This podcast is aimed at a non-specialist audience interested in acquiring what Northrop Frye called, in the title of one of his books, an educated imagination. Its materials are drawn from the many courses in literature and mythology that I taught, combi
To the expanded eyes of the imagination, the American Revolution is more than a political uprising against tyranny. It is also a liberation of human desire on all levels, including sexual and natural. The limits of time and space are on the verge of being shattered, and Atlantis will rise.
Blake's mythology recreates the Biblical account. The Fall as a Fall of an Aspect of God, which is a Creation-Fall: that is, that Fall is identical to the creation of the fallen world. Blake's mythology: the fiery-haired Orc, Promethean figure of energy and desire. The poem America: Orc as the spirit of the American Revolution.
Conventional morality defines “good” as the restraint or repression of desire. Blake warns that “He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.” Repression in the long run does not work. The only answer is “expanding eyes,” the transformation of reality through the imagination.
Prose satire The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was begun in 1790, the beginning of the French Revolution, which inspired wild hope throughout Europe of a crucial upheaval that would transform human life. The first task in this revolutionary moment is the liberation of energy in all its forms, psychological, political, artistic.
Blake saw himself in the line of the prophets railing against social abuses, including racism, child labor, and gender oppression. What both gives rise to these and keeps them in place? The central poem “London” provides the answer: the “mind'forged manacles.”
Blake created his own mythology, which eventually included two characters whose antagonism is comparable to that of Prometheus and Jupiter. But he began by exploring the relationship of what he called Contraries, beginning with The Songs of Innocence and Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
Changes beyond what common sense deems possible would take place if the human mind could renounce the fear and hate that keep it neurotically imprisoned. The transformation of human nature and even nature itself by love, though with a final limit of time and mutability.
The drama's conflict ends in Act 3, scene 1, with the demise of Jupiter, with two acts still to come. These are taken up by imagery of the transformation of humanity and nature, not just returning to an ordinary state free of tyranny and suffering, but beginning a metamorphosis into the paradisal.
Asia has descended to the realm of Demogorgon and catechizes him. Who created and rules all things? What is behind and beyond even Jupiter. Demogorgon says, “The deep truth is imageless.” We do not know. All we know is Love, and that is all we need to know.
A change of scene to the feminine counterpart of Prometheus, named Asia, Shelley's invention. She and Panthea, guided by a Dream and Spirits, descend to the cave of Demogorgon in a mysterious Otherworld.
Prometheus calls up the Phantasm of Jupiter to recall the curse he once pronounced on Jupiter, which he now regrets. Mercury arrives with the Furies, who, in this drama of the mind, are the forms of human despair and hopelessness. Other Spirits arrive, sent from a poet's imagination, saying don't give up. End of Act 1.
Prometheus's opening speech indicates that he has changed. He no longer hates, and would recant his curse on Jupiter, but can't remember it. No one, even his mother, Earth, dares tell him. But Earth tells him to summon someone from a mysterious Otherworld “below” death, in which reside images which are the doubles of all things in this life.
Interest in Prometheus revived in the Romantic revolutionary age. Short poems by Goethe and Byron show his as defiant rebel. Shelley's famous Preface to his Prometheus Unbound. The influence of Milton's titanic rebel, Satan.
Christian writers made Pandora the Classical Eve, disobedient the “cause of all our woe.” But in the 17th-19th centuries, Pandora was transvalued as a redemptive figure, especially by Calderón de la Barca and Goethe (influenced by Calderón) in a fragment called Pandora.
The drama ends with a proud, defiant Prometheus. The last play of the trilogy, featuring his reconciliation with Zeus, is lost. The new interest in the Prometheus myth during the Romantic era, the age of revolutions.
Aeschylus brings in Io, not part of the original Prometheus story, as a positive female figure replacing Pandora. Turned into a cow and stung by a gadfly, she wanders the world, an innocent sufferer. But from her line will come Herakles or Hercules, who will release Prometheus.
An “act” in Greek tragedy consists of dialogue between the hero and another character, followed by an interchange with the Chorus and a Choral Ode. In the second “act,” Prometheus speaks to Oceanus, the ocean, who counsels repentance and humble obedience. Prometheus responds by a remarkable speech in which fire becomes the fire of the creative mind.
Greek tragedy was not realistic, but stylized, ritualized, with actors wearing masks and a Chorus that sang and danced. The opening scene: Prometheus bound to the rock by Hephaestus. Key thematic words are repeated. This is a play about “limits” of all kinds.
