Beautiful. Alright. Leadership Lessons from the Great Books
podcast, episode number
130 with Momen and
Ryan. Poems of
Alfred Lord Tennyson in
3, 2, 1.
Hello. My name is Haysan Sorels, and this is
the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode
number 130.
In the long course of human history, there are people who
make an outsized impact in certain areas, including
the arts, the sciences, politics, and, yes, even
finance. Most of these people's names have been long
forgotten, but their words and their actions still have
an outsized impact on the world.
One of the larger challenges of our era of instant communication and everyone knowing
everything about everybody all at once is that the number of
people who seek to make, an outsized impact in
all areas they touch has increased, yet there are
still people who are, well, average.
Serving where you are at at the highest possible level of your
talents and skills without looking for claps or approval
is actually the gold standard of behavior in our
time. We make the default setting for
leaders the idea that every leader should be competent at every aspect
of leadership, but this is just as faulty an assumption for
leaders as it is for followers. Sometimes, some leaders need to just be
competent at one thing.
One thing. And if they are competent at that one thing,
they can have an outsized impact on the world long after they
are gone. On the show today, we
will extract lessons for leaders from the most unlikely
source possible. And while I am not a
poetry guy, quote, unquote, I personally think the poetry needs to rhyme.
And then Ogden Nash is probably the height of poetical
doggerel. And by the way, we're gonna be covering Ogden Nash next
year on the podcast, so stay tuned for that.
These poems that we are going to read today have lines and
have ideas and have thoughts that have entered the lexicon
of western thought. This goes beyond zeitgeist and have
generated an outsized impact. Today, we
will read and discuss the poems of Alfred, lord
Tennyson, with our returning guest cohost today,
Ryan j Stout and doctor Momin
Kazi. Leaders, serve where you
are planted at the highest possible level of your talents and
skills without seeking collapse or approval.
So today, we're going to pick up in our book reading with,
the Oxford paperbacks version of Tennyson's Poems and Play.
So this is a this is a collected edition. Right? It has a lot of
different poems and plays in it edited by, t Herbert
Warren and revised and enlarged by Frederick Page. There's a
lot of content in this book. We cannot possibly
cover it all. It would be impossible. Thus, we
are not going to. Instead, what we're going to do is we're going to
look at, we're going to read, we're going to examine,
certain select poems, some of which you will know and a
couple of which you you won't. And then we're going to frame those
in terms of, in terms of leadership, in terms
of how people lead and what leaders can learn from
poetry. Now one of the struggles that we have in our world, and I was
actually just listening to a podcast about this,
oh, over the course of the weekend, is that poetry is
fundamentally, an an
eastern medium. Right? The way in which
we think is different with poetry or has to be different with poetry.
Poetry is about a journey towards something, whereas a
narrative, and and we live in a Greek oriented
rationalist scientific rationalist, sort of environment even
with our religion and our fantasies, We still want things
to make sense. We want narratives to make sense. That's a
very Greek way of looking at the world.
And we need both ways of looking at the world. We need both of those
ways merging together. And so, when we look at the poems
of Tennyson, one of the things that will strike us immediately
as we read them is, well,
is what he is doing in taking folks
along, taking the western mind along a journey.
And I quote or read from Ulysses. This is the
first poem that we will look at today. It's a it's a
longish one, so so bear with me. I'm also gonna give you a little bit
of background on the poem, and then we'll let Momen and Ryan jump in with
their thoughts on the poem. And by the way, thanks to, to Ryan for
suggesting these, these poems as ones that we should look at
today out of Tennyson's broad over
or oeuvre. I have no idea how to pronounce that. Momen will
correct me. I'm not even worried about it. He'll correct me on
this.
Alright. And I pick up from Ulysses. A little
prophet said an idle king by this still hearth among these barren crags,
mashed with an age of wife, I meet and dole and equal laws into a
savage race that hoard and sleep and feed and know not me.
I cannot rest and travel. I will drink life to the less, to the
lees. All times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly, both with
those that love me and alone. On shore and when through
scuttling drifts, the rainy Hyades vex the dim
sea. I am become a name, or always roaming with
a hungry heart. Much have I seen and known cities of men
and manners, climates, councils, governments, myself not least, but honored
of them all, and drunk delight of battle with my peers, far
on the ringed plains of windy Troy. I'm a
part of all that I have met, yet all experience is
an arch where the throw gleams that untraveled world
whose margin fades. Forever and forever when I move, how
dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust, unburnish, not to shine
in use, as though to breathe where life, life piled on life,
where all too little and of one to me. Little remains, but every
hour is saved from that eternal silence, something more,
bringer of new things and vile. It were for
some 3 sons to store and hoard myself, and this
gray spirit yarn yearning and desire to follow knowledge like a sinking
star beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the scepter and the
isle, well loved of me, discerning to fulfill this labor by slow
prudence to make a mild to make mild a rugged people and
through soft degrees, subdue them to the useful and
the good. Most blameless is he, central in the sphere
of common duties, decent not to fail in offices of tenderness and
pay, meet adoration to my household gods when I am gone. He works his
work, I mine. There lies the pork. The vessel puffs for sale.
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners'
souls have toiled and wrought and fought with me that ever with a
frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine and opposed 3
hearts, 3 foreheads. You and I are old.
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all.
But something near the end, some work of the noble note may yet be done,
not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The
lights begin to twinkle from the rocks, a long day wanes as slow motion climbs,
the deep moans round with many voices. Come by, my
friends, it's not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting
well in order, smite the sounding furor for my purpose holds.
To sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars until
I die, it may be that the gulfs will wash us down. It may be
well that we shall touch the happy isles and see the great Achilles whom we
knew, Though much is taken and much abides, and though we are not
now, that strength which in old days move
Ulysses was written in 1833 and revised for
publication in, 18/33 and revised for publication in
1842. And by the way, this is according
to the, the Tennyson,
library pieces that are that are online. I'm quoting this
directly from them. Tennyson reworks the figure of Ulysses by drawing on the
ancient hero of Homer's Odyssey and the medieval hero of Dante's
Inferno. Homer's Ulysses is described in scroll,
let's see, 11 of the Odyssey, letters from a prophecy that he will take a
final sea voyage after killing the suitors of his wife, Penelope.
The details of the sea voyage are described by Dante in Canto
20, 6 of the inferno. Ulysses finds
himself restless in Ithaca. By the way, Ithaca, pause,
that is a city in New York that I once slipped in and
worked in, and driven by the longing that I have gained to experience the
world. Dante's Ulysses is a tragic figure who dies
while sailing too far in an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Tennyson
combines these two accounts by having Ulysses make his speech shortly after returning to
Ithaca and resuming his administrative responsibilities and shortly
before embarking on his final voyage.
Okay. So we opened up with that. I've talked quite
a bit. That's a long poem. Let's get Momin and
Ryan in here. We're gonna kinda flow a little bit with this today.
Thoughts on Tennyson? Thoughts on the the opening
poem, Ulysses, and a little bit thoughts on the literary life of
Alfred Lord Tennyson. Bowman, why don't you go ahead and get us kicked
off here? Love to. Thanks for inviting me to be part of
this podcast today. I really enjoy it and appreciate you, and
it's great to meet Ryan as well. I love the poem Ulysses. I
believe, my mentor when I was at University
of North Texas, he called this arguably the
greatest poem in the world, or the greatest poem ever
written. He he's a Victorianist, so he is, you know, he
is biased. But, I I think that it
is one of the greatest poems ever written. It really
does capture the spirit of the Victorian age especially.
He, Tennyson does some interesting
things with the original story and alters it for
his purposes. One of those being, that in
the original Homer poem,
all of his mariners have passed away or died,
on the way to Ithaca there in Greece. And
so for him to say, you know, hey, you know,
my fellow mariners, let's go back out after just 3 days of being
home, that's an alteration. But,
but still the fact is is he has captured
the spirit of 19th century,
you know, empire right there by saying,
I'm not done. I wanna get up and get back out, and,
I've got to strive to seek, to find, and not yield. You
know, I'm I'm still alive, basically. So I
have 3 or 4 kind of big points, and one of them
being that the poem was written during a time of
intense grieving. He lost his friend. We'll talk about it in in memoriam,
Arthur Henry Hallam. A shining light he thought had so
much potential. It was one of his best friends,
and he lost him. And, it was it was a
shock to everyone's system. And for for,
Tennyson, he really, found himself in a period
of grief and mourning. He writes
Ulysses finally in the in the kind
of getting himself out of the the
grief funk that he's in. But he's not
really publishing for a long time, but he's writing
these poems in memoriam, and Ulysses is one of
those poems. So I I would suggest grieving isn't the
end. If you look at this poem, you can see that
grieving and expressing that grief in in a very artistic
way is really the beginning. 2, it reveals
the longing for connection. He mentions Achilles. He mentions, of course,
Ulysses is speaking. But he's saying,
I might, you know, meet back up with Achilles. And so you
could see a man longing to reunite with his best
friend. 3, it illustrates the aspirations of,
Tennyson's national spirit to follow knowledge like a
sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human
thought. This is a big deal. This is the the spirit
of the age. You know? And then I would suggest that,
he recognizes that there are different roles that serve vital
purposes. Telemachus has his emerging role
as the new leader. He's, you know, in his early twenties now.
He's been without a father figure for 20 years.
He's been having to kind of fend off suitors, who have come
after Penelope and and trying to usurp you,
Odysseus or Ulysses. And so
he doesn't belittle Telemachus' role as the leader
when he's gonna be gone. He says he has his role. I have
mine. And so finally, I just wanna just
reaffirm that notion that Ulysses is also saying, I'm not
dead yet. You know, like, from, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You
know? You know, I fear you're unhappy. You know? I'm not dead yet.
Don't put me on the cart. I don't wanna go on the cart. Ulysses here
is saying that. I'm not dead yet. I have more to do. I'm
gonna again, those those awesome verbs, you know, to strive, to
seek, to find, and not to yield.
Excellent. Thanks, thanks, Roman. There's a I I took a bunch of different
notes there. Yeah. I wanna ask some follow-up questions around that. But
first, Ryan, what did you think of of this
poem? What what struck you about this? Well, I wanna thank you, and, Hassan, as
always, it's a it's a joy, to be here. And,
you know, echoing a lot of sentiments, but also the the thing
that I think struck me, there's a there's a there's an
acceptance here, and
the theme of fate
emerges or he even mentions, Ulysses mentions,
and just the acceptance
of that. Almost if I know there's the the first
paragraph of Cat's Cradle, the Vonnegut book.
