Transcription
So, the Iliad is the foundation of Greek civilization, which is the greatest civilization in human history. The most creative, it gave us, um, Plato, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles. Um, Greek civilization is essentially the foundation for Western civilization. So, the question we will look at today is, how's it possible that one epic poem can give birth to a civilization? Okay.
So, um, the thing to understand about civilization is that there are two important concepts. The first is, sorry, the second is eudaimonia. So, arete means virtue, excellence, or character. It's something that makes you special, what you excel at. Okay. And traditionally, um, there are two types of arete: there's war-fighting and there is speech-making. In Greek civilization, the paragon of the warrior is, of course, Achilles, and the paragon of the great orator, the great speaker, is Odysseus. So, we are reading the Iliad right now. Uh, and then after we finish the Iliad, we will read the Odyssey. Okay. So, these are the two great characters in Greek civilization: Achilles, the great warrior, and Odysseus, the, the great orator. Okay.
Eudaimonia means flourishing. And the idea of eudaimonia is that you can only be happy, you can only be yourself when you are achieving your, when you are expressing your arete. So, for example, Achilles, um, in the Iliad, he tells us that before he came to Troy, he was given a prophecy. He could either die old at home, or die young but a hero on the shores of Troy. And of, and he said, "Well, duh. Of course, I'm going to die young in Troy because only by fighting, only by winning glory, can I achieve eudaimonia." Okay? And that's why he's so unhappy when he gets in a fight with Agamemnon and he has to sit out the war, and he figures out different ways of getting back into the battle, because without fighting, he can't be Achilles. He is the paragon of the warrior. Okay. So, that's the idea of eudaimonia: I can only be happy when I am, be my creative best, when my, when I'm achieving my true potential. Okay.
Now, for the Greeks, war-fighting and speech-making are really the same thing, but through different means. Okay? So, when you fight a war, what you're trying to do is you're trying to impose your reality onto the world and make others believe what you believe, right? You do that through force. By, uh, brute strength, you show that you're superior, and therefore others must obey you. But speech-making is actually trying to, trying to achieve the same thing. Okay? But through words, okay? So, rather than through force, through beauty and through truth, you're trying to create a new reality that others submit to. And the example, of course, is the speeches between the speeches between Odysseus and Achilles. Okay. Odysseus and Achilles. All right.
So, remember the context. Um, Achilles gets in front of Agamemnon. He refuses to fight, and the Trojans, led by Hector, are destroying the Greeks. So, Agamemnon and Odysseus and the others, Nestor, have a war council, and they agree that they'll go and beg Achilles to come back. Okay. And Odysseus and Nestor and others, they go to Achilles, and they present an argument to Achilles. And, uh, Odysseus gives a very long speech. Now, the question for us is, why are the speeches in the Iliad so goddamn long? Right? Because Odysseus could simply say, "Hey, Achilles, we'll give you a million dollars. Will you fight for us, please?" He can also say, "Hey, Achilles, we're losing a war. Stop being an ass. Come fight for us." Okay? He can make it very, very short. Why is it so long? Right? And then Achilles' response can be like, "No." Okay? But he also offers a very long speech. And the answer is, they're not trying to respond to each other. They're trying to create their own reality. Okay?
So, when, with his, with his speech, what you're really trying to do is you're trying to project a movie onto the world. You're trying to create a new reality that others must inhabit. Okay? That's why speech-making is like war-fighting. You're trying to create your own reality and impose it on others. Right? So, remember what Odysseus is doing. He knows that for Achilles, it's really about face, right? He's lost face in front of the others, and that's why he won't back down. That's why he insists on Agamemnon apologizing. Okay? But Odysseus also knows that Agamemnon himself won't apologize. >> [snorts] >> So, for Odysseus, because he is the great orator, um, that is what he's going to do, try to do, is try to create a new reality that Achilles inhabits, and, um, which will convince him to join Odysseus in the war. Okay.
