Bond not, though she pine, delaying till its advent heart and mind their life. And then begins a long soliloquy by Palma. It goes from line 339 to 560, and it goes through a number of phases. But the first one, she discloses... poses herself where we've seen her before when Sardella sings, sees Adelaide, and at her feet, Palma. And Palma, on her part, sees Sardella emerge from the mass, the figure we've had over and over again of something parting and someone emerging from the mass. How dare? I let expand a force within me till some out soul whose resource it grew for should direct it.

[22:27]

Every law of life, its every fitness, every flaw must one determine whose corporeal shape would be no other than the prime escape and revelation to me of a will or life or shrouded and inscrutable above. save at the point which i should know shown that myself my powers might overflow so far so much and now it signified which earthly shape it henceforth chose my guide whose mortal lips selected to declare its oracles what fleshly garb would wear the first of intimations whom to love the next how love him Seen that orb above the castle covert and the mountain close, slow in appearing, if beneath it rose cravings, aversions, did our green precinct take pride in me, unaware of distinct with this or that endowment? How repressed at once such jetting power shrank to the rest. Was I to have a chance, touch spoil me, leave my spirit thence unfit to receive the consummating spell, that spell so near moreover.

[23:34]

Waits, and then almost as if it were, this I've marked, it's a song separate within it, and it, it, might be a Sardello song within it. It might be her song. Again, the confusion of Sardello and Palma is back and forth. And this is just this lovely little song that occurs I've got numbers on pages around 354. Wait, see not the wait in the earth. Let me do that spell line, because the fact that we're in dream and spell is very important. With I do have a chance, touch, spoil me, leave my spirit, thence unbidden to receive the consummating spell. That spell so near, moreover. Wait, see not the waking year. His almond blossoms must be honey ripe by this. To welcome him, fresh runnels strike the thought ravines. Because of him, the wind walks like a herald. I shall surely find him now." Before we go on, one of the issues raised by

[24:45]

Rachel regarding HD's poetry. It's an issue having to do with enthrallment, with enthrallment in love, seeking enthrallment in love, and seeking to enthrall, which is very close to the poem Seeking to Enthrall and To Be Enthralling. And she raises a tremendous guilt in the terms of her modern woman's questioning about, has woman been enthralled all the time? And then she realizes, also, woman's been enthralling. That's something every woman had been aiming at of the category. And actually, I will assume that Rachel Blau-Plessis had trouble of her being enthralling, her being enthralled. And it was just that close to see that some of the direction of the modern poem anticipating might have been they were very, very troubled with the spell that poetry cast.

[25:51]

In order to get into Sordello, I find I begin to read it obsessively. It's the only way you get there. And more than that, you do read obsessively in order to get back a century and a half to an entirely different concept of the sound of the poem. Not entirely different from when we are handed out of school because we're like, because we hear this form of the poem, but that even makes it more remote, to get into it the way the readers were, and they had a hard time. And they may have had a hard time, too, because the poem enthralls It baffles and then yields by enthralling. So does Finnegan's Wake. I mean, there was a certain kind of involvement in a modern poem that seeks to get you tar baby effect, I call it, that seeks to get you so attached to the poem in your bafflement and rage that you are enthralled. I mean, think of the plots in a million movies. We're talking about romance. We're talking about what gets Doug won. Every log life, its every fitness, every flaw, must one determine whose corporeal shape should be no other than the crying escape and revelation to me of a will or of life or fraud.

[27:09]

And I can just see Br'er Rabbit hopping around and Br'er Fox fixing up the tar baby for Br'er Fox. One is critical, and so forth, and then you're stuck. And at the other side of it, then, deep in that, well, and released with a really lovely little song, waits he not the waking year, it is off. Almond blossoms must be honey-ripe by this, to welcome him, fresh rose, bright the thought ravines. Because of him the wind walks like a herald, I shall surely find him now. And chief that earnest April morn of Richard's love court, Was it time so worn and white my cheek, so idly my blood beat, sitting that morn beside the lady's feet and saying as she prompted, till outburst one face from all the faces, not then first I knew it, where in maple chamber glooms crowned with what sanguine heart pomegranate blooms advanced it ever, men's acknowledgment sanctioned my own, t'was taken palmless

[28:12]

Bent Sordello recognized, accepted. And then we go back to Adelaide. She was sitting by the lady's feet. Done she sat, still skeeting, with Adelaide. Echelon would come, gaunt, scared. Chesano baffles me. He'd say, better I fought it out my father's way. Strangled Ferrara in its drowning flats. And you and your Torello yonder. What? Romano business there and ours concerned to cure that thrower chief and then she and and she's she at Liberty again Adelaide to sit and cut I'm skipping here a bit to get to another thing I want to pick up and scheme against the next emergence I to covered her Torello spike sprite Made fly or fold the wing to cut. It's the first hint that Sardella might be might be Torello's son that isn't even stated and The sprite comes at least from Sardella Land.