It's, you know, even if I was born, I forget the name, but even if
I was born a Thomas, I would have been a Brian. You know? So it's
like you can't run from who you are. Mhmm.
And I think there's an acknowledgment of that.
As he sort of pines about, you know, getting, you
know, getting into trouble. It's it's, you know, it's also to to to mention
another contemporary movie. It's, you know, Oliver Stone talks about,
you know, that in Natural Born Killers. He's he's doing the interview, and they're in
the prison, and Robert Downey junior asked him the question. He says, man, I'm just
a natural war killer. So there's there's, like, an acknowledgment and acceptance of
this thing that's it's it's a it's an outlier of a
personality. That's one. And the
the idea of not being able to rest,
I don't know The
thirst for knowledge I don't know. Is there an acknowledgment of that's
the thing that is also, like, leading him to his death or that's what he
I don't think it's leading to his death. It's what it's how he wants to
go. It it
seems like he's lived a a a a pretty exciting life. And
so even after all is said and done, this is how I would like
to spend my time, my last day sort of thing, even acknowledging,
passing on to, to Leni Cussen and so forth. And I think,
what else do I have here?
Tennyson does this so beautifully, but also as
Ulysses in the poem
despite all of his
his motivations and his he still has
time to acknowledge the
beauty of the natural world and the
language that he uses to describe that.
Where is the
where is Well, he talks
about the sunset. Yes. Yeah. There was one particular
line, though. But, yeah, that's so there's there's there's
there's, there's still an agnologist of the not the beauty of the
natural world. And I think, you know, someone who's
sailing off into, you know, the great unknown,
what a wonderful thing is it's like living it's the it's kind of distilled in
into living in the moment. And wouldn't we all really like to do that?
Well, we've we've got a little bit of a thing here with,
with Ulysses. And, you know, I'm a person who I've
I'm not obsessed with the Odyssey, but I've read it a
lot. And Odysseus I am obsessed.
You're you're obsessed. Okay. What was that? Yeah. I teach it every time.
Yeah. He he he has to be obsessed.
And, you know, how Homer had tied, you know, the
Iliad and the Odyssey together, and then how they really need to be
read and studied together, I I'm fascinated by by all of that.
As a leadership idea, though, there's there's a
couple of different leadership ideas that I think are are in this poem, that I
would like to get your thoughts on. A moment you hit on 1, this idea
of passing along your legacy
to others, but also acknowledging that you're not done. And and we have this
in our society and culture right now where, quite frankly,
people in the baby boomer generation have struggled
to let go. We can see this most notably in
politics, but there's other areas, entertainment,
culture, corporate business, where, know, you just have a generation that has had an
outsized influence on American culture in the latter half or had an outsized
influence on American culture in the latter half of the 20th century who
just will not let go.
And I'm in my mid forties and being a person in my mid forties,
the the I won't say the ship is almost passed,
but I can see the ship, like, sliding away
as people just won't let go. You know? And And so there's and then
there's generations behind me who are much younger, who are screaming at the boomers
to let go. Yeah. And and so we have this tension to
struggle in our culture. So that's at one level, at a leadership level, which, by
the way, and you see this sort of reflected in the poem.
One of the challenges of not letting go is you don't create a succession plan.
You have no plan for letting go. You have no plan
for release. Right? And, and I liked how you talked
about how Tennyson's poem here reflects the spirit of the
Victorian age. The Victorian age had zero
interest in letting go of anything.
First, we just covered All Quiet on the western front on this podcast,
a couple episodes ago. And so, you know, the first
big trauma that had to happen to the Victorian age was World War 1.
But it didn't the stuffing didn't all get knocked out of them until around World
War 2 and the cult and the collapse of the British Empire. Right?
And I would assert that that was because the Victorian age did not want to
let go. It did not want to surrender
to the next zeitgeist, the next historical cycle,
that was, that was coming into, into being. And so and and part of the
reason why it didn't wanna surrender was that succession. It could not
see who was going to pick up the baton
and move the thing forward. I think it's very important for leaders to
have a succession plan. Thoughts on this
idea of succession plans and sort of how you do this as
a leader leveraging some of the ideas in this, in this
poem? Do you want me to jump in there? Yeah. Go
ahead. So in the Odyssey, of course, Homer's
epic poem, Telemachus
is it it's an interesting poem. It starts off by talking
about sing to me, oh, muse, of the man of complicate who's
complicated, the man of twists and turns, the complicated
man, you know, and it's Odysseus. And, and
you think, oh, this is gonna be a story about Odysseus. And then the
next chapter goes right into Telemachus.
Right. And the next chapter is about to let I mean, in other words,
we don't really get to Odysseus way way into the until way
into the poem, and then we find him on a shore crying to go
home, wanting to go home. He's on the island with Calypso. But
Telemachus is the one who the focus is on,
and the focus is on Telemachus as
a man, as a young man who has
he's finally kind of bridged that gap
from adolescent and young adulthood into now,
what's he gonna do? And he's just he's downhearted. He's, you know,
downtrodden. And and I think that a lot of the
poem is
concerned with who is Telemachus,
what is his true temperament, is he
a man, or is he
less than masculine and less than able to to take the
lead? And it's one of those things where we
see that he has a wonderful,
side to him that's very compassionate. He practices this
code that, Zeus has instituted called the code
of xenia, the the the code of hospitality.
He sees a person who has walked into this palace
after, you know, several years of suitors abusing
their hospitality. He sees a man there who has not been attended
to, and he walks to him and says, who are you?
Not not who are you, but welcome. Let us take care of you.
Become refreshed. Let's feed you. And,
and that man happens to be a a gentleman named Minties, but
it's actually Athena in disguise. And she
realizes in the form of Minties that Telemachus
is is discouraged, at you know, wondering
if his father is alive or not. And
from that point on, we see a really wonderful person
in Telemachus who's about taking
care not of just his mother but also in the in the
absence of his father taking care of the palace, taking care of the
kingdom. When Odysseus finally does return
to the land of his home
and he finally gets to
meet back up with Telemachus, he
tests him immediately about, are you
a a kind of a,
less than male? Are you less than masculine? Did you allow this to
happen at the pallet? What did you do? Who are you? Yeah. Are are you
worthy? Are you worthy? Are you, you know or, you know, to
use, Dana Carvey's, you know, kind of,
you know, imitation of, Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know. Are
you a girlie man? You know? And and he's he's really trying
to get a bead, a be you know, like, who are
you, Telemachus? So I'm just saying, he's trying to figure it out.
He does realize, though, oh, Telemachus is somebody
who who I would be very proud of. And finally,
Telemachus gets back with the suitors with Odysseus'
father with him. They don't know that it's Odysseus, but one of
the suitors starts abusing Telemachus in front of everybody.
And Telemachus stands up and says, the boy you
once knew is gone. Now I'm a man.
You know? And that that's something that's really, makes
Odysseus proud. Now let's go back to Tennyson. He he writes,
you know, I've been back 3 days, you know, basically, after this
long 20 year journey, you know, 10 years fighting in,
Troy and 10 years trying to get home. Now I've been back 3
days, and I've gotta in the original, you know, in the
poem, he's got to take care of the suitors'
relatives who are gonna come after him for killing their pappy.
Right? And or whoever. You know? And he
now knows that he has to take care of wrap some some business
up. So he goes to the land of his father,
and Athena has to step in and say, it's
time to put an end to all this fighting,
and she hands down finally the last lines of of the Odyssey
are, you know, she hands down the packs of peace. Right?
But the whole point there is that
Odysseus has to take care of this business.
But in the meantime, he can leave Telemachus at home and
and know that everything's in good hands. And I like that
Tennyson says, basically, Telemachus is good at
this. He's good at managing people. He's good at dealing with
diplomatically dealing with and he's, with all sorts of,
you know, factions, but he's also good at hospitality.
And so he realizes that the the the kingdom is gonna be in good
hands while he's gone, doing what he does.
But there is the sense that he does expect one day
to come back home, but he he still has, there is
an element of an uncertainty in there, which, of course, we'll talk about in
these other poems that we we're gonna examine.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead,
Ryan. I was gonna say just tackling from the angle
of, Tennyson
and the role in literature, you know, moving from
the Victorian period, the renaissance before that. So you have
this burst of creativity, then you go into the Victorian period
where, the focus is on,
re, some some reason thinking. And then,
and I think for,
for Tennyson to he there's just about every
poetic device is used in the
poem. The, there's there's internal
rhymes, assonist, dissidents. He's he's using neater. He's
using all of these things in different ways,
throughout the and I think there's and and as
contemporary poetry moves forward because we get to
after the Victorian is the modern period. That's where, like, form and
things start to fall apart. And so I half wonder
if Tennyson is is, because
this is it is it is a it is masterful from, like, from the
first word to the last word. It is masterful. And I kinda called
Haysan and thanked him. I was like, dude, I forgot what role
this person played for me writing poetry 20 years ago
and coming across him, learning about him. And but to
go back and look at this and to see how it's you know,
even to go through with, like, a fine tooth scansion, it's,
it's, it's still there's more and more and more. The more I looked at
it, the more there was, and I can almost go, like, line for
line and let me get back to it here. Where is it?
So,
the use of, consonants here and
manners, climates, councils, governments.
So you have the repetition of m, the repetition of the c's, and have these
internal rhymes and these slant rhymes. And as the poem starts, it's
way, the form as far as like end
rhymes and how he's using punctuation is
way, is is, there's a there's a form
to it. And as the poem goes on, it kind of unravels.
Mhmm. And it it becomes almost, it it it almost
looks like a like a like a helix, like a double helix. If you
look at it in like a three-dimensional form, like my brain kind of does. Yeah.
Yeah. So, just the fact that he is
honoring the language and, clearly has a love of
the language and and and, and and
syntax. And so kind of like looking at it from that end
to add to the nostalgic end of things of, like, you know,
this is these are all of the tools from the beginning that got
us here, and this is kind of like, you know, the the masterpiece.
And so kind of looking at it from that end, it was really wonderful thing
to and to to learn that he worked on these for such a long time.
Mhmm. So this isn't that's a misconception of poetry, and I know a lot
of poets will do will will will will be kind of
sinister in how, how they speak out about their works. Will
say, oh, that took me to that's that just flew right out of me. You
know? And often that is a
lie. And this is evidence that it was
17 years, at least, Mariana, but I know this one was worked on for quite
some time as well. So that's kind of just my my approach and angle at
it. Like, just I love the language and and and I love the, you know,
all that aspect, like the nerdy stuff of poetry.
