A Strange Fashion of Forsaking in the Poetry of Thomas Wyatt (Part 1)

As an advisor to Henry VIII and ambassador to France and Italy, poet Thomas Wyatt was something of a professional court-surfer, practiced in riding the peaks and troughs of royal favor. Such were his verbal and diplomatic gifts that, though twice accused of and imprisoned for treason, he was twice released. His poetry reflects all the intrigue, paranoia, airlessness, and downright cruelty of the Tudor Court, where a misplaced word or an ill-timed look might see you not just out of favor, but a head shorter. In two of his most celebrated poems—which might draw upon the affair he might have had with Anne Boleyn—certainty is suspect, irony thick, allegiance changeable, and hunters apt to find they’ve become the hunted. Wes & Erin discuss Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee from Me.” Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. 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Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:00 Wes: The sponsor for today's episode is Lingoda, an online language school with classes led by native speakers. Over the years I've taken an in person language class here and there. I've always wanted to learn French, but I've always had trouble moving to the next level because class is often conflicted with work or other commitments. Recently here in Boston, despite my pretty flexible schedule, every time I've looked for a French class, I I've had trouble finding something that doesn't conflict with work and ideally I wouldn't be committed to going the same day, the same time every single week. I would want more flexibility. Lingoda has given me that flexibility. It allows me to take classes that fit into my schedule no matter how complicated it gets and whatever level I'm at. There are multiple time slots to choose from for a human led class with a native speaker every day of the week. I don't have to commit the same day and time each week and I can go at my own pace, booking a class when I'm ready. And in my experience, it's really important in learning language to have a class led by a human speaker and not just to be doing drills on an app. I think Lingoda is incredible and I've been recommending it to everybody in my life. Lingoda teachers will help guide you through your learning journey, give you really helpful feedback and help you stay motivated. Lingoda offers three different learning paths. Lingoda Flex, where you can choose when and how many classes to take Lingoda teams, which offers eight or 12 week courses at fixed times with the same teacher and Lingoda Sprint, which is a two month learning challenge that accelerates your language journey. Lingoda is having its biggest sale of the year. Save up to 50% on your language course by going to try.lingoda.com and using code subtext50 at checkout. That's subtext5.0. When you sign up for the seven day trial, you can attend three small group classes and one private class completely free. That's try.lingoda.com subtext50 and use code subtext50 that's subtext50. 2:23 Erin: You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. As an advisor to Henry VIII and ambassador to France and Italy, poet Thomas Wyatt was something of a professional courtier, practiced in riding the peaks and troughs of royal favor. Such were his verbal and diplomatic gifts that though twice accused of and imprisoned for treason, he he was twice released. His poetry reflects all the intrigue, paranoia, airlessness and downright cruelty of the Tudor court, where a misplaced word or an ill timed look might see you not just out of favor, but a head shorter in two of his most celebrated poems, which might draw upon the affair he might have had with Anne Boleyn. Certainty is suspect, irony thick, allegiance changeable, and hunters apt to find they've become the hunted. Today we're discussing Thomas Wyatt's who so list to hunt and they Flee from Me. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and this is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, I think we'll start part one of our episode with whoso list to hunt and then move on to they Flee from Me in part two. And as I'm sure you know, Wyatt is credited with bringing the sonnet into English by way of his really transformative translations of Petrarch. He was interested in many other forms as well, but, you know, he's really credited with bringing the sonnet over. I've just been reflecting on the fact that the English poetic tradition is built almost entirely on borrowed goods, you know, on forms from other traditions. I mean, I think one of the rare exceptions to this actually would be the rhyme royal stanza, which Chaucer originated and in which they flee from me is written. But yeah, it just occurs to me that English is a dubious sort of stolen, covetous, grasping kind of, you know, they're retrofitting various forms from other traditions into English and very often kind of making do. You could tell that the form is not native to the English tradition. Like in Terza rima, which is something that Wyatt also wrote in, in English, you know, terza rima, a form in which rhyme you have to do a triple rhyme, which is very easy to do in Italian, but which is very difficult to do in English. So it's not something that English take. I'm just thinking about how apt that might be for Wyatt's subject matter for the Tudor court in which all of this is being transposed into England at the time. They're sort of, you know, building the plane of courtly aspiration in the air as Henry VIII is kind of bankrupting the court to try and keep up with the grander courts of France and Italy and Spain. And there's something maybe a little bit false about the whole enterprise that Wyatt is kind of playing on. And I think it has something to do with this pilfering, this stealing things and kind of retrofitting them to you that don't quite fit. I mean, I think it worked out rather well for the English poetic tradition in the end, but it's just Funny that there's such dubious grounds on which the whole enterprise is built. 5:39 Wes: So it seems like he's playing with the courtly tradition, which by at this point is relatively old. How do we date the courtly tradition? 5:48 Erin: Is that at least to Eleanor of Aquitaine? