80: Everyone's a Critic

Hi and welcome to classical stuff you should know. Spring break, spring break, spring break, spring break. Uh huh. Anyway, we are on Spring break.

And we're moving on from that right away. You live from Austin Beach. Okay. We're going to have you live from South by Southwest.

Wow! That's literally true. We have no way of filling it with South by Southwest. You're going to have a clear for that.

And we are now, oh look we just got an email with a cease and desist from South by Southwest. Just kidding. But yes in the Spring break we are here, we are casting pods with you. We are classical stuff you should know.

A podcast about the classical world, ancient things and... We're not trying to rediscover golden age of education but we're trying to think about what makes education timeless, about the human soul and how human beings have not drastically changed from 3,000 years ago to now that we all, our hearts are still the same. We all desire the same things and there is a way to grow up with a child into honorable manhood and womanhood. And that is what we like to explore and talk about and think about.

Man what a pitch don't I'm not super good intro. Can you ever more than just do that every time? Okay well it starts with... Actually if you can just remove that part.

And maybe I think you are taking the reins on this one. What are we going to learn today? As most episodes I kind of have no idea but we'll see where we end up. So our starting place for today is a little book called...

It's a Preface to Paradise Lost. I think this was before it was it's on a separate book. It was literally a Preface to... The Preface that was at the beginning of...

Very large edition of it, obviously. So this is... So Paradise Lost, just hearing Graham and AJ talk about it, feels like one of those books that I ought to in fact read. So I'm working my way up to that.

I think on AJ's suggestion he said to read the Preface before reading Paradise Lost itself, which makes sense. It is a Preface. So this is my first time through it. This is a book you all read before correct?

Yeah it's by C.S. Lewis for those who are listening. It's really good. It's one of the back bones of how I teach the book in class.

A lot of what you've heard me talk about on the podcast, Oh Paradise Lost, is the ideas were started by that book and then sort of expanded on by just me talking about it in class and having kids say stuff and I go, oh, that's smart. I'm done seminars on stuff from that book that have nothing to do with Paradise Lost. It's more about that. There's so much content in there that isn't just how to read and understand Paradise Lost.

Totally. I think poetry and virtue and how we read classics and how we should accept the book and how the theology of millenenerics with theology of today. It's really good. It is really good.

I was so I've only just started reading it and it's my first time through it. What surprised me is how it's not really talking about Dante or I'm sorry how it's not really talking about Milton or Paradise Lost yet. It is it's setting the stage with like different types of epic before it gets into Paradise Lost. So that was a surprising thing to me.

I think one of you had said that maybe the drier parts of this book are the earlier sections. Yeah first two chapters about primary and secondary epic are just kind of boring if you're not interested in that sort of thing, but it does get better. Because you all have both read Paradise Lost before coming to the Preface, correct? I remember my history was I read Paradise Lost a little bit in a poetry class in college and then got a job here many years later and they're like hey can you teach Paradise Lost?

I said of course I can and I'm like I don't think I've ever read this. I read that preface and then taught the class. And then taught the class after that. That makes sense.

Seven years later still love Milton. That's actually. That's high praise. So just to say listener I will of course encourage you to pick up a copy of the Preface Paradise Lost, but you might have the same experience I do of saying he's not talking about Paradise Lost very much and he has a set the stage before he can get into the book itself.

So this is really interesting idea of like Milton shows this specific form of epic for a reason and that's kind of what he's going through in the first few chapters. So it's interesting, but I had no context. I never read Paradise Lost. I'll just say that.

So the chapter we'll start with today is actually the second chapter. So he's talking through the difference of primary and secondary epic, but we're going to talk about this chapter is criticism possible, which is a digression from his main argument. So we're not really going to be talking about Paradise Lost. Sorry, listener.

So here's the quote from the beginning of the chapter and we'll go from there. The title of the chapter is, is criticism possible. But first necessary digression. A recent remark of Mr.

Eliot's prose. Sorry, a recent remark of Mr. Eliot's poses for us at the outset. The fundamental question whether we, mere critics, have any right to talk about Milton at all.

Mr. Eliot says bluntly and frankly that the best contemporary practicing poets are the only jury of judgment whose verdict on his own views of Paradise Lost he will accept. He goes on. So the only people who can say whether Paradise Lost is good or not is modern is contemporary poets.

So like good poets can say whether Milton is good or not. This is Lewis's claim or what? This is Eliot's claim. This is Eliot's claim, which to spoil Lewis will eventually refute or very quickly refute.

So just hearing Eliot's stance. What do you have to say to that? So let me see if I can break this down a little bit. So Eliot says the people who know how to criticize the game are people who've played the game at a high level.