So, how does he do that? What he does is he expands the imagination of Achilles. All right. Right? That's why the speech is so long, because he's trying to create a new emotional reality for Achilles. Right? Now, Achilles is selfish, right? So, what does Odysseus say to Achilles? The first thing he says is, "Achilles, I want you to imagine this: before us is a great feast. We can see this, this feast. Now, I want you to imagine what's the opposite of this feast: a great desert where we're all dying. We're all starving. And that's the war we're fighting right now against the Trojans. That's why we need you back." Okay? So, it's a powerful image. And then he uses imagery to take Achilles to the present, where Hector is this giant, this god, running around killing all the Greeks before him. Okay? And then he takes Achilles back to the past and says, "Remember your father, Peleus? Before you came to the war, you promised him that you would win glory for him. You promised that you would win glory for the Greeks. Okay?" Then he takes Achilles to the future, which is, "Let's imagine what happens when we win this war. When we win this war, all the riches of Troy, all the treasures will belong to you, Achilles. Again, Agamemnon will give you his daughter for a bride, and you will be the glory of all of Greece. You have treasures and treasures." Think about the present. Think about the present. Think about the past. Think about the future. Okay? Expand your mind, Achilles. Right? That's what Odysseus is doing. He's trying to expand Achilles' imagination. And once you enter this world that Odysseus has created, then you will be convinced to join him. Okay? So, that's what speech-making is. Speech-making is projecting a movie onto the world that everyone can observe and then absorb this new reality. Okay? Internalize this new reality, right? And Achilles knows this, and Achilles refuses to be beaten, right? So, Achilles, for his speech, counters this with his own reality, which is a very self-absorbed reality. Okay? Right. So, rather than expanding outwards like this, Achilles continues to expand to, to contract inwards. Right? He uses the word "I, I, I" a lot, right? "Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me." This is never uses "I" or "we." He's always like, "we." Okay? So, Achilles says, "Hey, I understand that Neoptolemus is a god, but when I saw him, he ran away from me." Right? "Oh, Peleus, my dad. I should go home to see him. So, goodbye, guys." And like, "I got on his daughter for my wife. I spit on her. I don't want him. This crap." Okay? So, it's like, so he contracts in words. Okay? So, and that's why the speech is too long, is so long, because in speech-making, it's a war of realities. It's a war of narratives. And you create narratives through speeches. Okay?
But not only that, but there are certain techniques to speeches, because the goal of speeches is not just to paint a reality, but you want to paint a reality in which it is internalized by others. And therefore, you must make it memorable. Okay? So, remember in the beginning of class, I had you do an assignment, which is, um, write down the speech, right? And even though you didn't force yourself to memorize it, you're able to memorize a lot. Okay? And that shows you the power of the speech. The question in it is, what makes the speech so powerful? And the answer is, because it's poetry, guys. Okay? Poetry. And the elements of poetry, of course, are, um, imagery. And this is what Odysseus does well. This is what he specializes in. Okay? Drawing pictures for you to see, okay? Metaphors, connections. Okay? Metaphors is what we call connections, and connections are things that help you clarify reality. Okay? And which shows you, connect, which shows you things that you couldn't see before. So, for example, if I say, "The sky is like the sea," that doesn't really surprise you. Okay? If I say, "The sky is like a snail," well, that surprises you. And because it surprises you, you remember it. Okay? When you remember it, it reorders the way you see reality. All right. Uh, you also have, um, diction, choice of words, syntax. Okay? And these are things that both Odysseus and Achilles specialize in, especially, um, especially Odysseus. Okay? Does that make sense? All right. So, they're trying to create these narratives through their speeches, and they have these techniques. And guess what? The Greeks, their, their education system was very simple. All they had to do was memorize the Iliad. Okay? Because when you memorize the Iliad, you learn how to make a great speech, right? And you understood that for me to make a great speech, I need to have impact. I need people to remember what I say. I need to imprint myself [clears throat] on others. All right? And this becomes this system becomes the very basis of civilization, right? Speech-making, where to have things done, you have to go in front of people and make a speech and create a reality for people to accept. Right? And this is what leads to democracy. Okay? Are we clear?
Okay. Now I want to talk about, um, how, in fact, Homer creates civilization. Okay. All right. So, [snorts] um, Immanuel Kant, Emmanuel Kant was a German philosopher, and he's primarily concerned with how we understand reality. Why do we see the things that we do? What do we think the thoughts that we have? And he wrote a very good book called "The Critique of Pure Reason," which he outlines this theory. Okay. So, what he tells us is this: Traditionally, we've understood ourselves, we've understood ourselves as passive observers of reality. Okay? This thing is before us. We stand before it and we try to understand it. Okay? What Kant teaches us is that no, we are, in fact, active participants in reality, and we shape and form the reality before us. Okay?
