Great Books #3: Poets and Prophets

The Iliad is the foundation of Greek civilization, which is the greatest, most creative civilization in human history. It gave us Plato, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. Greek civilization is essentially the foundation for Western civilization. The question we will look at is: how is it possible that one epic poem can give birth to a civilization?

The Core Concepts: Areté and Eudaimonia

To understand Greek civilization, there are two important concepts. The first is areté. The second is eudaimonia.

Areté means virtue, excellence, or character. It's something that makes you special, what you excel at. Traditionally, there are two types of areté: 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. We are reading the Iliad right now, and after we finish the Iliad, we will read the Odyssey. These are the two great characters in Greek civilization: Achilles the great warrior and Odysseus the great orator.

Eudaimonia means flourishing. The idea of eudaimonia is that you can only be happy, you can only be yourself, when you are achieving your areté—when you are expressing your areté.

For example, Achilles in the Iliad 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 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." That's why he's so unhappy when he gets in a fight with Agamemnon and has to sit out the war. 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. That's the idea of eudaimonia: I can only be happy when I am being my creative best, when I'm achieving my true potential.

Speech-Making as War: The Battle of Realities

For the Greeks, war-fighting and speech-making are really the same thing, but through different means. When you fight a war, what you're trying to do is impose your reality onto the world and make others believe what you believe. You do that through force. By brute strength, you show that you're superior, and therefore others must obey you.

But speech-making is trying to achieve the same thing through words. Rather than through force, you use beauty and truth to create a new reality that others submit to. The example, of course, is the speech between Odysseus and Achilles.

Remember the context: Achilles gets in a fight with Agamemnon, he refuses to fight, and the Trojans, led by Hector, are destroying the Greeks. So Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Nestor have a war council, and they agree that they'll go and beg Achilles to come back. Odysseus, Nestor, and others go to Achilles and present an argument. Odysseus gives a very long speech.

Why are the speeches in the Iliad so goddamn long?

Odysseus could simply say, "Hey Achilles, we'll give you a million dollars. Will you fight for us, please?" He could also say, "Hey Achilles, we're losing a war. Stop being an asshole. Come fight for us." He could make it very, very short. Why is it so long? And then Achilles's response could be, "No." But he also offers a very long speech.

The answer is they're not trying to respond to each other; they're trying to create their own reality. With a speech, what you're really trying to do is project a movie onto the world. You're trying to create a new reality that others must inhabit. That's why speech-making is like war-fighting: you're trying to create your own reality and impose it on others.

Remember what Odysseus is doing. He knows that for Achilles, it's really about face. 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. But Odysseus also knows that Agamemnon himself won't apologize. So for Odysseus, because he is the great orator, what he's going to do is try to create a new reality that Achilles inhabits, which will convince him to join the war.

How does he do that? He expands the imagination of Achilles. That's why the speech is so long—because he's trying to create a new emotional reality for Achilles.

Achilles is selfish. So, what does Odysseus say to him? The first thing he says is, "Achilles, I want you to imagine this: before us is a great feast. We can see 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." It's a powerful image.

Then he uses imagery to take Achilles to the present, where Hector is this giant, this god, running around killing all Greeks before him. 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." Then he takes Achilles to the future: "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. Agamemnon will give you his daughter for a bride, and you will be the glory of all of Greece. You will have treasures and treasures." Think about the present. Think about the past. Think about the future. Expand your mind, Achilles.

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. Speech-making is projecting a movie onto the world that everyone can observe and then absorb, internalizing this new reality.

Achilles knows this, and he refuses to be beaten. So for his speech, Achilles counters this with his own reality, which is a very self-absorbed reality. Rather than expanding outwards as Odysseus wants, Achilles continues to contract inwards. He uses the word "I" a lot—"me, me, me, me, me." Odysseus never uses "I"; he's always "we." Achilles says, "Hey, I understand that Hector to you is a god, but when I saw him, he ran away from me." "Oh, Peleus, my dad. I should go home to see him. So, goodbye, guys." "Agamemnon's daughter for my wife? I spit on her. I don't want his crap." He contracts inwards. That's why the speeches are so long: in speech-making, it's a war of realities. It's a war of narratives, and you create narratives through speeches.

The Poetic Techniques of Reality Creation

There are certain techniques to speeches because the goal is not just to paint a reality, but to paint a reality that is internalized by others. Therefore, you must make it memorable. This shows you the power of the speech. The question is, what makes the speech so powerful? The answer is because it's poetry.