Whereas Lewis says you can have never played the game, but you can be a student of the game and have know a lot about the game and therefore criticize the game. Is that kind of, I guess I'm spoiling all the conversation, but I don't think Lewis ends up giving very satisfactory criteria for who gets to say whether Paradise Lost is good or not. But he does say that it's insufficient to say that only modern, let me get the right phrase, the best contemporary practicing poets. I don't think that those are the only people who get to be the jury of judgment for Paradise Lost.

Yeah. I mean, it's like the same. You hear that argument and it's like sports writing, right? Or commentators.

Do you want to, like, are people who've never played hockey? Can they write about hockey and talk about hockey and be critical about hockey? Oh, for though you guys are from Texas, so hockey is a game on a frozen surface of ice. Wait, what?

Really? Why would anyone do that? Sounds boring. I don't know what you get the ball through there.

I don't understand. You flatten the ball. You freak it. It's made of galvanized rubber.

I think I disagree with Eliot. I think I have to because I teach the book and talk about the book. Can you do yourself or not? Yeah.

Yeah. I read some of your emails. They get up there. Yeah, they get super long.

You do write wonderful, like, toasts. Like, you write poetry during meetings. Sure, those jokes. Yeah.

But they're also wonderful. And that's because I'm like, should we be paying attention to the meeting? So I'm not writing a little poem about the meeting. It feels okay.

Hey, Jay, what's it say you? So Eliot stands on one side and says that only the best one temporary action poets can be the jury of judgment for Paradise Lost. And Lewis says, nah. And I'll give Lewis his arguments in a second after this.

But what's it say ye? Oh man, I mean, I guess I'm still sort of developing my notions about what I believe about this. Here's where I'm kind of landing right now. Only those who have a developed understanding of a thing can best criticize whether a thing is good or not.

Yes. But whether a thing is good or not should also be recognizable at least at a low level by those who enjoy it. And it depends on the thing. Right.

So let's say wine. Right. So I'm, I don't really like wine. I'm not a huge wine guy.

But I can have wine and I can say this tastes kind of good or this tastes kind of bad. But a Somalia is going to be better able to tell me whether something is fantastic or not. But wine is something that you kind of have to have a develop out for. Right.

It's not for everybody. But there are certain things that are supposed to be entertainment. Right. So if you're a professional actor to enjoy a certain movie, that movie is failing.

Right. It is designed to entertain the masses. And if it's not entertaining the masses, it's doing it wrong. Right.

So as far as poetry goes, I guess it depends on who it's aimed at. Right. If I, if I'm talking Instagram poetry, well, that's aimed at the masses. If I don't get it, there's probably something wrong there.

Is that a thing? Is that a thing? Oh, yeah. So just take it like a common sentence.

Like I saw you walking down the street, but take away all capital letters and then. Put it in a serif font. Put it in a serif font. Put it in a serif font and then obviously it's a digital photo.

But make it look like it's typewritten. And have like a black and white sort of curly drawing around the edges or something. And then just do line breaks at weird spots. So I saw you walking down the street.

And everyone's just like, oh, my goodness. Which sounds horrible. So I used, I mean, I still have the Twitter. It's private.

So no one's trying to look it up. But all of my tweets were haiku. So maybe I was like the, uh, the proto, this person. Neither of you are following me.

Seriously? You have a, only haiku Twitter. Yeah. Anyway, so that's the thing.

So when I Google Instagram poetry, the first thing that comes up is an Atlantic article that I hope that you title of makes you very sad. How Instagram saved poetry. So there you go. So there you go.

So there you go. So I think it's a fine distinction to say that there are different goals and different types of media or entertainment. And so yeah, something aimed at the masses. The masses, that means anyone could say whether it's good or not.

Actually, bad Instagram poetry has inspired me to direct poetry. Actually, I do not even plan on talking about it. But I started to have the book right here. I'm giving myself a little like spring break and also sort of life task.

And that is I'm trying to find as many different wacky poetic forms that there are. And you know who has the most wacky poetic forms? So the Dutch. The Welsh.

Really? Yes. So for example, I'm just taking out all the different kinds of poetic forms that I can find. So like I can't even pronounce it.

A phrase licky. What? It's Welsh. And anyway, so I'm getting all these different poetic forms.

I'm writing them down this little book and I'm going to try to write one poem in that form as many times as I can. So like if I have 30 poems, I'll write 30 poems and I'll go back to the beginning and try it again. Because the free form crappy Instagram poetry just is so annoying. I was like, surely someone, surely you can, also this idea of, so I'm not a poet, I'm not very good at writing poetry.

I don't even think I'm all that good with like finding words and metaphors. But I have the belief as a classical educator that by practicing and copying, so in this case copying forms and going and reading good poems in these forms and by copying them and trying to like do what other people who writing in these forms do, you get better at it and hopefully you can kind of get to the point where something is more competent. You're a practicing poet. Yes.

