WEBVTT - Eight Books That Changed the World 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.880 I always tell my students, don't think of literature. I 0:00:03.960 --> 0:00:06.680 call it the broccoli argument. Don't think of it as 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:08.800 something that's good for you that you should do. Just 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:12.120 get it down, you know. It should really be something 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:14.920 that is. It's not easy. It takes hard work and 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.760 the barriers to entry to high the Science of Happiness, 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:23.200 Appreciating conderning dilemmas of modern medicine, Abraham Lincoln at the 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:27.840 Civil War, of the artistic genius Nichel Angeli, when intuition 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:40.440 face changed American psychology of religion. One Day University. The 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:45.599 most acclaimed and popular professors from top colleges. They're best lectures, 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:53.800 fascinating conversations. Hi, I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn. I'm an 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.960 advocate for literature. I think that it's important for political life. 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.280 I think it helps us. My name is Joseph leu See, 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.360 and I'm a professor of comparative literature at Bard College. 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:06.720 The name of the lecture is eight Books that Change 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.360 the World. When you think of the experience of just 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:12.759 scanning social media and that sense of exhaustion and wasted 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:15.880 time you get right after an hour of it, you 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:18.080 never feel that way after you read a book. I'm 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:20.680 gonna start with one of the wonderful things you said 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.200 in this lecture, which I just loved. Writing is an 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:29.280 act of generosity towards the reader. Thank you for reminding 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.440 me that, because in a way, I want to just 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.680 build a little bit on this idea of generosity uh 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:38.280 for the reader by the writer. But I think it 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:41.959 goes both ways. Um. I also tell my students, and 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:45.280 I tell the participants at Wenday University that writing and 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:49.440 reading are an act of collaboration. When we talk about literature, 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:51.680 I think the thing that we want to think about 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:54.640 it does the book doesn't. It's not like a painting, right. 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:56.840 If you look at a painting, it has an inherent 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.720 beauty in itself. Right. It's a physical object. You give 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.560 it meaning, but it exists as an object in the world. 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.200 The book is brought to life by the reader, and 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:12.560 that's why it's so different than watching television or you know, 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:15.480 you can interpret movies as well, but the book, all 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.720 the heavy lifting has to be done by the reader. 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:23.160 I always tell my students you're writing a book along 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:28.079 with the author, because if you don't actively engage with it, 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.120 it doesn't exist. It's just code on a page it 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:35.160 And this I think is a really amazing thing because 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:39.359 it makes it puts so much burden and responsibility on you. 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:43.840 Your imagination, your rational intellect, your memory, your sense of 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:47.040 history and culture, and you bring those all to bear 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:50.919 in what one great scholar, Edward said, said, an act 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:55.120 of erudition and sympathy. You know, when you are almost 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:58.040 back in the shoes of the author who wrote it. 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:02.000 Without the reader, the book is nothing. And that's why, 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:04.639 in a way, reading is so demanding. And that's why, 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.480 you know, uh, some of the recent statistics show that 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:10.560 it may be on the wane. Is that it's something 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:14.079 that you can't do along with other things. As Jonathan 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:17.320 friends and said the novelists, you can't read in multitask. 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:21.399 It takes up all of your energies. And I actually 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:24.680 think in this day and age, the skills that we 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.800 get from literature will become even more important than ever before. 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:34.079 The ability to focus and concentrate, the ability to read deeply, 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:38.840 to bring the text to life without succumbing to distractions. 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:44.280 This is an incredible challenge today right Those who can 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:46.200 do what I think are going to be you know, 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:49.360 will have a skill that will be very important in 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:55.600 this new information economy. Why because I think that books 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:59.160 have shown themselves to be remarkably resilient. I always tell 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:02.760 my students, think of a work like Augustine's Confessions. It 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:06.120 was written in the late three hundreds, I think like 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:11.000 three d. Some people call it like the first autobiograph, 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.240 first memoir. I mean, imagine, what else do you know 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:18.920 from that era. I mean, it's incredibly remote that book, 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:24.320 this memoir lives on. In the tell All memoir, the 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.200 Augustine was addicted in his own way to sex into 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:32.919 worldly glory. He had to overcome that. That's a story 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:35.520 that's told over and over again in our books today. 