1 00:00:04,580 --> 00:00:07,190 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Good afternoon. Great to see you all here. 2 00:00:07,670 --> 00:00:19,190 Um, the title of this lecture, Lisping in Numbers Poems That Count, derives in part from a famous line of Alexander Pope. 3 00:00:19,970 --> 00:00:23,210 I list in numbers. For the numbers came. 4 00:00:24,890 --> 00:00:34,930 Pope's line comes from an epistle poem. And to put it in context, uh, the line is about how Pope is a poet born not made. 5 00:00:34,940 --> 00:00:42,830 He can't help it. He was born speaking in verse. The poem is addressed to his ailing friend Doctor Arbuthnot, 6 00:00:43,160 --> 00:00:52,670 and it's a sometimes delightful and hilarious and sometimes moving rant on the trials and tribulations of the writing life, 7 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:57,410 and especially on the problem of other poets. 8 00:00:59,890 --> 00:01:03,760 Is there a parson much bemused in beer? 9 00:01:04,090 --> 00:01:16,240 A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, a clerk for doomed his father's soul to cross, who pens a stanza when he should engross three things. 10 00:01:16,390 --> 00:01:20,740 Another's modest wishes bound my friendship. 11 00:01:21,220 --> 00:01:26,740 And a prologue and £10. Why did I write? 12 00:01:27,070 --> 00:01:30,310 What send to me unknown dipped me in ink. 13 00:01:30,550 --> 00:01:34,330 My parents or my own as yet a child. 14 00:01:34,570 --> 00:01:40,240 Nor yet a fool to fame. I list in numbers for the numbers came. 15 00:01:40,750 --> 00:01:45,550 I left no idle calling. I left no calling for this idle trade. 16 00:01:45,580 --> 00:01:48,909 No duty broke. No father disobeyed the muse. 17 00:01:48,910 --> 00:01:53,260 But served to ease some friend, not wife. 18 00:01:53,590 --> 00:01:56,890 To help me through this long disease. 19 00:01:57,130 --> 00:02:04,060 My life. And we might think of Pope as someone in in constant chronic pain. 20 00:02:04,690 --> 00:02:15,790 Um. Doctor Arbuthnot, a Scottish satirist, physicist, physician and polymath, um was a founding member of the Slipper's Scribblers Club, 21 00:02:15,790 --> 00:02:21,340 whose members included Pope and Jonathan Swift and was deemed to be the wittiest of the lot. 22 00:02:22,050 --> 00:02:27,400 Um, but he was modest about taking credit for his productions, even allowing his children to burn his papers. 23 00:02:27,850 --> 00:02:34,750 Um, he made his living, though chiefly from teaching mathematics, and he is best known for his contributions to that field. 24 00:02:35,080 --> 00:02:44,470 So it seems to make sense that Pope's use of numbers here, a logical term for heroic couplets written in a strict ten syllable line, 25 00:02:44,800 --> 00:02:49,270 has something to do with the predilections and talents of his friend. 26 00:02:51,050 --> 00:03:01,550 We might think of numbers and mathematics as antithetical in some ways to poetry, but at least in terms of vocabulary, there is significant overlap. 27 00:03:01,910 --> 00:03:04,910 Numbers here mean simply verse poetry. 28 00:03:05,180 --> 00:03:12,200 Measure is another term, and metre means the same thing, which could apply equally to poetry or to say, geometry. 29 00:03:12,770 --> 00:03:22,760 But what do numbers, counting and operations like addition, subtraction, division and multiplication even algebra have to do with poetry? 30 00:03:23,120 --> 00:03:24,800 Intriguingly, more than you might think. 31 00:03:25,040 --> 00:03:34,400 I know that when I encounter a number in a poem, something in me sits up and take notice that I am on alert for something about to happen. 32 00:03:35,810 --> 00:03:44,290 Nonetheless, we are used to thinking of poets essential to the humanities as being in some ways opposed to math. 33 00:03:44,300 --> 00:03:50,780 Maths. I'm American, so I see math and accounting of all kinds, particularly with money. 34 00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:54,620 Poets, um, famously, do not tend to have overmuch of that. 35 00:03:55,280 --> 00:03:59,420 Um, this view is very well put by Wendy Cope in her poem temps. 36 00:03:59,960 --> 00:04:05,900 Although this poetic in numeracy, she lays at the feet exclusively of certain male poets. 37 00:04:06,380 --> 00:04:14,180 Um, and this is from her book Serious Concerns, and I think I actually heard her read this, um, a long time ago at Oxford when it first came out. 38 00:04:14,810 --> 00:04:19,220 Temps don't ask him for the time of day. 39 00:04:19,280 --> 00:04:22,460 He won't know it, for he's the abstracted sort. 40 00:04:23,090 --> 00:04:26,570 In fact, he's a typically useless male poet. 41 00:04:27,470 --> 00:04:33,500 We'll call him a temp for short. A temp isn't punctual or smart or efficient. 42 00:04:33,950 --> 00:04:40,970 He probably can't drive a car or follow a map, though he's very proficient at finding his way to the bar. 43 00:04:42,170 --> 00:04:47,780 He may have great talent, and not just for writing, for drawing, or playing the drums. 44 00:04:48,230 --> 00:04:52,520 But don't let him loose on accounts. That's inviting disaster. 45 00:04:52,850 --> 00:04:56,630 A tump can't do sums. He cannot get organised. 46 00:04:56,810 --> 00:04:59,840 Just watch him try it and you'll see a frustrated man. 47 00:04:59,990 --> 00:05:05,600 But sometimes. And these are the worst ones. Deny it and angrily tell you they can. 48 00:05:06,710 --> 00:05:15,530 I used to be close to a temp. Who would bellow? You think I can't add two and two and get even crosser when smiling and mellow? 49 00:05:15,740 --> 00:05:25,130 I answered. You're quite right, I do. Women poets are business like, able, good drivers and right on the ball. 50 00:05:25,580 --> 00:05:28,850 And some of us still know our seven times table. 51 00:05:29,150 --> 00:05:39,850 We're not like the temps. Not at all. Um, I may even know at least one of the terms that she's referring to, but he can sort of drive. 52 00:05:42,580 --> 00:05:46,480 Um, so this is sort of maybe how we tend to think of poets. 53 00:05:47,320 --> 00:05:53,110 Um, but actually there ends up being quite a lot of accounting and counting and poetry. 54 00:05:53,800 --> 00:05:57,550 Um, I trust we won't run into too many times today, though there might be a couple, 55 00:05:58,240 --> 00:06:05,770 but we'll start with numbers themselves, and in particular with counting A-b-c. 56 00:06:05,770 --> 00:06:12,970 Easy as one, two, three. As one Bard once said, the sequence of numbers has something of the magical properties of the alphabet. 57 00:06:13,600 --> 00:06:18,220 Um. I'm currently reading a book by Paul Lockhart on algebra written for laypeople. 58 00:06:18,240 --> 00:06:23,559 I'm very much a layperson. Um, partly because I like the title The Mending of Broken Bones, 59 00:06:23,560 --> 00:06:30,080 which is a colourful translation of the Arabic of algebra and the first chapter on numbers. 60 00:06:30,100 --> 00:06:41,410 Lockhart defines counting as essentially matching in the typical case of a collection of rocks or coins or marbles or whatever, 61 00:06:41,920 --> 00:06:53,080 we may match each item in turn with a previously established, societally agreed upon list of number words at the end of our counting process. 62 00:06:53,260 --> 00:06:57,640 We arrive at the words indicating the quantity in question. 63 00:06:58,540 --> 00:07:05,260 So counting is a kind of magic spell of syllables that must be said in a certain order. 64 00:07:05,740 --> 00:07:11,799 These syllables are, in a sense, random. One, two, three, four could just as easily be. 65 00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:18,760 And, uh, the three are test set up, for instance. Or eeny, meeny miny moe or fee fi fo fum. 66 00:07:19,660 --> 00:07:23,920 It may be important that these syllables are easy to differentiate from each other. 67 00:07:23,930 --> 00:07:33,130 We will see how that works in English. 123456789 ten. 68 00:07:33,940 --> 00:07:38,560 Each has a separate constellation of rhymes, and none rhymes with each other. 69 00:07:38,740 --> 00:07:48,100 The first number rhyme you will get is with 11, and after that you don't get another one until million, billion, trillion. 