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's not interested in Arthurian legend, say, you know, he's more. Wyatt is very much a European continental oriented poet, as much as I think he admired Chaucer. So he's interested in playing, I think, on these courtly tropes. But whoso list to hunt in particular. Right. Is actually just a very, very loose, very subversive translation of Petrarch's Sonnet 190. So he's as much in the sort of Italian Petrarchan tradition as he is playing on the courtlier themes of the poem. 6:28 Wes: Yeah. So I think subversion is a good word. So he's taking a tradition which is rather idealistic about love, and he's introducing something dark into it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's still, still an element of longing and romance. But it's more fallen maybe, and it's more. Well, I don't know if it's more overtly sexual. Well, I guess we'll get into that 6:53 Erin: in the poems, but certainly, I think. 6:55 Wes: Okay. And then in the background, as you pointed out, there's all the stuff with Henry viii and, and Wyatt himself. Right. Was imprisoned for a while, I think he was, for supposedly getting with Anne Boleyn, but apparently she was getting with everyone in town. So they executed five. Well, of course not. That's his insane mind, but Henry VIII's insanity. But five, five of them got executed and, and then plus Anne Boleyn, apparently it's possible that Wyatt saw it from the tower in which he was imprisoned. Crazy stuff. So, yeah, if this is even in a veiled way about Anne Boleyn, he's really doing something risky. 7:37 Erin: Yeah, I mean, you can always, you can always say it's a Persona poem. Right. The eye isn't. Isn't me. You know, I've never met this guy before. 7:46 Wes: Who's that other guy you already executed. 7:48 Erin: Right. It's covered so many Thomases, you know, one of them, they all get lost in the shuffle eventually. But it's super risky. Yeah, the, the very sexual nature, I think. I mean, I think it's safe to say that especially they flee from me, but also to a certain extent, who. whoso list to hunt is definitely such a radical transformation of the Petrarch, because, you know, in Petrarch it's all about Laura, or Laura, you know, being this like, chaste ideal, you know, she's the Beatrice to his Dante. Right. And so she's, you know, she's transformed into these animal figures, you know, the doe, the sacred doe. But it's almost like it might as well be, you know, it could all just be an allegory for, you know, the soul ascending to the divine or whatever the case may be. Right. So there's something very, very different in nature and in tone to what Petrarch is doing in his description of this pure white hind that appeared to him versus Wyatt as this exhausted would be lover going, ugh, you know, I can't run after this woman anymore is very different tonally. And yeah, I think it's definitely suggestive that it's not doing her any favors if it's implying that everybody is running after her and she has lots of opportunity, that's for sure. 9:09 Wes: When you say building the plane of courtly aspiration out of thin air or in the air, I think is what you said, do you mean in some sense they're trying to preserve that tradition even as times are kind of changing, or is this something new? 9:23 Erin: What I mostly mean is that the Tudors come to an English throne which they are conscious of being not highly regarded among European courts. I mean, they are the true backwater. Yeah. So they're trying to build up an artistic tradition. They're trying to be splendid and grand. They're trying to rival the courts of Europe. He was patron of many different artists, was, was always putting on these really lavish, over the top kinds of, you know, what we might now recognize as being nouveau riche gauche kinds of performances of courtly splendor. Because he was, he was really conscious of being, especially the Italians and, you know, but I think you're right to point out that word courtly is also being suggestive of a certain kind of English tradition. And I think that the Tudors are now at the point where they're using that tradition in this hyper aware, sophisticated, self conscious kind of way. Right, Yeah. 10:21 Wes: I was thinking of the word irony and the way the English Renaissance kind of introduces or not at least heightens that sensibility. You see it in Shakespeare especially. 10:33 Erin: Right. And it becomes a kind of a deadly game, you know, a really deadly game in the Tudor court in which everything is about this just really, really subtle and intricate pecking order in which everything is about performance, everything is about, you know, there's a lot of, you know, I think of like feigned sincerity when I think of the Tudor court, like these performances of being sincere, which everyone is aware are performances, and you get credit for how well you perform sincerity, just the layers of irony that involve being a part of the court, I think, were actually really kind of maddening, and I think implied that you just really could never trust anyone because you never knew who was lying to you, who would rat you out for an advancement, a favor or a position. And women, as well as men were doing this and very, very conscious of their playing, their identity in some way. You know, they were, in a sense, walking Persona poems. You know, their Personas were highly constructed. So, you know, I think they make us look us with our. With our Internet avatars and our, you know, the things that we hide behind on the Internet. I think they. They make us look pretty tame, actually, by comparison. But maybe that's overstating. 11:50 Wes: If you look at the bio for Wyatt, it's just a very matter of fact him being in and out of favor. One minute he's in prison, the next minute he's out. So with the alleged adultery of Anne Boleyn, he was in the Tower of London and then released, apparently because of his relationship with Thomas Cromwell. Later on, I think he was back in prison. Who was it? How did he get out of that one? I don't know. He was briefly in prison again. 12:16 Erin: I think it was Cromwell again. 12:17 Wes: Okay. I think Katherine Howard herself about to be executed had something to do with it. I don't know. 12:24 Erin: And this is what's so confusing about the fact that he's in and out of favor. The fact that he's in at all after a certain point is pretty remarkable because he was really Catherine of Aragon's man and then was in an odd position when she was kicked out. I think he favored Mary on the throne. 