. We're now able to come to a collective understanding of reality. Right? And who creates language? Poets create language.

And therefore poets, for their poetry, create reality unto itself. That's what this is trying to do. He's trying for his poetry to create a new reality for everyone to live in. A reality in which people get along. A reality in which people like Achilles are able to forget their hatred against Agamemnon and fight for the common good. Okay. All right. So even though each of us has our own understanding of reality, a poet is able to create a language that is so beautiful that it comes into us and we internalize the language, we absorb the language and we together create a new reality with the language as the building blocks.

Okay? Does that make sense, guys? All right. So let me explain now how Homer is able to do this. Okay, let's talk about how Homer is able to do this. Homer, how is a poet able to create reality? Okay, so a poet is unique in the world. Poets are really prophets. Okay. So if you look at all these great religious figures of the past, including Jesus, including Zoroaster, they weren't religious figures. They were really poets. Okay. And how they were able to work is they have a divine connection to the Okay.

What we call So there are different names for the universe. Okay. So Hegel the German philosopher used the term Geist. Okay. What is Geist? Well guys, it's hard to translate because it's German. Okay. But think of it as three English words. And in fact actually Geist will give us three English words. These three words are ghost, gist and geyser. Okay, a geyser is an eruption. Okay, ghost is the underlying thing and the gist, the essence. Okay. Okay, that's what the Geist is. The Geist is all around us. It's like the ghost.

It's always changing. It's always becoming. It's always erupting like a geyser. And it's really the essence of things. The gist. Okay. All right. Carl Jung had the word he uses, the collective unconscious.

Plato will use the realm of the forms and ideals. Okay. Christians will say heaven, whatever. Okay. All right. But these are the universe. All right. And remember how we said before our memories are stored in the universe. The universe is almost like a divine psychic internet, right? So every single memory is stored inside the universe. And what poets do is they're able to access this universe.

And as a result, they're able to summon the memories of the universe. And when they do that, they create epics of poetry. Okay. All right. The Iliad. Now, as I keep on discussing when we read the Iliad, each character is a real Okay. Each character has a living past, present, and future. By reading the speech of Patroclus, you understand his memories. You understand where he came from, what he wants, and where he's going. Okay? So, everyone in the Iliad is a living, breathing character. And how is Homer able to do that?

He's able to do that because he's able to summon these people from the universe. Okay? Even though you're dead, your consciousness is still alive in the universe. Even though Homer is no longer with us, his consciousness is still within the universe. So, it's possible through intense meditation to actually connect with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, whoever. Okay? They're all there. And that's what Homer is doing. He's able to connect with these people and bring them into the Iliad. Okay? But because these people are living, the Iliad itself is a living memory.

Okay. What I mean by that is, okay, the purpose of the Iliad is to create a memory, a living memory, for people to Okay. So remember Homer, he is a bard at this time. People don't read and write. So what he's doing is he's doing what this is doing, which is he's going from town to town. People are surrounding him. There's 100 people and then for the entire evening he recites his poetry and he's doing what Odysseus is doing. He's painting a movie for everyone to observe together.

And it's the same thing when you go to a movie theater, where yes it's the same movie but everyone's experience is going to be different. Okay. And how it becomes different is that you implant your own consciousness, your own understanding, into the Iliad. So it becomes a shared creation. And when you do that, what happens is, and this is really important guys, you connect directly to the universe. Okay? So in other words, the Iliad was created because of inspiration from the universe, but it's also a portal into the universe itself.

And this is what allows for new creations. Okay. So as you are observing the Iliad, because your own experience is different, because your own connection to the universe is unique, by interpreting the Iliad you create a new universe unto itself. Okay. And this is what we call, together, a process we call civilization.

All right. This is what happened. This is why one poem, the Iliad, was able to give birth to an entire civilization, because it was so alive, so powerful, so connected to the universe itself, to the monad, that when you observed it, you created into yourself a portal into the monad, the universe, the heavens, that allows you to create your own universe that then connected back to the monad.

So, it's just one, right? Any questions? Are you guys clear about this? All right. And think about this. All right. This is what the Greeks did. And how do we know it's true? Because even today, the Iliad speaks to us, right? The Iliad, when we read it, we can identify with Odysseus. We can understand Achilles. We can relate Achilles to ourselves. We can predict how Achilles will behave. Okay? And that's proof that this is eternal and immortal because it connects us to the monad. But knowing that, this is most important, is that you may not know this, but the more you read the Iliad, the more it's opening your mind.

Okay? Your mind is an antenna. Okay? Your mind is an antenna to the universe, right? So when you read the Iliad, it's as though your download speed is now increasing. You have a faster connection, a strong connection now to the internet. And so you're able to absorb more. Okay? When you're able to absorb more, you're able to create new realities which you're able to observe, which you're able to analyze deeper. All right? And that's why we read the great books, because it is literally, it allows us to connect and talk to God. Okay.