70 00:07:48,460 --> 00:07:55,960 I mean, you, you could say that 21 rhymes with 1 or 31 rhymes with 21, but I think that's fudging it a little bit. 71 00:07:55,960 --> 00:08:05,920 That's more of an identity than a full rhyme. Um, so counting is a list and also an incantation and counting out. 72 00:08:05,920 --> 00:08:13,510 Rhymes are an ancient and common genre of nursery rhyme, as in this classic one to buckle my shoe. 73 00:08:13,510 --> 00:08:16,810 Three, four. Shut the door. Five, six. 74 00:08:17,080 --> 00:08:21,670 Pick up sticks seven, eight. Lay them straight nine, ten. 75 00:08:21,670 --> 00:08:22,690 A big fat hen. 76 00:08:23,170 --> 00:08:29,680 Um, it's really fun to say, and it's also kind of interesting metrically and would be what I would call a dolnick, but that is for another time. 77 00:08:30,460 --> 00:08:35,590 Um, so counting matches a list of number words with some sort of countable items. 78 00:08:35,830 --> 00:08:40,930 So I would say the poetry and counting numbers sprang perhaps from much the same source. 79 00:08:41,230 --> 00:08:44,800 Numbers and counting are entangled with lists. 80 00:08:45,220 --> 00:08:55,240 A list often has numbers. A grocery list might involve two sticks of butter, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, a six pack of beer. 81 00:08:55,750 --> 00:09:02,860 And of course, lists are right there at the beginning of the Western canon and the epic catalogue as the Iliad Catalogue of Ships, 82 00:09:03,100 --> 00:09:09,309 where we find out that the oceans sent 50 ships equipped with 120 youths each. 83 00:09:09,310 --> 00:09:16,090 So there's a math problem right there. Um, the minions. 30, the Athenians, 50, the Cretans 80, the Myrmidons 50, and so on. 84 00:09:16,090 --> 00:09:27,460 A tremendous show of force. Um, the Odyssey is less obvious in its catalogue, perhaps, but we do have the inherent math problem of Penelope's suitors. 85 00:09:27,700 --> 00:09:29,259 57, from Dulcie. 86 00:09:29,260 --> 00:09:37,570 Um, 23 from Sammi, 44 from Zakynthos, 12 from Ithaca and then an assortment of hangers on that you're not sure whether to count or not. 87 00:09:38,410 --> 00:09:44,319 Um, this image, by the way, is, uh, recently all over, um, social media. 88 00:09:44,320 --> 00:09:51,010 And these are linear B tablets from Pylos, um, that show lists of items needed for sacrifice. 89 00:09:51,010 --> 00:09:55,990 So certain number of oxen and, um, tables and wine and so on. 90 00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:07,300 In Simon Armitage's version of the Odyssey, we have a charming bit of counting folklore and counting out rhyme in book nine, in the Cyclops cave. 91 00:10:07,870 --> 00:10:14,979 Um, the Cyclops, though this is also was recently on social media everywhere, which is a fragment of the Iliad. 92 00:10:14,980 --> 00:10:21,250 Um, papyrus in The Mummy and people like, why would you have this fragment of book two, the book of the Catalogue of Ships? 93 00:10:21,250 --> 00:10:25,000 But I'm, I'm big into lists. So I think it's a cool thing to be buried with. 94 00:10:25,870 --> 00:10:29,679 Um, and Simon Armitage, his version of the Odyssey. 95 00:10:29,680 --> 00:10:37,940 We have a charming bit of counting folklore. The cyclops, blinded, is letting out his use in lambs and rams, and weathers out of the cave. 96 00:10:38,300 --> 00:10:47,330 The last ram, his favourite has Odysseus tied up underneath to escape the cave, and we get a very sweet address to his favourite Ram, 97 00:10:47,330 --> 00:10:52,370 who is last out when he is usually the first to lead the flock out to pasture. 98 00:10:52,750 --> 00:10:56,959 Um, disappointingly, if you're trying to compare the passages, there is no counting. 99 00:10:56,960 --> 00:11:03,170 In the Greek. The ram is just last, but Armitage inserts, um, some Yorkshire counting here. 100 00:11:03,860 --> 00:11:07,490 Then they ambled forward, tottered over the stone floor, 101 00:11:07,520 --> 00:11:14,959 bleated to be let out of the cave for water and pasture, and Cyclops, even with a smoking hole instead of an. 102 00:11:14,960 --> 00:11:16,970 I was still a shepherd at heart. 103 00:11:17,210 --> 00:11:24,980 So he rolled away the rock, open the mouth of the cave and counted them out, stroking their backs as they wandered into the light. 104 00:11:25,430 --> 00:11:29,089 Mother tether mints. Hither. Leather. 105 00:11:29,090 --> 00:11:32,180 Amber. Denver, the ignorant swine. 106 00:11:32,390 --> 00:11:34,910 He released them one at a time. 107 00:11:36,060 --> 00:11:44,820 Yan Tan tether is a sheep counting system traditionally used by shepherds in Yorkshire, and it's also used for knitting and counting stitches. 108 00:11:45,060 --> 00:11:48,180 The knitting song is known as the lantern tether mother myth. 109 00:11:48,510 --> 00:11:55,140 Um, so I like that in a way. Um, both on the Odysseus side and on the Penelope side of counting stitches. 110 00:11:55,410 --> 00:11:59,730 Um, they could both be using some kind of ancient rhyme. 111 00:12:00,120 --> 00:12:06,090 And of course, we think of even going to sleep as counting sheep. So, again, this very ancient entanglement. 112 00:12:07,550 --> 00:12:15,050 To know the number of something. Odysseus learning the number of his enemies, for instance, is to gain some sort of power over it. 113 00:12:15,530 --> 00:12:19,640 And numbering in the ancient world can be related to spells and curses. 114 00:12:19,910 --> 00:12:24,140 That's how many. But how much is also a lover's question. 115 00:12:24,680 --> 00:12:30,709 Catullus combines these lover's problems in one of his most famous and translated poems, um. 116 00:12:30,710 --> 00:12:37,730 Catullus was the Latin poet of the late Roman Republic, who is part of the Neoteric school, a sort of ancient avant garde. 117 00:12:38,180 --> 00:12:42,730 Many of his poems are love poems and addressed to a woman he calls lesbian, 118 00:12:43,070 --> 00:12:50,720 who is usually identified with Claudia martelli, a sophisticated, well-versed married woman. 119 00:12:51,240 --> 00:12:58,640 Um. Many of these poems are in Hindi, a syllabic and 11 syllable line, um, 120 00:12:59,030 --> 00:13:04,190 which I would sort of roughly scan is something like bam, bam, bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam. 121 00:13:04,850 --> 00:13:07,750 We wow, I must smell SB Aqua mammoths. 122 00:13:08,210 --> 00:13:14,750 Um, and this is my very fast and loose, um, translation that I did just the other day, so it hasn't really been fine tuned, 123 00:13:14,750 --> 00:13:20,750 but, um, we'll give you a kind of an idea of the counting and, uh, counting that is going on. 124 00:13:21,950 --> 00:13:31,100 Let us live, my lesbian and love, and let us estimate the title of Judgy Old geezers as not worth a dime. 125 00:13:31,820 --> 00:13:37,219 Sons can set. They rise again on time. But we when, once we douse our little light. 126 00:13:37,220 --> 00:13:42,500 Must sleep for one interminable night. Give me a thousand smooches. 127 00:13:42,890 --> 00:13:49,280 Then another hundred, then a thousand more. Than smother them in 100 scads on scads. 128 00:13:49,460 --> 00:13:58,040 So many will shake the final tally up, lest any who and can hold us to account and curse our kisses, knowing the amount. 129 00:13:59,540 --> 00:14:05,150 Um. So there are lots of number words here, and there's also a lot of money imagery going on. 130 00:14:05,510 --> 00:14:08,959 Um, Catullus talks about himself as being one of these poor poets. 131 00:14:08,960 --> 00:14:13,970 Maybe he's a temp. I'm not sure. But, um, he has, you know, a pocket that's just full of cobwebs. 132 00:14:14,360 --> 00:14:21,919 Um, and there's this initial idea of estimating, um, the rumours of the severe old man as worth an ass. 133 00:14:21,920 --> 00:14:25,850 An ass is a small, worthless sort of bronze coin. 134 00:14:26,570 --> 00:14:31,340 Um, when he comes to. And we have this idea of one one night that will last forever. 135 00:14:31,340 --> 00:14:35,990 And a brief, short light. Um, so there's a lot of measuring and comparing. 136 00:14:36,320 --> 00:14:39,350 We get two kisses. Give me a thousand kisses. 137 00:14:39,620 --> 00:14:43,160 Um, this is not the usual word for kisses in Latin. 138 00:14:43,340 --> 00:14:51,530 A kiss in Latin usually would be Oscar alum. Um, but instead we have this vernacular, which is why I've translated that as smooches. 