12:45 Wes: So by 1540, he was again in the king's favor as he was granted the site and many of the manorial estates of the dissolved Boxley Abbey. Reading from Wikipedia here, however, he was charged once more with treason in 1541. The charges were again lifted, but only thanks to the intervention of Queen Catherine Howard, and on the condition of reconciling with his wife, granted a full pardon, restored to his duties as ambassador. So it's almost as if these very, very serious charges that could get your head lopped off were really just political tool and could be retracted on a whim. You know, it could be used on a whim, but then retracted on a whim. Oh, okay. Well, I guess I still need you or someone else. Is intervening on your behalf. So. 13:29 Erin: Right. 13:30 Wes: You're not a traitor anymore until I say so. 13:33 Erin: This is what happens when your country is run by a violent psychopath. 13:37 Wes: It's good to be the king. 13:41 Erin: I mean, really, he's, you know, Henry viii. I mean, Katherine Howard is, you know, I recommend looking into her a little bit more to see. Exactly. It's easy to kind of think of Henry VIII as this, like, you know, jolly guy who's always eating a leg of mutton or whatever. But, you know, he was. He was terrifying. And Katherine Howard was a child. And, I mean, it makes sense maybe that she intervened for Wyatt if he was part of this entrenched Catholic contingency, actually, because she was from a Catholic family and, you know, she's like, a generation younger than Henry. So various things have gone on in the interim between Catherine of Aragon and. And Katherine Howard. But, I mean, Katherine Howard herself is one of the saddest stories of Tudor England. She was a child when she married him. She was still basically a child when he put her to death. And she was so terrified over getting her head lopped off. And this is something that I went and I saw this just recently. So I was just at Hampton Court Palace. I was just, you know, I've been so deep in Tudor lore lately. But, you know, one of the most poignant. Some of the most poignant stories are stories of Katherine Howard, like how she was nervous about the date of her execution and wanted to appear br. So she had a servant bring her a block so that she could practice kneeling on it. And, you know, it's just, oh, anyway, 14:59 Wes: maybe at some point we'll do A Man for All Seasons, the movie where Robert Shaw plays King Henry VIII in such a great portrayal, I think, because you get a sense of the volatility of this character who could be your best friend one minute and ready to kill you the next. 15:16 Erin: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I just, you know, it's. It's worth. I think it's worth mentioning because it's just. It's so easy now to say, oh, you know, isn't it quaint that they all had, you know, they're all sending each other letters and little, you know, little tokens and little portraits and, oh, we had six wives and. Ah, we love that. We love the little, you know, rhymes about it, really. It was a dangerous, awful. 15:38 Wes: Well, Henry VIII wrote a defense of Catholicism, I think. Right. Didn't he write a. Immediately afterward is having Thomas More executed, who was his mentor, in a way, and all that. Stuff. So, yeah, it's nuts. One minute you're sending a nice poem, the next minute, sorry, poetry group is canceled today. You're going to be executed. 16:06 Erin: Well, and sometimes I think he would kill people on both sides just to scare everybody. It can't be overstated how truly awful he was. And the weakening of that into something like this jolly old fat man, I think, is we have to wake ourselves up from that and remind ourselves the very real stakes involved in Wyatt's poems, for one. 16:28 Wes: Yeah. So why. I know you had done this in school recently. Yeah. How did you get introduced to Wyatt, and why did you choose Wyatt for an episode? 16:40 Erin: Well, I fell in love with these poems in high school. I think these are just on my reading list because. 16:46 Wes: Okay, so you put them on. You put them on your reading list. Right, okay. 16:49 Erin: Yeah, yeah. And they're important, I think, you know, in the history, of course, of English poetry, of the lyric tradition. Important for my obsession with form and, you know, sort of tracing the lineage of forms into English. But also. Yeah, these two poems in particular, but also several other Wyatt poems. I remember first reading them and being kind of thrilled by them. Like, they seemed so chatty to me. You know, his conversational style is, I think, often talked about. But, yeah, they felt like, modern and, like, had this electricity in them and. Yeah, so I just. I remember reading them and being. I've been interested in the Tudors for a long time. My mom was really obsessed with the Tudors. I had a teapot as a little girl. When I used to play every afternoon. I used to like to have tea, which was usually just like, I would have milk in a teapot and. And like, have a little Debbie cake or something with it. And anyway, I had a teapot that had Henry and his six wives on the teapot. And I, I. It's still, still somewhere. It's in my parents attic somewhere. I was at the. An exhibit of the six wives of Henry VIII in the. I think it was. Gosh, I went to so many places now, I can't remember. I think it was in the National Portrait Gallery this summer in London. And it included a room that had, like a pop culture, you know, six wives of Henry VIII in pop culture section. And there was my teapot among the paraphernalia of, you know, sort of like kitschy, fun, like little cultural artifacts. And. Yeah, so I. I really liked that. And I thought, like, oh, the teapot with all the pretty women on them, like in pretty dresses. I was like 4. But anyway, my mom got me that because she was interested in the Tudors. And so I think Wyatt was someone who I was aware of much younger than I might have been ordinarily because of my interest in Elizabeth I. And just the whole Tudor dynasty was really interesting to me. Were you aware of him? 18:50 Wes: No, I wasn't. Yeah. I mean, yeah, who knows? I may have been exposed to him at some point when I was younger, but. No. One last question before we dive in. So I think, yeah. Listeners, when they look at these poems, will recognize the Renaissance English style. I don't have a lot of specifics on how that evolved, but has anyone made an argument for his direct influence on someone like Shakespeare? I guess that would be too difficult. I mean, it's setting a tone in a style that I think is recognizable. Right. And later poets, but definitely sort of a general cultural trend. But I don't know. You know, would Shakespeare have read someone like this? Yeah. 19:28 Erin: I don't know. It was collected in. Was it Tottel's Miscellany, which Shakespeare might have read? I think that would line up correctly. I think of a direct descendant of Wyatt as being someone like John Donne. And I could talk a little bit more about why I think that is. I think there's something surprising going on with these male speakers, which will. 19:47 Wes: Right. 