[29:17]

Well, let me read that. She in liberty to set a scheme against the next emergence. I, to cover Tertarella's sprite, may fly or fold the wing upon your horse boat, for leave command those steely shafts to shoot ope or straight assuage their blind heaviness in blank smooth snow. What semblance of success to any of my plans for making you mine and Romano's. break the first wall through, tread o'er the ruins of the chief, supplant his sons beside, still vainest were the vaunt, there Salinguero would obstruct me sheer, and the insuperable Tuscan here stay me. But one wild eve that lady died in her lone chamber, only I decide, Torella far at Naples, and my sire at Padua, Echelon away in ire with Albrecht, She held me thus, a clutch to make our spirits as our bodies touch, and so began flinging the past up, heaps of uncouth treasure from their sunless sleeps within her soul.

[30:28]

Deeds rose along with dreams, fragments of many miserable screams, secrets, more secrets. Then, no, not the last amongst others, like a casual trick of the past, how Aisha told me, gathering up her face, all left of it, into one arch grimace to die with. friend is gone but not the fear of that fell laughing heard as now I hear nor faltered voice so we don't get what at this point what Adelaide discussed it's where it began in an interrupted state about what there was some last thing she said and we've gone off leaving it dot dot dot land um as a matter of fact again in that psychological sense as um as if it were a real bright, a real inability to finish at that point within Palma, not just that what happens in the actual scene is Echelon bursts in, but still he has supplanted something that Adelaide, the disclosure Adelaide made.

[31:41]

which in the poem is that Sardello is Salinguerra's heir. There aren't the kind of significance, but having denied a significance to this, Salinguerra has given up his, almost lost his sense of a destiny because his heir was killed, he thought, so he has no house. And he just turned into a, he's still loyal or may or may not be to Etchelin. Etchelin's, Etchelin, though, has gone to a monastery to turn monk. And Sangara said, well, do I still owe you? Do I still have to take my orders from you? No. So he's on his own, but he doesn't have his ambition. He doesn't have a sense of a destiny, because Ratrud and the baby, he thinks, are And he doesn't have the heart to start again himself trying to start a new house. The losing heart may be echoed then in Sordello.

[32:42]

I mean, Sordello's destiny is called to, in some sense, as it comes to father. I'm not in any sense here, by the way, nor even tempted to... make of this any psychoanalysis or something like that having to do with Robert Browning. It doesn't. I mean, I can't even imagine it does. What the poem gives rise to are times for Robert Browning to, as Sardello, as Nardo, as Eglemore, and Palma have their portions of the poem. I feel portions of... deliberated or not, of Robert Browning's own sense of where his poems coming from arise to speak for themselves. I have to go back to where Troubadour had gone.

[33:43]

One of the things I found looking through it began, over and over again, picking something forward is that many times in which the nature and then one's own nature are discovered within nature. So there are two kinds of nature. Yield, ground, and That's book third really opens with it when Sardello returns from . He's returning from . Is he returning from Antrim? No, he's returning from . And from Verona, right. Let's open the opening of book three.

[35:36]

Remember, at the end of book two, called upon to perform at the court, Sardello, in a kind of despond, walks out of conflict and not owe coverage for it. Next day, no poet is supposed to perform. Or as Torello, when the dance of jamborees masked as devils ended, Dota's song come next. The master of the pageant looked perplexed. Till Nado's whisper came to his relief, his highness knew what poets were. In brief, had not the catchy race prescriptive right to peevishness, caprice, or call it pride, one must receive their nature in its length and breadth, expect the weakness with the strength. So phrasing till his stock of phrases spent, the easy-natured soldier smiled assent, and settled his portico, smoothed his chin, and nodded that the bull-bait might begin.

[36:41]

This is one thing I always remember when I was supposed to perform. Dylan Thomas has great education in this. If you're drunk, great. The audience is thrilled he's drunk. And Charles Olsen falling down and not able to speak straight seemed nearer to everybody how wonderful he's human. Although he's 6 foot 8, he probably has a mind 6 foot 8. Here, this one's cuddled. And now, the only thing we've ever heard. He's just as mixed up as we are. This relation of audience to poetry. But the other thing is that absolute, oh, Racky at the Poetry Center, where he was in a an advanced state of depression and spent, was my impression, a good deal of that reading, stalking up and down the stage, hitting his head. All the great moments, because you paid your money and you got to see what a poet looks like. They're exactly, I mean, it's in for free. It's not a performance in that sense. It's simply a spectacle, what the poet's like, what we expect a poet to be like.

[37:43]

What will it be like today? Bring sandwiches. you haven't seen Jack Spicer? Well, Spicer, at the end, I couldn't read. It's interesting in our naïve day, we didn't dream he was maybe drinking too much to read. But I think it was also a tremendous psychological pressure. It was the last four or five years or so. So the tape that he read at the talking conference in... 63 or 64, is extraordinary, because he hadn't even read in a group, a small group. Let's say like this one, who was gathered, a very in-group, and he still wouldn't be able to read. At the time, the head of the town was to be read. Jack sat in a baseball cap and got out the text.

[38:45]

and his head over and over again, which I can't imagine not breathing. And so the text was actually read by Robin Blaser. Not written by Robin Blaser, but read while Jack sat, as I was stupor, and later would say it was horrible and all wrong and so forth. But the poem had become, I think, absolutely forbidden to it. In the reading at the conference then that he read, Grail, told him, sir. And that was in a weak voice, but a very straight. And after the reading, I went up to him, and he didn't recognize me. He was around. I don't think he saw anything. Far off. Well, I mean, the main thing is that with poets, Browning, of course, is not one of those poets who is of the tetchy race.