139 00:14:52,040 --> 00:14:55,969 Um, and this has got more of a sort of labial plosive kissy noise to it. 140 00:14:55,970 --> 00:15:04,190 Vasya, um, also, you might think in a way, perhaps, um, all of these kisses contain little ass's little coins. 141 00:15:04,190 --> 00:15:12,950 There's an ass in Basia. Um, so we have a thousand, then a hundred, then another thousand, then another hundred, and so on. 142 00:15:13,310 --> 00:15:16,550 Um, and finally we get to this verb contour. 143 00:15:16,910 --> 00:15:22,910 Con contour. Bobby Musse. Um, con turbo means to shake things up. 144 00:15:23,450 --> 00:15:29,359 Um, it also means, I think, to go bankrupt. Um, so there's this idea of there being so many kisses. 145 00:15:29,360 --> 00:15:37,460 We scramble the accounts, and that way nobody can list them and number them and therefore curses. 146 00:15:37,760 --> 00:15:45,589 Um, there's a 1941 article, um, which suggests that this cone turbo verb has to do with the abacus. 147 00:15:45,590 --> 00:15:50,329 I really I'm very fond of this idea, I think, partly because I just like the word abacus. 148 00:15:50,330 --> 00:15:56,809 Abacus is a wonderful word to say, um, and etymological in theory comes from Greek, 149 00:15:56,810 --> 00:16:01,459 but it actually comes from a Semitic source, um, having to do with sand or dust, 150 00:16:01,460 --> 00:16:07,040 because the abacus was originally, um, a flat table with sand or dust, and you would have pebbles, 151 00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:11,689 or maybe you just draw on the sand in ways that you could make up the amount. 152 00:16:11,690 --> 00:16:22,130 So I kind of am attracted to that. Um. This is a translation by Isobel Williams from her delightful switch The Complete Catullus. 153 00:16:22,160 --> 00:16:29,210 These are very, very, very free translations, but they're kind of engage with the poems in unusual ways. 154 00:16:29,240 --> 00:16:34,430 I love that she calls five the Song of Snogs instead of the Song of Songs. 155 00:16:34,760 --> 00:16:41,540 Um, open out to life and love with me, Claudia, and we'll set the regulators hisses at the lowest rate of interest. 156 00:16:41,900 --> 00:16:48,500 Suns go down and dance will come. But once our pinprick light is out, the night will never be for more than sleeping. 157 00:16:49,010 --> 00:16:53,569 I love doing this. Let's take a long position. Swell the abacus with kisses. 158 00:16:53,570 --> 00:16:56,809 And here you can hear an English abacus contains kisses. 159 00:16:56,810 --> 00:17:00,350 So that's maybe something extra that Catullus doesn't have access to. 160 00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:07,790 Now, I'm not really sure how to read this bit out. I like the idea that x we think of kisses as x x x. 161 00:17:07,790 --> 00:17:14,930 Maybe it's also like x rated here. Um, but that x also looks a lot like a like a Latin ten. 162 00:17:15,230 --> 00:17:23,090 Um M stands for thousand, C for 100. Um, it also sort of brings to light maybe that if we do think this is Claudia martelli, 163 00:17:23,390 --> 00:17:30,320 um, these Latin initials for numbers also associate with her name. 164 00:17:31,400 --> 00:17:39,740 Um, Catullus seven kind of answers this. You ask how many kisses, and we get the idea of as many as the sand in the desert, which again, 165 00:17:39,740 --> 00:17:44,720 if this were an abacus, would be kind of attractive because you would already have sand in the mix. 166 00:17:45,830 --> 00:17:51,290 Would classicists recognise the poem if I just gave them this? 167 00:17:52,690 --> 00:17:57,950 Maybe. Do you recognise this poem? 168 00:18:04,670 --> 00:18:09,079 Latin and Greek poetry contain various numbers, lists, calculations. 169 00:18:09,080 --> 00:18:14,480 Calculus is a small pebble used in calculating and even algebra problems. 170 00:18:15,040 --> 00:18:20,420 Um. The Greek Anthology has a whole chapter 14 devoted to math problems, 171 00:18:20,720 --> 00:18:28,190 including an algebra problem about a tombstone of a mathematician where you have to work out, um, how old he died at. 172 00:18:28,670 --> 00:18:34,190 Um, but we perhaps we might think of this as a verse inside textbook rather than poetry with a capital P, 173 00:18:34,760 --> 00:18:40,700 um, a housman poet, most famously of the 1896 A Shropshire Lad. 174 00:18:40,700 --> 00:18:43,790 And, as Auden described him in a sonnet, 175 00:18:43,790 --> 00:18:52,340 the Latin scholar of his generation famously characterised the Latin poet Manlius in the preface to his second volume edition of the poet's work, 176 00:18:52,670 --> 00:19:00,050 as exercising an eminent aptitude for doing sums in verse, which is the brightest facet of his genius, 177 00:19:00,350 --> 00:19:06,830 that often gets kind of misquoted and tumbled around, so that it looks like Houseman is really dissing Manlius. 178 00:19:07,340 --> 00:19:13,700 Um, but giving Houseman s own predilection for sums in verse and his lifelong interest in astronomy. 179 00:19:13,700 --> 00:19:19,249 I don't think that adds up. Um, that poem that is obviously loveliest of trees. 180 00:19:19,250 --> 00:19:23,660 I don't know if anyone had figured that out. Anyone forget that one loveliest of trees. 181 00:19:24,890 --> 00:19:34,730 Loveliest of trees. The cherry now is hung with bloom about the bow and stands about the woodland ride wearing white for Easter tide. 182 00:19:35,420 --> 00:19:44,180 Now of my threescore years and 1020 will not come again and take from 70 springs a score. 183 00:19:44,540 --> 00:19:49,580 It only leaves me 50 more and sense to look at things in bloom. 184 00:19:50,090 --> 00:19:53,959 50 springs our little room about the woodlands. 185 00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:57,530 I will go to see the cherry hung with snow. 186 00:19:57,920 --> 00:20:02,719 So this is one of the most widely anthologised poems in the language and one of the most beloved. 187 00:20:02,720 --> 00:20:08,240 And it is doing sums in verse. Um, there is a biblical reference. 188 00:20:08,270 --> 00:20:14,120 Um, the days of our years are threescore years and 1020 plus 20 plus 20 plus ten. 189 00:20:14,660 --> 00:20:20,090 Um, so this is supposed to be the standard given lifespan of the human being. 190 00:20:20,090 --> 00:20:30,740 Other things, um, being beside the case, the character who speaks this poem is Terence Hearsay, the eponymous Shropshire lad of the book. 191 00:20:31,040 --> 00:20:36,080 And we learn here that he is 20 years old. Maybe even he has just turned 20 years old. 192 00:20:36,650 --> 00:20:45,500 But Houseman was in his late 30s and in an urban environment in London when he wrote this, working as a clerk in a patent office. 193 00:20:45,830 --> 00:20:54,680 And what seemed at first blush, what seems at first blush, the Poem of a Young Man is a meditation from the prospect of middle age. 194 00:20:54,950 --> 00:20:59,360 And perhaps that adds to the calculations and the subtractions here. 195 00:20:59,930 --> 00:21:09,860 Um, I suspect that your average 20 year old might think of 50 springs to look at cherry blossoms in bloom a lot. 196 00:21:11,210 --> 00:21:16,250 Um, but again, the poet's perspective may foreshortened this time. 197 00:21:16,250 --> 00:21:20,300 The point is that beauty requires an eternity to complement contemplated. 198 00:21:20,540 --> 00:21:25,339 And by a neat trick, the white blossoms of spring by a sleight of metaphor, 199 00:21:25,340 --> 00:21:32,660 are already foreclosed on by winter, and perhaps even one eternal night by the end of the poem. 200 00:21:36,710 --> 00:21:41,540 There can be a pleasure and a wit in mathematic operations, in poems. 201 00:21:41,540 --> 00:21:45,290 And again, numbers are often rhetorical, maybe even always rhetorical. 202 00:21:45,290 --> 00:21:54,440 In poetry, birthday poems, of which perhaps loveliest of trees is maybe even arguably a species naturally offered play for numbers. 203 00:21:54,920 --> 00:22:00,260 I had to include this one by Jonathan Swift. Um, who from this poem on Saint Stella. 204 00:22:00,260 --> 00:22:05,630 Who is Miss Hester Johnson? A birthday verse every year until her death. 205 00:22:06,020 --> 00:22:11,089 As she was born in 1681, she would have been 38 at the time of this poem. 206 00:22:11,090 --> 00:22:14,990 But where? And that's not going to bother us. 34 is required here for the math. 207 00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:20,240 Um, the nature of their relationship was unclear, and they may have had a secret marriage. 