19:48 Erin: Which I'm sure we'll get into. And that's a theme in Donne as well. Maybe that's just because conceit or, you know, various other things. But I think the speaker has something in common with Donne. I'm not sure that Shakespeare's speaker and his sonnets, because they're so often in the imperative mood. Most of the sonnets, they just feel quite different in tone. Like, the speaker just seems very, very different from a Wyatt speaker. Maybe more so in the Dark Lady Sonnets, of course. But for the bulk of the sonnets, 20:16 Wes: the Young man sonnets, there's more resignation, maybe. 20:19 Erin: Yeah. There's just a lot of character. Like, you really get the sense of who Wyatt man from these. I think even though we can't quite trust it or, you know, we assume there's some obfuscation going on, but. 20:34 Wes: Yeah. 20:34 Erin: Yeah. 20:34 Wes: Should we start? So you wanted to start with whoso list to hunt. Do you want to read four lines and then discuss and then four lines. How do you want to do that? Or do you want to read the whole thing first? 20:43 Erin: Well, let's read the whole thing. It has such a great sweep. And then we'll kind of go a couple lines at a time. 20:50 Wes: Okay. 20:50 Erin: Yeah. 20:51 Wes: So Let me just. Before you do that, you said this is rhyme royal. A, B, B, A. Is that what that is? 20:56 Erin: No, this is a sonnet. They flee from me. Is rhyme royal? 20:59 Wes: Oh, they flee from me. 21:01 Erin: Yeah. 21:01 Wes: Okay. Well, all right. So you can tell us what that. Tell me and the listeners what that is when we get to that. So this is a borrowed rhyme scheme. It is, but it's the Italians. But okay. 21:11 Erin: It's twisted, though, so it's almost a Petrarchan sonnet. But it's actually kind of listing toward. Not to misuse that word, but it's kind of listing towards the Shakespearean sonnet because it has a twist. So it has the Abba. Abba. Traditional Petrarchan or Italian octave. And for the sestet, it's C, D, D, C, E, E. So it has the little couplet at the end, the button on the end that's characteristic of the Shakespearean sonnet. 21:38 Wes: Okay. 21:38 Erin: So it's kind of like. It's like halfway through its mutation, it's like Jeff Goldblum, half Jeff Goldblum, half fly. I love that. 21:49 Wes: Pretty good. 21:50 Erin: Got to be the first time those two things have ever been connected. All right, here we go. Whoso list to hunt. I know where is an hind but as for me, alas, I may no more the vain travail hath wearied me so sore I am of them that farthest cometh behind yet may I by no means my wearied mind draw from the deer. But as she fleeth afore fainting, I follow, I leave off. Therefore sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind who list her hunt I put him out of doubt as well as I may spend his time in vain engraven with diamonds and letters plain There is written her fair neck round about Noli me tangere For Caesar's I am and wild for to hold Though I seem tame, I like 22:36 Wes: big hinds and I cannot lie. Sir, wait, that's not the double entendre. 22:43 Erin: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. That's the true poetic legacy of Wyatt. 22:46 Wes: Yeah. Well, I was gonna say when you said terza rima is hard to do if you're a rapper. It's not. Because you can just use the same word over and over and over again. Rhyme words with themselves. 22:58 Erin: Or you can rhyme terrible words with each other. The badness is no impediment. 23:05 Wes: Bad rhymes are acceptable. 23:06 Erin: Right. 23:07 Wes: All right. But hind in this case. So we're getting. So the images of a deer and a hunt, I guess. Is there a double entendre? I was going to say there was. Other than the one I made with behind. I think I'm thinking of the next poem, but. 23:29 Erin: Oh, the heart. Yes. Yeah. No, unfortunately, I don't think there's anything having to do with. 23:35 Wes: Yeah. 23:36 Erin: With big butts here. 23:37 Wes: No, no, I know. 23:39 Erin: I'm just easy. 23:42 Wes: Okay. So hunting is a metaphor for the pursuit of love, in this case, sort of. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, go ahead, complicate it. 23:51 Erin: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean. I mean, that's what's so. Right. That's what's so immediately interesting about this. It's like, okay, when they get the deer, if this is the metaphor, then the killing of the thing that you're pursuing. Right. Becomes what? Literal marriage. It works, right? Yeah. 24:14 Wes: You both die in a way. 24:15 Erin: Sexual congress. People still say that anymore? I don't know. 24:21 Wes: Yeah. Petite mort. 24:23 Erin: Yeah. Yeah. 24:23 Wes: The little death of orgasm, but the death of single life and the death of longing. 24:30 Erin: Yes. 24:30 Wes: Potentially. 24:31 Erin: Yeah. 24:32 Wes: And other. You know, the death of individuality. You know, the boundary problems that arise. All of that stuff. It evokes all that stuff. So. 24:41 Erin: But with little of that adhering to the hunter. Right. The hunted is. 24:46 Wes: Well, I think the hunter. Yeah. Becomes the hunt. Head. Sorry. 24:49 Erin: Yes. 24:50 Wes: Sorry to say that. 24:51 Erin: I already said that in my. 24:54 Wes: Did you already say that? 24:55 Erin: I did. I couldn't. I can't say it. Yeah. I mean, there's no other way. 24:59 Wes: I didn't hear that for some reason. Okay. Now I'm just. Plagiarism. 25:02 Erin: Yeah, that's right. 25:02 Wes: I invented that phrase because I had never heard it before. 25:08 Erin: Yeah. I take full credit. 25:10 Wes: But. Yeah. What I'm trying to say is we'll find out, I think, in the second poem. Yeah. That there are the implications that follow for the hunted in some ways fall for the hunter. Right. 