The elements of poetry, of course, are:

• Imagery: This is what Odysseus does well; this is what he specializes in—drawing pictures for you to see.
• Metaphors: We call metaphors connections, and connections are things that help you clarify reality. They show you things that you couldn't see before. For example, if I say, "The sky is like the sea," that doesn't really surprise you. If I say, "The sky is like a snail," well, that surprises you. And because it surprises you, you remember it. When you remember it, it reorders the way you see reality.
• Diction: The choice of words.
• Syntax: The arrangement of words.

These are things that both Odysseus and Achilles specialize in, especially Odysseus. They're trying to create these narratives through their speeches, and they have these techniques.

Guess what? The Greeks' education system was very simple. All they had to do was memorize the Iliad. Because when you memorize the Iliad, you learn how to make a great speech. You understood that to make a great speech, you need to have an impact. You need people to remember what you say. You need to imprint yourself on others. This system becomes the very basis of civilization: speech-making, where to get things done, you have to go in front of people, make a speech, and create a reality for people to accept. This is what leads to democracy.

How Poets Shape Reality: A Philosophical Framework

Now I want to talk about how, in fact, Homer creates civilization.

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher, and he's primarily concerned with how we understand reality. Why do we see the things that we do? Why do we think the thoughts that we have? He wrote a very good book called the Critique of Pure Reason, in which he outlines this theory.

Traditionally, we've understood ourselves as passive observers of reality. This thing is before us, we stand before it, and we try to understand it. What Kant teaches us is that no, we are in fact active participants in reality, and we shape and form the reality before us. Kant divides the world into two:

1. The world of objective reality, the things in themselves, or the noumena.
2. The things that we can understand, called the phenomena, which are the things to us or the things that seem to us.

What are the noumena? They're just vibrations. The entire world is sound vibrations, frequencies. We can't actually see these things. So, what we do is we filter the world around us and turn them into phenomena. We do so through a filter called time and space.

Time and space do not exist outside of us; they exist inside of us in order for us to understand reality. Time just means sequence, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We put things in sequence, and we create time. Space is the idea of sensation, which is basically the five senses. Time and space don't exist outside of us because everything outside of us is just pure energy, but our minds can't perceive pure energy. Therefore, we use time and space—sequence and sensation—to order the world around us.

But what this means is that if we're able to control time and space, we can control reality itself. And what is this thing that controls time and space? This thing is called language.

Before language, we would each perceive our own time and space. With language, we are now able to come to a collective understanding of reality. And who creates language? Poets create language. And therefore, poets, through their poetry, create reality itself. That's what Odysseus is trying to do. He's trying, through his poetry, to 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.

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. We internalize the language, we absorb the language, and we together create a new reality with the language as the building blocks.

Homer's Connection to the Universe

Let's talk about how Homer is able to do this. How is a poet able to create reality? A poet is unique in the world. Poets are really prophets. If you look at all these great religious figures of the past, including Jesus, including Zoroaster, they weren't religious figures. They were really poets. And how they are able to work is they have a divine connection to the universe.

There are different names for the universe. Hegel, the German philosopher, used the term Geist. What is Geist? It's hard to translate because it's German, but think of it as three English words: ghost, gist, and geyser. A geyser is an eruption, a ghost is the underlying thing, and the gist is the essence. That's what the Geist is. The Geist is all around us. It's like the ghost; it's always changing, always becoming, always erupting like a geyser. And it's really the essence of things, the gist.

• Carl Jung used the term collective unconscious.
• Plato would use the realm of the forms and ideals.
• Christians will say heaven, whatever.

These are the universe. And remember how we said before, our memories are stored in the universe. The universe is almost like a divine, psychic internet. Every single memory is stored inside the universe. And what poets do is they're able to access this universe. As a result, they're able to summon the memories of the universe. And when they do that, they create epics of poetry.

The Iliad. As I keep on discussing when we read the Iliad, each character is a real person. 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. Everyone in the Iliad is a living, breathing character. And how is Homer able to do that? He's able to do that because he's able to summon these people from the universe. 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. 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.

Because these people are living, the Iliad itself is a living memory. The purpose of the Iliad is to create a living memory for people to observe.

Remember Homer, he is a bard. At this time, people don't read and write. So what he's doing is what Odysseus is doing: he's going from town to town, people are surrounding him—there are 100 people—and then for the entire evening, he recites his poetry. He's painting a movie for everyone to observe together. 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. 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—you connect directly to the universe. 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.

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. And this is what we call, together, a process we call civilization.

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 within 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. It's just one dialogue.

And think about this. This is what the Greeks did. And how do we know it's true? Because even today, the Iliad speaks to us. When we read it, we can identify with Odysseus. We can understand Achilles. We can relate Achilles to ourselves. We can predict how Achilles will behave. And that's proof that this Iliad is eternal and immortal because it connects us to the monad.