One one thing you mentioned though, I think you, after the
renaissance, which which we have, the enlightenment age, we
all we also have the romantic era. And so, you know, you have people
like, words worth talking about, poetry being
inspired by. It's, it's memory, you know,
it it that inspires the feelings that you had back when you
actually experienced the thing. So we before
in between the renaissance and the Victorian age, we had a
lot going on there. And, of course, the romantic era is a really important
one. And but you mentioned nature, which the romantics were
very into. And and you mentioned the
Victorian era being more centered on reason. I think what's going
on with this notion of reason is that it's in
tension with the
the old ways of thinking in terms of
religious faith and the certainty that comes
from dogma and from from various, you
know, Christian doctrines. And so we're I I know
that Tennyson deals with that in in memoriam. We're gonna
see the that kind of tension between faith
and certainty and doubt and the new
scientific, discoveries that are
happening geologically, archaeologically, and so forth. And so,
you know and then you you Haysan, you mentioned earlier, you know,
after the after the Victorian era, you've got the Edwardian,
but then it goes right into, you know, finally,
you know, when we do have the modernists, right, and then into the
postmodernist, you know, it's like we're no longer thinking in terms of
Victorian anymore. We're thinking more like, you know, what
whatever, you know, Elizabeth is. You know? Yeah. Yeah.
Well and and that's one of the things that is interesting to me
about literature, and and as well as film, you
know, but let's let's keep it to literature here for just a
second.
One of the challenges of a postmodern mindset, a postmodern
deconstructionist mindset and I
don't really care what your politics are on this. This
is not a political statement. This is a
this is a factual statement about what happens in postmodernism and
deconstructionism when those two forces are combined together. So
postmodernism devolves everything to power.
Everything's about power and who has it and who doesn't. But deconstructionism
devolves everything down to you could pull everything apart and
argue every single side sophistry, basically. You can argue every single side of
every single argument, and then you argue it into nothing.
And one of the things I've asserted on this podcast over the course of the
last year, and I'm going to also be asserting it next year, is that and
you mentioned nature and religion. Right? You mentioned dogma. Right?
You mentioned romanticism. One of the things that
postmodernism and deconstructionism do is they destroy romantics.
They destroy romanticism. Camille Paglia would would would say this,
right, in her examination of culture. But so
would Michel Foucault, by the way. He would agree with that. He would agree. We're
we're destroying romanticism. Right? We're we're exposing
reality to the harsh light of reason. Well, to the
idealism. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. It's a critique of I the
idealism of where the real Well, I would even go a step further than that.
It's even more than just the critique of the idealism. It's the critique of the
emotion behind the idealism. Sure. Sure.
And you can be an idealist or be
a rationalist, but it's really
hard. It's really difficult because your
own idealism gets eaten up by the acidity
of rationalism, at which, of course, it devolves into just deconstructionism,
and now you're in a hole. That you're you're back in a doom loop, basically,
basically, as the kids say these days. One of the things that I think we
have to do as leaders is we have to and I and I'm gonna say
something.
At moment. I I know you're you're, you know, you're a professor in English department,
Tarleton State University. Ryan has a long background in in
creativity and in, in writing and in publishing and in poetry.
I'm going to say something that I think will probably, if not,
offend you both at the very minimum, poke you
both. Right. Okay. Here
we go. Here here's here's my statement. But maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe as soon
as I think about it, maybe I won't. I
think we have to find a way to build at this point in time in
western culture. No more deconstructing.
We're we're done. Because when you deconstruct
at the end of that road, what do you have? You have you have
Nisha's abyss, basically, that stares back through
you. You that's all you got. Right? You don't have anything there.
And human beings human beings need to
create, and they need the emotion that goes
along with creation. This is why our movies
suck now. Our movies suck now because they're wandering in a
circle. Oh, and of course, nobody knows how to write. You know? But
those are 2 those are 2 separate problems that combine. So our GPT is pretty
good at writing. Oh, well, well, don't get me started on the AI then. Don't
get me started on that because, see, here's what we'll do. We devolve to
our technology. Right? We devolve to our technology. We say our technology will
allow us to be creative. Thinking machines. Right. Except the problem with the technologist is
you run to the Ray Bradbury problem or the Isaac Asimov problem depending
upon which way you wanna go. Right? And, yes, you run
into the Aldous Huxley and brave new world and George Orwellian, you know,
surveillance state and giving you all the pleasures that you want and dah dah dah
dah. And the and the flip side of the postmodern idea of
power is just pleasure, right, and hedonism. But those
are 2 twin 2 twin tracks that don't lead anywhere but into an abyss.
And so how do you build on the other side of an abyss? How do
you build on the other side of that? I think that's the challenging question of
our time. And I think romanticism, the romanticism
of Tennyson is part of the answer to that question, but I don't know how
we would capture that. I have zero idea how we go back and
recapture that. So so this is so this is interesting. You you brought up, you
you brought up early on, like, a plan b? Yeah. Mhmm. So
the plan b for industrialism industrialization was
what? The Internet era?
Because that's it's it's because they're they're pushed out. Right? Those
things are are are forced out. Of
whatever the the movement is or the the zeitgeist as you said.
And, well, I I keep thinking about the form
is commensurate with, like, the industrial revolution. Things are taking
form, becoming more sort of homogenized. Sure. Okay. And
so that kinda, like, mirrors the poetry, but then the
after the industrial revolution, you get kind of the Internet age, and now
we're devolved into this formless cloud.
And so it kinda makes sense that,
you know, if if our if if art
and culture, how they influence each other, if there's
not a if if there's not a ballast, then nothing
is like, what is what is, like, what
is it tethered to? Well What is our what is our
predicament tethered to? And is that the is that the issue? I think in the
west, we've decided that our predicament is tethered to identity. I think we've
decided that. We've decided that identity is the thing. Whether you're
whether it's a racial identity, class identity, gender identity,
it doesn't matter. We've decided that that's the the ballast. I love
that word or the anchor. I would use that term, but ballast
is probably better. That's the ballast that we are. We are
we are we're going to we're
gonna we're gonna hook our ley lines to. Right?
Because that will be the thing that will never change, will be our identity. Except
here's the problem. The technologists are bringing us a transhuman
future where we'll even be able to manipulate that
all the way down to the biological level. Forget what you may think about
the politics or the biology of transgenderism.
That's the beginning of the fact is transgenderism is the beginning of the
transhuman movement. It's the beginning of the manipulation of identity at a
biological level. Whether it's right or
wrong is outside the pale of this current this current conversation we're
having. We're not talking about the right or wrongs of it. I'm merely talking about
the fact of its existence in the zeitgeist Because to your point, there's
no balance, so there has to be something. Because you have to be able to
to my point, I think my assertion is you have to be able to
build. We have to build. We can't
just keep deconstructing or going down the swing
poles of power and pleasure. The sand is the deconstruction.
And if you're building on sand, that's your that's your problem. And
by the way, that works for a guy like Foucault or for or for
Deridian thinking. It works for that sort
of idea because that's the logical end of Nietzsche and nihilism.
That's the logical end. That's where you wind up at. But the thing is,
as I said before, it's a cul de sac. Right? It turns back on you.
Right? The abyss stares back through you.
Bowman, you've been you've been thinking about what I've been saying. I can see your
brain working. Go ahead. Well, I'm just for one, I think
that, you know, like, you you mentioned that the transgender,
kind of, I don't know, maybe dilemma. Or I
would say I would say moment. Right? The moment that we're having. That's a good
you know? I think that it's not that it's about
deconstruction into into
such a fragmentation that we have basically no center
or no, no foundation. I think, if anything,
we're just more aware of science. We're just
more aware of the kind of particularizations
that that science
reveals. And so it's it's not that,
that there's all of a sudden these new kind of, categories
or it it it's just being able to put some
some language to scientific
facts. Right? So when when we go
all the way back to the Victorian age, you know, when Tennyson writes in his
poem, Ulysses, he says, it may be that the
gulfs will wash us down. It may be we shall touch the
happy aisles. He doesn't
know. Right? There's a there's a sense of there's
a sense of uncertainty, and I think that the Victorian age was
very much in engaged with the
implications of science and or
scientific thinking and thought. Like, let's bring
Charles Darwin into the conversation. He says Darwin would like to
enter the chat. Yeah. Dar yeah. He's he he's,
you know, a a person of faith who's also observing
scientific, phenomenon phenomena.
Right? And he's putting language to it, and it's
creating with the archaeological and the geological
discoveries, a sense of, oh, no.
Maybe what we have the answers we have,
offered in the past aren't going to satisfy
a lot of what we're now discovering. Right? So it's like
the the the Victorian era is
really dealing with this struggle between
faith and science. Right? And the Right.
Right. And it's a struggle that has not I would agree with you. Yes. That's
the victorian. And it has it has It hasn't gone away. That's right.
And, you know, but then we have people like Matthew Arnold saying,
you know, here it is. This these armies ignorant armies
clashing by night. Right? Mhmm. You know? And he goes, all
love, let us be true to one another. You know? Let
us cling on to one another, basically. We we
can't be certain of everything else, but we can be certain of our,
maybe, our connection with each other. I think with with
with Tennyson, he's doing, he's at least
tapping into a similar kind of, anxiety.
And that that's all throughout the In Memoriam poems.
That's all through, you know, Ulysses. Anything that that has to
do with this struggle between what we know for certain,
but also now things that are that are going to
to start to, you know,
question and interrogate that. And it and Right. It you know, to
where now it's not about the certainties
of the past. Now it's, oh, wait. Maybe how do we
reconcile these new discoveries or these new ideas?
It is an age of rationality in the sense that
that they're they're now they're dealing with with
new scientific facts. So how do we deal with that
in in in light of our faith? Right? Well well and and the
question that science can never answer, it can't because it's
not ill equipped, right, to answer this question,
is what does the discovery
mean? Well, it's it's I'm sorry
to interrupt, but, like, language is being left out of the equation,
and I think it's really important. So for instance, there's a Japanese
phrase, koi koi no koi no yoken.
Mhmm. And what that means is it's a
that that I see someone and I know without a
doubt that that is the person I will spend the rest of my life with.
There's not a word in English for that.