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:39.599 So the freshness in the modernity of Augustine's memoir, even 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:44.080 though it was written over sixteen hundred years ago, as extraordinary. 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:46.719 The fact that some of these books can stay alive, 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:51.800 it's really a miracle. Most books disappear very shortly after 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:56.160 they're published, right. The scholar at Stanford, Franco Moretti, came 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:59.320 up with the term the slaughterhouse of literature, you know, 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:02.520 to show the and the statistics are staggering. I think 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:05.120 it's something like only one out of every two hundred 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:09.440 books lives past their immediate point of publication. Why do 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.440 those few live on? And the fact that they do 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.680 is really remarkable. I use the word miracle because somehow 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:21.040 they remain relevant and vital with the passing of time, 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:24.160 and it's because of the reader. When they stop speaking 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:29.080 to the reader, they will disappear. Your lecture the eight 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:34.920 books that change the world, one naturally is the Bible, 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.880 which may have changed the world more than anything else, 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:42.680 no matter what you believe, right I I'd say, think 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.520 of the Bible as literature, as a collection of stories, 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.440 independent of your your faith system, and just think of 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.880 its revolutionary impact across the world. I urge you to 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:56.120 read the Bible. It's an incredible piece of literature. It 0:05:56.240 --> 0:05:59.679 is so unusually written, it was written by many hands. 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:05.240 It's at once a collection, it's an anthology, it's a digest. 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:10.760 It's about editing, it's about translation, it's about trying to 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:15.960 blur the line between life and words. It's about the 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:20.480 sacredness of the text. A lot of modern literary criticism 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:24.599 what I do grew out of the tradition of biblical scholarship, 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:30.599 the exegesis, making sense of the word. You've zero in 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:36.600 on Genesis as an extraordinary piece of storytelling. Storytelling, I mean, 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:42.479 think about it. Genesis has a specific language, something along 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.120 the lines. And God created the earth and the heavens 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:47.560 and it was good, and you know, then he rested 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:50.800 on the seventh day. This idea, the way the sentences cascade, 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:54.200 the hands, you know, one following weather. We don't talk 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:57.280 like that. That's called in to put My professor had 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.240 on for a moment para taxis where the the sentences 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:04.960 don't really logically link the way we speak today with 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:10.520 normal syntax, but in that incredible form you get a 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:14.880 rhythm of flow and a kind of rhetoric of storytelling 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:19.560 that's so memorable, so rich, so unbelievable. And also think 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:23.600 of the characters that are created in Genesis. God is 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.520 a character. Everything that God is making is sort of 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:29.960 not turning out the way he planned, right. Genesis is origin. 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:34.680 Listen to this amazing passage. And the Lord saw that 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:38.680 the evil of the human creature was great on the earth, 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:42.720 and that every scheme of his heart's devising was only 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:48.080 perpetually evil. And the Lord regretted having made the human 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:53.000 on earth, and was grieved to the heart. And the 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:56.360 Lord said I will wipe out the human race I 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.600 created from the face of the earth, from human to 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.520 alt a crawling thing to the foul of heavens. For 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:07.320 I regret that I have made them. What a passage. 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:13.480 The idea of God as a character who's upset over 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:18.560 his creation. It's one of the most grounding images and 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:25.680 descriptions of what supposedly an untouchable, a noble, surpassingly powerful deity, 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:29.360 and the collection of people who wrote Genesis give us 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:33.880 to him. It's a hate right in all his psychologic 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:36.000 in this context, I don't know what it really is, 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:41.320 in all the psychological complexity. This ish image of God 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:47.280 grieving to the heart is to me a powerful example 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:53.000 of how we create character in the Bible. That's what 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:56.200 literature does it get, whether it's you know, a realist 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:01.160 novel from the eight hundreds or contemporary novel M Yesterday 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:06.920 or the Genesis. You're talking about these unbelievably rich characters, 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.520 like God, like Joseph, like Adam and Eve. I mean, 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:14.240 think of Adam and Eve. You know, uh, they live 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:18.000 in paradise, but they choose to violate the terms of 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:23.440 paradise to taste from the tree of knowledge. Why Do 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:28.400 they prefer a life with hardship if it means getting 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.760 to knowledge? Do they? Just? Is it just a human 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:35.480 tendency to not be able to resist temptation? It raises 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:40.439 all these incredible psychological issues and concerns that can speak 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:43.240 to you no matter what your faith is. We've been 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:46.640 teasing our listeners a little, so let's taste from the 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.760 tree of your lecture and mentioned that the eight books 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:54.880 the other book from ancient times as the Odyssey, right I. 