208 00:22:20,450 --> 00:22:24,950 He met her first when she was eight and then when she was 15 or 16. 209 00:22:24,950 --> 00:22:32,900 And in 1696, when he met her as a teenager, he declared her the most beautiful, graceful and agreeable young woman in London. 210 00:22:33,380 --> 00:22:37,040 So this is Stella's birthday, March 13th, 1719. 211 00:22:38,210 --> 00:22:43,370 Stella, this day is 34. We shan't dispute a year or more. 212 00:22:43,610 --> 00:22:49,370 However, Stella, be not troubled. Although thy size and years are doubled. 213 00:22:49,970 --> 00:22:54,380 Since first I saw thee at 16. The brightest virgin on the green. 214 00:22:54,890 --> 00:23:00,680 So little is thy form declined. Made up so largely in thy mind I would. 215 00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:04,520 It pleased the gods to split thy beauty. Sighs. 216 00:23:04,520 --> 00:23:08,809 And years and wit. No age could furnish out a pair of nymphs. 217 00:23:08,810 --> 00:23:12,889 So graceful, wise and fair. With half the lustre of your eyes. 218 00:23:12,890 --> 00:23:16,070 With half your wit, your years and sighs. 219 00:23:16,820 --> 00:23:20,600 And then before it grew too late. How should I beg of gentle fate. 220 00:23:20,810 --> 00:23:24,530 That either nymph might have her swain to split my worship? 221 00:23:24,530 --> 00:23:31,790 Two in in twain. And you can see all of these number words 34 a year or more. 222 00:23:31,790 --> 00:23:35,449 Doubled 16. Little. Largely. Split pair. 223 00:23:35,450 --> 00:23:42,920 Half, half. Um. Split in twain. Now, I personally, I don't think I would be thrilled to get this poem. 224 00:23:44,810 --> 00:23:51,680 It is very charming and very affectionate, but the sort of constant repetition of sighs gives me pause. 225 00:23:52,610 --> 00:23:57,709 Um, so as we can see, numbers and mathematical operations in poems can be used for precision, level, 226 00:23:57,710 --> 00:24:04,820 specificity and detail verisimilitude for magical charms, powers, spells, curses for rhetorical proofs, arguments, 227 00:24:04,820 --> 00:24:12,830 and persuasion as a natural and essential element of narrative for analogies, metaphors, vocabulary, puns, wordplay, 228 00:24:12,830 --> 00:24:20,060 and tropes for building poetic structures and stanzas, for delayed gratification and the pleasure of deduction. 229 00:24:20,270 --> 00:24:27,290 Realisation for counting, accounting and demonstrating what or who counts. 230 00:24:28,910 --> 00:24:35,870 In terms of specificity. I think the locus classic classic US is La Belle dumb son Mercy by John Keats. 231 00:24:36,950 --> 00:24:46,340 Um, you know, Ezra Pound famously warned the poets to go in fear of abstraction, and we may think of numbers themselves as a kind of abstraction. 232 00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:54,710 Pure numbers may are. But numbers applied to countable objects or actions are precise details. 233 00:24:54,860 --> 00:25:02,540 Nothing could be less abstract and more particular, giving a reading a texture of reality and for simulated. 234 00:25:02,900 --> 00:25:11,450 Um. This is perhaps one of the most famous examples. The poem is still so fresh from his pen that he revises it as he copies it out. 235 00:25:11,450 --> 00:25:19,550 It first appears in a letter to his brother, uh, George and his sister in law, Georgina, who have settled in Kentucky. 236 00:25:19,820 --> 00:25:23,890 And, um, this letter is from April of 1819. 237 00:25:23,900 --> 00:25:27,049 I won't read the whole poem, but we'll read some of it. Um. 238 00:25:27,050 --> 00:25:31,340 Oh, what can ail the night at arms alone and pale loitering. 239 00:25:31,340 --> 00:25:35,150 The sedge has withered from the lake. And no birds sing. 240 00:25:35,630 --> 00:25:39,860 I see a lily on thy brow. With anguish moist and fever dew. 241 00:25:39,860 --> 00:25:43,670 And on thy cheeks a fading rose. Fast with withering. 242 00:25:43,820 --> 00:25:48,770 Two I met a lady in the meads. Full beautiful a fairy's child. 243 00:25:49,130 --> 00:25:53,930 Her hair was long, her foot was light and her eyes were wild. 244 00:25:54,620 --> 00:25:58,549 I made a Garland for her head and bracelets too. And fragrant zone. 245 00:25:58,550 --> 00:26:02,270 She looked at me as she did love and made sweet moon. 246 00:26:02,690 --> 00:26:10,760 I set her on my pacing steed and nothing else. All day long for side long would she bend and sing a fairy song. 247 00:26:11,690 --> 00:26:18,290 She found me roots of relish. Sweet and honey, wild and manju and sure and language strange. 248 00:26:18,290 --> 00:26:23,060 She said I love the true. She took me to her elfin grotto. 249 00:26:23,090 --> 00:26:26,330 And there she wept and sighed. Full sore. 250 00:26:26,540 --> 00:26:32,240 And there I shut her wild, wild eyes with kisses for. 251 00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:39,550 In the letter with the poem, Keats immediately addresses the numerical detail. 252 00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:44,590 Um, so right after the poem he says, why? For kisses, you will say. 253 00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:51,960 Why four? Four because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my muse. 254 00:26:52,260 --> 00:26:55,860 She would have fain said, score without hurting the rhyme. 255 00:26:56,790 --> 00:27:00,630 But we must temper the imagination, as the critics say, with judgement. 256 00:27:01,290 --> 00:27:09,210 I am obliged to choose an even number that both eyes might have fair play, and to speak truly, I think, to a piece quite sufficient. 257 00:27:09,870 --> 00:27:16,919 Suppose I had said seven. There would have been three and a half apiece, a very awkward affair, and well got out of on my side. 258 00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:22,559 So you can see all of these. It is playing with numbers even in the letter for kisses. 259 00:27:22,560 --> 00:27:25,740 Score even numbers. Both eyes. Two apiece. 260 00:27:25,740 --> 00:27:29,370 Seven. Three and a half. Um. Quite charming. Um. 261 00:27:30,030 --> 00:27:33,899 He was wildly revising even as he was writing it down. 262 00:27:33,900 --> 00:27:36,720 And you can see some crossing out in the manuscript. 263 00:27:37,110 --> 00:27:46,200 Um, and you can see that the stanza with the four is one of the stanzas that he has, has sort of been thinking about or having second thoughts about. 264 00:27:46,530 --> 00:27:50,160 Um, and it is certainly one of the most memorable details of the poem. 265 00:27:50,430 --> 00:27:54,450 But he immediately, despite this justification, had second thoughts. 266 00:27:54,450 --> 00:28:01,859 And when the poem goes to publication, where is yeah, know when the poem goes to publication? 267 00:28:01,860 --> 00:28:07,260 He ditches four altogether, and in fact, he ditches the entire rhyme pair so he doesn't put in a score either. 268 00:28:07,470 --> 00:28:11,610 He just takes out this detail altogether. She took me to her elfin grot. 269 00:28:11,940 --> 00:28:19,620 And there she gazed and sighed deep. And there I shut her wild, sad eyes, so kissed to sleep. 270 00:28:20,670 --> 00:28:26,970 No one, I think, considers this an improvement. And usually, um, you know, when you see it in anthologies, you see the 1819 version. 271 00:28:27,300 --> 00:28:32,970 We miss the strange specificity of four, the doubling of two for the two eyes, 272 00:28:33,180 --> 00:28:40,530 which is not some typical fairy tale thrice, and which grounds this fairy story in some kind of uncanny reality. 273 00:28:40,980 --> 00:28:47,010 Um, it is certainly one of the most memorable details of the poem, as I said, and is even an occasion for this poem. 274 00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:50,310 Parody response by Robert Service. 275 00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:55,740 Um. Sometimes known as the Canadian Kipling. What kisses had John Keats? 276 00:28:56,760 --> 00:29:07,440 I scanned two lines, with some surmise as over Keats I chanced to pour, and there I shut her wild, wild eyes with kisses, for says I. 277 00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:11,340 Why was it only four? Not 5 or 6 or seven? 