Similar to like if you were copying the masters and painting. Yes. Right. And my hope is that if I do that, then I could create something that I'm satisfied with so that every time I read Instagram poetry, I'm not, I'm not, sort of, just sort of how vapid and sort of shallow and everything is.

Anyway. So we're talking Milton. Yeah. I think Milton is designed to be something that a lay person can read and enjoyment.

Yeah. But more layers are discovered as you study it deeply, right? There's more to be found. Right.

It's a good movie where there is symbolism. And if you want to study it, you can. If you don't want to study it, you can read it once and enjoy it. And that's what's good at both levels.

Right. And it's not supposed to be the mark of a classic. But on the second read, you'll learn more and you can keep on reading it and it keeps on giving you more. And that's, that's the mark of the book.

Presence of depth. Yeah. All this is just a wrap up on Instagram poetry. You all have probably heard this before.

Robert Frost has a wonderful quote. You go free versus like playing tennis without a net. Yeah. Yeah.

So that actually sounds like a really fun game. That's terrible. It sounds great. Why bother?

It feels like. Right. Well, then you're just playing racquetball essentially. Okay.

Good. Yeah. All right. So it was just so in English class, we read a lot of paradise lost out loud or sorry, I read a lot of paradise lost out loud while we're teaching it.

And paradise lost has lots of those that were sort of popular when Milton wrote it. A lot of those digressions where when he digresses and he's like, you know what, this reminds me of it's kind of like this. It's kind of like this old Greek army. No, it's not like that.

It's Norwegian Viking. No, you know what it's really like. It's like a Norwegian Viking ship that got beached on a stranded whale. And then anyway, Satan.

So there's a lot of these digressions. I want students try to read it at home. They're like, oh my goodness, I have no idea what he's talking about. But I found that when you read it out loud, students sort of realize when you're digressing.

And if you as a good reader are reading it and you have the emphasis and you have the right places and the characters are speaking that a untutored and Milton 15 year old can sit and listen and get and enjoy it or understand what is happening in the scene. Maybe it's harder for them to read themselves. But just by listening it, they can get it. And hopefully it is left an impression on them that like, oh my goodness, there's so much here if I wanted, if I wanted to go into it, but I can also just kind of enjoy the fact that these demons are talking to each other in hell and that's sort of already kind of interesting.

So I think that's almost like it has enough for the masses, but also has like all this depth, like a good movie or a... So I don't agree with Elliot. Where the only way to assess whether something is good or bad is if you yourself are a poet. I mean, Elliot, say it like a C's.

Because he's a poet. Yeah. I mean, like for so for example, I know we're still digressing here, but it's not a good redemption. Right?

If you haven't seen it. I know. It's a great movie. It's about a guy who ends up in jail and eventually escapes and how all that happens.

And it's really enjoyable on a first watch. It's got Morgan Freeman. He narrates the whole thing as he should. If you want to go deeper, you can and see how they use lighting to events like when it's actually warm sunlight.

That's when he's feeling most human and when he's in jail and feeling inhuman, it's these dark overcast days. So like the basic way that they frame every shot and do all this cinematography. Well, if you're a cinematographer, you're gonna appreciate it. But if you're a random person in the audience and just watch the movie, it's also still good.

Yeah. I like that. So let's go through Lewis's argument and then we'll go on to our next writer who has some thoughts on this. So Lewis takes us more from a logical perspective.

So again, Elliot is saying only the best contemporary practicing poets can be the jury of judgment for Paradise Lost. So Lewis says, let us consider what would follow if we took Mr. Elliot's view seriously. The first result is that I, not being one of the best contemporary poets, cannot judge Mr.

Elliot's criticism at all. What then shall I do? Shall I go to the best contemporary poets who can and ask them whether Mr. Elliot is right?

But in order to go to them, I must first know who they are. And this by hypothesis, I cannot find out the same lack of poethood which renders my critical opinions on Milton worthless renders my opinions on Mr. Pound and Mr. Auden equally worthless.

Should I then go to Mr. Elliot and ask him to tell me who the best contemporary poets are? But this again will be useless. I personally may think of Mr.

Elliot a poet. In fact, I do. But then as he has explained to me, my thoughts on such a point are worthless. I cannot find out whether Mr.

poet or not until I found out I cannot know whether his testimony to the poethood of Mr. Pound and Mr. Pound is valid. Isn't that funny?

It is funny. I like that. And then at the basis of his whole critical edifice then lies the judgment I am poet, but this is a critical judgment. It therefore follows that when Mr.

Elliot asks himself, am I a poet, he has to assume the answer I am before he can find the answer I am. And that's so fundamentally, it's a logical point he makes that we can't know who these great poets are. And so we can't use that as a criteria. Yeah, if your judgment is taken out of it, you have to trust the judgment of those that you cannot judge.