[39:51]

But I'm just sharing a little news that it's invaluable to remember you of the tetchy race. You can always throw out Wingate if you like. You and opera singers, wherever you are. Meanwhile, of course, the world wants to treat poets as businesses and be very annoyed when they don't keep up with that. And the font took them. Let our laurels lie, bray, moon-fern now, with misty triumphally, because once more, Gorito gets once more Sardella to itself. A dream is o'er, and a suspended life begins anew. Quiet both throbbing temples then subdue that cheap distortion. Nature's strict embrace, putting aside the past, shall soon efface its print as well. Factitious humor is grown over the true. Love's hatred's not its own, and turning pure as some forgotten vest woven of painted vices, silkiest tufting that

[40:55]

Tyrene welts pearl-sheeted lip, let welter fire-ring, let it slip in the sea, and vexed, et cetera. That passage is straight Eglemor. And when Eglemor is held up for what he's liable to commit, it's exactly that. Only here we have it straight in, in our guide speaking, I guess our storyteller speaking. But Brown is perfectly capable of a tune. So the stain of the world forsakes Sardella with its pain, its pleasure, how the taint to loosening escapes cloud after cloud. Men to his familiar shades die, fair and foul die, fading as they blip, men and women and the pathos and the wit, wise speech and foolish deeds to smile or sigh for, good, bad, seemly or ignoble die. the laugh face glances through the eglantine's the laugh voice murmurs twixt the blocks and divines of men of that machine supplied by thought to compass self-perception with be sought by forcing half himself an insane pulse of a god's blood on clay it could convulse never transmute on human sights and sounds to watch the other happy with hurts and bounds it ebbs from to its source a fountain sealing forever

[42:16]

better sure be unrevealed than part revealed. Sordello well or ill is finished. Then what further use of will point in the prime idea not realized and oversight? Inordinately prized, no less, and pampered with enough of each delight to prove the whole above its reach. And then we have an interior monologue. To need become all natures, yet retain the law of my own nature. must be resoundingly the core of, because it's the need, the need from which Browning comes all his life. To need become all natures, yet retain the law of my own nature, to remain myself, yet yearn. As if that chestnut think should yearn for this first large bloom, crisp and pink are those pale fragrant tears where zephyrs march wounds along the fretted pine tree branch. Will and the means to show will, great and small, material, spiritual, abjure them all safe, any so to state they may be left to amuse, not tempt become, and thus bereft just as I first was fashioned would I be.

[43:30]

Nor moon is it Apollo now, but me thou visitest to comfort and befriend. Swim thou into my heart, and there an end since I possessed thee. Nay, thus shut mine eyes, and know, quite know, by this heart's fall and rise, when thou dost bury thee in clouds, and when outstandest, wherefore practice upon men to make that plainer to myself. It is Ordella speaking. We've got within the same book Prayed out, Robert Browning. Signed, 603. Oh, yeah, right. Okay, that's where it begins, but I want to move you into it, because it's marvelous as it begins to change.

[44:32]

At the end of Palma's, on line 561, Palma's long soliloquy, or speech, it's a speech, but really unbroken to Sardello, And in the change from that first one, where there's an orb that, yes, interestingly enough, remember his picture of, Sordello's picture of the one is that she will move himself as the moon moves the sea. But... Palma's overweening. Her picture is that the one will somewhat keep, well, I could work both ways, somewhat keep her, keep her, a focus for her inordinate sense of the destiny the one is to have. I mean, she, her whole speech as it moves through here is a picture of moving herself as a political power. And very much listening to her father, and Echelon, and

[45:37]

And what use she, she wants to take Adelaide's place as part of what seems to be moving there. So it's quite something that's coming forward on him. And what she leaves him with is not, while the introduction was a poem, she leaves him with the destiny of he's to take his place with a feudal order. And it's right. And Palmaplet... Though no affirming to stir many as for exile of mankind whose proper service ascertained intact as yet, parentheses, to be by him themselves made act, not watch Sardello acting each of them. That's the change between the two Sardellos. To make others act, not force them to see you enact them. What to secure if the true diadem seemed imminent while our sardello drank the wisdom of that golden palma? Thank Verona's lady in her citadel, founded by Gaulish brennus, legends tell.

[46:41]

And truly, when she left him, the sun reared ahead like the first fine birds who appeared atop the capital, his face on flame would triumph, triumphing till manliest came, nor slight too much my rhymes. Now, who is Mr. My here? I think we... I think all of a sudden, they're repressible. Robert Browning come forward. Nor fly too much my rhymes. That spring, disbred, dispart, disperse. I read this before because it's such a description of Browning's own feel of what's going on in his rhyme. That spring, disbred, dispart, disperse, lingering overhead like an escape of angel. Rather, say, my transcendental platen-mounted gape and archimede shoe courts a novice queen with tremulous silver trunk, whence branches sheen lap out thick foliage necks to shiver soon with colored buds, then glowing like the gloom one mild flame. Last, a pause, a burst, and all her ivory limbs are smothered by a fall.