So, um, Kant divides the world into two. The first world is the world of objective reality, the things in themselves, or the noumena. Okay? And what's the noumena? They're just vibrations. Okay? We talked about this, right? The entire world is sound vibrations, frequencies. So, we can't actually see these things. So, we, what we do is we filter the world around us and turn them into things that we can understand, called the phenomena, which are the things to us. Okay? Things to us, or the things that seem to us. All right? And we do so through a filter called time and space. So, time and space do not exist outside of us. They exist inside of us in order for us to understand reality. Okay? So, time, what, what does time mean? Time just means sequence, right? Sequence is just like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We put things in sequence, we create time. Space is the idea of sensation. Okay? Sensation is just basically the five senses, right? All right. Now, time and space exist outside of us because everything outside of us is just pure energy. Okay? But our minds can't perceive pure energy. Therefore, we use time and space, sequence and sensation, to understand the world around us, to, to order the world around us. Okay? All right.
So, but what this means is that if we're able to control time and space, we can control reality unto itself. Okay? Does that make sense? And what is this thing that controls time and space? This thing is called language. Okay? Before language, we would just perceive our own time and space. With language, okay? We're now able to come to a collective understanding of reality. Right? And who creates language? Poets create language. And therefore, poets, for their poetry, create reality unto itself. That's what this is is trying to do. He's trying to, for his poetry, create a new reality for everyone to live in. A reality in which people get along. A reality in which people like Achilles are able to forget their hatred against Agamemnon and fight for the common good. Okay? All right. So, even though each of us has our own understanding of reality, a poet is able to create a language that is so beautiful that it comes into us, and we internalize the language, we absorb the language, and we together create a new reality with the language as the building blocks. Okay? Does that make sense, guys? All right. All right.
So, let me explain now how Homer is able to do this. Okay? Let's, let's talk about how Homer is able to do this. Homer, how's, how is a poet able to create reality? Okay? So, a poet is unique in the world. Poets, um, are really, are really prophets. Okay? So, if you look at all these great religious figures of the past, including, uh, Jesus, including Zoroaster, they weren't religious figures. They were really poets. Okay? And how, and what, how they're able to work is they have a divine connection to the universe. Okay? What we call, okay? So, [clears throat] there are different names for the universe. Okay? So, Hegel, uh, the German philosopher, used the term "Geist." Geist. Okay? What is Geist? Well, guys, it's hard to translate because it's German. Okay? But think of it as three English words. And in fact, actually, uh, guys will give us three English words. These three words are ghost, gist, gist, and, uh, geyser. Okay? Geyser is an eruption. Okay? Ghost is the underlying thing. And, uh, the gist, the essence. Okay? Okay, that's what the Geist is. The Geist is all around us. It's like the ghost. It's always changing. It's always becoming. It's always erupting like a, a geyser. And it's really the essence of things, the, the, the gist. Okay? All right. Um, Carl Jung had the word, he uses "collective unconscious." Collective unconscious. Uh, Plato will use "the realm of the forms and ideals." Okay? Christians will say "heaven," whatever. Okay? [clears throat] All right. But these are the, the universe. All right. And remember how we said before, um, our memories are stored in the universe. The universe is almost like a divine psychic internet, right? So, every single memory is stored inside the universe. And what poets do is they're able to access this universe. And as a result, they're able to summon the memories of the universe. And they do, and when they do that, they create epics of poetry. Okay? All right. The Iliad. [clears throat]
Now, as I keep on discussing, when we read the Iliad, each character is a real person. Okay? Each character has a living past, present, and future. By reading the speech of Patroclus, you understand his memories. You understand where he came from, what he wants, and where he's going. Okay? So, everyone in the Iliad is a living, breathing character. And how's Homer able to do that? He's able to do that because, A, he's able to summon these people from the universe. Okay? Even though you're dead, your consciousness is still alive in the universe. Even though Homer is no longer with us, his consciousness is still within the universe. So, it's possible through intense meditation to actually connect with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, whoever. Okay? They're all there. And that's what Homer is doing. He's able to connect with these people and bring them into the Iliad. Okay? But because these people are living, the Iliad itself is a living memory. Okay? What I mean by that is, okay, the purpose of the Iliad is to create a memory, a living memory for people to observe. Okay? So, remember, Homer, he is a bard at this time. People don't read and write. So, what he's doing is he's doing what this is is doing, which is he's going from town to town. People are surrounding him. He's, there's 100 people, and then for the entire evening, he recites his poetry. And he's doing what Odysseus is doing: he's painting a movie for everyone to observe together. And it's the same thing when you go to a movie theater, where, yes, it's the same movie, but everyone's experience is going to be different. Okay? And how it becomes different is that you implant your own consciousness, your own understanding, into the Iliad. So, it becomes a shared creation. And when you do that, what happens is that, this is really important, guys, you connect directly to the universe. Okay? So, in other words, the Iliad was created because of inspiration from the universe, but it's also a portal into the universe itself. And this is what allows for new creations. Okay? [clears throat] Okay.