So what you what you guys were just talking about is, like, it
was the melding of these two things that otherwise don't have an ident
an identifier to pull them together. So something has to be created. Koi no
yokken has to be created because it is the melding of 2 things or otherwise
unidentifiable as, you
know, you know, separate, they are not as, you know, great as their, you
know, their total of the parts. As their total of the parts. Yeah. Kind of
creating, and that that's kind of what I I see. It's
kinda coming in from from it's it's
not like I don't know. How do you is it a a a
an an invented emotion? Well, I think
you got a I think you yeah. Yeah. I think that not an invented emotion.
It's definitely putting language like, you're saying it's putting
language. That's what Tennyson's so good at. He's putting language
on the the the spirit of an age and the anxiety
of an age, in a way that that no other poet
could do it. And with our and with the atomization of our
postmodern culture, we have many voices trying to put
language on an age and on a on a set of anxieties. And it's
the it's the, you know, the analogy is the the
the the blind Hindus touching the elephant. Right? We we know
this story. Right? One touched the trunk and thought it was a rope. One
touched the right. And they can't they're not talking to the interesting thing about
that tale or that allegory, such as it were, is that
none of the none of the blind Hindus talk to each other.
In that story. In that story. Right. Which is which is to me really
interesting, which is why it's used very often or
references a way where or as a,
not a seductity. I don't know why I just thought of that word. It's used
as a it's used as
a vessel. Right? Well, it's yeah. For for understanding
atomization. Right? And for blindness to,
to the to the bringing together of
things or the or the uniting of things. And my only assertion,
this is my only assertion, is that we
need something in order to build forward
because otherwise, you know, then
2064 is just gonna have better technology with the same arguments.
Or gonna be having the same arguments just with ro personal robots walking around.
If Elon Musk has his way, which okay. Like, you know, like, we'll all
have personal robot. Like, we'll have carbs. Right? Or iPhones.
And to what end? Why? We we why?
And that's the question again that science can't answer. Why do
I need this? What is the meaning of
this thing? Science just says we can do it,
to paraphrase from Jeff Goldblum in the great original Jurassic park.
You were so worried about whether or not you
could. You didn't sink top to think about whether or not you
should. Sure. And now you've packaged it and he slaps the table. I
love that. And now you packaged it and you put it on lunch boxes and
it's on t shirts. And we laugh at this because it's the combination of consumerism
Mhmm. And the sort of postmodern cynicism. We won't be romantic about this
and scientific rationalism. And then the dinosaur eats all the people,
which is which is kinda where we're at right now.
And we have to my concern, my concern always for leaders,
is how do they take Tennyson's work, which may be
romantic and inspiring and stirring? And I agree Ulysses is an
inspiring and stirring poem. I love reading that out loud. How do we take
that at a practical level to our people and say, let's build
on this inspiring, stirring thing? Let's build
on that. Let's move that forward in spite of
everything we're seeing in our crises that I I
think fundamentally go back to meaning. We could talk about that. But our
crises that are all around us. Because unlike in the Victorian era, the
Victorian era was right buttressed up next to faith. As much as they wanted to
get away from it, churches were still being filled filled.
Public, public and private acknowledgment
of religion was still going on in the Victorian era. Sure.
Darwin only really captured the elites, really, if we're gonna be honest about
Darwin. Darwin's ideas captured the elites from Barry Wollstonecraft
all the way to Percy Shelley, and
that's not very far of a gap. But, like, you know, it
captured the ideas of the I know. It captured the mindset of the
elites. But the average person, the common
person that was walking around in the west,
They were still they were still going to church. Well, they were going to church,
but they were they were it's the same kind of argument that people are
having today when they go to the creation museum down in Glen
Rose. It's like, you know, it's like, well, did would did
people really, you know, exist when dinosaurs did? You
know, it's sort of like you can talk to people who are just as kind
of adamant about the creation story, not
involving evolution, and then others who who've really
pushed back against evolution. There's a lot of people,
who, you know, would just
not hear it, you know, especially in this part of the world. And
you know? But I'm gonna come back to Tennyson. He says,
old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death
closes all. Right? So there is the sense that
we do know some answers even in spite of the
the swirl of the age, which is, you know,
like you said, Darwin, you know, with the beagle and all. You know,
he he even if even if there's a
disconnect in terms of their timelines,
maybe in their discussions with each other, there is still in that zeitgeist
a sense of what do we do with with a a
past. I mean, the renaissance, they were still wondering, like, does
purgatory exist, or do we need to, you know, rely on our
reason? And do we have to have facts and data
to support our interpretations versus just going
with superstition or with with, you know How he comes
full circle. Right. Right. But but one thing is true.
It is certain death. Right? Whether you're a a a faith
based person or a evolution based person, you need death.
Right? Old age hath yet his honor and his toil, he says. Death
closes all, but and there's the big but, you know,
the big contrast. Something ere the end.
Some work of noble note may yet be done.
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
So, I mean, to me, I think that still can apply
now, whether or not you put gods in a
metaphorical, you know, light or
as a faith based or, you know, who believes that there may be
a a creator god or what what have you. The the
idea some work of noble note may yet
may yet be done. That's awesome. Because
especially you're you're young to to me. I'm 5th I'm 62.
Right? I look at it like, do I have 5 years? Do I have 10
years? Do I have 15? If I'm lucky, do I have, you know, we don't
even know if tomorrow's guaranteed. Right? But I would like to believe
that something before my end, some work of noble
note, may yet be done, you know, including being part of your
podcast. Well, I will say that's Go
ahead. Some work of may yet be done,
and and and the scene that he's painting is is it
mirrors the the language. So work may be done and the
lights, but, the the day wanes, and so it's
sort of like the ending. It's it's they're they're they're mirroring each other. The
language and the sentiment and the idea are mirroring each other
Mhmm. Which is a really wonderful thing. Well, we just we've
just only been through one poem. We're probably, like, we're
probably, like, probably, like, 45 minutes into the show. And we've only
been through 1 poem. And moment,
I I I've taken a, I'm not gonna say what town I live in because
this is good. This podcast goes everywhere, but moment knows the town that I live
in Yeah. Very well. And, I could tell you looking around, I
am going I am saying to myself internally, I got
30 years of good work probably left in me already at this
stage. I'm like, I got 30 years, and that's going to go by like
that. Yeah. You know? And I'll turn around and it'll be gone.
And and and before I moved to this current town that
I was in, I I that I'm in, I always thought
I, you know, wander around to, like, beige a 100 or something like that. But
now I'm realizing maybe that might not be the thing.
Yeah. It's it's sobering.
Right? It's it's, it's it's not it
doesn't create an existential crisis in me because to your point, I'm one of those
people of faith, so I don't have an existential crisis about that. I
have existential crises about other things, not about that.
Well, it is interesting. So the Camus is a is
a so, Camus, one of his, like, tenets would
be, you know, beyond anything, do not despair.
And reading Tennyson, it's like, okay. Well, we're
there's the existential, and I know that Camus often gets confused with
existentialists and absurdists, blah blah blah. But,
it's Ted is insane, despair. Despair away.
It's okay. It's okay. You know? It's
acknowledging that instead of yeah. You're right. It's it's
the like I said, grieving isn't the end. It's the beginning. He
is just in the middle of it. He's lost his best friend,
and he writes in memoriam. He writes Ulysses.
If you read it from that lens of someone who misses his
best friend, you can see that this poem really does
say despair is okay. Right? I mean, it
in the sense that, it's an honest
it's an honest response to to
loss. Right? And he doesn't know if he
will return if he will reunite with Arthur Henry Hallam. He
doesn't know, you know, if he, Odysseus, or Ulysses
will reunite with Achilles, the great Achilles whom we
knew. Right? Something just clicked over in my
head with what Womong Womong was
just saying there with Ryan with your focus on the language and and Camus.
And then I'll go into because we've already talked around Tennyson and through Tennyson.
So let's talk a little about Tennyson's background here. We'll we'll sort of switch this,
but this is the thing that clicked open my head, and maybe this will be
valuable for people who are listening. I think in
America, we don't do a good job with the number 1, we don't do a
good job with grief. But number 2, we don't do a good job with endings.
We just don't. We don't do it at a good job at a private
level. We don't we and we really don't do
a good job of it at a public level. So 2 of
the worst disasters probably of the last 20
years have been 911 and COVID for
the United States of America. Not talking globally. I have listeners all over the
world. Your mileage will vary. But in
my country, in America,
9 11 and COVID. And
I think that the the
cultural
breakdowns and challenges that have occurred over the last 25 years around those
2 twin, such as it were, twin
towers of disasters, and I'm not being funny here,
the lack of grief, the lack of public grieving,
the lack of being able to engage in despair publicly
and and sort of exist sort of
sort of sort of, you know, push all of that out, right, and
get rid of it. You don't have any tools
in the in a postmodern context where your 2
poles are either power or pleasure because grieving or the
opportunity to grieve can be seen as a as a statement of, I'm gonna use
another p word here that's often used, privilege. Only privileged people
can grieve. I gotta get up and go to work.
Right. And when we don't get how much just
that sentiment is postmodernist insanity
because exactly every single culture forever,
grieving is, is it was a integral part
of their society and how they interface with
each other and had their strength as a culture. And we don't Yeah. But I
would say that postmodernism is not the boogeyman here. There are peep
I mean, people as in India that I
know, because I'm, you know, half Indian, half Pakistani.
Right? The yeah. I I heard it. We
don't have time to grieve. We I mean, not grieve. We don't have we
don't have the energy to be depressed. The
energy. We're we're working on just, you know, making a
life and and having you know, just getting getting by. And some I
mean, not not all my relatives were like that, but definitely there
was a sense of even from my father, it would be like,
why what's with all this depression? You know? And
I've I think he was in denial. But I mean, like, I don't have time
for depression. You know? And, that's different from
national mourning. I understand. When you look at that let's go back to the
Victorian era. I mean, she is
the poster child for National Morning.
You know? She wore she you know, everyone knows her, not
as the vivacious, you you know, kind of German girl who
I mean, English girl with the you know, who spoke
German and was a German. He had to get that German
accent, you know, erased as much as possible. But still,
when when, her beloved husband passed
away, she was in black for the rest of her life, you know, with
these you close that went all the way up from her neck down to
her, you know, like, wrists and and ankles
can't be shown for you know? But, I mean, it's not just modesty. She
was in black. Right? And so she was,
you know, modeling a sense of this is what we do, you
know, as a nation when when, prince Albert
is, you know, dies. Right? I mean,
so Tennyson is in good company, you know, with with
the the notion that you can you can grieve, you can
mourn. People like CS Lewis come along later and and he has
to resurrect in a sense the, you know, like, hey. It's okay.