[47:44]

Blue linders and fruit sparkles and leaf dust. Ron Johnson committed that line. It's slightly memorable. Blue linders and fruit sparkles and leaf dust. Ending the weird work prosecuted just for her amusement. He decrepit stark doses. Her control of the light may mark a pipe. Yet not so, surely never so. Only, as good my soul were suffered, go o'er the lagoon. For fair thee put aside entrance thy synod, as if God may glide out of the world he fills, and leave it mute for myriad ages, as we men compute, returning into it without a break of consciousness. They sleep, and I awake o'er the lagoon, being at Venice." So, I mean, soul after soul gets to come forward in this stuff, including the poet directly. They sleep an eye away. This is, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, the 1,000 Faces of Eve or whatever.

[48:48]

This beats those personalities all over the place. They come bobbing up to the surface. No, in just such songs as Eglemor, say, wrote, with heart and soul and strength, for he believed in self-achieving, all to be achieved by singer, in such songs you find alone completeness, judged the song if singer won, and neither purpose answered his in it or its in him, him, him, while from true works to wit Sordello's dream performances that will be never more than dreams. As gave there still some proof, the singer's proper life was meet the life in song exhibit. This is she to that. A passion and a knowledge far transcending, the majestic as they are, smoldered. His lay was but an episode in the bar's life. What evidence you owe to some slight weariness on looking off or start away, the childish skit or scoff in Charlemagne, his poem, dream devising every point except one silly line about the rest of daughters.

[49:56]

I really didn't. It would be marvelous to imagine poems that you had made of you. bright remarks about what you did, silly mark about the rescue daughters. Is there a footnote about that? I haven't been referencing a poem now. Let's see. Now I've forgotten a song that was never sung or something. And Joe Hancock, he said, Duncan, what was the song that was never sung? What was this? Did I say anything about what was this here wrestling song? One silly line. What? They were the subject of much gossip. It was said Charlemagne would not let them marry, as he would not dare to. as he would not bear to leave them to be here. The poem was an invention of Brown English. Yes, right. And what about the silly line? Well, this poem is, there's, I still find it hard to take a certain turn in the first, that occurs right out of the way. We rise with great ecstasy, and then, in the very first book, I think,

[51:01]

And then it has walks with God, and then something walks with God. It just came wrong there again. I can't find that line, but it's a resounding, all of a sudden, thunderously Eglemore couplet. OK, let's get back into our friend Eglemore's one. My life commenced before this work. At what may lurk in that? Miss Travis Gipp or Scotland Charlemagne What may lurk in that? And the consciousness in the poem of what, it's something lurking in the poem. And this is one of the things that surely makes it opening up to a good deal of our 20th century interest in the significant poem. You work in a murky stuff. but you expect it to yield. And your question all the time is, what works in that? That thing that came to you in the course as we were writing, what is there? The other way around is the great redundancy and bore in which the self-evidently significant text is stuck to the point.

[52:11]

My life commenced before this work, so I interpret the significance of the barge. Start aside and look at dance. My life commenced before this work. My life continues after. On I fare with no more stopping, possibly no care to note the undercurrent of why and how, where, when, or the deeper life as thus just now. But silent shall I cease to live, a laugh for you who sigh when shall come to pass we read that story. How will he compress the future gains, his life's true business, into the better lay, which that one's flout, however inopportune it be, lets out? Engrosses him already, though professed to mediate, meditate with us, eternal rest and partnership in all his life has found. I do have a curious little side note, not around any of this point, but by making that mistake of meditating, Anne Creeley, Robert Creeley's first wide proofread, a piece that appeared in the Black Mountain Review, and there was an objection to at least one crucial word that had been

[53:33]

corrected by Anne Feeley. She corrected mediate, meditate. So the Virgin meditated instead of mediating. But through for a loop, Jung's procedure of argument. And now I'm going further ahead here, where We're at the end of the speech end of Natto's, and Natto has an extended feature. Well, let's get . Natto's back talking now. Tis but a sailor's promise, weather bound, and then Natto goes on. Strike sail, slip cable, hear the bark, be moored for once, the spawning stretch, the poles assured. Noontide above, except the waves crisp dash or buzz of colibri or tortoise splash, the margins silent. Out with every spoil made in our tracking, coil by mighty coil, this serpent of a river to his head in the midst.

[54:39]

Admire each treasure as we spread the bank to help us tell our history aright. Give ear, endeavor to describe the groves of giant rushes, how they grew like demons and long tresses we'd sail through. What mountains, yawns, forests to give us vent opened each doleful side, yet on we went till, may that beetle shake your cap, attest the springing of this land wind from the west. Wherefore? Ah, yes, you frolic it today, tomorrow, and the pageant moved away down to the poorest tentpole we and you part company. No other may pursue eastward your voyage be informed what fate intends its triumph or decline await the tempter of the everlasting step. I muse this on a ruined palace step at Venice. Why should I break off, nor sit longer upon my step, exhaust the fit England gave birth to? This is so much the haunts one, because the cantos were the fit England gave birth to and moved off back to when Brown went to Italy for ghosts coming in layers of the infalcated.