So, as you are observing the Iliad, because your own experience is different, because your own connection to the universe is unique, by interpreting the Iliad, you create a new universe unto itself. Okay? And this, what we call together, a process we call civilization. All right. This, this is what happened. This is why one poem, the Iliad, was able to give birth to an entire civilization, because it was so alive, so powerful, so connected to the universe itself, to the monad, that when you observed it, you created into yourself a portal into the monad, the universe, the heavens, that allowed you to create your own universe, that then connected back to the monad. Okay? So, it's just one dialogue, right? Any questions? Are, are you guys clear about this? All right. And think about this. All right. This is what the Greeks did. And how do we know it's true? Because even today, the Iliad speaks to us, right? The Iliad, when we read it, we can identify with Odysseus. We can understand Achilles. We can, we can relate Achilles to ourselves. We can predict how Achilles will behave. Okay? And that's proof that this, uh, Iliad is eternal and immortal, because it connects us to the monad. But knowing that, this is most important, is that you may not know this, but the more you read the Iliad, the more it's opening your mind. Okay? Your mind is, is an antenna. Okay? Your mind is, is an antenna to the universe, right? So, when you read the Iliad, it's as though your download speed is now increasing. You have a faster connection, strong connection now to the internet. And so they're able to absorb more. Okay? When you're able to absorb more, you're able to create new realities in which you're able to observe, which you're able to analyze deeper. All right? And that's why we read the great books, because it is literally, it allows us to connect and talk to God itself. Okay? Does that make sense, guys? Right. So, um, yeah, any questions before I move on? All right. Okay.
So, what I'm going to do now is we're going to read together, sorry, uh, we're not going to read together an essay by Percy Shelley. It's called "A Defense of Poetry," and he explains how this happens. Okay? All right. So, now, giving you the theory, um, we, we'll, we'll see how Percy Shelley, a very famous British Romantic poet, how he, how he explains this. Okay? Okay. Sorry. [clears throat] All right. So, this is from his essay, "The Defense of Poetry." Okay? It's a very long essay, but, but I'll just highlight for you certain aspects. Okay? So, he's talking about how Homer created Greek civilization, and, um, Homer was a bard poet, but had a heavy influence on the playwrights. Okay? The play, the three big playwrights, of course, are Sophocles and Euripides. [snorts] And the theater will become the very essence of Athenian life. Okay? So, what you do, what you did for fun was you would go to a theater, but the theater was more than just entertainment. It was about education. It was about enlightenment and vacation. Okay? So, um, he talks about the theater in Athens. Okay? The drama in Athens, or, or wherever else it may have approached to its perfection, ever coincides with the moral and intellectual greatness of the age. All right. So, the theater at Athens provoked these tremendous feelings in people that made them into moral people with ambition, with creativity. All right. "The tragedies of Athenian poets are as mirrors in which a spectator beholds himself under a thin disguise of circumstance, of all but that ideal perfection, energy, which everyone feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, admires, and would become." All right. Okay.