278 00:29:11,970 --> 00:29:14,820 I think I would have made it more even 11. 279 00:29:16,050 --> 00:29:26,850 Gee, if she'd lured a guy like me into her jellied grot, I'd make sure that Beldum saw in mercy sure kiss a lot. 280 00:29:27,900 --> 00:29:35,220 Then poets have their little tricks. I think John counted kisses for not 2 or 3 or 5 or 6 to rhyme with sort. 281 00:29:35,970 --> 00:29:38,250 Um, so in a sense, I, you know, I kind of agree. 282 00:29:38,250 --> 00:29:45,300 I think it is there to rhyme with sort and that gives its reason, and that doesn't undermine the fact that it's still the better choice. 283 00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:49,500 Ballads like numbers, they like counting. 284 00:29:50,070 --> 00:29:56,870 Um, uh, this is, you know, weirdly, I, they kind of go together. 285 00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:02,040 It doesn't seem like they would, but they do the very famous poem, um, by William Wordsworth. 286 00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:11,180 We are seven. It's a poem about counting, about who counts, um, and about, um, who does who. 287 00:30:11,190 --> 00:30:16,190 Where's my okay, uh, about who counts? Um, who does the counting? 288 00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:21,419 As with most poems centred in some ways on numbers, there is a superabundance of numbers in the poem, 289 00:30:21,420 --> 00:30:26,970 not just the essential ones for the numerical problem, which is one of addition and subtraction. 290 00:30:28,110 --> 00:30:34,799 We are seven, a simple child that lightly draws its breath and feels its life in every limb. 291 00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:38,700 What should it know of death? I met a little cottage girl. 292 00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:44,430 She was eight years old. She said. Her hair was thick with many a curl that clustered round her head. 293 00:30:44,940 --> 00:30:49,320 She had a rustic woodland air and she was wildly clad. 294 00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:54,240 These kind of remind me a little bit of the fairy. Her eyes were fair and very fair. 295 00:30:54,450 --> 00:30:58,770 Her beauty made me glad. Sisters and brothers, little maid, how many may you be? 296 00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:03,900 How many? Seven and all, she said, and wondering, looked at me. 297 00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:06,930 And where are they? I pray you tell, she answered. 298 00:31:06,930 --> 00:31:15,180 Seven or we and two of us at Cornwall, and two are gone to see two of us in the churchyard lie my sister and my brother, 299 00:31:15,420 --> 00:31:18,870 and in the churchyard cottage I dwelled near them with my mother. 300 00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:22,680 You say that two at Conway dwell, and two are gone to see yet. 301 00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:25,890 Year seven, I pray you tell sweet maid how this may be. 302 00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:29,879 Um. You round about my little maid. Your limbs, they are alive. 303 00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:34,260 If two are in the churchyard, lay then here only five. Their graves are green. 304 00:31:34,260 --> 00:31:42,360 They may be seen. Um. She talks about often after sunset, sir, when it is light and fair, I take my little poor ginger and eat my supper there. 305 00:31:42,630 --> 00:31:45,850 The first that died was Sister Jane. In bed. 306 00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:49,330 She moaning lay till God released her of her pain. 307 00:31:49,330 --> 00:31:52,809 And then she went away. So in the churchyard she was laid. 308 00:31:52,810 --> 00:31:57,250 And when the grass was dry together round her grave we played. 309 00:31:57,430 --> 00:32:02,110 My brother John and I. And when the ground was white with snow. 310 00:32:02,110 --> 00:32:06,069 And I could run and slide. My brother John was forced to go. 311 00:32:06,070 --> 00:32:11,440 And he lies by her side. How many are you, then, said I, if they two are in heaven. 312 00:32:11,980 --> 00:32:17,380 Quick, was the little maids reply. Oh, master, we are seven, but they are dead. 313 00:32:17,710 --> 00:32:22,390 Those two are dead. Their spirits are in heaven to us, throwing words away. 314 00:32:22,390 --> 00:32:27,520 For still the little maid would have her will, and said, nay, we are seven. 315 00:32:29,690 --> 00:32:37,670 I actually find this a very creepy poem. I mean, if you were to sort of dramatise it or whatever, it could be the beginning of a horror film. 316 00:32:38,180 --> 00:32:42,500 Um, you know, this beautiful child, um, talking about her dead siblings. 317 00:32:42,950 --> 00:32:48,860 Um, it's also kind of strange. I think that the first thing that the speaker asks the child is, how many are you? 318 00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:52,370 Not what is your name? You know, it's it's odd to me. 319 00:32:52,730 --> 00:32:57,970 So the little girl we are informed is eight years old. Um, ask how many children are in her family. 320 00:32:57,980 --> 00:33:01,670 She says they're seven. Two in Conway, two at sea and two in the churchyard. 321 00:33:01,850 --> 00:33:07,640 And then there is, of course, herself. Two plus two plus two plus one is seven. 322 00:33:08,510 --> 00:33:11,899 The essence of the poem, though, is the speaker's refusal to count the dead with the living. 323 00:33:11,900 --> 00:33:15,290 And so he arrives at a different sum. Two plus two plus one. 324 00:33:15,290 --> 00:33:19,670 So five, or else seven, minus two and thus five. 325 00:33:20,180 --> 00:33:23,659 But the girl who has something rather uncanny about her, she's alive. 326 00:33:23,660 --> 00:33:27,500 But according to the poem, but seems to live between this world and the next, 327 00:33:27,500 --> 00:33:34,100 and has something of a fairy wildness to her, refuses to not include her sister Jane and her dead brother John. 328 00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:39,050 In fact, Jane and John are the only two individuals named in the poem. 329 00:33:39,710 --> 00:33:45,650 They are the children besides the little girl most vividly evoked, and they are the focus of her solicitude. 330 00:33:45,860 --> 00:33:54,200 She sings to them and keeps them company when she eats. The rhymes on the specific numbers govern some of the direction of the poem. 331 00:33:54,200 --> 00:34:02,000 Five and alive seven and Heaven and the ballad form again, is one that likes to enumerate specific cardinal numbers, 332 00:34:02,180 --> 00:34:08,960 whether as persuasive rhetorical detail or along with ordinal numbers, as essential narrative elements. 333 00:34:09,260 --> 00:34:13,339 Um, ballads do kind of. They are attracted to numbers. 334 00:34:13,340 --> 00:34:20,420 I mean, even if you think of something like a song like The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot, 335 00:34:20,810 --> 00:34:25,940 um, it's just full of numbers, and it sounds like it's a sort of legendary song. 336 00:34:25,940 --> 00:34:34,400 It's a legend, and it sounds long ago, but the wreck, which was a real ship, um, was wrecked in 1975, and the song only comes out in 1976. 337 00:34:34,700 --> 00:34:39,680 So you have things like with a load of iron ore, 26,000 tons more. 338 00:34:40,010 --> 00:34:47,060 Um, you have, you know, they, they made Whitefish Bay if they'd put 15 more miles behind her. 339 00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:52,580 But of course, the critical number comes at the end of the song in a musty old hall in Detroit. 340 00:34:52,580 --> 00:34:55,520 They prayed in the Maritime Sailors Cathedral. 341 00:34:56,090 --> 00:35:04,129 The cathedral bell chimed till it rang 29 times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and the specificity of 29, 342 00:35:04,130 --> 00:35:09,650 not 30, which would scan better, nor scores or many of some such meaning that each lost soul counts. 343 00:35:09,860 --> 00:35:14,450 And it is the actual number of crew members who died in that wreck. 