[55:45]

Who is adorable enough to reclaim a? No, Sardellos will alack be queen to me. Sardellos was calm about that. Not any one has appeared throughout the frowning. That Bethany's busied among her smoking fruit boats, thee, perhaps from our delicious Othello, who twinkled pigeons o'er the portico, not prettier, bind you lilies into sheaves to deck the bridge-side chapel, dropping leaves soiled by their own loose gold meal. Ah, beneath the cool arch stoops she, brownish cheek, her wreath endures a month, a half-month, If I make a queen of her, continue for her sake, Sardella story. Nay, that Paduan girl flashes with bare legs where live whirl in the dead black geodeca proves seaweed drifting has sucked down three, four, all indeed save one pale red stripe, pale blue turban post predominantly. you and a disheveled ghost.

[56:48]

Well, now we know when Pound says, there were not all those girls, there was one, that it's an answer to all those girls that come in the flock as Robert Browning is sitting on the step in the first part of his magic. Not far from that passage then is an opening of Venice. And that's on line 743. It begins, Venice seems a type of life Twix blue and blue extends a stripe as light. Venice isn't even a city in his story. Remember, these are astounding interjections. Browning had gone to Italy to find locale for the poem. He'd written it, still discontent, done it twice over again, and finally went away from the poem with the poem with him to go and get locale. But the effective Venice, you're at the one that carries strong at the wall for our poultry.

[57:50]

It goes forward, absolutely. And it's not one of the places of the locale. It is the locale, though, isn't it? If we put each of the people, Sardellos in Goito, Nardos at Mantua, Palmas at Verona, and somebody is at Venice. Maybe our other cat, the one that's doing the whole brawl. So there is a fourth one. We not only have Sardellonado and Eglamore. Eglamore is under the... Eglamore was also at the court. Eglamore, Nado, and then it's Nado Sardello when he is a bard. But we've got Robert Browning as another one of those persons. Venice seems a type of life, twixt blue and blue extends a stripe as life, the somewhat hangs betwixt nought and nought. Tis Venice, and tis life, as good you sought to spare me the Piazza's slippery stone, or keep me to the unchoked canals alone, as hinder life, the evil with the good, which make up living rightly understood.

[58:58]

Only to finish, do finish. Teasants, queens, take them, made happy by what means, parade them for the common credit, vouch that a luckless residue we send to crouch in corners out of sight was just as framed for happiness, its portion might have claimed as well, and so obtaining joy had stalked, fastuous as any, such my project, balked already. I hardly venture to adjust the first rags when you find me, to mistrust me nor unreasonable. You, no doubt, have the true knack of tiring the suitors out with those thin lips on tremble, lashless eyes, inveterably tear-shocked. There, be wise, mistress of mine, there, as if I met you insult, shall your friend, not slave, be shent for speaking home? Beside, care a bit erased, broken-up beauties ever took my taste supremely. Broken-up beauties ever. And I love you more, far more than her I looked should foot life's temple floor.

[60:03]

What does it say in a footnote to that? Is this in gossip? Somebody got a footnote that tells us who did he look to foot life's temple floor? That, we're at 770, line 770, part 3. I wonder. Who is this who? Is that part three? No, there is no. Then we can all wonder. Years ago, leagues at distance, when and where a whisper came, let others seek. Thy cares found thy life's provision. Thy race should be thy mistress, and into one face the many faces crowd. Ah, that I judge or know your secret rough apparel, grudge all ornaments, save tag or tassel worn to him, we are not thoroughly forlorn.

[61:10]

Flouch bonnet, unloop mantle, careless go, alone, that's saddest, but it must be so to Venice. Sitting now, and now glance aside, ought to sultry or undignified. Then, ravishingest lady, will you pass, or not, each portable group, the mass before the basilisk, that feast gone by? God's great day is the corpus domini, and wistfully foregoing proper man. Come, timid up to me for alms, and then the luxury to hesitate. Fain do some unexampled grace, when whom but you dare I bestow your own upon? And here further, before you say it is to sneer, I call you ravishing, for I regret little that she whose early foot was set forth as she planted on a pedestal, now in the silent city, seems to fall toward me. No wreath, only a lips unrest to quiet, a surcharged eyelids to be pressed dry of the tears upon my bosom. Strange such sad chance should produce in thee such change, my love.

[62:12]

Warped souls and bodies, yet God spoke of right hand, left hand, I flex our yoke. Flordello, as your poor poet ship may find, so sleep upon my shoulders. Child, nor mind your foolish talk. Well, manage, reinstate your own worth. Ask, mortal, but when they pray to evil men, pass hope. Don't each contrive despite the evil you have viewed to live. Eggnamore, in this same book, has a soliloquy of his own. Where are we in ? Let me see here. 6646. Maybe I was wrong, but we're in book two. Uh-huh. OK. And we're in book three . We've got to get . Yeah, that would get, we just, I guess that covered the two.

[63:23]

Following the passage we're in, the two, I'm going to pick up another theme here, which is the one of division, and run even some repeats on it. We noted it before, where we've got, it appears right at the beginning of the poem, and I run through a series that I found of these partings, curtains, partings. The first write-off is in One line, 1820. Though I might be proud to see the dim, abysmal past divide its hateful surge, letting of all men this one man emerge because it pleased me.