So, again, the idea of poetry, the idea of truth, is that it's a mirror in which you can look at yourself and you look at the world around you. Achilles or Odysseus are in you, and you are in them, and by observing them objectively, you can better understand yourself. "The imagination is enlarged by sympathy with pains and passions so mighty that they extend in their conception the capacity of that by which they are conceived. The good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror, and sorrow, and exact calm is prolonged from the safety of this high exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life." Okay? So, the idea of Greek tragedy is, um, [clears throat] epiphany and catharsis. So, if you look at, uh, Greek tragedy, there's a very common pattern. Okay? So, there's a tragic character, and he's undone by hubris. Okay? That's a great tragic flaw, his hubris. He's arrogant. Achilles has hubris. He thinks he's better than everyone else. Agamemnon has hubris. He's better than everyone else. Okay? But will die because of hubris. Hector will die because of hubris. So, it's hubris that is the great, uh, killer of people. Okay? No matter how great you are, you will suffer from hubris. The greater you are, the more you, you'll suffer from hubris, which can only lead to tragedy. And you're observing this, and you recognize that, oh, it's hubris that leads to tragedy, and therefore it will make you a much more humble person. Okay? This is what we call epiphany. But regardless of your epiphany, you're still going to face tragedy. Okay? The person is still going to fall. So, Hector, no matter how great he is, he's still going to die. Patroclus, no matter how innocent he is, he's still going to die. Okay? And this will lead, and so what happens is you feel a connection with that person, you cry. And this leads to catharsis. Okay? Catharsis is basically purge. Whatever feelings that you have, you cry. You purge your feelings. You, you purge your hubris. You purge your hatred. Okay? And this will make you a whole person. But when you commit catharsis, what happens is that you now connect with the character itself. So, the character now lives in you, and you live in the character. Okay? And that will make you a much better person. Does it make sense, guys? All right.
"Even crime is disarmed of its horror and all its contagion by being represented as a fatal consequence of the unfathomable agency of nature, its diversity of its willfulness. Men can no longer cherish in it as a creation of their choice. In a drama of the highest order, there is little food for censor or hatred. It teaches rather than self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself unless reflected upon that which it resembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many-sided mirror which collects the bright rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the simplicity of these elementary forms and touches them with majesty and beauty and multiplies all that it reflects and endows it with the power of propagating its like wherever it may fall." Okay. So, this is very long, but it's a very simple idea. The idea is that when you watch a tragedy, okay, when you observe a tragedy, [snorts] you're observing a fundamental truth about human nature, okay, which is that we're all going to be tragic. The classic, that classic case is Oedipus. Okay? Oedipus is a man who killed his father and married his mother. And when he discovers the, the truth, he blinds himself and then he goes into exile. Okay? And if you actually read the tragedy by Sophocles, he did nothing wrong. It was, it was just fate. It was just an accident. But unfortunately, that's what life is about. Okay? So, the, you are a great person when you're able to acknowledge your limitations. You're able to acknowledge, um, fate and destiny, but you struggle regardless. Okay? That's what arete. That's what eudaimonia is: to recognize your limitations, to recognize the universe may have a grudge against you, but you struggle on regardless. Okay? And that story, when you watch it, yourself, it brings sorrow to you. It brings pity, but it makes you also much more wise and reflective about the world that we live in. Okay? And that creates wisdom, that creates empathy. This creates morality. Okay? And that's why Greek drama is so important. Okay.
Now, let's look at another, another passage. "Poets are not only subject to the experiences or spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all that they combine with the evidence and hues of this etherial." Okay? All right. This is a really important idea. Remember how we said that poets have a connection to the divine? Right? So, they are absorbing the Geist. They are absorbing the monad. Okay? But at the same time, they're observing the world around us, the material. Okay? They're observing human nature. They're observing nature, like life itself. And what they do is they combine these two together. Okay? The present with the eternal, the here with the forever. And they turn it into words that are able to express both the material and the spiritual. The here and the forever, the present and the eternal. Okay. "A word, a trait in a representation of a scene or a passion will touch the internal cord." Okay? Uh, diction or metaphor. Internal cord. Internal cord is just your connection to the divine. Okay? So, this word, because, because it's so beautiful, this sentence so beautiful, will reawaken your memory. Okay? This is a really important idea where we are always in a process of, um, reincarnation. All right. So, why are we here in this world? Because there are things that we can experience that we cannot experience in the spiritual. When we're in the spiritual, we are formless. We have, we don't have any bodies. Therefore, we can have sex. We can't have pain. We can't love. Okay? But in this world, we can. But what's important to understand is that we, when we reincarnate into this world, our memories of our former selves and of the spiritual world are lost to us. Otherwise, we can't actually live the life that, that, that we live. Okay? But poetry, because it connects both to the divine and the present, certain words will spark your soul, and your soul is the forever memory of all your lives and