But knowing that, this is most important: you may not know this, but the more you read the Iliad, the more it's opening your mind. Your mind is an antenna to the universe. So when you read the Iliad, it's as though your download speed is now increasing. You have a faster, stronger connection now to the internet, and so you're able to absorb more. 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. And that's why we read the great books: because it literally allows us to connect and talk to God itself.

Shelley's "A Defence of Poetry": The Poet as Prophet

Now we're going to read together an essay by Percy Shelley. It's called "A Defence of Poetry," and he explains how this happens. Now that I've given you the theory, we'll see how Percy Shelley, a very famous British Romantic poet, explains this.

This is from his essay, "A Defence of Poetry." He's talking about how Homer created Greek civilization. Homer was a bard, a poet, but had a heavy influence on the playwrights. The three big playwrights, of course, are Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, and the theater would become the very essence of Athenian life. 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.

He talks about the theater in Athens:

The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have approached to its perfection, ever co-existed with the moral and intellectual greatness of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian poets are as mirrors in which the spectator beholds himself, under a thin disguise of circumstance, stript of all but that ideal perfection and energy which every one feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, admires, and would become. The imagination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and passions so mighty, that they distend in their conception the capacity of that by which they are conceived; the good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror and sorrow; and an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life.

The idea of Greek tragedy is epiphany and catharsis. If you look at Greek tragedy, there's a very common pattern. There's a tragic character, and he's undone by hubris. That's the great tragic flaw, his hubris. He's arrogant. Achilles has hubris; he thinks he's better than everyone else. Agamemnon has hubris. Hector will die because of hubris. It's hubris that is the great killer of people. No matter how great you are, you will suffer from hubris. The greater you are, the more you'll suffer from hubris, which can only lead to tragedy. 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. This is what we call epiphany.

But regardless of your epiphany, you're still going to face tragedy. 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. This will lead—you feel a connection with that person, you cry—and this leads to catharsis. Catharsis is basically a purge. Whatever feelings that you have, you cry. You purge your feelings. You purge your hubris. You purge your hatred. And this will make you a whole person. But when you commit to 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. And that will make you a much better person.

Even crime is disarmed of half its horror and all its contagion by being represented as the fatal consequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of its wilfulness; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather 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 brightest 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.

This is a very simple idea. When you watch a tragedy, you're observing a fundamental truth about human nature, which is that we're all going to be tragic. The classic case is Oedipus. Oedipus is a man who killed his father and married his mother. And when he discovers the truth, he blinds himself and then he goes into exile. If you actually read the tragedy by Sophocles, he did nothing wrong. It was just fate. It was just an accident. But unfortunately, that's what life is about.

You are a great person when you're able to acknowledge your limitations. You're able to acknowledge fate and destiny, but you struggle regardless. That's what areté is. That's what eudaimonia is: to recognize your limitations, to recognize the universe may have a grudge against you, but you struggle on regardless. And that story, when you watch it yourself, it brings sorrow to you, it brings pity, but it also makes you much more wise and reflective about the world that we live in. That creates wisdom. That creates empathy. This creates morality. And that's why Greek drama is so important.

Let's look at another passage.

Poets are not only subject to the same experiences as other men, but they are ever still more anxiously circumscribed by the limited circle of their sensible impressions; and they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world... A word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord.

The "enchanted chord" is just your connection to the divine. This word, because it's so beautiful, this sentence, so beautiful, will reawaken your memory. This is a really important idea where we are always in a process of reincarnation. 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 don't have any bodies. Therefore, we cannot have sex, we can't have pain, we can't love. But in this world, we can.

What's important to understand is that 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 we live. 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. That's what poetry does. Poetry is a gateway into your soul.

...and re-animate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations 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 their sisters abide—abide, because there is no 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.

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. We're not able to see this because of how our minds work, because we're only able to see through time and space. But poetry helps us go beyond time and space and connect immediately to the eternal, to the divine, to the spiritual.

All things exist as they are perceived; at least in relation to the percipient. "The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and recipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity 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 anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso: Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta (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. Poetry is a portal to the divine.

To conclude:

The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry. At such periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. The persons 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 whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, that power which is seated on the throne of their own soul.

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. There's a fire burning in you; you have to let it out, otherwise you can't sleep, you can't eat. Poets are prophets who must speak the truth, otherwise they will just suffocate. They'll just drown in their own misery.

It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age.

It's all inspiration. When Homer is speaking, he doesn't know what he's speaking. Are you telling me this guy is 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, he doesn't understand anything. He's just a divine fire. He's just channeling God. He's just a portal for God to speak with us.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; 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 unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Poets are prophets, and their words create our reality. Everything that we know, everything that we do, is because of the language that the poets create. 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. It's all by design.