[64:40]

Yet that moment past, I should delight in watching first to last his progress, if you watch it not a whit more in the secret than yourselves, who sit fresh chapped with it to listen. And then 73 to 74, in that same book we've got departing again reiterated. Lo, the past is hurled in twain, up thrust, out staggering on the world, subsiding into shape. A darkness rears its outline, kindles at the core, appears Verona. And around the darkness and so forth, there are expectations of birth, I think, and expectations of something coming forth from. And again, immediate images of something coming forth from the divisions in Brown and Jones' thought syntax. They're not just completions. They're real divisions.

[65:43]

OK, we're now at line 212, that first part. Because that's the one that we talked about when I was talking about the fault. Cliffs and earthquake suffrage jut in the mid-sea, each domineering crest, which naught save such another throw can wrest from out, can see a certain choke-width grown since o'er the waters twine and tangle, thrown too thick, too fast, accumulating round, too short, overriot, and confound their long, each brilliant islet with itself, unless a second shot, save shoal and shelf, whirling the sea-grip wide. Here I would say, in terms that are immediate and bodily, Browning's fantasies of birth, of content as being born from the the body of the poem over and over and over again as you proceed.

[66:47]

What's interesting is it's surely born out of that content. There's not a concept of insemination unless somebody else got that. I dreamt of that. So this, in fact, another thing that's important to notice if you've got images of birth, whether there are also images of insemination or whether that's been driven. Man's a germ of a god, but that's a very different thing, isn't it? Browning can picture himself as a thing being born, and as being germinal in itself, it does not mean, again, so that the body of the poem It is the figures coming forth from earth or sea continues. Does anybody notice any images or passages in the poem in which there's a sense of inseminating? There probably wouldn't be because not only Sardella, but Browning is somebody who is being made, being formed.

[67:53]

Do you want to pick up on that? Through the poem, there's been a lot about not having transmutations, about not being able to transmute and remember convulsions and does not commute to God. Apollo, for one thing, that's a first place. Very early, Sarvelo is said to have leprosy. He's been blighted in some way. And Apollo is not only the god of transmutation, of poetry, one of the kinds of poetry. But he's also, since he's a god of medicine, he's a god of disease. And so that they're told about this place being let loose of disease. And Palma would be, when Palma becomes a one of those, she moves him away from being Apollo in some sense.

[69:05]

Whatever happens to the leprosy? No, leprosy is figurative as far as I can tell. No, no, no, it's something. And I think, no, I think, right, I searched for it. I thought, leprosy is going to happen. Such a nice boy. There's not even a sly little line about that. It was a very little thing. It's leprosy. for a wicked cartoon, hard to play, a lion on its ass. Well, I'll go, Jerry, in a moment. Quick, quick, quick. Oh, he does that in a fair few lines. Did you finally locate his dime? Yeah, he did. Is it only three lines per page? In my word, it takes the lines 620, but... In one great kiss or lips upon his breast... Huh?

[70:16]

Yeah. With short, quick, passionate cries, on the press, in one great kiss or lips upon his breast... I have written in the margin here. I thought I had it written out of the margin. Here it is, yeah. What's it being added through? What had Sardella found, or can his spirit go the mighty round in where poor Eglmore be? Gun, so says old Fatal, the two eagles went two ways about the world.

[71:23]

Where in the midst they met, though on a shifting ways to sand, men set Joke's temple. Quick, what has Fort Sardella found? Where they approach, approach, that foot's rebound. Palma, no sound where I thought, though in mail, they mount, have reached the threshold, dashed the veil aside, and you divine who sat there dead, under his foot the badge. Still, Palma said, a triumph lingering in the wide eyes, wider than some spent swimmers if he spies help from above in his extreme despair, and heads far back on shoulder thrust, turns there with short, quick, passionate cry as Palma pressed. In one great kiss her lips upon his breast it beat. By this the hermit being has stopped his day's toil at Luito. The new crop dead fine leaf answers. Now tis eve he fit. Twirled so and filed all day. The mansion is fit. God counsel for. as easy gets the word the past betwixt them and became become the third to the soft small unaffrighted feet as taxing with one fall so no remembrance racks of the stone maidens and the font of stone feet creeping through the crevice leaves alone alas my friend alas sordello whom anon they laid within that old font tune and yet again alas

[72:47]

The font had been revealed to be a tomb because it was buried in the font. So as you go by, but I love that he's quite sly when he goes, yes, he was sitting there dead, which is hard to get away with in a form that is surrounded with a crown. What? I think I was telling you where it was. You were telling me where it was. Yes, it was. There he was, down, down. Yeah. Well, now we can snarl when they tell us that we're obscure. I'm going to try and start that off. OK, let me go some of these others, divide, because they really begin to be quite interesting in this. Wait a minute, maybe. Oh, we should be in two. No. Yeah, which would be 1, 8, 55. Looking for 8, 55.

[73:49]

All right. If I could count, it would be great. Yeah, here it is. The pageant thinned... The pageant thinned accordingly from rank to rank like wind his spirit passed to winnow and divide. Back fell the simpler phantasms. Every side the strong clave to the wise. That's the word cleave, play. Again, where you... with either class the beauteous, so till two or three amassed mankind's beseemingnesses and reduced themselves eventually, grace loosed, strength lavished, all to heighten up one shape whose potency no feature should escape." And then all of a sudden, well, that suggests something about a portrait. And so now we're talking about Friedrich, and it goes back into the politic. But remember, this is no politics of Robert Browning. So I think he does, in a sense, these figures come and go as if they're in a dream, that for him, the destiny of politics and history of action, after all, it isn't politics, but action that is on Brown's mind.