25:21 Erin: Certainly. 25:21 Wes: Yeah. 25:22 Erin: I mean, I think immediately there's this. By line three, the vain travail hath wearied me so sore. It's like, this is not fun anymore. This is not providing any satisfaction for this whole group of people. They're getting tired out. So rather than, I guess, tiring out the deer in the hunt, the opposite is happening. So already they're being almost taken advantage of in some way by the deer. Like, the deer is kind of enjoying this and everyone is just tiring themselves out and running after her. It, however, the deer's tease. 25:53 Wes: Let's just. 25:54 Erin: Yeah, yeah, I think. I think so. Right. And I mean, I think it's worth saying if this is Anne Boleyn, Wyatt was married when he first met Her. This was a terrible marriage, I guess, and he wanted nothing to do with her. After a couple of kids, no one knows what happened there, but that's simply to say, you know, how free he was. To be hunting is also something, you know, one wonders about this group of hunters and what their situation is. But it seems to me that if someone is. 26:20 Wes: Honey, can I go out hunting this weekend? 26:24 Erin: If someone is hunting. 26:25 Wes: You hunted last weekend. 26:28 Erin: Well, she's wise to be running from at least one member of this particular group. If we are to take this as Wyatt Bowen. 26:35 Wes: Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting that it's a group thing. So that's sort of where. If we were to take this strictly as a metaphor for the pursuit of a beloved, there's a bit of a breakdown. I mean, breakdown is maybe the wrong word, but there's a bit of darkness introduced by this idea that he's part of a group and he's the one lagging behind. 26:57 Erin: Yeah. There's something of the guy who looks around and slowly realizes that he's the oldest one at the club. You know, he's been going there every night for 20 years, and suddenly he realizes that he's older than everybody else and he's at the back of the herd who. 27:14 Wes: So list to grind. I know. The great club. 27:20 Erin: Alas, I. Yeah, no, but all that to say, I mean, is wearying and wanting to. I mean, certainly he's obsessed, and therefore he's already been kind of captured by this hind, and therefore, in a way, perhaps becomes something like the hunted. But I think more than that, it's this. No, I'm going to stop. I can't do this anymore. It's this, his wearing himself out and then kind of having a renewed interest and then wearing himself out again. 27:49 Wes: The other aspect of this is it's a really interesting way to begin. And these sorts of tensions are what make these poems interesting. But he's a hunter, but he knows where the hind is. So I found that immediately arresting who so is to hunt. I know where is in hind. He could tell you exactly where it is. It's not that. Right. I think typically on a hunt, you have all your hound dogs and they're sniffing out the hind. The hind. You don't know where it is. You're out to find it. In this case, he knows where. And so the hunt means something else. 28:20 Erin: Yeah, I think that's right. It's also. He's not doing a great job advertising this hunt either. I mean, if you like to hunt, but you don't expect to catch anything then. You know, if you like the pure chase. That's not quite a hunt either, you know, I mean, I think you hunt to kill. You hunt so that at the end of the day, you have something to eat or something to sling over your shoulders and throw onto the table of King John or whoever. 28:44 Wes: Maybe it's catch and catch and release. Catch and flirting, in other words, which is you could think of as a vain travail. Right. So it's a kind of hunting, but unconsummated. 28:55 Erin: Yeah, well, he addresses someone, you know, it's. It's. It begins with an apostrophe. And we, I suppose, are the person he's talking to. So I love how we're immediately in his confidence. Like this is. You know, we're immediately talking. Having an intimate conversation with someone at this bar, going like, man, I've been trying to. Trying to get with this woman over there, and I can't do it, you know, and, yeah, it's just. It's very. It's very chatty. I like it a lot. And I like the vacillations in it. Because by line two, as for me, alas, I may no more. He's not swearing off it entirely. He's like, I don't know if I could keep doing this. That's something different from saying, I resign. You can have my place in the back of the pack and hope that you work your way up to the front eventually, but don't expect to hold your place there. So, yeah, I like the fact that the certainty of his giving this up is in question. 29:45 Wes: Oh, I see. So I was taking May as well. I can't. I may no more as I can't. And you're taking it as I might not. 29:52 Erin: Might not. 29:52 Wes: Yeah, Might not be able. Well, the other thing, you know, if you are sitting in the bar, it's not just, I'm after this girl and it's very tiring. It's. Yeah. If you're interested in someone, I know just the girl for you. It's the one that I'm after. 30:03 Erin: Right. 30:05 Wes: And I'm just too tired, so I'm gonna. Why don't I pass this on to you? Do you have energy? All right, you go for it then. 30:13 Erin: It's true. Why didn't I think how weird that is until you put that up? 30:16 Wes: It's very weird. 30:18 Erin: Yeah. 30:19 Wes: He's advertising the beloved to others. 30:22 Erin: Yeah, well, and that's the thing. She's obviously not the beloved. Maybe. I mean, maybe that's that's what we could take from this. 30:27 Wes: The would be beloved. Yeah. I don't know how to put it, but yeah, yeah. 30:30 Erin: I mean, this is about not something like real love, but maybe just acquiring status of having this particular notch on the belt or whatever. Right. So this is about really the other men. They're competing with each other maybe for the prize. And it's not so much about the prize as it is about showing the other men, hey, look, I was the one who did it. And yet still in that scenario, there is something self defeating about inviting more men in. But maybe there isn't, because then you have a bigger audience when you do get the, you know, there's something to be gained from having more and more and more people after the trophy. Sure, he's fallen to the back of the group now he's of them that farthest cometh behind. But may I by no means my wearied mind draw from the deer. But as she fleeth afore fainting, I follow. So the thought pursuit that still happens even as he's taking a break, sitting this one out in the bar instead of being on the dance floor or whatever, getting a drink, resting. 