Hesiod, a partisan of Zeus, casts Prometheus, the antagonist of Zeus, in a negative light. Zeus's revenge against humanity is Pandora, an artificially-constructed woman given to Epimetheus, Prometheus's brother. She opens a jar (“box” is a mistranslation), and all evils fly out. Theories that Pandora is a patriarchal distortion of an original Goddess myth.
The myth of Prometheus has been recreated over time by different authors for radically different purposes. The earliest account is in Hesiod's Theogony. Hesiod champions Zeus as a figure of law and order, and disapproves of Prometheus the Trickster
A thank you to my listeners, all over the world, on our 200th episode. The thematic spectrum of Donne's love poetry, continued. Moods of skepticism (“Go and catch a falling star”), hatred (“The Apparition”) and requited sexual and romantic love (“The Good Morrow,” “The Sun Rising,” “The Canonization”).
Donne's are arguably the greatest love poems in English after Shakespeare's sonnets. Donne as a Metaphysical poet. Donne's fascinating and troubled life. A spectrum of types of love, beginning with the satiric and overtly erotic: “Elegy 19” and “The Flea.”
Shakespeare's enigmatic and fascinating poem about the love-death union of two lovers symbolized as the phoenix and the turtledove. The symbolism of two who are paradoxically one in love, in religion, and in poetic metaphor, which says “A is B.”
The ironic themes in the beautiful youth sequence include old age and death and the possibility of infidelity. The Dark Lady sequence begins with mildly tender irony and moves to fierce condemnation of both the Lady and love itself.
Ideal resolutions in the beautiful youth sequence include (1) urging the youth to marry and perpetuate his beauty through offspring; (2) finding their own Platonic love satisfying; (3) making the youth immortal through the poet's art. Famous examples of each. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Shakespeare's texts, both the plays and the sonnets, are “equivocal.” They are endlessly suggestive because they seem to offer a range of interpretive possibilities, from the ideal to the ironic, and force the reader to read actively and choose. Sonnets 12, 20, and 29: the beautiful youth and an ideal love. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
The Sonnets constantly suggest a total order and total meaning. Yet they simultaneously suggest that such an order is “undecidable,” tantalizing yet elusive. The meaning of a text and the meaning of a love affair may be undecidable, despite our repeated attempts to find a definitive meaning or moral in them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
The two sequences, the “beautiful youth” sonnets (1-126) and the Dark Lady sonnets (127-52), are so distinctive, so unlike the standard Courtly Love formulas, that it is natural to wonder if they are based on real life, but there is no proof. The enigmatic Dedication to the sonnets only confuses the issue. The beautiful youth is a young male, and in the opening sonnets, the poet urges him to perpetuate his beauty by breeding. Later, the poet promises another form of immortality, in his verse. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
The various conspiracy theories about alternate authorship of Shakespeare's works. What we actually do know about Shakespeare, as opposed to the various legends. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
The Arthurian stories or Matter of Britain are not just a set of tales but a vision evolving through time, at the hands of many authors. A brief look at the conclusion of Malory's Morte Darthur, where the destruction of all that Arthur created suggests an ideal too great for this imperfect earth. And yet, the prophecy that Arthur will return someday. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Gawain's adventure consists of two contests or games. Huizinga's Homo Ludens: human culture as play, as game-playing. But for real stakes. Gawain is really striving not for a prize or fame but for loyalty to virtue. He comes short because he is human and imperfect, but we must strive anyway, or nothing is achieved. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
The lord's wife tries three times to seduce Gawain while her husband is out hunting, but Gawain resists. On New Year's, Gawain endures his ordeal at the Green Knight's “chapel,” an opening in the earth. He feels shame that he has tried to cheat by wearing the lady's magic belt that confers invulnerability, but the Knight commends him, and back at home the lords and ladies all wear green belts in his honor. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Description of the seasonal cycle. Finally, it is winter again, and Gawain leaves to find the Green Knight's chapel. His shield with the pentangle or “endlesse knot,” symbolizing five sets of five virtues. The northern journey through wonders and adventures. The northern lord's castle. Hopitality is granted by the lord, who also offers a wager—another bet. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
A quick sketch of the development of the Arthurian mythos. The Middle English alliterative Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a romance full of wonders. The Green Knight challenges the Court of Arthur. Gawain accepts the challenge, and cuts off the Knight's head. The Green Knight picks up his head and departs, telling Gawain that a year hence he must allow the Knight to strike his own blow. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
