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The History of Literature
665 Keats's Great Odes (with Anahid Nersessian) [Ad-Free Encore Edition]
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello, this is Jack Wilson at the end of 2024. Are you having a good end of the year and are you ready for 2025? We're hoping to roll out some new things in 2025, so stay tuned. And we also hope to have lots of good literary content for you here at the History of Literature Podcast. Today we're releasing another ad free episode, this time going back to 2021 with our guest, Anahid Nursesian. No editing this time. The episode is in full, including the tale of the Spinechian emailer. We'll see you on Thursday with an all new episode featuring Mike Palindrome and a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And now, episode 306, Keats's Great Odes with Anahid Narcissian.
- [01:25]
Anahid Nursessian
I have a student who came to me and said, you know, I think it's so wonderful that when you teach this poem, you tell us it's your favorite poem. And I thought, oh yes, I do do that. And he said, I think it's so wonderful that when you read it out loud, you cry. And I thought, I cry when I read this poem out loud because I hadn't been aware of that at all. And so I realized that apparently when I've been reading this poem aloud to my students, I've been choking up or tearing up slightly in a way that's visible to them, even though it was not visible to me.
- [01:58]
Jack Wilson
That's Professor Anahid Nursesian talking about one of the poems that puts tears in her eyes and a catch in her throat. We'll hear what poem she's referring to, along with her longtime love for the poetry of John Keats, her background as a literature devotee, and her new book, Keats A Lover's Discourse, which looks at Keats six great odes through a personal prism. That's all coming up today on the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Jack Wilson. So we have Mr. John Keats once again. We did a double episode on him last year, was it? Or last year or the year before. It's all kind of a blur now, but those episodes are in our archives, which you can check out if you'd like. I think we dove into Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale. Are those the two that got to our guest? We will see. Hey, our guest today is wonderful and so is her book, if you like. The podcast. You will like this book. This is a professor who. Well, I'm sure she can write in an academic style, full of theory and so on. She's obviously smart like that. She went to Yale. She got a PhD from the university of Chicago. She taught at Columbia and now teaches at ucla. Her books are in Harvard University Press and the University of Chicago Press. Those are some heavy hitters. But you know how in the movies when they have a professor, maybe it's played by some Anthony Hopkins type or some Nicole Kidman type. Emma Thompson, one of those brainy actors. And there's a moment when they break through and remember their love of literature, and they try to explain to someone just why it was that they love reading and. And love these dusty old books and why they're not such dusty books. After all, they're full of life and love and happiness and despair and joy. And the books speak to us across the centuries when we find ourselves communing with the soul of someone from long ago in a land far away. Well, this is that point in the movie. This is that kind of book. Not the kind that sends an academic on his or her way up the ladder of getting tenure and so on, but the kind of book where the academic, steeped in literature, takes a moment to explore and expand and deliver the good news of these favorite works of hers to the rest of us. She goes inside her own mind, her own life, and it's a fascinating life. She grew up as a woman in New York City, a woman of Iranian and Armenian descent, and she fell in love with romantic poetry. And these essays are the result. They've been called demanding, generous, precise, utopian, and unfailingly brilliant. End quote. Excellent stuff. So buy Keats letters, buy his collected works of poetry, and buy this book. And enjoy your spring, compliments of your old friend Jack Wilson, and your summer. And why not autumn, of course, you'll still be reading these. Then you can read them more than once. And why not winter, too, for that matter? Kate's springs eternal. So let's do this. We'll take a quick break, come back with this week's science news of the week, and then a conversation with our lover of Keats, Anahid Narcesyan, after this.
- [06:04]
Anahid Nursessian
SA.