31:33 Wes: I like that. Thought pursuit. 31:35 Erin: Yeah. He's still even just out of it, he's fainting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 31:41 Wes: So he can't actually pursue, but he can't draw away his mind. I like, yeah, I like this idea, this fainting. I follow as if in a way, fainting were a way of following. Fainting as in losing consciousness, being so invested in the other, invested in the object of one's desire, that one loses consciousness of oneself and perhaps consciousness altogether. It's a completely ecstatic state of mind, in other words. 32:11 Erin: Oh, I love that. Yeah. And it's occurring to me that now if he's in his mind, he might console himself with thoughts of what would happen if he caught her or with the goal in mind instead. Even in his mind, she's running from him. She fleeth afore of fainting. I follow. So he's being tired out even in the thought pursuit of it. You know, he's not fantasizing about what's gonna happen when he gets her. He can't draw his mind from the deer, and the deer is still running in his mind, so he can't even envision, I think, a scenario in which he actually, you know, what will he do when he gets her? Maybe because of the metaphor, she has reason to be. 32:51 Wes: n/a I leave off therefore sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. So then he does leave off. Sithens being an interesting word for sense. Right. I don't know where that. I don't know the etymology, but in a net, I seek to hold the wind. So that's a new idea. This idea that the object being pursued in a way cannot be held. There's something intrinsically about her that is uncapturable. 33:21 Erin: Yeah. And yet he's. You know, he's saying he's leaving off, but then we know he'll return to it again, you know, so he's. This is just another example of his waffling. I might not do this anymore. I'm gonna. I think I'm gonna stop, but I can't even stop thinking about her. But no, no, no. Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna stop now. It's like trying to hold the. You know, he's bargaining with himself or something. Or, you know, he's not doing a great job of selling this either. You know, the whole point is that he's. He's. He's trying to sell a man a bridge or something. But I leave off, therefore, sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. And then we have. So that's line eight. So that's the octave. So then we need. We need a volta right here to get away from that. The twisting and turning of his sort of bargaining with himself now has to twist back again with this turn. 34:08 Wes: Before you get to that twist, I just want to say one more thing, which is that in the second stanza, in the first stanza, whereas in the first stanza, there's this weird presence of others and the implication that he's trying to incite them to pursue the object of his desire, that's gone now in the second stanza. 34:28 Erin: So, I mean, in the second quatrain. 34:30 Wes: Sorry, quatrain. Yeah. I realize this is not stanzas. I just made the separations. I turned it into stanzas in my notes. That's the problem. And then I put next to the title, no stanzas. So I would not make that mistake. But then I just made a note. 34:44 Erin: I do that too. It's easier to note it. 34:47 Wes: So, yeah, the second quatrain, he now is by himself. And I don't think the idea of others comes up again. 34:54 Erin: Well, in line nine, who list her hunt? 34:58 Wes: Oh, yeah. No, Right. 34:59 Erin: Well, yeah. 35:00 Wes: Immediately contradicted. Yeah. No, of course. Yeah. 35:03 Erin: Well, you know, what's the difference between who so lists to hunt and who lists her hunt? He's not quite speaking directly to a person. I Mean, I didn't mean to put that quite so strongly that we're envisioning that he's speaking to a person in particular. This is more of a kind of a general warning, educational session. So if you want to hunt her, whoever you are, I put you out of doubt. So it does become more specified with the pronouns, and it also crystallizes what's come before it in a way. 35:34 Wes: So he's going to relieve. Yeah, for anyone who's interested in hunting her and of course, her right. Specific object with desire on the one hand, but of course, could stand for any, you know, it could stand more generally. So he could be. Right. He could be admonishing someone. Let me just, you know, if you were going to do that, if you're going to make that mistake, let me just tell you right now, let me put you out of doubt about whether this is a good idea. So one could be giving that admonition about a particular love interest, or one could be saying that about men or women in general, about the pursuit of love interests in general. If you're agreeing to this, let me give you the cynical truth. This is a waste of time. 36:16 Erin: Yes. And yet doubt seems to be the theme of the day here, you know, is he going to be able to give this up? He doubts it, it seems, but he seems to say, here, I'll put you out of doubt about what a doubtful pursuit this is. It's a strange kind of twist. I mean, he is and is not. It's all tongue in cheek, right? Because he's saying, sure, if you want to. If you want to do this, go ahead, in this very rather sarcastic manner. 