Does that make sense, guys? Right. Yeah, any questions before I move on? All right. Okay. So what I'm going to do now is we're going to read together, sorry, we're not going to read together, an essay by Percy Shelley. It's called A Defense of Poetry and he explains how this happens. Okay. All right. So now having given you the theory we'll see how Percy Shelley, who was a very famous British Romantic poet, how he explains this. Okay.

Okay. Sorry. All right. So this is from his essay A Defense of Poetry. Okay, it's a very long essay but I'll just highlight for you certain aspects. Okay, so he's talking about how Homer created Greek civilization and Homer was a bard, a poet, but had a heavy influence on the playwrights. Okay. The three big playwrights of course are Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and the theater will become the very essence of Athenian life. Okay. So what you did for fun was you would go to a theater but the theater was more than just entertainment.

It was about education. It was about enlightenment and vocation. Okay. So he talks about the theater in Athens. Okay. The drama in Athens, or wheresoever else it may have approached to its perfection, ever coincides with the moral and intellectual greatness of the age. All right. So the theater at Athens provoked these tremendous feelings in people that made them into moral people with ambition, with creativity. All right. The tragedies of the Athenian poets are as mirrors in which the spectator beholds himself, under a thin disguise of circumstance, stripped of all but that ideal perfection and energy which everyone feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, admires and would become.

All right. Okay. So again the idea of poetry, the idea of truth is that it's a mirror in which you can look at yourself and you look at the world around you. Achilles or Odysseus are in you and you are in them and by observing them objectively you can better understand The imagination is enlarged by sympathy with pains and passions so mighty that they extend in their conception the capacity of that by which they are conceived. The good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror and sorrow, and an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life.

Okay. So the idea of Greek tragedy is catharsis. So if you look at Greek tragedy there's a very common pattern. Okay. So there's a tragic character and he's undone by hubris. Okay, that's a great tragic flaw, his hubris. He's arrogant. Achilles has hubris. He thinks he's better than everyone else. Agamemnon has hubris. He's better than everyone else. Okay, but will die because of hubris. Hector will die because of hubris. So it's hubris that is the great killer of people. Okay? No matter how great you are, you will suffer from hubris.

The greater you are, the more you'll suffer from hubris, which can only lead to tragedy. And you're observing this and you recognize that, oh, it's hubris that leads to tragedy and therefore it will make you a much more humble person. Okay, this is what we call epiphany. But regardless of your epiphany, you're still going to face tragedy. Okay, the person is still going to fall. So Hector, no matter how great he is, he's still going to die. Patroclus, no matter how innocent he is, he's still going to die. Okay?

And so what happens is you feel a connection with that person, you cry. And this leads to catharsis. Okay? Catharsis is basically purge. Whatever feelings that you have, you cry. You purge your feelings. You purge your hubris. You purge your hatred. Okay? And this will make you a whole person. But when you commit catharsis, what happens is that you now connect with the character itself. So the character now lives in you and you live in the character. Okay? And that will make you a much better person.

Does it make sense, guys? All right. Even crime is disarmed of half its horror and all its contagion by being represented as the fatal consequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of its wolfishness. Men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice. In a drama of the highest order, there is little food for censure or hatred. It teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself unless reflected upon that which it resembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the brightest rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the simplicity of these elementary forms, and touches them with majesty and beauty, and multiplies all that it reflects and endows it with the power of propagating its like wherever it may fall.

Okay, so this is very long but it's a very simple idea. The idea is when you watch a tragedy, okay, when you observe a tragedy, you're observing a fundamental truth about human nature, okay, which is that we're all going to be tragic. The classic case is Oedipus. Okay, Oedipus is a man who killed his father and married his mother. And when he discovers the truth, he blinds himself and then he goes into exile. Okay. And if you actually read the tragedy by Sophocles, he did nothing wrong.

It was just fate. It was just an accident. But unfortunately, that's what life is about. Okay. So you are a great person when you're able to acknowledge your limitations. You're able to acknowledge fate and destiny, but you struggle regardless. Okay, that's arete. That's eudaimonia, to recognize your limitations, to recognize the universe may have a grudge against you but you struggle on regardless. Okay. And that story, when you watch it yourself, it brings sorrow to you. It brings pity but it makes you also much more wise and reflective about the world that we live in.

Okay. And that creates wisdom, that creates empathy. This creates morality. Okay. And that's why Greek drama is so important. Okay. Now let's look at another Poets are not only subject to the experiences or spirits of the most refined organization but they can color all that they combine with the evidence and hues of this ethereal. Okay. All right. This is a really important idea. Remember how we said that poets have a connection to the divine. Right. So they are absorbing the Geist. They are absorbing the monad. Okay. But at the same time they're observing the world around us, the material.