Yeah. So again, he takes more from a logical perspective. But what you are getting at is something more fundamental and I think is important. Let's go to Leo Tolstoy, who is Leo Tolstoy, what do you all know about this fellow?

He's an Ashen. Ashen. Was he... What did he read?

Andy Recht. Andy Recht. Ornpeice. The death of him.

I don't know about that. Yes, the death of him. I have only ever read. How much land does one man need or something like that?

A short story? He read that short story. I've never read it. I'm getting him confused with those ideas.

Exactly. He was the guy that sort of invited a whole bunch of dudes to sort of live at his house and his wife didn't like it. And he... That's correct.

The death of... I'm Leo Tolstoy. He died at a train station. He died at a train station.

He was having a criminal. Yeah. Oh, man. He's a Russian author.

He's what we're getting at here. So Ornpeice and I are probably the most relevant to people listening. Or the one you've probably heard of. You have a beautiful copy.

A three volume set of Word and PC. Every man library on your shelf. And I must practice the Christian virtues because I covered it. And I mustn't.

Well, then... Practice that. Then that three volume set is doing its job. I just covered all of those beautiful every man library books.

Oh my goodness. I have a copy. It's coming in the mail of Brideshead Revisited. Never read it.

And I got the every man copy for like eight bucks used on Amazon. I'm super stoked. Sounds like a good book. I think the Serti Institute did a close reads series on Brideshead.

You might want to listen to that too. It was pretty good. I was not reading it with him. Okay.

So Tolstoy wrote a number of novels, short stories, things. Russian author. And he also wrote an essay that I find helpful, interesting, called What Is Art? Have you all read What Is Art?

I have not read What Is Art. Okay. So I feel like coming from Tolstoy matters. I mean, he having created art might have some really interesting ideas on what is art.

So let's make this. I'll give you a couple quotes and then we'll distill from there. The business of art lies just in this. To make that understood and felt which in the form of an argument might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.

The business of art lies just in this. To make that understood and felt which in the form of an argument might be incomprehensible and inaccessible. So if I'm trying to say how I feel about a meadow at dusk, I can't argue you and to understand it is best if I express it to you in some other form or painting or song or something like that. Yes.

Leaving some sort of artifact that leaves that emotional impression or leaves that that not just an emotional impression but leaves that impression of how something makes you feel and think and reflecting on the understanding of my current experience of a meta purpose. That's good. I like that. That's a really good definition.

So you're talking to the aesthetic aspect of it. So there are things of beauty that we can't experience purely through bullet pointed arguments. But there's also an element of it. So yes, you feel something for beauty but also there are like moral arguments that you wouldn't agree to.

If I just said Graham, you should stop covering that book over there. Instead, I can tell you a story about someone who covered a book and then that book killed them or something. I feel it and I'm trying to read it on my car drive home and I drop it and it hits the accelerator and I go flying off the bridge. Oh my gosh.

You all are writing the story right now. I hate this. So art is to evoke oneself a feeling one has once experienced and having evoked it oneself out by means of movement, lines, colors, sounds or forms expressed in words. So to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling.

That is the activity of art. So it is that you're trying to transmit something to someone else. So feeling is one part of it. But he also talks about it.

He keeps going back to art must be moral. So any art that is conveying an immoral teaching in a positive way is bad art regardless of the self. So my boy William Blake, the marriage of heaven and hell will be bad art. Well, he was moral.

He was making moral. I don't know unless it was satire. Well, William Blake, isn't that definitely moral? Yeah.

But he believed the things he was writing in the marriage of heaven and hell. That's what I'm saying. And so even if you could say, oh, it's so beautifully written, the content of what is being written about matters to Tolstoy. By saying like just be like licentious.

Yes. What does he base that on? Tolstoy. His personal experience.

So he has to be good art. It has to be moral. We pose this question to our seniors. When?

It's one that you and I really disagreed on. It was about like art and moral and what to do. Do you blame do blame art for the impression that leaves on you? Oh, yeah.

Do blame is the is the artist culpable for his art. I think was the question. Yeah. No, the question is can art itself be moral or immoral?

That's right. Because Oscar Wilde says no, a book is neither good nor bad. It is either well written or poorly written. It cannot be moral itself.

Yeah. And I was on the I was on I was taking the side of Oscar Wilde and that conversation. And I disagree with that. I guess I take the side of Tolstoy and say that that that a book a beautiful book that is immoral.

But like for example, I have tried twice in my life to read Lolita, Nabokov, Nabokov. Nabokov. I can't pronounce his name. You think of someone who watches a lot of hockey when you know how to pronounce Russian names.