36:39 Wes: Well, the doubt part is, you know, I think is if you are wondering whether this is a good idea for you. So in the first stanza, he's invited someone to take up the pursuit stanza. In the first quatrain, the beginning of the poem, he's invited someone to take up this pursuit. Now he's saying, you know, in case you think this is a good idea. So the doubt being, in case you're wondering, then, okay, so he's invited that. Then he's given good reasons why someone would be doubt that that's a good idea. Like that's trying to catch the wind with a net. But if you're still not convinced, which is really what this line means, that that's a bad idea. Let me tell you about the diamonds. Let me tell you about what's actually written on her. Yes, the message is explicit. You don't have to read between the Lines. It's right there in diamonds. Yeah. 37:33 Erin: Yes, but I'm interested in the agency of the speaker here. I put him out of doubt. The whole thing is ironic, of course, you know, oh, if you like to hunt, I'll tell you how to, you know, how to have a good time. Right. So the whole thing is. Can be read as sarcastic or really ironic, but the idea that he is then advertising his ability to provide certainty for this person who he's enticing and not enticing when he himself does not have certainty and when he himself has no agency, as if he has the right to say, I know this situation. Take it from me, I'm putting you in this. In this particular headset, you know, the agency he's taking over. This other person's relationship to the hind I find interesting. And to say that I put him out, I know I'm cutting off the, you know, the full extent of the. Right. But like the. The ownership he's taking over kind of the mental landscape around this hind is an interesting one because it implies a measure of authority which he himself claims not to have in the poem. 38:39 Wes: Right. This is a do as I say, not as I do moment. Yeah. It's like being lectured by a drug addict about, this is how you stop the drugs. 38:48 Erin: Yes. Or I'm the one that farthest cometh behind, and yet I'm the one that knows the nature of this pursuit better than anybody else. And I kind of know this hind better than anybody else. I mean, what authority does he have to be discouraging, encouraging other suitors? Of course, the whole nature of this poem is a form of encouraging discouragement, because if you really wanted to discourage someone, you wouldn't have to say anything at all. You could just hope that they never find out about this hind and move on. You don't have to say, hey, I have something for you, but don't do it. That's a little bit defeating itself. 39:27 Wes: Well, they might be discouraged by the implication, which is that he's captured this hind before because he knows where is an hind. And also he knows he has intimate knowledge of the diamond letters that are round about her fair neck. 39:43 Erin: That's right. That's true. 39:44 Wes: So there has been a catch and release. 39:47 Erin: Uh oh, has this guy gotten away or have we, you know, can we still ground him up and throw him back in the tower? Because now I'm seeing how incriminating this is. 39:55 Wes: Right. Yeah. 39:56 Erin: And just. Someone just put a flea in my ear about this Wyatt character again. Maybe I can't Trust him. Yeah. So as well as I may spend his time in vain. 40:07 Wes: So whoso, as well as I, might waste his time on this project, I'll put him out of doubt. And then. So then we get the story about the image of the diamonds with. You can't touch this. 40:21 Erin: Well, I just wanted to say that. In vain. Well, I think Caesar is prefigured in this. In vain. This is my little. You know, take this for what it's worth. But, you know, I was just thinking about he may spend his time in vain. Okay. Unprofitably, of course. But also I was thinking of taking the Lord's name in vain. Right. It's irreverent. Something improper. So I think there's a hint of the betrayal of the Almighty already before we even get the final four lines and the explicit words of the Caesar figure. 40:52 Wes: Yeah. So by bringing up Caesar, this evokes, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Caesar's I am. Which is. It's a way of saying, I belong to the things of this world as opposed to the things of the spiritual world, so don't touch me. Which seems to be contradictory, but. Yeah, enlighten me on this. If I'm getting this wrong. 41:10 Erin: I think that's correct. I think that there's also. And I should have looked this up before, but I did not. There is an apocryphal story about someone finding a white hind with a collar on it years and years after the death of the Caesar that put a collar around its neck, saying something like that. Like, there were. This was a practice of maybe it was Augustus Caesar to actually claim ownership via a collar of some kind over the deer belonging to him. And there's some apocryphal story about something like 200, 300 years after, say, if it was Augustus Caesar, two or 300 years after Augustus Caesar's death, someone finding a living deer with this color. Wow, that's cool. So, I mean, I think you're absolutely right that render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's chime here is part of this. But also, I think it is literally invoking a fanciful story that might have. Well, that obviously still, I think, had some currency in Wyatt's time or was known. 42:12 Wes: Yeah. Really interesting. So do not touch me. For Caesar's I am. Again, the implication seems to be. One might. I think it would be more straightforwardly understandable to say something like, do not touch me. I am representative of some higher spiritual realm. But in this case, it seems to be precisely the opposite so going beyond the apocryphal story to what this is supposed to represent. Do not touch me for Caesar's I am, it seems to suggest again, the. There's something this worldly about love and passion. So this would be an inversion of a more traditional courtly trope in which love represents, I think, as you already mentioned, a relation to the divine. Doesn't this invert that? 43:01 Erin: I think it does. I think it's also a bit more scary and frightening for the deer itself, or the metaphorical deer in the original Petrarch. The translation I have says touch me not in diamonds. And Topaz was written round about her lovely neck. It pleased my lord to set me free. So this is quite a twist on that. Touch me not for Caesar's I am and wild for to hold Though I seem tame. So it has pleased my Lord, or, sorry, it pleased my Lord to set me free. So don't touch me because I'm free. And we do get the Lord, but the Lord is quite different from, you know, this is still in the touch me not, no limit realm of Christ, but then with Lord, which could mean, you know, your run of the mill, everyday Lord, there's still a Christ like implication, that duality. Caesar, you don't get that duality of Lord. That's a different kettle of fish altogether. So there's a nightmare quality. What I'm trying to say is there's a nightmare quality to the end of this poem, I think, because the inscription ends not with the words of the beloved, who would be implied to have some agency if she were to have the final lines of the poem attributed to her, but really the words of Caesar ventriloquizing her and implying that she is not free in the sense that the Petrarchan deer is free, but she belongs to an earthly power and therefore can't be touched because she belongs to someone else, not because she's been set free in some sort of divine metaphor in which she belongs to Christ alone and she's protected by the divine, or something like that. The idea here is, I think that one thinks that this deer is a real tease. She loves to run these men ragged and she has all this agency and instead what they find when they do catch her. Because as I think you rightly point out, the speaker must have had a catch and release thing going. What you find when you finally get her is actually that she doesn't even belong to herself. She's already been claimed by someone. 