You know? So he writes a grief observed. Right? He writes
these these wonderful, you know, observations of
just what what it is to to go through loss.
And and even as a person of faith go, you know, it's
okay to grieve. It's okay to to be depressed
or, you know, we gotta work through it. You know? Yeah.
Yeah. So I I don't but I don't think it's a postmodern has a rate
you know, somehow made it to where you're making
the postmodernism. I what it was more it was
what was I what I was thinking was actions like we've made money God. We've
made God money our God, and so that Yeah. Kinda, like,
breaks everything down. And my only point and my only point
is if you don't offer with those 2 twin
those 2 twin events, if you don't offer the public an opportunity,
even a national day of mourning. Right? Like Yeah. Yeah. And and
by the way, this is this is, irregardless of
party, and I know irregardless is not a word. If George w Bush had declared
right. Had declared a national day of mourning or if Joe Biden had declared a
national day of mourning. Yeah. After
COVID? Yeah. Right. Like, just give us a
minute. You're right. The the thing is is the
American response is often, let's get
even. Let's Or let's just push through it. Yeah.
Let's just push through it. Let's go to war for 20 years now that you
know, with people who didn't even engage with 911, for
example. Right? We just we've we've finally just got out of
Afghanistan, you know, during the Biden administration.
So it's it's like, yeah, there is a sense of you know,
it's it's almost like like you said, it it's not
about even observing a day of just
grievance, you know, not grievance, but, grieving Mhmm. As
opposed to, the day of grievance. Griefence.
Right. Right. Which we don't we already had a summer in 2020.
It was a little bit of that. Anyway, moving on. Yes.
Let's talk a little bit about Tennessee because we've sort of talked around and through
and over and above this man. So, when we look at the literary
life of Alfred, lord Tennyson, he was a
baron. His name is actually Alfred Tennyson, born
August 6, 1809, and died
in, the 6th October of 18 92. He
was a poet laureate during much of queen Victoria's reign.
And in 18/29, Tennyson was awarded the chancellor's gold medal at
Cambridge for one of his first pieces, Timbuktu, which, by the way, is in the
collection of poems, that I have here of Tennyson. We will not
be reading Timbuktu today, but I would recommend going and taking a look at it
just for the strength of, Ulysses alone.
He published his first solo collection of poems, poems chiefly
lyrical in 18 30. So this guy had a long and
storied career in, in England. Although
described by some critics as overly sentimental, interestingly
enough, his poems ultimately proved popular and brought Tennyson to the
attention of well known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry with its media
medievalism and powerful visual imagery was a major
influence on the Pre Raphaelite brotherhood.
This is a part that's interesting to me about Tennyson's writing.
And, Ryan, I know this probably jumps out to you with the language piece. A
number of phrases from Tennyson's work have become commonplace in the English
language, including nature, red, tooth, and claw,
which, by the way, I thought was Kipling until I I started doing some research
into tennis, and I thought Kipling had come up with that. Just better to have
loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Most people think that Shakespeare.
Theirs is not your reason why there's much to do and die.
Again, most people think that many people think that Shakespeare, if they think of any
if they even think of that at all, I don't know that that's a common
common phraseology that's used anymore in our time.
My strength is as the strength of 10 because my heart is pure, to
strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Okay.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. I love that one.
That should be tattooed on the foreheads of anyone who,
accesses the Internet via their phone.
And the old order changeth, yielding place to new.
He is the 9th most frequently quoted writer, I did not know this, in the
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. We've kind
of talked about the importance of Tennyson and his poet his his
poem Ulysses on Western literature.
Clearly, the man had an outsized impact, as I mentioned in the in in the
intro, with his poetry in general on the
west.
Very briefly, if you were going to sell
Tennyson to someone, and I think we probably done that already, but if you
were gonna sell Tennyson to somebody,
hardcore psychology of how to lead people, why should I care about
Tennyson? Why should I care about his writing? Why should I care about poetry?
About Tennyson because consuming to I
this is great because are either of you familiar with Ahman
Hillman as a classicist? No. I am
not. And he and, so he makes
some really, I don't know, arguments for, how important the
Greek language is and kind of, like, going and his,
I I missed his name. What what what did you say? A m m
o n At Hillman, h a hill h
Hillman. Okay. And,
and it it is interesting. He he, he he really,
advocates for reading, like, kind of nothing
before. It's it's all classics. It's all Plato, Aristotle,
and it's like the foundation of thought. And in order to
in order to kind of understand what's happening, you
know, 2000 years ago, and more with those
writings is almost imperative to have the foundation on something like
this, if that makes any sense.
Okay. So I should read it because it's good for me,
like my vegetables? Well, I I think because you were talking about,
like, yeah. Absolutely. Let me Okay. Go without
fiber for 6 weeks and see how you do. Tell me
tell me how life is. And why we're gonna ride this
stuff. Build to build so in order to
build on steady in order to build on solid ground.
Right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I would suggest that
Tennyson is
a remarkably accessible poet.
Mhmm. Like, you've you just mentioned those quotes. Well, I
mean, I recognized all those poems. The charge of
the light brigade, you know, of course, has relevance
because, you know, Russia's already, taken over Crimea,
but now is going into Ukraine. But the the that
that battle, you know, the charge of the light
brigade was all about the Crimea at the time.
Right? So but the the lines that you mentioned, you know,
there's not, to make reply. There's not to reason
why. There's but to do and die into the valley of death, rode the
600. You know? The it's just very
inspiring, very accessible
language and when someone reads the poem
when they hear the words in memoriam, for example, they may
think, oh, well, that's Latin or that's, you know, that's
not for me, you know. But then when you read the poems and you see
they're very short little, like, almost fragments, they're
just almost little, not all of them
are long, but most of them are very short. You you go, oh, look at
what he's saying. He he he has
very, pedestrian
mundane images that he's using to talk about, you know, what
it is that he's feeling. And I would say the
same thing with with, the language that we read, like, whether
it be in in, you know, Mariana
or, Mariana. I don't know how how you know? But
you look back, a lot of like you said, a lot of people think, oh,
this is Shakespearean. It's like, no. No. No. He's saying
it's better to have loved and loved and lost than never do have loved at
all. That's very accessible. So, you know,
Ryan's, celebrated the language of of
Tennyson, but I, you know, I I just second that. You
know? It's it's, like, it's accessible and it's readable.
And I think also this, the the Brits were
reading it going, oh, he writes an incredible,
rewriting of the Arthurian legend.
Right. You know? And and it's so it's also
tapping into not just a a mythological
past, but it's bringing that past into the
present and saying, it's still relevant for us,
and it's still something that speaks to us
now. I would suggest that we could do the same thing that he did
then. Go back to the old stories, bring them into the new,
like, Odysseus is now Ulysses, but not just
Ulysses, the man who's going to, you know, end up having
Athena deliver packs of peace. But now he's this person who may just
go traveling again for a whole bunch of years, you know, leaving
his aged wife at home, after, you know, being away
from her all those years. I'm just saying he takes those things from the
past, like Ryan mentioned, 2,000, 3000 years
before. He brings it into the Victorian age.
Now I think that we, you know, just a
mere 200 years later can bring those things
from that era into our present age,
and they still are relevant, they still matter, and it
still strikes a note or strikes a chord. Who
doesn't feel sad when someone is lost?
Who doesn't feel, proud of their nation when it does
something right, you know, who doesn't feel, like
we wanna go back and resurrect the heroes from our
from our, in our memory, you know, and bring
them into the present. You know? I think that's what Tennyson
does for us. It's interesting. Hey, Sinead. You were talking
about the deconstruction deconstruction. It's like, and and,
moment to your to your point, it it's I think that's the first thing that
I was drawn to was like, oh, shoot. We have to read Tennyson. This is
gonna be a beast. And then I was like, wait a minute. This
is pretty easy. I was like, this guy is is is is making it
like you're saying, this is for everyone. It's not this it's not this thing that's
hoarded and I can't do it. I'm I'm brilliant. I'm smarter. It's
like no. No. No. No. No. I'm gonna share all of this with you. You
know, clearly, this is a a, you know, a touched person in this area,
and why not share? That could that kinda builds on the spiritual
end of things as well when you talk about, the the the the use of
nature in his writing as well. So that's a I really
I appreciated that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank
you. And the thing is is this poem, this these
poems, these this poetry
is oh, you
just you just made you you made me think something, and then it just, it
just zipped away. But he's speaking to not just
the the the feelings that we experience, but he's also
saying something about poetry. He's saying something about the
poet. He's saying that there are things that that
people who are creative, who are tapping into
something else that is super this may be
supernatural. You might wanna say we transcend by getting into
this this this act of creation. You know?
He's he's engaging us in it in it and he's
inviting us into that space. And when we
go there, we're not disappointed, you know, but it's
just a lot of times people think, oh, it's not not
you, you know, but I'm a lot of times people come into it thinking
it's gonna be beyond me. It's gonna be too erudite. It's
gonna be too, you know, whatever. Now
that doesn't mean that an educated reader can't get a lot more of the
references or illusions. I mean, it's gonna happen when someone
knows the Arthurian legend. They're gonna come to, you know, more to
Arthur and go. Oh, yeah. I get it. You know, there's a lot more going
on here or when they read Anoni, right, they're gonna be
like, oh, okay. I know about, Paris
and, you know the the promise of Helen based
upon you know his the judgment that he met out to
you know between Hera Athena and Aphrodite right. I mean we
when you read those poems then and you know the back
stories from those classical stories. Yeah. It's a lot richer,
but that doesn't mean that you have to be all educated to come to those
poems and not get you could still get something tremendous
from it. It's so, yeah, it's accessible.
And if you just read the words on the page, even, you
know, like, even the last lines of Mariana, you know, she
wept, I am a weary, a weary, oh god that I were dead.
Who doesn't get that? Well, speaking of speaking
of Mariana or Mariana, we're
gonna read that one next. So let's pick up let's pick up
with Mariana by Alfred
Mort Tennyson With blackest
moss, the flower plots were thickly crusted, one and all.
The rusted nails fell from the knots that held the pair to
the gable wall. The broken sheds looked sad and
strange. Unifin, unlifted was the clinking latch
we did and warn the ancient batch upon the lonely meted
range. She only said my life is dreary. He
cometh not. She said, she said, I am a weary, a weary.
I would that I were dead.