344 00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:22,070 Now, here we have you. Operations, um, 345 00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:32,489 whether of addition or subtraction or multiplication or division in poems have a way of delaying some kind of recognition or realisation for a moment, 346 00:35:32,490 --> 00:35:37,740 while the sounds of the poem wash over you so that the wisdom arrives a second or two later, 347 00:35:37,740 --> 00:35:44,850 and the second wave of knowledge, um, is pleasurable, even if it's in a melancholy, spooky, shivery way. 348 00:35:45,090 --> 00:35:50,640 Um, this is one of my just very favourite lines from a song. 349 00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:55,620 Um, Hank Williams senior Long Gone Lonesome Blues from 1950. 350 00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:59,730 I'm gonna find me a river. One that's cold as ice. 351 00:36:00,450 --> 00:36:03,840 And when I find me that river. Lord, I'm going to pay the price. 352 00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:07,740 Oh Lord, I'm going down in it three times. 353 00:36:07,740 --> 00:36:12,960 But Lord, I'm only coming up twice. I mean, it's funny and it's horrible. 354 00:36:13,350 --> 00:36:20,940 And there's something about that math where you have to do the subtraction to realise the suicidal intent of the speaker. 355 00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:28,620 Um, this is another ballad. Uh, it's a living poet, Alan Shapiro, I think he lives in North Carolina. 356 00:36:28,620 --> 00:36:32,190 I came across this in a Best American Poetry volume. 357 00:36:32,430 --> 00:36:37,800 Um, it doesn't look like it has a lot of numbers, but what it has is a lot of multiplication and division in it. 358 00:36:38,820 --> 00:36:43,320 Country Western singer. So it's about an alcoholic, um, country western singer. 359 00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:50,399 I mean, it could be Hank Williams, in fact. Um, but, uh, and it's got a lot of the tropes of a country western song. 360 00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:57,510 So there's some, like, terrible, um, metaphors and so on, but it's also kind of moving in its way. 361 00:36:58,860 --> 00:37:06,210 I used to feel like a new man after the day's first brew, but then that new man I became would need a tall one, too, 362 00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:15,120 as would the new man he became and the new one after him, and so on and so forth, till the new man made the dizzy room go dim. 363 00:37:15,390 --> 00:37:19,080 And each one said, I'll be your muse. I'll trade you song for beer. 364 00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:23,280 He said, I'll be your salt lick, honey, if you will be my dear. 365 00:37:23,910 --> 00:37:27,690 He said, I'll be your happy hour. And you, boy, you'll be mine. 366 00:37:27,690 --> 00:37:31,770 And mine won't end at 6 or 7. Or even at closing time. 367 00:37:32,370 --> 00:37:42,660 Yes, son. I'll be your spirit guide. I'll lead you to absolute, to Dewar's, Bushmills and Jameson's, then down to Old Tangle Foot. 368 00:37:43,050 --> 00:37:46,590 And they all drained the pretence from you that propped you up so high. 369 00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:50,549 I'll teach you salvation's just salvation. 370 00:37:50,550 --> 00:37:54,120 Without the I to hear his sweet talk. 371 00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:58,529 Was to think he'd gone from rags to riches. Till going from drink to drink. 372 00:37:58,530 --> 00:38:04,140 Became like going from hags to [INAUDIBLE]. Like going from bed to barroom stool. 373 00:38:04,260 --> 00:38:10,500 From stool to bathroom stall from stall to sink, from sink to stool, from stool to hospital. 374 00:38:11,250 --> 00:38:21,570 Now the monitors beep like pinball machines and coldly the I.V. drips, and a nurse runs a moistened washcloth over my parched and bleeding lips. 375 00:38:21,930 --> 00:38:33,090 And the blood I taste. The blood I swallow is as far away from wine as 510 is for the one who dies at 509. 376 00:38:36,730 --> 00:38:42,040 So that little extra subtraction problem, that is the difference one minute. 377 00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:51,790 The difference of eternity. Um, allergies and tombstone's are, as we saw in the Greek anthology poem on the mathematician. 378 00:38:52,150 --> 00:38:57,490 A place for numbers as well as words. We expect to see a name and the death dates, a life. 379 00:38:57,490 --> 00:39:03,070 Parentheses. Poems about death like birthday poems gravitate to the numerical. 380 00:39:03,430 --> 00:39:07,480 Let's consider this widely anthologised piece by Seamus Heaney. 381 00:39:07,690 --> 00:39:16,960 Mid-term break. I sat all morning in the college sickbay, counting bells, nailing classes to a close. 382 00:39:17,740 --> 00:39:23,960 At 2:00 our neighbours drove me home. In the porch, I met my father crying. 383 00:39:24,620 --> 00:39:30,230 He had always taken funerals in his stride and Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. 384 00:39:30,980 --> 00:39:33,350 The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram. 385 00:39:33,350 --> 00:39:45,230 When I came in, and I was embarrassed by old man standing up to shake my hand and tell me they were sorry for my trouble, whispers informed strangers. 386 00:39:45,380 --> 00:39:53,960 I was the eldest, away at school, as my mother held my hand in hers and coughed out angry Tearless sighs. 387 00:39:54,710 --> 00:40:00,980 At 10:00 the ambulance arrived with the corpse staunched and bandaged by the nurses. 388 00:40:01,790 --> 00:40:08,060 Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside. 389 00:40:08,450 --> 00:40:14,810 I saw him for the first time in six weeks, paler now, wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple. 390 00:40:15,350 --> 00:40:20,210 He lay in the four foot box, as in his cot. No gaudy scars. 391 00:40:20,450 --> 00:40:26,420 The bumper knocked him clear, a four foot box a foot for every year. 392 00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:38,450 Numbers and operations with numbers often represent in poems anyway, or rather enact a dawning of reality to the speaker of the poem. 393 00:40:38,810 --> 00:40:46,820 Sometimes an out of body sort of numbness and detachment, and sometimes a realisation of a fact that can be described but not absorbed. 394 00:40:47,090 --> 00:40:49,970 In shock the mind struggles to take the measure of things. 395 00:40:50,090 --> 00:40:58,310 This is what is going on, I think, in Heaney's mid-term break, various kinds of measurement and accounting are in play from the get go. 396 00:40:58,940 --> 00:41:02,600 Um, even the title mid-term break, which seem straightforward enough. 397 00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:07,490 A break from school gains weight and meaning in this like mid is to bisect something. 398 00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:10,879 Term is an ending point. Time hangs heavy. 399 00:41:10,880 --> 00:41:18,890 About the poem. The beginning all morning. A vague but intelligible unit of time grows grave with wordplay. 400 00:41:19,370 --> 00:41:22,340 In the second line we begin counting with the nailing of bells. 401 00:41:22,730 --> 00:41:29,270 There's the specific to a clock that points the speaker in a particular moment, but with journalistic precision. 402 00:41:29,630 --> 00:41:33,500 As the speaker looks on from outside himself and measurements begin, 403 00:41:33,500 --> 00:41:39,300 and analogies with the human body astride or a step can be a measure of distance, a hand, a measure of height. 404 00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:45,230 These are perhaps less obviously felt here as measurements, but I do feel them ever so faintly. 405 00:41:45,710 --> 00:41:51,650 10:00 is another journalistic marker as the ambulance arrived punctually but in no haste. 406 00:41:52,100 --> 00:41:55,879 Next morning ties us back to all morning, even snowdrops. 407 00:41:55,880 --> 00:42:05,600 Not at first. Anything to do with numbers are, or mathematics are a specific marker of time and the final analogical calendar of the natural world. 