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:57.920 I you know, of course, a list like this is 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.160 highly selective, highly adios and cratic, and more of a 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:05.480 gesture towards the books that have been incredibly meaningful to 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:07.760 me and the books that I feel have had the 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:10.880 lasting impact. The whole point is that I want my 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:16.520 eight to stimulate you. Our listeners are audience members to 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:18.839 make their own list of eight books. Okay, so we 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:22.840 got the Odyssey by Homer. Yeah, I'm not evading the questions. 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:25.120 And then and I wasn't a literary version of a 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:29.840 filibuster that I have the And then you jump your 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.040 fast forward to the fourteenth century with I chose Dante. 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:35.600 Dante is my my you know, my main man, the 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:39.120 person I've studied and written about, probably more than anyone. Um. 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:44.160 I chose Genesis because of its um incredible the impact 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.680 of the Bible and all cultures, all religions. I chose 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.520 the Odyssey because it's the story of the hero's return 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:53.560 that is as relevant today as it was when it 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.920 was written centuries before the birth of Christ. I chose 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.760 Dante because of its unbelievable tension between this spiritual world 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:03.840 in the secular world. Dante was writing as a Christian, 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:07.800 but it's about the way earthly history and the demands 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:10.480 of the soul come into conflict those of my first three. 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:14.880 And this is right on the cusp of the Middle Ages, 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:19.280 the Age of Belief, and then the Age of Reason, 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.360 the Renaissance, and then the Renaissance. We naturally flow into 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:25.800 the person I felt I had to choose one from 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:29.440 because he shaped the English language, he shaped the language 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:33.000 you and I are speaking. And now Shakespeare. Uh, Shakespeare 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.000 is the opposite in a way of Dante. If Dante 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:39.920 is very scholarly, very steeped in doctrine, and and very 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.160 difficult to just pick up and read Shakespeare once you 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:47.040 learn the little verbal ticks, once you learn the expressions, 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:51.560 is actually not that difficult. A lot of shakespeare stuff 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.560 is refashioned, recycled stuff like Romeo and Juliet was an 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.920 Italian Renaissance tale, a very boring one. Shakespeare made it magical. 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:03.880 He was no scholar. He was just really an incredibly 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:09.280 gifted psychologist, the most extraordinary capacity to use language. But 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:12.160 he was not someone who was buried his nose buried 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:15.319 in books. He was a businessman trying to get people 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.480 to his theater and make compelling works of art that 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:23.960 were accessible. We have to remember that, right, Shakespeare was Shakespeare. 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:27.880 I know you've seen, you've heard the rumors. The main 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:32.120 argument against Shakespeare's being the author of his own plays 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.680 was that how could someone with very little education right 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:39.679 as he did? But that's absurd. That's Michelangelo didn't go 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:44.040 to you know, art school. He he apprenticed. We can't 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:47.600 apply anachronistically our idea just because Shakespeare didn't go to 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:50.720 Oxford and Cambridge that he couldn't have written, uh these 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:54.120 plays is absolutely silly. If with my list gives the 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:56.960 lie to anything, it's this the idea that you can't 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:00.880 be read by many and a brilliant writer because Shakespeare 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.120 could not have been more popular in his day. He's 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:07.959 still in college curricula all over the country. Uh, you know, 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:13.240 and he was a very successful theater impresario, theater merchants, 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:15.760 so you know, he was I think that's part of 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:19.320 his appeal. He was what I call accessible genius. He 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.480 wasn't trying to say things in a rarefied way. He 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:25.720 was trying to get people into his theater and communicate 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:27.640 with his audience, and he somehow did it in a 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:30.360 way of you know, artistic brilliance. Okay, we got four 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.000 books so far, So moving closer today. I thought the 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:36.280 whole point of my lectures to get people reading. So 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:38.480 I didn't want to, you know, give them all. I 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:40.800 could have chosen, you know, don Quixote, I could have 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:43.800 chosen Montana, a lot of older text, but I wanted 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:46.000 to come close to the present to find works in 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.079 more relevant to today. So in that way, and especially 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:53.319 are the American question, American identity, United States writers. So 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:57.200 I chose a British author, Virginia Wolf because, um, I 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:01.040 believe that she wrote an extraordinary book about many things, 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.959 but above all, I would say it gives us an 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:08.520 incredibly complex model of female identity. That book is to 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:13.680 the Lighthouse, our fifth book, our last, our six, seventh 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.720 and eighth book, our last three, or all American books, 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:19.560 and all in dialogue with one another in their own ways. 