Her tears fell with the dews that even tears
fell air. The dews were dry. She could not look on the
sweet heaven either at born or even tide.
After the flirting no. After the flitting of the bats, when thickest
dark detrans the sky, she drew her casement curtain
by and glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said
the night is dreary. He cometh not, she said. She said I am
weary, a weary, I would that I were dead.
Upon the middle of the night, walking, waking, she heard the night
fowl crow. The cock sung out an hour ere light
from the dark fed, the oxen's low. Came to her
without hope of change, in sleep she seemed to walk forlorn,
till cold winds woke the gray eyed morn, about the lonely
moat at Grange. She only said the day is dreary, he cometh not,
she said. She said, I am a weary, a weary, I would
that I were dead. About a
stone cast from the wall a sluice with blackened water
slept, and o'er at many round and small the clustered,
marish mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook all
way, all silver green with gnarled bark. For leagues no
other tree did mark, the level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said my life is dreary. He cometh not, she said. She said
I am a weary a weary I would that I were dead.
And ever when the moon was low and the shrill winds were up and away,
in the white curtain to and fro, she saw the gusty shadow
sway. But when the moon was very low and wild
winds bound within their cell, the shadow of the poplar
fell upon her bed across her brow. She only said the night
is dreary. He cometh not, she said. She said, I am a weary, a
weary. I would that I were dead.
All day within the dreary house, the doors upon their hinges
creaked. The blue flies sung in the pain. The mouse behind
the moldering Wayne's cot shrieked, Or from the
crevice peered about, old faces glimmered through the doors. Old
footsteps trod the upper floors. Old voices called or from
without. She only said my life is dreary. He cometh not, she
said. She said I am a weary, a weary, I would that I were
dead. The sparrows chirrup on the roof, the
snow, the slow clock ticking, and the sound which to the wooing
wind aloof, the poplar bay did all confound.
Her sense, but she most but most she loathed the hour
when the thick moted sunbeam lay, athwart the chambers and the day
was sloping towards his western bower. Then she
said, I am very dreary. He will not come, she
said. She wept. I am weary, weary.
Oh, God, that I were dead.
I gotta say when I first read that for
this podcast, the image that came
into my head, and because I
I I I have I think it words first and then images because my brain
is weird. The the the words thing converted to
images. I converted those images from or
converted those words into images in my head of,
the the old school animated show on television, Tiny
Toons, which almost no one remembers, back in
the day. Steven Spielberg's attempt to do Looney Tunes. I used to watch it in
high school when I would come back from back from school. And
then Batman, the animated series would come on after that. That was your 1, 2
punch. And then my grandma would watch a Oprah, and then that was it. I
was off the TV for the rest of the day. But for that hour,
I would have Tiny Toons. And and and they did a really good job on
that show of hearkening back to and I've talked about Looney Tunes weirdly
enough on this podcast before. But hearkening back to what Looney Tunes did in
the 19 fifties sixties seventies in incorporating
classical elements into, the, the
cartoon, classical elements of literature, music, all of that. As a matter
of fact, if you go onto my Facebook page currently, you will see the Barber
of Seville with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.
Everything I know about classical music, I learned from Looney Tunes. Anyway,
so on Tiny Toons, they had an episode where
they lampooned Edgar Allan Poe
and the raven. And weirdly enough, that
was the imagery that popped into my head when I read this Tennyson
poem. Those are the two things that clicks together in the mashup
of Hasan's fertile brain.
This poem is
also puts me in mind of Galatians 59 where it says,
a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. All you need is a
little drop of yeast. Right? If you know anything about making bread and then it
just expands and grows. And this poem
is a little drop, and then it expands, and it grows, and it
grows, and it grows. And that is evidenced in the
background of this poem. Again, from
SparkNotes, gonna grab grab this off the Internet. The subject of this
poem of, Mariana is drawn from a line in
Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure, Mariana in the Moted Grange.
This line describes a young woman waiting for her lover, Angelo, who has abandoned
her upon the loss of her dowry. Just as the epigraph from
Shakespeare contains no verb, the poem too lacks all action or
narrative movement. Instead, the entire poem serves as an extended
visual depiction of melancholy
isolation. But it does have a lot of action. So,
anyway, I'm gonna argue with SparkNotes on that one. Yeah. Go ahead. Argue with
SparkNotes. SparkNotes. The same thing, and I was like, I don't know.
Well, we we we we will we will go into the AI
generated Google Gemini, and we will correct SparkNotes. I
just think they were referring that she's kind of just sitting wearily by a window
or some. Like, that's that's sort of the what,
and, and I love the chorus. There's a chorus. Mhmm.
Yes. Yeah. So Refrain. Yeah. There's a lot of
interesting elements in this poem.
And so while Ulysses is about
adventure leadership, it's more of a direct hit to what we actually cover on
this podcast, picking someone for succession, all of that. Mariana
is a little bit more about the zeitgeist of the time. It's a little bit
about some of the things we've already been talking about, existential dread.
Really though, existential dread, remorse, grief,
my lover will not come, you know, I wish that I were dead,
all these kinds of things. Right? And there's no there's
no sort of sugarcoating this to moments point earlier. I
wish that I were dead. I'm weary. I'm weary. I I I gotta get out.
Right? And the
zeitgeist of our time is driven by existential dread of the large things.
But I think that that dread is driven by
or is driven as a distraction for dealing with or acknowledging the small
things. And we see this on both the left and the right
sides in our political world. One of one of the things that
has has really been obsessing me the last 5 or 6 years
has been how our social media platforms
allow us to take very local existential dread
and scale that up to a national level. My and
I the example I always use is this. My son lives my oldest son lives
in New York state. He has he should have he should
never be getting news about anything going on in the town in which I live
in in North Central Texas, and yet he does.
That's insane. Now we can say on a good end that
that connects us all. Right. But there's a
downside to this. And the downside to this is
I I have no control
other than a sense of dread or
or dismay or remorse on
whatever may be going on in his town in upstate New York.
Just like he has no control, direct ability to
impact and influence events in the town that I live in in North Central
Texas. And yet, we can see those things,
and thus, our dread is triggered, which, by the way, I think is one of
the things that one of the reasons why those platforms exist. They exist to trigger
that dread. That's just a they they like that because it keeps you on the
platform more and keeps you clicking because you're constantly clicking around trying to resolve that
dread with more dopaminergic, you know, pushing. Right?
Yeah. They've monetized our anxiety. They've bingo. Excellent. Very
good. Yeah. Exactly. I love that. They've monetized our anxiety,
and there's no reason for it. And this poem is an
example of localized anxiety remaining local,
which is one of the things I think that it should be, local. Go ahead,
Ryan. Just just also reading it as well. It it's
like so writers, again, and if you're a good writer and
you're a remembered writer, they're by default of no fault of the there
are historians as well, so
it starts as time goes on, it starts to
it also becomes part of history.
Right. And
we which is why it's important to look at what was going on in, Tennyson's
life at the time and not just you know, he just he
just wasn't plucked down, you know, this time period. A few stole
his beautiful things and then went back to wherever he was.
So, I don't it it it
when you were talking about social media Mhmm. And it's
it just sent me it's just like the author of an Instagram person. Like, somebody
someone has an Instagram page. Through no fault of their own, they are naturally
a part of history. They're they're part of,
yeah, they're part of the historical conversation because of what they
represent in the movement. And so whether
and largely, that's determined on the relevance or popularity
or being sort of remembered. Right. It was just an observation.
Yeah. No. I know. I I I agree. And that is how
that's the upside of what of of these platforms that are sold to us is
that we will be it's the unstated upside. Right? You'll be a part of
history. We will we will we will rise above
the un the unwashed masses of the vast,
expanses of history who never had a voice. We now
all have a voice to rise above those unwashed masses of
history and to be remembered in the future
except when Instagram shuts down.
Well, if everybody's memorable, is anybody memorable? Well and then it all
gets memory hold, and you wind up in the way back machine of the Internet
and no one looks for you, which is why when I pass
away, I'm I'm asking my family to scrub all evidence
of me ever being on the Internet. Just scrub it from
existence. Even this podcast will go away. So there is an ending, by the way,
to this podcast, Gary. I've started that, by the way.
I mean, I I kinda like it. I kinda like the idea
that I could just disappear from the Internet upon
death. And and I don't wanna be resurrected with AI. I
don't I don't want thousands of hours of my voice on
this podcast. I'm saying this publicly. I do not want thousands of hours of my
voice on this podcast being combined with images so
that some nephew or niece or 4th
generation great great grandkid, you know, a 150 years
from now or a 120 years from now, can somewhat see an I don't want
that. I don't want them to see an avatar of me. I want to go
away. When I'm done, I want to be forgotten. I want to descend back
into the mass of humanity and
be gone because that's okay.
There's it's a bookend. We're supposed to be gone.
Yeah. He says it right there in the poem. I have a Bowman, I have
a question for you. How and and this is all you
know?
How do you think someone like Tennyson would process
the oh my god. The the indestructibility of the Internet. I don't know. Like, I
don't how how do you think minds and then,
like I said, this is not a question, but
just because of kind of, like, how we interpret it and how we experience the
Internet today, if you were to go back and tell that to or a modern
day person, ex describe what the Internet is. How
do you think someone like Tanneson would
would process? I
guess I guess more succinctly would be like,
do you think Tennyson would share share the same opinion that
Hassan has of himself about being wiped?
About being wiped? Wiped from the Internet.
Or wiped? I didn't hear what you were talking the last Wiped from the
Internet. So so
Hasan hey. Hasan's claim is basically after he's dead, he wants
to be as if he never existed. And someone
is a poet like Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tennyson, who's nostalgia
in this rich language, and how does that
is there a cognitive dissonance in there?
I don't see Tennyson as having the same,
desire to be, erased after he's passed
away. I don't I don't think Tennyson is,
I mean, he's left behind so many writings and poems
and and, you know, and, of course, he
had a long life of poetry. He was a, a poet
laureate for many, many years. And, you know,
but I I don't see I I think he would have
embraced the Internet and just, you know, he would have just, like,
any great poet now, you know, would have, you know, the
best would have gotten on there and the all the other would have been just
in notebooks or whatever. And you know what I mean? I but I don't think
I think, Hassan, you're you're selling yourself short. You know, like,
you've got this wonderful out creative output and
you've got guests that you've invited to be part of it.