45:18 Wes: I mean, one way of reading that is as disappointment in the promise of love as the promise of the beloved. Being something evocative of the divine. Being more than mundane. Right? So that's one way. That's one sort of warning. Don't touch me. Not because I'm divinely untouchable, but because I am a thing of this world. The last line, which is really interesting, right? Wild for to hold. Though I seem tame. So why would a deer being pursued. Why would one think of that deer as tame? I think if we're associating the deerness with a feminine beloved. One could associate tameness with the feminine. And the feminine turns out to be, not as advertised, too wild for to hold. And the feminine is generally associated with higher ideals, including the divine. So I put tameness and divinity and femininity together. And I see the hunter as finding out, disappointedly that this is just, you could say just a human being. Just a creature of this world. Wild for to hold. Which suggests possessed of its own passions. Possessed of its own lack of tameness. Right? Too wild. So it could also, you know, it could be an expression of a disappointment that there's even a subjectivity to the other, which is a very Oedipal thing, right? The impulse is to objectify and control the beloved. And to have it exist only for you. But you find out that there's person with their own desires underneath. 46:56 Erin: That's really interesting. I thought that the tameness is sort of just implied by the fact that it's wearing a collar. But then you get close enough to see the fine print, right? And you realize that you're getting a warning that things are wilder than they may appear. The inscription on the collar undoes the collar itself to a certain extent. 47:15 Wes: That's interesting. 47:16 Erin: I don't know what that means. Just for the fact of the collar. That seems more important than what's advertised on it. Just like the reality of the situation. The quote, unquote reality. Reality of the situation that the speaker claims to be in is more real somehow more substantive in some way than the poems. Function as an advertisement to the would be pursuer. In other words, both are kind of faux advertisements. Perhaps I'm wilder than I look. Well, no, you're not, because you're wearing somebody's collar, you know, so really, you have no. You have no agency of your own. You're claimed. And if you put a foot out of line, you're gonna get your head chopped off in some clubs. 47:59 Wes: The collar is a signifier of wildness. It's the wilder girls who wear the collar. 48:09 Erin: Are you familiar with the Sonnet? No, Swan so Fine by Marianne Moore. No, it's about a candelabrum, a Louis XV candelabrum that she sees in Versailles. And it has a swan on it with swart blind look askance. I used to have it memorized. I can't remember. But anyway, it's a chintz china swan with fawn brown eyes. So the doe is. She's obviously thinking of Wyatt. She's saying it's a swan, but has eyes that are brown like a doe and a toothed gold collar on to show whose bird it was, I think is how the line goes. 48:47 Wes: Wow. Wee sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie. 48:52 Erin: That's right. Interesting. Yeah. So even in the fake in Versailles, the swan that's part of this candelabra, which is just an art piece, an overly ornate art piece, he still has to proclaim that the images of animals on his china belong to him. Him. There's like a double dose of the Wyatt doe somehow, obviously, is referencing this poem. But. Yeah. So the desperate need. And maybe actually in light of that, I mean, maybe the desperate need of Louis the 15th to claim even the inanimate objects around him. Maybe we should be reading this inscription. Just maybe we should be more gimlet eyed about this. That, in fact, the need to put the diamond collar around the neck actually implies that Caesar has less power than he'd like to believe. And that's also part of the inherent issue here of the fact that, okay, she has been claimed. Then why does she have so many men running after her? Something isn't adding up. She's not quite as owned, perhaps. 50:00 Wes: I mean, the Caesar's I am. Can be. And maybe you've been suggesting this all along, but I haven't been paying attention. But a way of saying I belong to Henry viii. Is that the idea? 50:11 Erin: Sorry, I don't know if I ever explicitly said that. 50:14 Wes: And wild for to hold, though I seem tame. Which one could read that broadly as why is she wild for to hold? On one level, it could just mean that this is dangerous. 50:25 Erin: Beware, do not approach. 50:27 Wes: Deal with the guardian. 50:29 Erin: If you mess with the deer, you'll get the horns. No, that's okay. 50:33 Wes: So I was reading it at a more metaphorical level as Caesar as being representative of what you render unto Caesar the things of this world as opposed to the spiritual world. And I'm associating wildness and desire and sexuality and all those things with the this world, with the Caesar's world, and then contrasting that with tameness and spirituality and femininity. So to suggest that the admonition is that you will find out that your idealized beloved is not so ideal if you catch them. 51:07 Erin: Okay, so we'll leave off our discussion of who so list to hunt there. And in part two of our discussion of the poems of Thomas Wyatt, we'll build, I think, on many of the themes established in who so list to hunt with another poem that's kind of about hunting, they flee from me. So we'll cover that in Part two. Thank you, Wes, thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.