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:24.760 I chose Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Joseph Hellos Catched twenty two, 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:27.720 and harp re Leased to Kill a Mockingbird, And they're 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:29.840 all part of what I considered the quest for the 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.560 Great American novel. A theorist in the late nineteenth century, 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:36.880 John William DeForest came up with the term the great 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:40.200 American novel. And I still think there is this desire 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:44.000 um in writers to kind of capture the complexities of 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:47.200 American identity and get it on the printed page. And 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:49.160 it's not just the three I mentioned, but we see 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.920 this in Philip Roth, Tony Morrison, so many Mark Twain, 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:56.880 so many writers who kind of embraced the riddle and 0:14:57.080 --> 0:15:01.200 enigma of American identity. Make the case for why reading 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:05.040 literature matters so much, you know, Richard, the more I 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:07.680 think about it, the more important than the choice of 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:11.440 eight books, my version of eight books versus yours versus 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:15.920 someone else's. Um, it's really what do they have in common? 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:19.400 What to all great books. What does all great literature 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:22.600 have in common? And I would focus on four things. 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:27.920 One great literature is a passport to alternate worlds. You know, 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:30.880 I grew up in a working class Italian American family. 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:33.520 My family immigrated. We didn't have a lot of money. 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:35.960 My parents had a grade school education. There were no 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:38.280 books in our house. In fact, I'm kind of an 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:41.480 unlikely person to be giving a lecture on eight books 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:43.640 to read, because when I was growing up, my mom, 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:45.520 whenever she saw me with a book, she'd say, in 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:51.120 her dialect, you know, lass, you know, put that book down. 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:53.800 It's going to give you a headache, as if reading 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:57.440 would give me a headache, you know. Um. But even 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:00.840 though we didn't have money, we didn't travel. We had 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:03.840 a local library, and by going to the library, I 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:08.120 could read about Rob Lais and Renaissance France. I could 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.680 read about f Scott Fitzgerald in the nineteen twenties during Prohibition, 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:16.880 I could travel anywhere. Literature gave me alternate worlds. It 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:20.680 gives every read or alternate world not just in the present, 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:24.800 but you can go back in the past. Aristotle said brilliantly, 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:30.600 history tells us what happened poetry gives us what could 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:34.960 have which should have happened, a universal history. It takes, 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:38.520 it moves beyond the contingent into the universal, so that 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:42.040 when you read Scott Fitzgerald's A Great Godsby, you can 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:44.680 see what life was like in the nineteen twenties. You 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:49.080 can see, you can the air of the parties that 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:51.640 gets me through his rife with the sense and the 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:55.160 music of that era. It brings it to life just 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:59.600 as richly as any historian could. So the first facet 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:04.760 of these great books is they're a passport to alternate 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:09.280 world absolutely the second. The second one is literature is 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:12.680 the marriage of form and content. In other words, how 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:19.080 you say something is just as important as what you say. 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:23.160 That's really the biggest difference between literature and other forms 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:25.800 of writing. You can read wonderful history, you can read 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:31.240 wonderful philosophy. But literature is all about the surface texture 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.600 of the words you do. It's almost like music. When 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.000 you become a good reader, you start to hear the 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:42.640 notes of what's on the page. Form and content are one. 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.560 You know. There's a little line from Hamlet. When we 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:51.760 first meet Hamlet, Claudius introduces um and he's like my son, Hamlet. 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:53.919 He's not really, you know, he's it's his nephew, but 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:57.680 he's become his son because he's married Gertrude and Hamlet. 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:01.200 In reply to this line, he says a little more 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:06.359 than kin and less than kind. Too much family, too 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:10.320 little good behavior. Right, it would lose an effect if 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:12.480 he just said, you're not a very good uncle. You 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.080 shouldn't have married my mom. Right, you shouldn't have killed 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:18.520 my dad either, while you're at it. It's about this 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:24.840 kind of artful crafting of language thematically. You know, my 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:28.120 students always say, gosh, this was an a paper, how 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:30.800 could you have given it a C? And I say, 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:33.359 you know, the idea may have been an A, but 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:35.800 the writing was a D. So we split the difference. 