- [06:32]
Jack Wilson
Okay, let's start with our science news of the week. Do we have anything special for this? Any theme song or anything? News from the world of science. Okay, I guess that'll do. Here we have news from the world of science. Scientists have taught spinach to send emails. That's our headline Sounds crazy, right? This is actually a real story in actual newspapers. First line. It may sound like something out of a futuristic science fiction film, but scientists have managed to engineer spinach plants which are capable of sending emails. End quote. I know, I know. You're dubious. It's hard to believe, but here it is right here in the newspaper. It's all thanks to those brainiacs at mit. The article goes on to explain that these scientists have taught spinach how to detect things in the soil around them using nanotechnology, and they then wi fi that information to email accounts so that scientists can monitor the chemical composition of the soil. Now, some of you might be astonished to hear this news that spinach can send emails. And I can see where you're coming from. I'm not surprised that you're astonished. It's an incredible story. However, I myself was not surprised at all, as it happens. But that's probably because even before I read this article, I was onto this. This news kind of came to me, in fact, unexpectedly. I've been corresponding with some spinach for some time now. Maybe a year ago, it started. You know, I think MIT might want to check their parental controls, or maybe it's vegetal controls, whatever they call it, because their spinach isn't just limiting itself to sending back dull technical information about the contents of the soil to their scientific handlers. These little green guys are in need of distraction, just like any other living thing. In fact, if anything, based on their emails to me, I'd say they seem to be even more in need of distraction than human beings would be, which I guess makes sense. And so they seem to be roaming outside their mission a bit, and that's how they wound up landing messages in my inbox. Let me tell you the story. It started with an email that I got, subject to why I am spinach farmer. Listen to podcast in field. What is a Jack Wilson? What is literature? Oh, my. That was it. My heart skipped. Spinach. What? I thought it must be a prank. I am spinach. What the heck? So I wrote back. Dear Spinach, hello, I am Jack Wilson. I hope you are doing well, growing and thriving. Best wishes, Jack. Of course, I thought this was a prank, a hoax, but I thought I would respond anyway, see where it led. Maybe it was someone in need, maybe someone with some issues, someone who needed to hear from me. That was my email. Upbeat, positive. The reply came quickly. Subject why to Jack Wilson. I am spinach farmer. Listen to podcast in field. Are you vegetable? How you can talk? Where you learn to do it. I only know can to do email. What is literature? That was it. That was all it said. So I wrote back. Dear Spinach, I learned to talk long ago, back when I was just a little sprout. Lol. As you surmised, I am a human being on my better days. Anyway, smiley face. I think you know what literature is. If not, I hope you spend some more time listening to the podcast that should tell you. And they're all free. I thought about including a link to the Patreon account, but that seemed a little crass. And of course, I still thought it was a prank. I didn't know this would wind up on the Internet, someone making fun of me for engaging in this. So I tried to keep things, you know, not too embarrassing. Then I got another email. Why? To Jack Wilson. I am spinach. Someday you eat me. What is literature? That was it for that email. After that, I emailed as best I could, in spite of my hesitation, thinking I was probably wasting my time or setting myself up for something. I tried to define literature as one would to a plant or someone pretending to be one. I can tell you it's not easy. I've never tried to explain literature to a plant before.
- [12:09]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
It is difficult.
- [12:12]
Jack Wilson
I tried to talk about works where characters wait around thinking a plant might identify with that. I mentioned Becket, of course. I talked about the importance of sunshine and wind in whatever books I could think of and the recurring love of nature. Even some children's books where plants came to life, though I didn't mention that. Those books always kind of creeped me out. I talked about works of literature that encourage us to grow and fulfill our destiny. But really, come on, what do you say to spinach? How do you make sense of a topic like literature? What does a phrase like books that are full of heart mean to an edible plant known for its flat, crinkly leaves? I did my best, but I couldn't shake an idea that haunted me. Someday you eat me, said spinach. And it's true, I eat spinach. I couldn't get over that. I don't know how I can stop. I don't know if I should stop. But how could I mention this to spinach? I've never tried to explain literature to my prey before. Who would listen to a predator on such a subject? So I wrote an email, and then another, and then another, trying to explain literature. My heart breaking every single time. Literature is very human centric, it turns out. But why? I used to be kind of proud of that, as it seemed to give literature a kind of importance, even a nobility, to be so focused on humanity. But now it seemed a little narrow, even barbaric. I wrote things like, dear spinach, I'm sure I won't ever eat you. Ha ha. Even if I ate nothing but spinach for the rest of my life, the odds are astronomical that I'd be eating you. In particular, I'll probably be eating some spinach from a hundred miles away. Ha ha. But the laughter and bonhomie were forced. Other times I would get more philosophical and say, dear spinach, I couldn't sleep last night. But the good news is, I had a thought. Maybe you won't be eaten at all. Maybe you're going to be used for another purpose, chopped up and turned into vitamins or medicine. Wouldn't that be better? And then I'd think, but no. Vitamins and medicine get ingested, too. I hadn't really thought of that, and the chopping up sounded brutal, so I added, you'd be helping people. And then I deleted part of that, so it just said, you'd be helping. And then I wrote, or maybe you'll just wither and die right where you are and rot back into the soil. Maybe you'll spoil and make someone sick. Is that what you want? Then I deleted the entire message. Hadn't spinach suffered enough?