But anyway, twice in my life tried to read that book. And it's a book about like a 13 year old girl's sexual encounters with like a 40 year old man lodging in her house. And it's every time I read it, it's just so dark and depressing that I can't, even if I can't sort of distill any beauty from it because it's just so nasty. But there are people who say that this book is like, you know, a important piece of literature.

And I, and for whatever reason, I just can't get over the fact that it just feels so like smudty. Right. Even there was like a book that someone was talking about, I think it was called Reading Lolita in Tehran. Yeah.

And I was just thinking about that as like a concept, I was, I think what they were saying was we take this book and we bring it to these women that are oppressed in this sort of oppressive regime and we show them that, hey, if you're the power of literature, like you can liberate yourself from oppressive, you know, patriarchy or whatever. I mean, okay, that's maybe a fine concept, but Lolita. That's what they're going to use. Right.

So I, I feel like either I'm missing something or I just way, I just very much strongly agree with full story on this. You want to say anything with the country? It depends on how far you want to dive into this conversation. It is relevant.

Let me just say that. So Tolstoy does say that it matters the moral argument that the author is making in their work. The issue of beauty is separate, but you need both to have a work of art, essentially. You need both it to be conveyed well and a good thing to be conveyed.

So I think it's relevant to the discussion. We're going to, yeah. The position I was taking in that conversation that I had with Donaldson is that. So Donaldson, you reacted negatively to that book.

How do you know the author didn't write Lolita to give you those feelings that no matter how much someone may glorify the sexual exploits of the young, it's smart, right? He wrote it to show you that no matter how much it might be beautified, you should have that reaction that you had. Right. The book itself is not moral.

Your reaction to the book is moral. Sure. I mean, I never, I've never finished it because I, every, every time I, both times I've read it, I've just sort of had to put it away for the health of my own soul, just because it was so depressing. Right.

Even if at the end he says, you know, the sexual liaisons of the young are a beautiful thing. Maybe the author himself intended you to act inversion to that and then always hold an opinion otherwise. But then what happens to those? What about Paradise Lost?

Right. Some people react to Paradise Lost and say that Satan is the hero. Yeah. Right.

In that sense, that would be an immoral book. But they're having a wrong reaction to the book itself. Right. Yeah.

But then this comes down to criticism. So this comes down to, you're not so much arguing, authorial intent, but arguing like what does the book have in it that makes it up that is advocating or not advocating a specific reading of that book. And I know that you and I differ on this, that I think that there are readings of things. In fact, when we get to my podcast in a couple of episodes, when we're going to talk about the wasteland, anyway, we'll get to that.

But I know that I have a stronger belief in the fact that there are canonical readings of things and then there are bad takes on things. Oh, I'm saying no, no, no, no, but you're saying that like, if I'm understanding you correctly, that what I read Lolita and I say, let's not use Lolita because I never finished it. So it's sort of a bad example. But if we use Paradise Lost and I say, no, Satan is not the hero, like he ends the book a laughable snake and clearly what he's done is so terrible.

And people say, Satan's totally the hero because look how awesome he is in book one and book four, he's so like, you know, majestic and like a cover of a metal album and he's just so cool. And I say, we're not taking the whole book into consideration, like we need to have a critical back and forth. But and at the end of that, I would say Milton is intending the view that I've come away with and the view that C.S. Lewis is talking about, like that was his intent.

And the people who read this and say, Satan's actually the hero and Milton is like an icon of class. That's just a bad take. They're incorrect. And you're saying, no, how can you not know that Milton intended that?

No, I'm not arguing authorial intent. I'm saying that authorial intent aside, the book is an artifact and how you react to that artifact makes you moral or immoral. The artifact is itself a thing. It's like a rock.

It's your reaction to that that is moral or immoral. No, the rock has been crafted in a way that is going to have desired effects on human souls. So there's the authorial intent. Fine.

But I mean, but like, so we have an Elton John, you have an Elton John album on your wall, right? Yeah. And Elton John wrote what Elton is it? Breaking Hearts.

Breaking Hearts. So Elton John wrote that album and you know, you write music because you want people to like listen to the music and love the music and enjoy the music. And so craft and care was put into it to have it be some risk, to have it be melodies that are catchy and stick in your mind. And if you put in songs of like absolute dissonance or key changes that worked felt terrible or beats that changed every measure so you couldn't keep up with it, like you've now crafted an artifact that is uncomfortable to listen to.

Now if you did that, he would be doing that on purpose and he could say, I've crafted this because I want you to feel uncomfortable. Or I've crafted this because I want you to, you know, because this is a must we jam and I want you to enjoy it. And I feel like the same is true when you're talking about in moral books. Like if somebody is glorifying the sexual exploits of the young and everything in that book is made for its glorification, then I don't see how you can go around and say, I, but he's just doing that to make you think, he's just doing it to make you want to realize how gross it is.