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:41.040 It's about the joy and beauty of hearing the words. 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:44.480 You do podcasts, you know what that's about, right, The 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:48.760 joy of language. How language has a life of its own, 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:51.960 And that's what literature gives us. Now that we've heard 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:57.000 your first two qualities, let's go to the third. I 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:00.119 think the third one is what I call human at 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:05.320 He's diary. By that, I mean literature gives us insights 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:07.879 into the way people lived. And I think in a 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.040 way that no other form of expression can well because 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.160 there's so much empathy. So much empathy puts you right 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:17.480 alongside a character from a different time, a different place, 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:21.040 a different culture. Think of To the Lighthouse. It's about 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:24.520 a woman basically, you know, she's she's a housewife, she 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:29.640 doesn't work, she raises an enormous family, many children. That 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:32.000 person's voice would be very hard to hear in the 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.320 public back then, because her husband is a philosopher, is 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:38.760 very famous. His words is out there everywhere. But she's 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:42.200 at home. She's a domestic you know, creature. And yet 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.280 Virginia Wolf takes us inside her head and she gives 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:50.720 these incredibly lush descriptions of her inner life. Where else 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.560 can we get that but literature. I tell my students 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:58.080 it's like a fossil, an imprint, but not in the 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:00.520 physical world, but of the human spirit it and you 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:04.159 have this lovely phrase, the literature is the texture of 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:09.040 life beyond the facts. That's exactly what I think this 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:12.399 idea of humanity's diary gives us. So we're up to 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:16.280 the fourth The fourth one, uh is my most I 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:20.119 would say, um coded one I call it finding a 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:23.480 fig tree of your own. By that, I mean going 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:26.199 back to St. Augustine, who wrote the Confessions in the 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:31.120 late three hundreds. Augustine has this life changing experience basically 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:34.800 under a fig tree where he's having this breakdown, true 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:38.920 like spiritual crisis, and he hears a voice saying totally 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:41.680 leg which is Latin for a pick it up and read. 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:44.080 So he reaches for a book happens to be a Bible, 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:47.840 and he finds the passage that enables him to break 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:52.640 his addiction with sex, with pleasures of the flesh, with 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:57.600 worldly ambition. Sometimes we need external help to break a habit, 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:00.879 to break a pattern. For Augustine, came in the form 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:03.879 of picking up a book and reading about a path 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:08.200 in life that he needed to take. This is very dramatic, 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.080 of course, but I think we all have those moments 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:14.680 where we're reading something and it can really have an 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:17.439 impact on who we are, our sense of the world, 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:20.120 our sense of someone we know or someone we thought 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:23.640 we knew, our sense of our own past. I think 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:27.720 it's something that makes it literature, as like a companion 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.040 that you go through life with and that at certain 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:34.760 times can change that life. We've all or many of 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:38.280 us have had those moments as readers where we read 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.480 something and we feel the book is speaking directly to us, 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:45.440 our own private fig tree moment in a way. That's 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:49.159 my most important gift of reading, that you can have 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:53.720 that moment where reading changes your life. Now we're doing 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:58.439 this podcast and we're talking about your lecture. We've given 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:02.000 people a taste of what you're talking about. Why should 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:05.159 they go and see you? Because every talk has I 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:09.960 suppose has its aim right, mine is very simple. It's 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:13.320 not for them to leave and say, wow, Professor Liusey 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:15.080 had some really I mean, I hope they think I 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:17.560 have good insights on the books. But my aim is 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:21.239 very simple. I want you to leave my talk and 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:24.600 go read a book. If you do that, then the 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:28.600 talk succeeded. Why should we read? Why should we read 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:33.720 the great books? Because of this power of storytelling to 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:40.560 bring people separated by culture, politics, identity together into that 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:45.840 universal space where they can recognize each other as human 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:51.600 beings and feel each other's pain while enjoying the pleasure 0:22:52.600 --> 0:22:58.320 of great stories. That's great right here, that was really enjoyable. 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:09.920 I'm Richard Davis. Thanks for listening. Sign off on our 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:12.520 website one day you dot com to become a member 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:16.520 and access over six hundred full length video lectures for 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:18.280 the world's finest professors