And, if there's some insight to be
gleaned or gained now, well, at least
as a as a historical artifact, it's gonna be useful in
the future because, you know, it it'll it'll
hopefully just like when Ovid says in
Metamorphoses, you know, help me, oh, muse, to
write, a a a continuous
poem that's not just relevant for back then, but
also for our time, which in his time was the age of Augustus.
Right. So I'm just saying, you know, now 2000 years
later, reading it and going, woah. These stories are so
relevant. So so much so that, say, 400 years ago,
Shakespeare is using those stories to help
him write his plays. Right? And then Shakespeare's
plays helped Tennyson get inspired to
write this poem. You know? So, how how is
your podcast gonna end up inspiring future
leaders to do a similar kind of,
you know, initiative and and and
teaching tool. And, you know, I I think it's all wonderful. I'm sad
that the library at, Alexandria, you
know, burned down Ptolemy's, you know, life. You know what I mean? It's
like so I I I like the idea, you know.
But going back to Marianna just for a second Yeah. It's not
that you you mentioned her localized grief. Right? And
I again, going back to, to Ulysses
and in memoriam, of course, she wrote he wrote this in, what was it,
18:30? Right? And, Ulysses is 18:33.
The in memoriam is between, you know,
about those 10 basically, 20 years of
writing, you know, but, but I think that,
he, again, is reasserting that it's okay to grieve,
in a sense. You know, he's he's capturing her
grief. Right? Oh, I am weary. I am weary. I
am a weary a weary. I'm I would that I were dead. Right?
But it it's okay, you know, and the
the poem shows us that grieving itself has a
rhythm of its own. You know, the mourning of
the perceived past, certainties, you
know, now are replaced with with different concerns,
with new concerns. Right? But one thing that is happening
is the world still goes on all around
her. Right? And that's why I think there is action in
this poem. It's not though located in what
Mariana is doing. It's located in all of the
birds chirping and the moss even doing its
thing and the rusting of the nail. Like, there's a lot of
stuff happening all around her and we get to
see it happen in this in the in the
cycle of an entire night and day. Right? So
at the very end, it's not just, it's
in the middle of you know, we see, the blackest
moss, the broken sheds,
the look look sad and strange. Right? We didn't
warn the ancient thatch upon the lowly moated grange.
Right? It it's like all this stuff is happening, then it happens at
the the dues and even right the dues were
before the the dues were dried. She couldn't even
look on the sweet heaven either at more or
even tide and then we have bats We
you know, even in the middle of the night, waking, she heard the
night fell crow. The cock sung out
an hour air light and keep keeps going down the
poem, to where it's not just
during the nighttime, but even it says, when the moon
was low and the shrill winds were up and away
and on and on. Right? And finally, near the last part of the the
poem, it says, the sparrows cheer up on the roof, the slow tick
clock ticking, and the sound which to the wooing wind aloof the
poplar made did all confound her since. But
most she loathed the hour when the thick moded
sunbeam layeth worth the chamber. So it's not just that
she's sad in the nighttime in the middle of the night. She's also
sad and really, really sad. Oh god, that I were dead.
In the middle of the day, right, when the sun is revealing the dust
of the of her surroundings. I mean so it's just sort of
this the the again, the rhythm of of grief
doesn't have a predictability. And at the same
time, it shows us that sometimes
you just have to ride it out. And, hopefully,
you will you, you know, you won't just succumb to
the feelings or or the thought, I am a weary, oh
weary, oh god, that I were dead. You gotta you gotta kind of
almost embrace it and then move ahead.
Right? And and I'm such a
reactionary person. Mhmm. To sit in it.
Yeah. Is is it's beautiful. Really
is. Uh-huh.
When I think about
what I'm doing here, I wanna tie these 2 things together, these
2 threads together, what we're doing here.
Right?
There's so many books to read, so many insights to be had. Right.
And I as I already mentioned, I only have 30 good years of work probably
left in me. So I
gotta I gotta hustle. Right? I gotta I gotta get after it. Right? I
gotta be on it. Right? I gotta read 4 books a
month. I've gotta line up guests. I've gotta bring people in. Right? I gotta I
gotta I gotta. Right? Yeah. Yeah. If I'm and and and at the end
of that,
I think a lot of I think of the I
think of the, the pivotal scene at the end of Schindler's list
when Liam Neeson is Oscar Schindler takes off his ring.
Right? His, his Nazi ring. Right? Mhmm.
And he says, how many more Jews could this have bought?
I didn't do enough. Right. I didn't do enough.
The, what, this, this, see points to something else I can't, you know, it's been
a long time since I've been 16 years old. Exactly. Takes a pin. Right. Yeah.
Jacket. Yeah. Jacket. Yeah. How many more lives could this have bought?
Yeah. How much more could I have done? Right.
And when you look at sort of the
commercialized consumerist promises of social media and of the
Internet. What we're doing here
goes in the exact opposite direction of all of that
and and and thrusts defiantly
against all of that. And at a certain
point, you just gotta be like, I think, at least for me
anyway, I have to be like, or I have to take the posture of
to paraphrase from Ariana. I am a weary, a
weary. Not that I wish I
were dead. Death will come when it comes.
Don't need to wish it or, or or fear or live in fear of it.
Right? It'll come when it comes, however it comes, whenever it comes.
Am I doing enough with the skills and talents and abilities?
And my larger concern is
that we are so wedded to the short term games. I just did
a shorts episode on this. As leaders, we're so wedded to the
short term click based games that we know we can win right now
that we don't go on the other side of that
arc, right, to do the deep long term things
where we may wind up at the end of 10 years of
work or 15 years of work and go, it wasn't enough. I could've I
could've done more. It wasn't enough. And so people will often
ask me, how long do you why are you doing a podcast that you don't
sell ads on? And I
say the the typical answer that I give, and it is a true answer, it's
part of the true answer, is that I don't wanna have an advertiser tell me
what books I can read and what books I can't. I don't want an advertiser
to tell me what guests I can have on and what guests I can't.
If I'm going to do something outrageous, like, I'm gonna read Mein
Kampf Mhmm. I'm probably gonna wanna have an expert on
there who may be a little unsavory, who might have some things to say about
Mein Kampf. We're gonna I'm gonna I want the
freedom to go get that guy or woman. I do. I want that
freedom. Well, I would hope so. I mean, I'm a scholar of Mein
Kampf in my new order. It doesn't mean I'm a Nazi. Exactly.
Exactly. And I don't need to do a negotiation with
a, very well meaning
advertiser who has a brand to protect Mhmm. Around what you
might or might not say or around who you might might or might not be.
I don't need to have that. That's a level of complication and ridiculousness in
my life that I don't need. So just know. Well, it's Just know. There's also
another thing. You you you're talking about you're you're talking about willingly putting yourself
in a a position that would render you powerless.
Sure. Yes. Exactly. I think that's also
the powerlessness, it can be applied to this this this piece as
well. Mhmm. Because how much we we have we
have, you know, we we we just said how many times moment and and he
signed. He said, we can go at any moment. Any moment. And and we we
can we can we can have we we have control over our response or reaction,
that sort of thing. That's it. Very good. Outcome. Go ahead. And
so Yeah. And then the other but the other reason
is what and then, Ryan, I'll go back to you for just a second, but
I wanna close. The other reason I don't have advertisers is
because advertisers play a short game.
They play a game of of of short term content in
and and and by the way, that's fine if that's the game you wanna play.
I don't object to you. I wanna be very clear. Me critiquing you playing that
game does not mean I object to the game existing. Because if I objected
to it existing or not, it wouldn't matter. The game is gonna exist anyway. This
is how human beings are. It just saying I don't have to play
it. If you perceive it as a critique and you're defensive
about it, cool. I'm merely saying
I don't wanna play that, but the game exists. And so advertisers do
play that and I don't wanna be part of that game. Right? I would rather
go in the opposite end and do something different and more interesting
that just might not work
out. And that's where part of the
erasure idea comes from because maybe at the end of it, it
doesn't work out. Maybe I did all these thousands of
hours, and the meter didn't even move 5 inches.
It sounds like investment and outcome, Hasan. Well well
well and so this is how I think about it. Right? And Mariana is the
kind of poem that puts that front and center. Ryan, go
ahead. No. Interestingly
enough, the ability to stay in the moment, her the the
the ability to stay in the moment, while
also identifying everything that's in the moment.
Right. Is that Yeah. Well, at least the poet's
identifying it. You know? And, you know, eve however
she's, you know, in the pocket of this
despair, you know, I I loved what you said before about
just sort of sitting in it, you know, just kind
of almost nesting. You know?
It's like it's a tough it's a tough thing not to
wanna keep fixing yourself, right, or moving out
of that space, right, that you were mentioning, Ryan.
But going back to the poem, I love, you know, that Ryan started off the
whole analysis back when we were looking at Ulysses with
looking at the language. You know, We see a lot of repetition in this
poem. Of course, we do see the refrains, you know. But when he
says when Tennyson writes, old faces glimmer through the
doors. Old footsteps trod the upper
floors. Old voices called her from
without. She only said my life
is dreary. Right. Come with not. Right? The
the the fact is is though she does have these other people
who are still reaching out to her and, you
know, tapping in into, you know,
her space in a sense by saying, you know,
there's still this is this there's still stuff happening. Right?
Mhmm. And, but
somehow or another, there's there's gotta be something to be said
for embracing
the grief, but also maintaining your
grit. I don't know, you know, in measure for measure,
if if it if it's that Tennyson takes it to its lodge you know,
to what happens with that story. But I think that,
you know, when when,
Tennyson is writing, he's basically
saying you gotta you gotta
observe the rhythm of this grief. Right? You have
to embrace it in a sense. It's good if you're
surrounded by a support system. Mhmm. Right?
But also remember he writes in memoriam after
this. He writes for Ulysses. You know, he's still
writing, but he's in the midst of his grief. It's like when
Milton's John Milton says, you know, in a kind of an
ironic sonnet, you know, that he's, like,
lamenting that his light has been lost.
Oh, when I consider how my light is spent, you know, basically, he's
saying I've lost my eyesight, but he's like, I'm
worthless now. I don't have any I can't do the rest of my mission in
life. But the reality is he wrote another poem.
He's doing it. He's in the acting field. Very thing that he's lamenting that he
can't do anything. You know? And I think it's a similar kind
of dynamic we have here too. You know? It's like,
you know, we're we're not done yet.
Well and and and creatives, athletes,
high functioning high functioning entrepreneurs, small business owners,
anybody who Ryan made a point about, you
know, with with the podcast. Right? About where my power lies. Right?