I don't know, that just feels like that's the, like someone who's making pornography says like, oh, but you know, we're doing this just to liberate human sexuality and say, you're trying to make money and, you know, you're going to lowest common denominators and no one believes that you're doing this to like benefit society. I don't think pornography could necessarily not call art or you write a shallow book. Between pornography. Well, in the difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.

That's not the quote. Anyway, so for example, once something that might illustrate my viewpoint, I once wrote a poem about Methuselah, right, and I put it in modern day. Methuselah lived a long time, 969 years, I think it was. And his dad, Methuselah's dad was taken up by chariot into heaven, right?

And so if I am a young boy and my father had been taken up into heaven, right, I think it was, I forget his dad's, Enoch, Enoch, he was taken and he was not because he got took him, right? So if my dad was taken up by God and I'm hitting year 968 and I'm thinking, man, I'm still here, I've lived longer than anybody else I know ever, maybe the same thing was supposed to happen to me and God forgot. And so in my poem, he spends a lot of time looking at things at represent time. So the rings of a redwood tree and he can count them and to him, it seems terrible.

And then eventually he stops worrying about all these things and he tries to fill his time and he messes with people and he turns snarky young children into glassy eyed philosophers and he puts, you know, he just does all kinds of weird stuff to fill his time because he has nothing else going on. At the end, he sort of resigns himself to God having forgotten about him and he does all these things that represent him taking time away from himself. So he shaves his head, he shaves his beard, he cuts all of his fingernails, which all are records of time and he looks at the tide going in and out because it's timeless, right? It's just a circular, you know, circular process.

At the end of the poem, I have God come down as a mosquito and bow and drink Methusel's blood as a reservoir of human experience because God didn't have the same experience yet. It was a thousand years of human experience that God got to drink from, right? That is not a great representation of God. It's not, right?

That's, this here is putting human experience above the Godhead and glorifying human experience perhaps above the divine. So wouldn't you say that that is a immoral poem? No, I want you to think about it. That's all.

But it's bad. It's not evil. I want you to think. This reaction you're having, it's bad to put a reservoir of human experience above the existence of God is perhaps just the reaction I want.

But you wrote it thinking it was cool. No, I wrote it thinking it was well written. But do you recognize that that is a sentiment that you disagree with? Yeah.

I'm allowed to, as an artist, espouse a sentiment I disagree with in the hopes that you might disagree with it as well. I'm going to move us on from here just to say that Tolstoy's view is not entirely agreed with and actually our next author disagrees with Tolstoy. So just to offer. Yeah.

So that's why I didn't want to do this. I knew it would be a long conversation. In one that's not resolved. But I think it's helpful for the listener to hear that Tolstoy's position is not just to reflect on what we just experienced.

I can't believe we disagree so much on this. Which is fine. But Tolstoy put out this view that you all thought you initially agreed with. Like it sounds good when you first hear it of, right, that art is about conveying something that can't be conveyed through.

Oh, I still like that part. Yeah, exactly. But Tolstoy's entire view is that plus the morality of the piece itself and that you are conveying a good thing. In the way that we want to be more virtuous, we want to raise up children who are virtuous, we must expose them and ourselves to art that is both beautiful and conveys a moral message.

That's Tolstoy's argument. But he has another piece of his argument that I haven't thrown out because I think Paul will hate it. Is that the art must also be universal. And what does he mean by universal?

He means that universal. He can access it. What he's getting at is that things that are explicitly religious cannot be universal. So anything that is explicitly Christian, there's a certain cultural background you need to understand it.

And so that cannot be good art if it is explicitly Christian. So one epic poem that is particularly relevant to our conversation today does not meet the Tolstoy test of good art. So Tolstoy's answer to whether the paradise lost is good art is no because it's too Christian or because it's like it's also Christian at all. When he says timeless things in there, the relationship between law and grace or law and what's going on?

You want to read and enjoy it, right? Not everyone will understand all of it is a form of the argument. And so he likes the ancients more than he likes the medievals. So things that are secular or a religious, he finds more universal and accessible than religious art explicitly.

That is his argument, another green or disagreeing. That's his argument. I think Milton's retort as a believer would be that everyone's a Christian even if he doesn't want to be. So a person who writes in opposition to Tolstoy's view is Harold Bloom, who I accidentally called Alan Bloom or one of the other somewhat recently.

Harold Bloom wrote a wonderful book called Western Cannon which is too thick and too smart for me to have read entirely. So I just read sections of it. The intro is excellent and his chapter on Shakespeare is incredible. Do you all know?

Can you read Harold Bloom somewhat recently? Was it like one of his essays? I have Western Cannon. You did my class.

I've read every chapter of it every now and then. He loves Shakespeare. That's my one. He does love Shakespeare.