[75:00]

And action and destiny are as much a part of the dream as a... I wondered in relation to this... Because I don't get a relation to Robert Browning at all, it's hard to get any of the Victorians relating to what in the world was going on in their empire. Of all the most repressed possible contents of their daily life must have been outside of dashing into the fray, the emperor Kipling does much better by it, wondering what it is and what are the British undertaking. Robert Browning's not in the height of it anyway, though. When did they take India? And everybody gets really giddy. Yeah, OK. So we're not there. Oh, yeah, right. And so anyway, they are an empire, no matter what you do with it. Well, this would be a striking difference because, and nor are we easy about what is our, we are neither easy nor, again, we have the same trouble as significance when what is it that gets us upset about our wars?

[76:07]

What is it that gets us upset about the, I'm talking about what deep thing that we're actually involved with, that we're in it and so forth, but when we're out of it, why is it so difficult? And it seems not in that way to touch the Victorians. So he'd be modern. I'm not quite a modern at that point, I think. Well, now in book two, we've got the theme of division again occurring. Yeah. The word Palma, steal aside and die, Sordello. This is real. And this abjure. This is when he's been in fantasy, going toward Mantua. He imagines he's been walking in the woods and so forth.

[77:09]

It's hard to tell, is it real at that announcement? And then line 55, what next? The curtains see dividing. She is there, and presently he will be there. The proper you, at length, in your cherished dress of grace and strength, most like the very Boniface. Not so. It is a showy man advanced, but though a glad cry welcomed him, then every sound sank, and the crowd disposed themselves around. This is not he, Sordella felt, while placed for the best troubadour of Boniface in its even more. So we're in a series of, but it happens again with the curtains, see, dividing. Not even a room. Again, it's a dream scene. And 169, 177, the same thing again. Meanwhile, sounds low and drear stole on him, and a noise of footsteps nearer and nearer while the underwood was pushed aside, the larches grazed, the dead leaves crushed at the approach of men.

[78:14]

The wind seemed laid, only the trees shrunk slightly, and a shade came o'er the sky, although it was midday yet. You saw each hat shut, hound cast flower at flutter. A Roman bride, when they'd disparch her unbound tresses with the sabine dart, holding that famous rape in memory still, felt creep into her curl of the iron chill, and looked thus, Eglemor would say. Indeed, tis Eglemor. No other these proceed home hither in the woods. T'were surely sweet far from the scene of one's forlorn defeat to sleep, Judge Notto. And 656, again, is a parting. This is the great age of soft core pornography. Also, it's a great age of pornography, but the soft core is right before the synergists, symbolists, could be gorgeously present.

[79:18]

Oh, yes. Then we have 655. Weeks, months, years went by, and lo, Sordello vanished utterly, thundered in twain. each spectral part at strife with each, one jarred against another life, the poet thwarting hopelessly the man who, fooled no longer, free in fancy ran here, there, let slip no opportunities his pitiful pursuit beside the prize to drop on him some no time and acquit his constant fate the poet asks to wit that waiving any compromise between no joy and all joy kept the hunger keying beyond most methods of incurring scoff from the man portion not to be put off with self reflecting by the poet's scheme though ne'er so bright who sauntered forth in dream dressed anyhow nor weighted mystic frames immeasurable gifts astounding claims but just his sorry self who yet might be sorrier for all he in reality achieved.

[80:23]

So opinion mans the poet part, fondling in turn a fancy verse. The art developing his soul a thousand ways, potent in its assistance to amaze the mother to the majesties, convince each sort of nature that the nature's prince accosted it. Language, the makeshift, grew into a bravest of expedients, too. Apollo seemed it now perverse had thrown quiver and bow away, to lyre alone sufficed. While out of dream his day's work went to tune a crazy denizen or servant, so hampered him the man part, rust to judge between the bard and the bard's audience, grudge a minute's toil that missed its due reward. But the complete sordello of man and bard, John's cloud-girt angel, this foot on land, that on the sea, with open in his hand a bitter sweetling of a book, was gone. I'm going to read this passage again because it's for a series of transitions with it.

[81:27]

And we've got enough words. This is in book two, and it begins at line 656. go through this man portion of this business where he's sundered. I'll read it from the sun ring, because the sun ring is also, if you remember the image, you might pass this to the back a little later. I'll get the page for that. Not that Browning was looking at this image, but we do have two. At this point, since Durer also was struck by He did a great series on the images and John of Patmos. And after reading this passage through, I think I'll talk a little about the book because that's what I see in that image. It's a great potent one for our... Potent anyway, all the way to poetry, but it's a poem that merges more and more with the challenge of what is in relation to the book.

[82:31]

And remember, Browning is writing books... Sardella really is a book. Weeks, months, years went by, and lo, Sardella vanished utterly. thundered in twain. Each spectral part in strife with each, one jarred against another lie, the poet hoarding hopelessly the man who fooled no longer free and fancy ran here, there. Let slip no opportunities. I think what we're faced here at the destiny that the constant defining and making of salt lays on the poet. And I remember In college years, in my early 20s, often, and I didn't even have a handful to be disposed of. I think that lasted until late 20s. wanting really to destroy all the writing there was that I'd written on him, you know, and see if you could walk away from it free.