And then powerlessness with an advertiser. Right? Well, the
and the 4 types of folks I've just mentioned, entrepreneurs, small business
owners, athletes, and, and
creatives, there is a sense of
and this is why Michael Jordan is still considered to be the one of the
greatest basketball players of all time, period, full stop.
Even when he hasn't played in the league in 25, 30 years
almost now. His name still the taste of his name still falls out of
people's mouths. Right? Why? Because he he did
everything that he could do at a very high level, and he only
left when he couldn't keep doing it at a high level. That's Milton.
Mhmm. He's writing the poem at a high level even though he thinks he's lost
it. Yeah. He thinks it's not there anymore. That's
how you know Milton and
Jordan and the entrepreneur who you know who's built a
business that you've never heard of and yet is everywhere. Right? Or the small
business owner on your block. Right? I've known many small business
owners, right, who the reason they can and this gets back to the idea of
succession that we were talking about earlier, around Ulysses. The
reason they can't give away the business is because they don't think that their son
or daughter can do it at the same high level that they did it.
They just don't believe it. Mhmm. There's also elements of,
like, regardless of what is occurring in your life, like, the
show must go on, man. And
I worked with it I I worked with a woman. It was unbelievable.
She was a dishwasher at a restaurant, a small restaurant. I was
a friend of hers, a meat market. The the the back was sandwich and bar
shop. She had a baby on, like, a Monday.
She was back washing dishes on, like,
Thursday. Oof. And we were like, what? And she's like,
hey. Show must go on. You
know? And that's it. That's it.
Alright. We've been talking about In Memoriam. It is a
long poem. There are, my
gosh, multiple parts to In Memoriam.
Yeah. And then when I first looked at it, I thought, oh my lord. The
Roman numerals never end on the numbering of this one.
It gets into the Roman numeral c, which I'm not even clear. I don't even
remember what the Roman numeral c is.
And I'm sure Hundred. I I guess something like it's gotta be. Right? I thought
that was l. Wait. No. L's 50. So c has to be a hundred.
Right. Okay. Alright. Cool. All I know is
there aren't as many Super Bowls as there are parts of the
poem in memoriam. Not yet, anyway.
There's a lot of poems and yeah. Yeah. And each one of the
poems in In Memoriam ties into the next one,
in sir with certain elements. But each one of the poems can stand
individually on its own. So we're just gonna pull one that has a very famous
line at the end, and then I want to, what, I wanna wrap up because
we've talked extensively today. Both of you have been very gracious
with me, and we're we're we're rounding the horn here.
So I'm gonna read in memoriam, as I tell
my sometimes tell my son when I'm reading him Jules Verne and Journey
to the Center of the Earth, my 7 year old boy, XXVII.
27. That's right.
I envy not in any moods, the captive void of noble
rage, the linnet born within the cage that never knew the
summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes his
license in the field of time unfettered by the sense of crime to
whom a conscience never wakes, nor what may count
itself as blessed to the heart that never plight his trough, but
stagnates in the weeds of sloth, nor want
nor any want to be gotten rest. I hold it true.
Whatever befall, I feel it when I sorrow most.
Tis better to have loved and lost than never
to have loved at all.
And, again, there's tons more, right, of these poems. Go out and
pick up the collection of Tennyson's poems and plays. It will
enrich your life, and you will not regret
it. I wanna make one comment right here. Reading this, it's the
it's so beautiful. Like, it really is going back and and and seeing this and
be like, I had this book, though. What am I doing?
But so Picasso went into the cave of
Lascaux, the Mhmm. Cave paintings, and he
said, we've invented nothing.
So when I read this or listen to you read
this Mhmm. It it makes me
it it it helps me remember that we're standing on the
shoulders of of
yeah. They're they're almost gods at this point. You know?
Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Because,
not not only do we quote these people,
you know, rightfully, you know, but what they're saying
is is it feels timeless. It
feels prophetic. It feels like
more than just a lecture from a professor. It
feels like that because they are prophetic.
They are prescient. They are brilliant,
the these poems by Tennyson. And he
he says things that get to the real
heart of the matter. You know? And, again, he
is he is, like, he is mourning the loss of his
best friend who was really young when he died. And
he thought there was all this potential. There was all
this, he thought he was that Arthur Henry Hallam was better
than Tennyson himself. Wow. And the but and
so he thought this is an extinguished light.
What in the world is going on with this thing called life?
Right? And, but then he observes the
world around him and says, I envy not in any
moods the captive void of noble rage,
the linnet born within the cage that never knew the Summer Woods. Right? I mean,
he's in other words, he gets in to he gives us these images
that ultimately he will tell us,
you know, that it's better to have loved
and lost than never to have loved at all. So he goes, it was worth
it. Right? And Yeah. It sounds very romantic, like
it's about a man and a woman. You know, I think that's how a lot
of pop culture kind of takes it. But this is really, you know
Tennyson the poet is is
revealing himself as the speaker of this poem saying,
it's better to risk it than to to
to to to break
yourself off from the world. Right. Mariana. Right.
Right. And, Yeah. And it it it it's worth it. And,
I hold it true whatever befall, he
says. Right? So there is truth for
Tennyson. He holds some things true. Right? He can still
hold on. And that's one one of the thing that's things that's
so comforting in these the midst of these poems. He will talk
about the this this tension
between let's just call it evolution as
opposed to science. Well, like and faith
or, you know, religion. Right? He in memoriam is full of
that. There's a lot of poems that deal with with those 2, you
know, mad those 2, issues, and and he's trying
to, like, trying to reconcile those two things. But
here he says, ultimately, I hold it true whatever
befall. I feel it when I sorrow most to
it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Reconciliation of tension, access to
knowledge. Right? Mhmm. And yet a a
a a a a sure fit of wisdom,
relationships, and the meaning of them and the depth of them,
life, and what is this thing? It's almost the Beatles
could have almost written that line.
Institutions, bureaucracies, systemic structures that build cages
around people, and then demand that we exist inside of them when
everything in us is maybe screaming to burst out.
I I I I frame my last part of this as the eternal sunshine
of the inscrutable mind. I was being clever there.
Yeah. And I think
that our minds are inscrutable to us.
We actually don't know ourselves. And a poet like
Tennyson opens the door for us to know
ourselves by exposing what we don't know in a raw
kind of way, but doing it in a way that is,
gentle, that is, fundamentally, I
think, loving. Right? And loving from
a agape sense, not an eros. This is
not this is not eros. You may wanna put arrows to moment to your point.
You may wanna place arrows on top of this, but it is not that's not
what we're talking about here. We're talking about agape love. We're talking about
the love of between that exists just between people
in a who are pursuing a common goal called trying to
figure out life. Mhmm.
And this is this goes beyond productivity. This goes beyond our tools. This goes
beyond our systems and processes. This goes beyond our science and
our rationality. This even goes beyond our religious structures and our dogma.
This goes to something else, and poetry is the
vehicle for that something
else. And so It's a big Go for it. Yeah. So, you know,
usually, I wind up these or I try to wind up these podcast episodes with,
like, this is what you should maybe take from this. But occasionally, I'll run I'll
run across episodes or I'll do episodes where the answer will
be, I've concluded nothing. I have no conclusions for you. It's
an open ended episode. I'm thinking this is gonna be an open
ended episode because I have no conclusion here. There's no
there's no dating mall from the climax. Right?
I do I do believe in what t e Lawrence said, never outstay a climax.
So we're gonna we're gonna let we're gonna let Roman Ryan
close off here. Come back to your points, though. Socrates
was wise in that he said the unexamined life isn't worth
living. Yeah. Right? And Tennyson repeats
that in his own way by saying I envy not the beast that takes his
license in the field of time, unfettered by the sense of crime,
to whom a conscience never wakes.
Right? I mean, it's embedded. Right? It ultimately,
he's saying it's good to think and
to have a conscience and to be bothered
by the various aspects of life
and not just be sort of,
kind of not slothful, just, you know, not taking advantage of
the moments. Right? You you you, in Ulysses,
he says, I wanna drink life to the lees,
right, to the bottom of the cup where the sediment is.
Right? I think it's the same thing here. It's like, what does that look
like? What does that sense of
living life to the leaves, drinking it to the bottom of the cup
look like? It's not just a hedonistic. It's not just a, you
know, a sense of, to eat,
drink, and be merry for tomorrow, we die. I think there but there is a
sense of urgency Even if you're gonna live into your
eighties or nineties or or beyond, who knows what'll happen when we're
ultimately at that age, you know, I would hope.
It's it is the sense of if you're gonna
live, you've gotta live. And to
be in it, like Ryan said earlier, just
in it. And so I don't know. These poems
inspire me to take
the life that we've been given, however
that works, and just ex just ring
it out to where at the end of it, that
cloth is that is dry. You know? The the cup
is down to its bottom of the, you know, the the sediment in the
bottom of that cup. And, and it it will
have been better to have loved and lost than never to
have loved at all. I think you could change that out. It's it'd
be better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at
all. Ryan, final words?
That I think, Tennyson is do both both of you beautiful, by the way.
Thanks so much.
Not only I think
I I get a sense of Tennyson's
character through reading all of
these, and it's not I mean, I've I've I've
read it's this is this is and I've never spent this much time on
Tennyson, but it has affected me much differently than
before. And I the
takeaway is I get a sense that he, you know,
he, you know, it's a,
he did the dance. Like, he, you know, he put his money money
where his mouth is, that sort of thing. Like, he didn't just glaze over
the the summary and then and then, you know, and then turn all
this stuff out with some you know? The the there is that that
book years ago called million little pieces Mhmm. And,
found out, after the fact so short story. I'm in
recovery. I haven't had a drink. The other day was, 20 years, and,
a friend of mine by the name is Cynthia. I've known her my entire life.
She bought this book for me, A 1000000 Little Pieces. She was like, it was
so inspiring. Blah blah blah. I've read the first three pages, and I was like,
this is BS. This guy didn't do any of this. And then he was on
Oprah, like, a few weeks later Yeah. And it was K. And
someone who's experienced who did the deed, I knew that he was
lying. But everyone else who read it, they thought it was a
miracle. And so that is sort of my takeaways. Like, he
did all the shit. Yes. And so
yeah. And with
that, I would like to thank Ryan
Stout and Momen Kazi for coming on the Leadership
Lessons from the Great Books podcast one more time. This is the
first time we've had them both on together at the same time. And,
and with that, well, guess what? We're
out. Goodbye. Thank you. Bye. It was a pleasure.