He says Shakespeare invented the human. Yeah. I'll read another funny quote about that later. Okay.

So this is quoting Harold Bloom. Probably Tolstoy's essay, like his what is art, is a disaster prompting the serious question of how so great a writer could have been so mistaken. Disappearingly Tolstoy quotes as idolaters of Shakespeare, a distinguished company that includes Greta Shelley Hugo, he goes on, he could have included many others, indeed virtually every major writer capable of reading with a few and savory exceptions like Voltaire. The less interesting aspect of Tolstoy's story is rebellion against the aesthetic is creative envy.

There's a particular fury in Tolstoy's denial of an imminent shared by Shakespeare with Homer, a sharing that Tolstoy reserved for his own war and peace which is funny. Much more interesting is Tolstoy's spiritual revulsion against the immoral and irreligious tragedy of King Lear. I prefer such a revulsion to any attempts to Christianize Shakespeare's deliberately pre-Christian drama and Tolstoy's quite accurate in seeing that Shakespeare as a dramatist is neither a Christian nor a moralist. What is art discards not only Shakespeare but Dante, Beethoven, Raphael, and then he goes into Paradise Lost Later.

So Harold Bloom says this is a bad way of determining what is art. So where are we right now? T.S. Eliot says only artists can do it.

He's a contemporary poet. He's a contemporary poet. Eminent contemporary poets can do it now. We can't ask the dead ones.

He's exactly right. Yeah, they wrote it down. So Eliot says that. And Tolstoy says, if it conveys a feeling, if it's a good moral feeling, and if it's universal, that is good art.

Harold Bloom says not, also what you're wrong, and his answer to how to figure it out is very similar to Eliot's. He has a quote from the intro. Greatness recognizes greatness and is shadowed by it. I love that quote.

Without the canon, we cease to think you may idealize endlessly about replacing aesthetic standard yet only strength can join itself to strength. So a similar position to T.S. Eliot, but Bloom would not say that it's only contemporary poets. He would say that there is a canon and to attach yourself to the canon, you must be great.

Yeah, that's, again, that seems... My question is who gets to say? He doesn't even run into the same problem. There's a logical problem that Lewis is getting into, but I don't think he really...

I don't think the logic of it is Eliot's problem. I think so when we say that we appeal to tradition, or Graham, what is the reason you were asked to read Paradise Lost? Is it because someone read it and said, that was a really good book? Or is it, we look at that time period and say, this is the most important book that comes out of it?

Yeah. It's... The only thing I can think of is reputation. I think it's probably the most basic thing.

It's probably... Oh yeah, Paradise Lost sounds. That sounds familiar. We should probably read that.

It's probably important. It's basically the way that it was talked about when the 10th grade curriculum was drafted. Like, for example, I have, I'm trying to think of a book that I've never read, I'm a warm piece, and I'm trying to think of what's considered classic that I've personally never read. Regardless, I've only read the Anita like once, and just, you know, real fast.

But in the back of my mind, I'm like, the Anita, there's probably gold there. There's probably like good things if I take the time to dig and find them. Or for example, we are expanding our curriculum for 12th grade to include a lot more Shakespeare plays. Kids are going to have choice.

And I had never read... I've been a long time since I read King Lear. I read King Lear a long time ago, and I just recently reread it. And as I was reading, I was like, there's really good stuff here.

And if I spend even more time, you get these little hints that there's some deeper things going on in this book. And you're like, okay, if I just spend more time in this thing, I'm going to uncover some really interesting, great metaphors or ways of expressing feeling that help me think about King Lear's case, like how to be old, how to age, how to be responsible. So I think there's just like, reputations, or when you read something and it's not immediately accessible to you, but you can see that there seems to be good stuff there. I think that's like a test.

Now, I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't say that I'm great. And I'm definitely not a contemporary poet.

But I feel like I can recognize when something has lots to give me, I just need to put the effort in, and when something is candy, or when something, when you read it, you're like, oh, there's not tons here. There's not much here for me. I'm trying to think of like an example of something that I've read in the past that is old, that when I read, I was like, oh, there's not tons of money. Voltaire is maybe a good example.

Like, I remember reading Candide. And I'm like, oh, I get it. Like, I get your point. And it's a simple point, and it's like sort of expressed and it's kind of clever, but you know.

Which is why Tolstor likes it. Not a lot of deep soil. Candide. Or what was Rousseau and his like, you know, his happy savage.

I can't remember what the book is, so he's got a book about, you know, happy savages. I'm like, I get it, right? You know, the savages are untouched by, you know, you have this anthropological theory that society is what corrupts you and that man is happy when they're like naked and free in the woods. And you wrote a little book about it, and I get it.