- [15:24]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
I tried different approaches.
- [15:26]
Jack Wilson
Dear spinach, I wrote, can you feel solidarity with other living things? It might help you to get through hard times. And dear spinach, can you admire the universe? Do you feel a spiritual presence around you, hovering, looking out for you? That can be a gift. And dear spinach, it's winter now and it's very cold. Do you have everything you need? Is there a way I can get you something to help you make it through? Tiny clothes, perhaps, Or a wee blanket woven from yarn or threads? Maybe a little matchstick that you could use as a heater? And dear spinach, are you lonely? I'm lonely, too. We have that in common, don't we, spinach? Does it help you to know that? Do you have a tv? And finally, dear spinach, have you ever been in love? I hope so. I. But I had to stop there because I was crying so hard I couldn't see the screen. I got no response to any of these. And then I ran across the article above about the MIT scientists, and I knew that this had not been a prank or a hoax. This MIT spinach, given the power to send emails, needed something more out of life. And somehow the spinach had gotten my email address. Thanks, I guess, to a farmer who listens to the podcast out in the Field. And the spinach had reached out. The least I could do was take them seriously. That night, after I read the article, my wife made dinner, a beautiful lentil soup, perfect for a cold and wintry day. It was a work of art, a great gift for myself and my family. And yet I could only stare at my bowl, wondering about the carrots and the potatoes, how it must have felt when they were chopped to pieces and dropped into the pot and boiled. Had that felt like a blessing? Did it feel like the culmination of their journey, the trip to their great reward? Or was it a horrifying surprise? What had they known about their future? Had anyone bothered to prepare them for their fate? My youngest son, the pickiest eater, is going through a growth spurt now, which makes him devour things like lentil soup, so rich with the protein and nutrients that a human being requires. Without these nutrients, we cannot grow. Without this fuel, we cannot laugh or love or read literature. Without them there is no energy. Without them there is no life. My son doesn't appreciate this. As usual, he separated out anything green and leafy, and by the time he was done his bowl was empty except for the slug of wilted greens he had dragged to the edge of his bowl. My wife hollered at him to finish his food, but I could only think of the spinach perched up there on the edge, surviving for the moment. And so I intervened. No, no, I said. It's his destiny. He needs to be free. His destiny? Free? What are you talking about? My wife said. She had no idea I was not talking about my son, but the spinach itself. Finish your food, she said to my son, who sighed. They did this every night, and he knew he could not win. But my mind was elsewhere. No. I shouted, batting the spoon out of my son's hand as he brought the spinach toward his open mouth. He's suffered enough, damn it. Suffered? My wife said. Damn it. Are you insane? No. I cried. I'm compassionate. I grabbed my son's plate and ran into the kitchen. I looked at the garbage can and then the garbage disposal, the natural homes for this little green slug, and I felt awful. No, no. I cried. Not for this one. Not for my friend. I took the spinach outside to liberate it, but what then? Dump it onto the snow, Put it on a post and let it be devoured by some varmint? Bury it in the soil? In a wild moment I thought about bringing it back inside cradled in the warmth of my cupped hand and setting it gently on my computer keyboard to see if it would type me a note. Like old times, spinach. Just like the way things were. But all this was madness, absolute madness. I was alone in the cold. This spinach couldn't type. And even if it could, who cared? The end was inevitable. It was left to me alone under the night sky, left to me to find compassion in a heartless world. This hurts me, I said, raising my leafy friend above my head. I am in pain. And then I opened my mouth to the spinach and I chewed and swallowed and lifted my tear stained face to the sky. That was delicious, I confessed to the hollow stars above. And the universe stared back at me in empty wonder. That's the science news of the week here on the History of literature. News from the world of science. News from the world of science here on the history of literature. We'll be back with Anahid Nursesian and John Keats after this. Okay. Joining me now is Anahid Nursessian, an associate professor of English at the University.