Okay? They're observing human nature. They're observing nature, like life itself. And what they do is they combine these two together. Okay? The present with the eternal, the here with the forever. And they turn it into words that are able to express both the material and the spiritual. The here and the forever, the present and the eternal. Okay.

A word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion will touch the internal cord. Okay. Diction or Internal cord. Internal cord is just your connection to the divine. Okay. So this word, because it's so beautiful, this sentence so beautiful, will reawaken your memory. Okay. This is a really important idea where we are always in a process of reincarnation. All right. So why are we here in this world? Because there are things that we can experience that we cannot experience in the spiritual. When we're in the spiritual, we are formless.

We don't have any bodies. Therefore, we cannot have sex. We can't have pain. We can't love. Okay? But in this world, we can. But what's important to understand is that when we reincarnate into this world, our memories of our former selves and of the spiritual world are lost to us. Otherwise, we can't actually live the life that we live. Okay? But poetry, because it connects both to the divine and the present, certain words will spark your soul and your soul is the forever memory of all your lives and your connection to the spiritual.

Okay, that's what poetry does. Poetry is a gateway into your soul. And reanimate. Okay. In those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. All right? So, you have all these past lives in you that you don't remember. But a certain word, a certain poem will reignite, reanimate all these past lives in you. And they will rise up and say, "Hey, we remember." Okay? And this will elevate. Poetry makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world. It arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide, abide because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things.

Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man and man. Okay, there's God in us. And poetry reminds us there is God in us. There's God everywhere. And poetry reminds us there's God everywhere. Poetry lets us see the divine everywhere. Okay, we're not able to see this because of how our minds work. Because we're only able to see through time and space. But poetry helps us go beyond time and space and connect immediately to the Okay? To the divine, to the spiritual.

All things exist as they are perceived. Okay, so again the idea of Kant, where we can only see things through time and space. Okay, these are things we can see. But you know what? There are things that we can feel that we can't see. It's the feelings that matter, at least in relation to the recipient. The mind is its own place and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Okay? But what this tells us is that if we learn how to control our minds, we can control reality itself.

Okay? But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. Okay? Do you understand this idea? The idea is poetry activates our imagination. Before we were in a prison of our own making. Before we could only see what we could see. But poetry gives us a higher sight. It allows us to see the things beyond just time and space. The eternal, the past, the future. And wherever it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being.

Okay. All right. So each time we use our imagination, we create a new reality for ourselves. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration.

It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso: none but God and the poet deserve the name of creator. The poet is the creator of our world because the poet has the imagination to see things beyond time and space, beyond this reality. And the poet then distills these emotions into words that help us ourselves connect to the divine. Okay? Poetry is a portal to the divine.

This is clear, right, guys? All right. So we'll conclude. The most unfailing herald, companion and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution is poetry. Poetry is the basis of all civilization. Okay. It is from poetry that everything must come. At such periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. The persons in whom this power resides may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers.

But even while they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve that power which is seated on the throne of their own soul. Okay? So poets don't actually know their prophecies. Poets don't know they're connected to the monad or the divine. They just do what they do because they have no choice. Okay? There's a fire burning in you. You have to let it out otherwise you can't sleep. You can't eat. Okay. Poets are prophets who must speak the truth otherwise they will just suffocate. Okay. They'll just drown in their own It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words.

Okay. Poets are the flame itself. Poets are not human. They are the messengers of the divine flame. Okay, they just burn. And when you read their words, you can see the flame in them. Okay, so even though Homer, we don't even know who this guy is. We don't have his picture, but you can see when we read him, he's alive still. Okay, his words still burn. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit. And they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations.

Okay? It's all inspiration. When Homer is speaking, he doesn't know what he's speaking. He doesn't. Are you telling me this guy, he's able to understand? Oh, this is what Odysseus is doing. Odysseus is trying to create a reality and he's using imagery. He's using diction. No, no, he doesn't understand anything. He's just blah blah blah blah blah. Okay, he's a divine fire. He's just channeling God. Okay, he's just a portal for God to speak with the universe, with us.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration. Okay. The mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present. They are prophets because of the future speaking to us today. Okay? Right? God is past, future, present. And so when God speaks, he's also speaking to the future. The words which express what they understand not. The trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire. The influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the legislators of the world. Okay? Poets are prophets and their words create our reality.

Everything that we know, everything that we do, it's because of the language that the poets create. Okay? Does that make sense, guys? That's how Homer created civilization, because God willed that Homer speak truth and willed that this truth would spread across the world through his poetry. Okay? It's all by design. Does it make sense? All right. Any questions?

Okay. All right. So, I'll see you guys next class. Okay.