408 00:42:06,740 --> 00:42:11,360 The four foot measurement of the small box for is again an oddly poetic number, 409 00:42:11,540 --> 00:42:19,160 not magically odd like three, nor prime, but small specific human with a long, sorrowful O. 410 00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:28,160 It prepares us for the body of a child, but somehow not for the gut punch of the math problem at the end, the answer to which is the child's age. 411 00:42:28,580 --> 00:42:37,820 Again, it is somehow the slight delay of our working out of the answer that that's information that arrives a second after the poem itself has ended, 412 00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,930 that sets the sad echoes resonating in the mind. 413 00:42:44,550 --> 00:42:49,890 I would be remiss not to at least mention or talk about a little bit with poetry and numbers. 414 00:42:50,100 --> 00:42:56,759 Marion Moore's syllabic stanzas more dispenses with feet altogether, and instead we get nubby, 415 00:42:56,760 --> 00:43:03,930 tangible syllables that we count like to tell us as syllables on our fingers, on our hand. 416 00:43:03,930 --> 00:43:12,300 Abacus. Some people complain that we can't hear syllables in English, to which I might say, unheard melodies are sweeter. 417 00:43:13,410 --> 00:43:22,050 But I might also quote Leibnitz. Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. 418 00:43:22,260 --> 00:43:31,260 And I do think that even if people think they can't hear syllabic, still some part of your brain is doing the counting and does hear the structure. 419 00:43:31,860 --> 00:43:35,100 Moore has talked about, you know, how she arrives at these stanzas. 420 00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:44,790 They seem to be ad hoc. I have written that any stanza is a matter of expediency, hit upon as being approximately suitable to the subject. 421 00:43:44,790 --> 00:43:48,780 I like this approximate idea. Um, she talks about, um. 422 00:43:48,810 --> 00:43:52,980 I don't plan a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes determining the procedure. 423 00:43:53,400 --> 00:44:00,120 Um, I may influence an arrangement or thin it and then try to make a successive stanza identical with the first. 424 00:44:00,420 --> 00:44:07,620 Um, this is the paper. Nonetheless, like many animal poems of Moore's, it's partly, maybe an ars poetica, maybe a feminist one. 425 00:44:07,620 --> 00:44:11,220 It's pregnant with ideas of motherhood as well as writer hood. 426 00:44:11,460 --> 00:44:15,630 Although, of course, Moore famously had a fraught relationship with her mother. 427 00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:22,710 Um, but first and foremost is an exquisite description of this strange creature whose paper fragile shell 428 00:44:22,950 --> 00:44:29,100 is ultimately likened to ancient and long surviving classical structures of bronze and marble. 429 00:44:29,460 --> 00:44:34,740 Um, so I've listed the numbers. I don't know why it hasn't come out very well in my slides, but, you know, 430 00:44:34,740 --> 00:44:45,690 for authorities whose hopes are shaped by mercenaries writers and trapped by tea time fame and by computers, uh, computers, Comfort's not for these. 431 00:44:45,690 --> 00:44:49,980 The paper Nautilus constructs her thin paper, her thin glass shell, 432 00:44:50,250 --> 00:44:56,880 giving her perishable souvenir of hope a dull white outside and small edged inner surface, 433 00:44:57,150 --> 00:45:02,340 glossy as the sea, the watchful maker of it guards at night and day and night. 434 00:45:02,340 --> 00:45:10,920 She scarcely eats until the eggs are hatched, buried eight fold in her eight arms, for she is in a sense a devil fish. 435 00:45:11,310 --> 00:45:23,310 Her glass ram's horn cradled. Freight is hid, but is not crushed, as Hercules, bitten by a crab loyal to the Hydra, was hindered to succeed. 436 00:45:23,310 --> 00:45:30,900 The intensively watched eggs coming from the shell free it when they are freed, leaving its wasp nest. 437 00:45:30,900 --> 00:45:39,960 Floors of white and white and close laid Ionic kitten folds, like the lines in the main of a Parthenon horse, 438 00:45:40,230 --> 00:45:47,790 round which the arms had wound themselves as if they knew love is the only fortress strong enough to trust you. 439 00:45:48,660 --> 00:45:52,500 The Nautilus is actually. It's a kind of octopus. The paper Nautilus. 440 00:45:52,500 --> 00:45:57,530 This is. You can see here the description is wonderful, where she just talks about the pleading, 441 00:45:57,870 --> 00:46:04,080 um, as if it's like the pleading of a ionic kitten or the Maine of a Parthenon horse. 442 00:46:04,380 --> 00:46:12,540 Um, these are very, very precise and accurate. As for the structure itself, what it's doing, I mean, it has that it has an organic feel. 443 00:46:12,540 --> 00:46:16,859 It feels pleated to me that seven, seven, five, five, eight is interesting. 444 00:46:16,860 --> 00:46:18,479 Again, it's an octopus with eight arms. 445 00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:29,010 And there's a a point where we go from odd numbers of syllables to eight, five, eight is a sort of Fibonacci sequence, um, set of numbers. 446 00:46:29,010 --> 00:46:36,870 And then we go into sixes. She breaks the pattern. It's one point, um, here by a crab loyal to the Hydra. 447 00:46:36,870 --> 00:46:41,820 I think she didn't want to have a the hanging out there at the end of the line, and she simply changed the rules. 448 00:46:42,030 --> 00:46:48,660 Maybe it has more important than that, but, um, I'm willing to sort of say that she was doing this in an ad hoc fashion. 449 00:46:49,020 --> 00:46:52,580 Um, but there's still a very kind of nubby feel to the syllabic. 450 00:46:52,590 --> 00:46:55,709 So they have that feeling of counting. 451 00:46:55,710 --> 00:47:05,910 In some ways they feel organic, the way the structure of this is a kind of Fibonacci, um, curve by its natural, but it's also mathematical. 452 00:47:08,310 --> 00:47:12,990 When totting up Marion Moore's stanzas, I tied up on my fingers. 453 00:47:12,990 --> 00:47:20,220 And in fact, if you see someone mouthing words to themselves and doing this, they are probably a poet. 454 00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:26,760 Um, and here's a poem that engages directly with mental arithmetic and with finger counting. 455 00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:31,890 And Emily Dickinson has lots and lots of number and sciencey poems. 456 00:47:32,310 --> 00:47:42,540 Um, her education at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke emphasised, unusually for the time, for either boys or girls, natural sciences. 457 00:47:42,900 --> 00:47:46,440 She was required to memorise and recite scientific texts. 458 00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:50,309 She writes um to her brother. Um, when she's 17. 459 00:47:50,310 --> 00:47:56,790 I finished my examination in Euclid. My studies are chemistry, physiology, a quarter course in algebra. 460 00:47:56,790 --> 00:48:03,479 She wrote to a friend saying she was studying algebra, Euclid, ecclesiastical history, and reviewing arithmetic. 461 00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:09,480 Again, to be on the safe side because Mount Holyoke really emphasised being quick with mental arithmetic. 462 00:48:09,630 --> 00:48:15,540 So we have a bit of that here. Um, this poem uses cipher for zero. 463 00:48:15,870 --> 00:48:21,660 She sometimes also uses the word zero. Um, her poem about the snake, a narrow fellow in the grass. 464 00:48:22,050 --> 00:48:29,580 And, um, I never meet that fellow attended or alone without a tighter breathing and zero at the bone. 465 00:48:29,970 --> 00:48:38,100 Um, the zero there having to do with the thermometer. But here she uses the more multivalent term cipher. 466 00:48:38,580 --> 00:48:42,569 Um, and for a cipher also. So, teens, one by one, 467 00:48:42,570 --> 00:48:54,480 the father counts and then attract between set cipher lists to teach the I the value of its ten until the peevish student acquire the quick of skill. 468 00:48:54,870 --> 00:48:58,770 The numerals are dower to back adorning all the rule. 469 00:48:59,190 --> 00:49:06,570 Tis mostly slate and pencil. And darkness on the school distracts the children's fingers. 470 00:49:06,930 --> 00:49:11,160 Still the eternal rule regards least cipher. 471 00:49:11,310 --> 00:49:16,470 Like with leader of the band and every separate urchins. 