You know. Oh, if I clubbed it the same thing, what do you do? Right? And then you're done.

And so I don't feel like there's nuggets of gold if you keep digging. If you keep digging, you're just going to get the same idea. That's just fair. So I think that all these authors are getting at two different things.

So one question is, how does the canon come to exist? And that's the history of greatness joining itself to greatness, which is, I don't want to pretend it's an easy process. And even though it's saying that sentence, it kind of shouldn't make any sense. But we do receive that, and we can read what those before us have said.

This is great. I think an especially easy way to do this is to look at who references what. So when you're reading something, what are they referencing? Who are they reading?

And that's some indication of who great thinkers, great authors are reading before them. So it's much easier to trace the canon from present day to past than it is to in the moment recognize greatness. And that's, I think the problem with Eliot's quote is to say, it's really hard to know who today are the great poets of a hundred years from now, who's going to be remembered. Who's going to be remembered?

Who's going to be remembered? Who's going to be remembered 100 years from now? And so that's why I disagree with Eliot. There's probably like a shoebox somewhere filled with amazing poetry that we won't discover.

Like kids still writing it. And we're going to discover when he's dead. And we're going to be like, oh my goodness. And this is...

We won't know until later. It's actually, it's funny that, hey, for example, it was a strong presumption because when it first came out, it failed at the box office. It was a flop when it came out. But now, if I'm not mistaken, I could look this up and I'm not going to.

I think it's the number one movie on IMDB, like most highly regarded movie on IMDB. It deserves it. Yes, but at the time was not recognized that way. I would not put Thoreau in the same category, but with...

I liked him as a high schooler, but probably wouldn't like him. Walden did not sell well in his life. There were tons of copies of it made because he thought it was going to be great. They didn't sell, he died.

And then it became popular after he died. To recognize greatness in our day is very hard. I think probably not worth doing, but the tradition that comes before us is more trustworthy, more established. Is that a fair place to get to with this?

So you're going to think this is taking a weird turn, but it's not so any other comments before I move on. No, you're driving the van, maybe. So that was Harold Bloom. So we've gone from Lewis, I guess, Elliott, to Lewis, to Tolstoy, to Harold Bloom.

Now, just for kicks and giggles, let's read from Allen Bloom. So this is the closing of the American mind. I promise I'm signing the right people this time. There is something in Lewis's argument that I'm questioning the value of critics in reading Lewis' second chapter.

And I think there is something to the fact that Lewis, it matters that Tolstoy actually wrote good books and then wrote an essay on what is art. And even if we disagree with him, we should give him more credibility because he actually achieved the thing that he set out to describe. So if he's claiming an organizing principle about art, and then he has created really good art, you should say, OK, well, we can't just throw him out that if someone who claims an organizing principle about art and makes really bad art, then we'll be like, that person maybe doesn't know what he's talking about. Yes.

So then this is Harold Allen Bloom's quote on that one. Maybe Elliot's right because Lewis wrote a good book, which is a full circle. The scholar cannot understand the text that he purports to interpret. Schiller might be able to grasp the essence of the alias because as a creator, he is a kindomer.

He could not understand Homer as Homer understood himself because his mind was of a different historical epoch, but he could understand what it meant to be a poet. A scholar can do neither. And when I'm reading scholar, I'm thinking critic in the same way, but maybe that's unfair. A scholar can do neither.

From the point of view of life and from the point of view of truth, modern scholarship is a failure. Hegel Ridicules, the typical German gymnasium teacher who explains that Alexander the Great had a pathological love of power. The teacher proves the assertion by the fact that Alexander conquered the world. The teacher's freedom from this illness is attested to by the fact that he has not conquered the world.

The story encapsulates Nietzsche's criticism of the German university and its classical scholarship. The scholar cannot understand the will to power, not a cause recognized by science, which made Alexander different from others because the scholar neither has it nor does his method permit him to have it or see it. The scholar could never conquer the mind of man. Clearly as teachers, we have conquered the love of money.

So you can teach on that. So that's why expectations is actually the perfect way to teach. So I'll lay that point out there. Teach about obsession because you're apathetic.

Well, crap. I feel like the only way we can keep being teachers of high quality is we need to start writing books. Cranking on classics. Cranking on classics.

Like writing poetry and writing novels and stuff. I think you're right. Oh, man. I'm sorry that the bar has been raised.

But so the scholar is insufficient. He's talking about scholar. I'm hearing critic, but I'm also hearing I like to listen to lots of podcasts at two times speed and a number of those podcasts are political podcasts. And what I'm also hearing in this is I'm listening to people who are interpreting events that they are not a part of.

Yeah. And so why do I care? Like why am I wasting my time listening to people who aren't actually in the game? Like why not listen to, first off, anyway, this is where I'm thinking it's a weird term because I think a lot.