[83:34]

I mean, could you possibly? Already I felt, no, this is, somehow this stuff that I'm writing is compelling me. Who is me? I mean, I see that as man and one of the real splits between the man that I'd have been free And I think in the very first session I talked about it, when you sit down and you start writing, now you are a reader, and that writing is taken over, and it is a directive strength. So there are two destinies, and this destiny really seems to thwart the freedom of the man. And that goes along with the enthralling. That goes along with the other theme of it is the power of enthralling, because the man is enthralled by the poet. And the poet, in turn, would enthrall the audience. And the audience would be enthralled. And we have a constant production of a kind of enslavement, but a laying down of a destiny.

[84:38]

But there's something about the squawk from the man portion, which is another part of it. I hear it in this. I think I hear it right. They were dealing with the one, the kind of pathos that William Carlos Williams says, I am a poet, I am a poet, in the middle of Patterson. And Pound and Williams write macho letters back and forth to each other to disclaim that they have any poetic sensibilities and that they're not going to be caught by these themes and so forth. They try to break through and show man talk as fast as they can do it. The poet thwarting hopelessly the man, in capital letters, who fooled no longer free and fancy ran. Okay. The poet has his constant faith. The poet has to quit his constant faith. The poet has to wit. That waiving any compromise between no joy and all joy kept the hunger keen beyond most methods. Of incurring scoff from the man portion, not to be put off with self-reflecting by the poet's scheme, though ne'er so bright.

[85:41]

Remember, Sardallo is most sure of his women as an audience. That's quite clear in the beginning, his dalliance. And after being in court, and coming up to Maegor and coming into his competition and defeating Eglimor, killing Eglimor in defeat. And then in the place of the Delians, the crowd appears. When he's really heartbroken about the position he's in, he keeps wanting to go back to the Delians. Finally, of course, back to the stone maidens who have sinned themselves. But the primary picture of the of an audience of women for the poet. The minute it comes up, the next stop is the poet with the poets. And that is a contest exactly like the war, because Eglemor is killed. Sardella will plant Eglemor, although this is within a And so the man portion is scoffed from the man portion.

[86:43]

Audience is man portion, but also some man portion of self scoffs. Not to be put off with self-reflecting by the poet's scheme, though ne'er so bright. Who sauntered forth in dream, dressed anyhow, So Browning, remember Browning had that same perception followed by thought, and I think the thought is also self-reflecting. Now Sardella wants to shed it, and Browning comes across very strongly, moving as if you were in a grave. Not philosophy, the one that, in the Victorian sense, they expected the poem to be thinking, to be reflective in a sense. who sauntered forth in dream, dressed anyhow, nor waited mystic frames, immeasurable gifts, astounding claims, but just his sorry self. At least I must be grabbing something out of here, because I really see that it is your sorry self from the dream, who yet might be sorrier for ought he in reality achieved, so opinion mans the poet part fondly in turn of fancy verse.

[87:51]

The art developing his soul a thousand ways, I think I'm right. This is one of the few places the word art is used. Craft is used in other things. Sardello substitutes craft in a number of things when he wins the prize in order just to make up poetry. And he begins calculating through a long part of three and two, tries calculating how do you relate to audience. So we have an account that he's disheartened because the poem begins to be just what the audience required. The art developing his soul a thousand ways, potent by its assistance to amaze the multitude of majesties, convinced each sort of nature that the nature's prince accosted it. Language the makeshift grew into a bravest of expedience too. Apollo, it seemed it now, perverse, had thrown quiver and bow away. The liar alone sufficed. While out of dream, his daily's work went to tune a crazy Tenzin or Sirvan, so hampered him the man part, thrust to judge between the bard and the bard's audience, grudge a minute's toil that missed it due reward.

[89:00]

But the complete Sordello, man and bard, John's cloud-girt angel, this book on the land, that on the sea, whip, open book in his hand, a bittersweetling of a book, was gone. I think that that picture of the poet and the proper person seen here in that figure of angel and book and between sea and land is I think I spoke at the beginning of the fact that praising Robert Browning's fantasy, that it seemed to be my... a group of poets following Williams and Pound, particularly, but it would certainly be true also of H.D., seemed to be in a post-Freudian rejection of fantasy as such, and to demand that there be actual, in other words, that the man himself, the woman herself, as a matter of fact, the man himself and the woman herself begin to be very much the question, that they be standing there one part, that there be two parts,

[90:28]

with the poetic, along with the poetic power. So the invisible hand doesn't write book, which is fantasy. Fantasy's right, I mean, it's still another projection, but the insistence that the actual light be present in the poem. Robert Browning has to come in on this poem. He isn't going to let it alone at all. Here I sit on the stairs in Venice and adds himself to the, that's more than a two-legged angel by the time he's added himself to the other four presences. And so there's a self-portrait in depth, but all right, but that would only be one part. And it's also not a self-portrait. Because if you took man and bard, the bard part then has been also divided away from the man and becomes, remember the two together are the angel figure, but the bard part becomes pure fantasy. Browning's insistence on fantasy. And yet he makes fun almost all the time when fantasy actually enters in the

[91:30]

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