472 00:49:16,650 --> 00:49:19,800 Some is fashioned for his hand. 473 00:49:20,730 --> 00:49:27,750 There's a variation. Sometimes he adds these little plus and the manuscripts where she's thinking about maybe changing something. 474 00:49:27,750 --> 00:49:34,080 And so her manuscripts are littered with these kind of mathematical symbols, even if they aren't being used in that way. 475 00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:39,270 Um, so we have the idea of counting on our fingers. Um, the cipher. 476 00:49:39,660 --> 00:49:50,640 I love the word cipher. Um, partly it could be a zero, but it also has the sense of being a puzzle or of being a person of no account. 477 00:49:51,330 --> 00:49:57,120 Um, and in a textbook that she would have perhaps looked at Benjamin Greenleaf. 478 00:49:57,660 --> 00:50:04,050 Um, there's also, I think, a little bit of religious language here, although the cipher has no value of itself when standing alone, 479 00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:10,830 yet being joined to the right hand of significant figures, it increases their value in a tenfold proportion. 480 00:50:11,250 --> 00:50:16,889 And, um, I really love how the ten fingers and up are fashioned for his hand. 481 00:50:16,890 --> 00:50:23,130 Every separate church and some the idea that every single individual is of value and counts. 482 00:50:23,460 --> 00:50:31,320 I think even though I can't completely decipher this poem, um, it's this idea of equality seems to be strongly within it. 483 00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:40,180 And I think to this idea of counting in a religious sense, which perhaps is maybe at the background. 484 00:50:40,190 --> 00:50:44,930 I also the idea of God numbering and and caring and counting. 485 00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:48,710 Um, this passage from Matthew is one that springs to mind. 486 00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:51,380 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? 487 00:50:51,710 --> 00:50:59,240 And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your father's will, but the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 488 00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:04,130 Do not fear. Therefore you are of more value than many sparrows. 489 00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:08,410 And if we look at the Greek, we might notice that the coin, 490 00:51:08,410 --> 00:51:13,200 the little nobody knows really how to translate this penny farthing, whatever is again that ass. 491 00:51:13,210 --> 00:51:17,380 It's the same coin that Catullus is using and Assyrian. 492 00:51:21,730 --> 00:51:30,140 There can be a numbness in the centre of numbers when we speak of human beings as statistics, particularly in man made disasters such as war. 493 00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:39,580 The perpetrators of violence in a time of AI and drones are increasingly insulated and isolated from the human cost, 494 00:51:39,790 --> 00:51:43,630 the moral accounting of their calculations and weaponry. 495 00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:54,670 Yehuda Amichai, um, born in Germany to an Orthodox Jewish family, migrated to Mandate Palestine at the age of 11 and 1935. 496 00:51:55,000 --> 00:52:01,300 He later served in the British Army in World War Two, and in an assortment of conflicts in the IDF. 497 00:52:01,660 --> 00:52:09,400 He is a soldier, poet, a war poet in the sense I think, that Wilfred Owen is one who understands the cost of conflict. 498 00:52:10,780 --> 00:52:20,370 As bombs continue to fall on Gaza and Ukraine, on fishing boats in the Caribbean and Tel Aviv, on Turan and civilians pay the price. 499 00:52:20,380 --> 00:52:30,730 I think often of this poem, which is one not only of numbers and counting and mathematics, but of geometry, taking the measure of the world, 500 00:52:31,150 --> 00:52:38,410 and uses the cool language of measurement and counting, not to dehumanise, but to focus and particular eyes. 501 00:52:38,650 --> 00:52:41,140 I find it devastating and ever topical. 502 00:52:41,620 --> 00:52:51,310 I should say I have no Hebrew whatsoever, and I am given to understand that Amichai is Hebrew is particularly rich in untranslatable wordplay. 503 00:52:51,820 --> 00:52:55,540 He says of his Hebrew, I grew up in a very religious household, so the prayers, 504 00:52:55,750 --> 00:52:59,690 the language of prayer itself became a kind of natural language for me. 505 00:52:59,710 --> 00:53:02,080 I've looked at a few translations of this poem. 506 00:53:02,350 --> 00:53:09,879 I, I went with this one, um, because the poet himself cooperated with Ted Hughes to produce this, this version. 507 00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:15,940 So perhaps it is a more accurate version. I couldn't say the diameter of the bomb. 508 00:53:18,870 --> 00:53:28,860 The diameter of the bomb was 37cm, and the diameter of its effective range about seven metres. 509 00:53:29,930 --> 00:53:39,840 And in it four dead and 11 wounded, and around them in a greater circle of pain and time are scattered. 510 00:53:39,860 --> 00:53:51,950 Two hospitals and one cemetery. But the young woman who was buried where she came from, over 100km away, enlarges the circle greatly, 511 00:53:52,760 --> 00:54:01,490 and the lone man who weeps over her death in a far corner of a distant country, includes the whole world in the circle. 512 00:54:02,150 --> 00:54:08,180 And I won't speak at all about the crying of orphans that reaches to the seat of God, 513 00:54:08,660 --> 00:54:14,810 and from there onward, making the circle without end and without God. 514 00:54:18,340 --> 00:54:23,620 The circle, we might say, is a cipher. Both nothing and everything. 515 00:54:24,250 --> 00:54:26,770 I think of that last image in that last image. 516 00:54:27,190 --> 00:54:34,900 Mean is engaging with the notion of God as a sphere of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere, 517 00:54:35,140 --> 00:54:38,950 but it is inverted in the blast of the bomb. 518 00:54:42,300 --> 00:54:49,860 And again we see lots and lots of number words, um, and again geometry now, as well as addition and subtraction. 519 00:54:50,340 --> 00:54:56,130 Um, one of the things when I'm working on one of these talks is suddenly the talk starts to talk back to me and wherever I go. 520 00:54:56,610 --> 00:55:03,300 Um, there I was, just in the Westgate library, and this was on special display, speaking to me. 521 00:55:03,750 --> 00:55:08,730 One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for death. 522 00:55:09,060 --> 00:55:13,050 Five for silver, six for gold. Seven for a secret never to be told. 523 00:55:13,500 --> 00:55:18,870 It's an ancient nursery rhyme. And a counting out rhyme. And a kind of augury by magpies. 524 00:55:19,260 --> 00:55:25,140 And a reminder that poetry and numbers, counting and charms have been entangled for as long as we have had language. 525 00:55:26,160 --> 00:55:29,910 I will end with a counting out rhyme that has no numbers at all. 526 00:55:30,810 --> 00:55:40,890 Counting out rhyme by Edna Saint Vincent Millay. Silver bark a beach and sallow bark of yellow birch and yellow twig of willow. 527 00:55:41,610 --> 00:55:45,060 Stripe of green and moosewood maple. 528 00:55:45,390 --> 00:55:50,220 Colour seen and leaf of apple. Bark of purple. 529 00:55:50,880 --> 00:55:54,210 Wood of purple, pale as moonbeam. 530 00:55:54,540 --> 00:55:58,140 Wood of oak for yolk and barn beam. 531 00:55:58,470 --> 00:56:08,190 Wood of hornbeam, silver bark of beach and hollow stem of elder, tall and yellow twig of willow. 532 00:56:09,970 --> 00:56:14,290 What is it? Counting. What counts? These are questions. 533 00:56:14,560 --> 00:56:24,010 Problems. Maybe they will only become more urgent with time and climate, with nations at war with one another and man with the natural world. 534 00:56:24,580 --> 00:56:31,390 We live in a time of subtractions and division of ciphers and sums. 535 00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:39,640 Maybe poetry can be a kind of algebra, wrestling with the problem of solving for what is missing. 536 00:56:40,150 --> 00:56:43,510 Mending what is broken. Take.