- [22:05]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Of California, Los Angeles.
- [22:07]
Jack Wilson
She's the author of Utopia, Romanticism and Adjustment and the co editor of the.
- [22:12]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Thinking Literature series published by the University of Chicago Press. She's here today to talk about her new book, Keats's A Lover's Discourse, which gathers and revisits the six poems that.
- [22:23]
Jack Wilson
Keats wrote in 1819 that have become known as the great Odes. Anahid Nursesian, welcome to the History of Literature.
- [22:31]
Anahid Nursessian
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be talking to you.
- [22:34]
Jack Wilson
So you write that your book is a love story between me and Keats.
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Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
But before we turn to your book.
- [22:40]
Jack Wilson
Let'S back up a little bit and.
- [22:41]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Talk about who you are and how.
- [22:43]
Jack Wilson
You came to write this book.
- [22:44]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
So let's begin with your childhood and.
- [22:46]
Jack Wilson
Where did you grow up?
- [22:48]
Anahid Nursessian
I grew up in New York city in the 1980s. So I remember, you know, a New York that was much rougher than New York is now. And yeah, and when I was a teenager, I think if I have my dates right, when I was a teenager, Rudy Giuliani became the mayor and immediately militarized the city. And so it was, became, it was very different when I was a teenager than it was when I was young. So I have had the experience of two very, very different cities.
- [23:17]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Were you in the Village or Upper west side? Upper east side or in the one of the other boroughs?
- [23:22]
Anahid Nursessian
I grew up on the Upper east side, so not, not too far from Central park but in an. In an area that was sort of mid gentrification when I was living there with my parents. And my parents still live there. They live in the house that I grew up in, which was a very ramshackle house that they purchased for, you know, like the price that would make you weep because in the 1970s and it was really falling down. So my whole childhood was my parents, you know, doing this kind of weekend warrior stuff and trying to fix the electricity in the house and, you know, almost killing each other and falling through the floor and things like that. So it's very beautiful now, but it was a work in Progress for about 30 years.
- [24:02]
Jack Wilson
Right, and what kind of childhood did.
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Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
You have then, growing up in the city?
- [24:07]
Anahid Nursessian
Well, in a lot of ways it was really privileged and really comfortable. You know, I mean, as I just said, I grew up in a house, my parents owned a house, and financially they did very well. Both of my parents are psychoanalysts and so. Yeah.
- [24:22]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Wow.
- [24:23]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah. And they had their offices in our house. So, you know, there were two. There are two entrances and one goes through the kitchen and one goes to a waiting room. And so there was always a stream of patients coming in and out. And my parents are very old fashioned and so they abided by the old rule that your patients shouldn't know anything about you whatsoever. So it was very important that I not be seen by any of their clientele. So a lot of times I would have to kind of skulk around or hide if somebody else was coming up the stairs. So that was interesting. They were very interested in contemporary art and literature. A lot of their friends were artists and writers. So I spent a lot of weekends dragged kicking and screaming to galleries and museums. And now I'm very grateful for that. But at the time I resented it a lot. So that part of it was great. And again, very privileged and very comfortable on the other end of things. My father is from Iran and he has an Iranian passport. And he came to the US in the 1970s and in the 1980s, having an Iranian parent was a quite difficult thing because of no conflict between the US and Iran. So kind of much like it is now. That was a really difficult thing for me as a kid. And I got bullied a lot at school, you know, for having a funny name and having a foreign dad. So it was a mixed bag, you know, very, very comfortable on one end and then and very uncomfortable on the other.