your connection to the spiritual. Okay? That's what poetry does. Poetry is a gateway into your soul and reanimate. Okay. "In those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past." All right? So, you have all these past lives in you that you don't remember. But a certain word, a certain poem will reignite, reanimate all these past lives in you. And they will sum up and say, "Hey, we remember." Okay? And this will elevate you. Poetry does make immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world. It arrests the vanishing operations which haunt the inter-illuminations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom the sisters abide, abide, because there is no more portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man and man." Okay. There's God in us. And poetry reminds us there is God in us. There's God everywhere. And poetry reminds us there's God everywhere. Poetry lets us see the divine everywhere. Okay? We're not able to see this because of how our minds work. Because we're only see able to see through time and space. But poetry is, helps us go beyond time and space and connect immediately to the eternal. Okay? To the divine, to the spiritual. [snorts] [clears throat]
"All things exist as they are perceived." Okay? So, again, the idea of Kant, where, where we can only see things through time and space. Okay? These are things we, we can see. But, you know what? There are things that we can feel that we can't see. It's the feelings that matter, at least in relation to the recipient. "The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." Okay? But what this tells us is that if we learn how to control our minds, we can control reality itself. Okay? But poetry defeats a curse which binds us to be subjected to the asin of surrounding impressions. Okay? Do you understand this idea? The idea is poetry activates our imagination. Before, we were in a prison of our own making. Before, we only could only see what we could see. But poetry gives us a higher sight. It allows us to see the things beyond just time and space. The eternal, the past, the future. "And wherever it spreads its own figure curtain, or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being." Okay? All right. So, each time we use our imagination, we create our new reality for ourselves. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces a common universe of which we are portions and recipients, and it purchases from our insight, inward insight. The film of the familiar with which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates a new the universe after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recreation of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso: "None but God and the poet deserve the name of creator." The poet is the creator of our world because the poet has the imagination to see things beyond time and space, beyond this reality. And the poet then distills these emotions into words that help us ourselves connect to the divine. Okay? Poetry is a portal to the divine. This is, this is clear, right, guys? All right.
So, we'll conclude: "The most unfailing hero, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution is poetry. Poetry is the basis of all civilization. Okay? It is from poetry that everything must come from. At such periods, there's an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving intent and passion, conceptions respecting man and nature. The person in whom this power resides may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. But even while they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve that power which is seated on the throne of their own soul." Okay? So, poets don't actually know they're prophets. Poets don't know they're connected to the monad or the divine. They just do what they do because they have no choice. Okay? There's a fire burning in you. You have to let it out, otherwise you, you can't sleep. You can't eat. Okay? Poets are prophets who must speak the truth, otherwise they will just suffocate. Okay? They'll just drown in their own misery. "It is impossible to read the compositions of most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric light which burns within their words." Okay? Poets are the flame itself. Poets are not human. They are the messengers of the divine flame. Okay? They just burn. And when you read their words, you can see the flame in them. Okay? So, even though Homer, we don't even know who this guy is. We have, we don't know, we don't have his picture, but you can see when we read him, he's alive still. Okay? His words still burn. "They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and perpetuating spirit. And they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations." Okay? It's all inspiration. When Homer is speaking, he doesn't know what he's speaking. He doesn't. Are you telling me like this guy, he's able to understand, "Oh, this is what Odysseus is doing. Odysseus is trying to create a reality, and he's using imagery. He's using diction." No, no, he doesn't understand anything. He's just, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay? He's a divine fire. He's a channel. He's just channeling God. Okay? He's just a portal for God to speak with the universe, with, with us. "Poets are the unhoped-for openers of an unpremeditated inspiration. Okay? The mirrors of the gigantic shadows which future casts upon the present." There are prophets because of future speaking to us today. Okay? Right? God is past, future, present. And so when God speaks, he's also speaking to the future. "The words which express what they understand not. The trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire. The influence which is moved not, but moves." Poets are the legislators of the world. Okay? Poets are prophets, and their words create our reality. Everything that we know, everything that we do, it's because of language, of the language that the poets create. Okay? Doesn't make sense, guys? That's how Homer created civilization because God willed it that Homer speak truth and willed that this truth will spread across the world through his poetry. Okay? It's all by design. Does it make sense? All right. Any questions? Okay. All right. So, I'll see you guys next class. Okay.