The Norman Conquest of 1066. The transformation of Old English into Middle English, partly through the influence of Anglo-Norman French. From heroic poetry to the romance, the tale of wonders. The new theme of Courtly Love, a new kind of idealized romantic love. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Beowulf returns to the Geats, eventually becomes king for 50 years of peace. The dragon is awakened when someone steals from his hoard. Beowulf and Wiglaf defeat the dragon, but Beowulf is mortally wounded. He asks to see the treasure, then dies. The Geats may not long survive his death. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Grendel's mother breaks into Heorot, grabs Hrothgar's best friend and her son's hand. Beowulf pursues her to the uncanny mere, dives in, slays her with the help of a sword from the days of the giants, whose blade is melted by her blood. Return and a second celebration. Beowulf the triumphing warrior—but also Beowulf the peacemaker. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Hrothgar's line from the mysterious Scyld opens the poem. The building of Heorot, and the bard's song. Grendel preys on Heorot 12 years. The arrival of Beowulf. Beowulf insulted by Unferth. The battle with Grendel. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Everything about Beowulf is a mystery: its date and place of origin; its atypical hero, a monster slayer rather than heroic feuding warrior; its problematic relationship to Christianity. J.R.R. Tolkien's famous essay about these problems. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Northumbria, along the northeastern coast, site of a cultural efflorescence in the 7th and 8th centuries. From here, the Lindisfarne Gospels and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 731 CE, which preserves the first English poem, “Caedmon's Hymn.” Also, an Anglo-Saxon elegiac lyric, “The Wanderer.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
The 18th century discovery that 1/3 of languages today, including English, derive from the lost language of the Indo-Europeans. The waves of settlement of the British Isles: the Celts, then the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons, bearing with them what became Old English, the first form of the English language. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Faust and Mephistopheles win a war for the Emperor in Act 4. In Act 5, Faust, now 100, reclaims land from the sea, and is responsible for the death of an aged couple in the process. He dies, angels save his soul in a wildly comic scene, and he is redeemed in the eternity of the Eternal Feminine. He is not yet done striving. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Helen has been rescued from the underworld and taken to a medieval castle by Faust, courting her, uniting with her as a union of opposites, Classical with Medieval/German/Romantic. Their child Euphorion plunges to his death by trying to climb too high. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
It is easy to read Act 3 ironically. Faust strives for the archetypal feminine, but their union is an illusion and produces a child who, because ungrounded in the real world, leaps to his death. But there may be a less reductive way of looking at it, not instead of but in addition to the ironic reading. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
As Faust disappears to find Helen again, the Homunculus achieves his quest to be embodied at the climax of the Classical Walpurgis Night, the end of Act 2. Alchemical and scientific imagery of the union of fire and water unite with the imagery of evolution as Homunculus "impregnates” the waters of the sea nymph Galatea. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Goethe invented the idea of a Classical Walpurgis Night? Why? Four quests: Faust for Helen (again), Mephistopheles for sex, the Homulculus for a body, and a fourth quest, symbolized by the enigmatic Cabiri. Symbolism of 3 and 4; of fire and water; of life as evolutionary metamorphosis. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
The Homunculus, artificial disembodied intelligence created by Wagner, tells the group that Faust is dreaming of Helen's engendering through the rape of Leda, and that Faust must be revived at the Classical Walpurgis Night, where he will search for a body. The site in Thessaly is the Pharsalian fields, where Julius Caesar defeated Pompey and Cato, victory of future imperialism over freedom, the ironic cycle of history. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Faust descends to the uncanny realm of the Mothers while the Court watches. He attempts to seize Helen of Troy, but an explosion knocks him unconscious. As Act 2 opens, he has been removed to his old study, still in a coma. Wagner has become an alchemist. Serious alchemy as a ritual meditation whose goal was the spiritualization of matter. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
To celebrate the solving of the Emperor's financial crisis, a carnival-masque, dramatizing society's ultimate value: wealth. Faust as Plutus, god of wealth, on a chariot. The mysterious Boy Charioteer who leads the chariot. Hijinks involving illusions of wealth. The Emperor commands Faust to summon up Helen of Troy. Mephistopheles tells Faust he must descend to the Nothing that is the ground of being, the realm of the Mothers. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
The Holy Roman Empire is broke, but Faust and Mephistopheles “solve” the Emperor's problem by inventing wealth that only exists on paper—in short, by inventing modern finance, based not on material wealth like gold but symbolic wealth like money. It is fake alchemy, a con job. It is also the world of modern finance. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
Goethe does judge Faust morally, but not in the Aristotelian framework of the tragic hero, which is how he'd like to see himself. He is instead an antihero, redeemed, but not by the sacrifice of Christ: instead, perhaps unfortunately, through that of an innocent female figure, saving an unworthy man. The metaphor of the waterfall, the rainbow created by the sun within its spray: spirit immanent in this material world. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
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