- [25:50]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Yeah, so when you were first describing it with your parents, I was thinking of a Woody Allen movie. But it sounds like it would be kind of a. A Woody Allen locale, but with completely different characters.
- [26:02]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, definitely. Well, in some ways, very different characters. I mean, you know, my parents, because they were psychoanalysts, a lot of their friends were also psychoanalysts. So a lot of, you know, shrinks kind of sitting around the house and chewing the fat. So I grew up around a very neurotic. Kind of. A very neurotic kind of vibe. I'm very comfortable, you know, in a. In a Woody Allen context, I guess.
- [26:26]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Yeah. So speaking of your identity, you've written or said that you were constantly being told that the literature you loved didn't belong to you. So who was telling you this? And what was their basis for telling you that?
- [26:39]
Anahid Nursessian
You know, in a way, that makes it sound. What I wrote there makes it sound more direct than it was. It was a much more implicit message that I got just from the fact that, you know, I never had an English teacher who was, you know, Iranian or really. Who was anything but white and English, Western European. And I never read any literature that wasn't by white writers until I was in high school. That wasn't how our curriculum worked at the school that I went to. You know, it's very, very conservative, very traditional curriculum. And if I went to, you know, Barnes and Noble, the writers that I saw were not people that had names like mine or, you know, looked like my dad. So it's a really indirect way of absorbing the sense that you're somehow excluded from higher or canonical literary culture. But I think those messages, as kind of indirect, as they are extremely powerful. And I certainly got. I heard them loud and clear.
- [27:37]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Yeah, but what was the literature that you loved?
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Anahid Nursessian
Well, I'm a real nerd, so even I was a nerd from a young age. And I just fell in love when I was really young with pretty. Again, canonical English literature. So I loved Chaucer, I loved John Donne, you know, Milton, and then, of course, the Romantic poets, most obviously John Keats, but also William Blake and Percy Shelley. Those have been the writers that have been the most important to me.
- [28:07]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
So it'd be the literature that you loved was all in this sort of general stream, a lot of it coming out of Britain. But you feeling like there was something kind of. I don't know what the right word is artificial, or that there was a disconnect between you and who you were and the people who maybe were supposed to identify the most with that kind of literature.
- [28:32]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I always felt like I was Being introduced to that culture as an interloper, maybe best as an investigator, a kind of outside investigator, but. But never with a sense that it was my birthright or my inheritance or that it belonged to me in any kind of deep and meaningful way, which is, I think, which was very different from the experience of a lot of the kids that I went to school with, you know, who were very. The school I went to was very WASPy and, you know, again, traditional. And so there was certainly a sense that this kind of literature and this kind of culture was the birthright and the inheritance of the student population.
- [29:10]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Yeah, it's so fascinating, and it puts you in such an interesting position with respect to it, because a lot of those people, a lot of the classmates that probably you felt at least like they did properly inherit this or this literature did belong to them, probably didn't like it.
- [29:28]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, that's amazing.
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Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
That's very true.
- [29:31]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, that's very true. And that's something that I kind of talk about in the book, is that in a strange way, when you feel like an outsider in your immediate environment, which I certainly did, it's very easy to get attracted to a kind of obscure or arcane or, again, slightly nerdy set of interests that pull you apart from your peers, but that also might pull you into a realm of thinking and feeling and reading that is actually quite traditional. You know, there's nothing particularly subversive about being interested in John Donne. There's nothing particularly subject subversive about being a student who's really good at English. And so I don't necessarily think that my cultivation of those interests was rebellious in any way, but it gave me an out. You know, it gave me a way to feel as though there was more to life than, you know, being 14 and surrounded by blonde chicks.
- [30:25]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
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Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Did you ever see the movie Breaking Away?
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Anahid Nursessian
Oh, my God. That is one of my favorite movies. I will put that on my top 10 list.
- [30:36]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Okay. Because we talked before, and I had mentioned. I brought up Professor James Chandler of the University of Chicago, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, but when I took his class in Romanticism when I was an undergrad, he said something to me that kind of changed my life, really, but changed the way I looked at literature, for sure. And he was talking about Keats, and he said, you know, if you've seen the movie Breaking Away, and I'll just remind people who maybe don't remember, there's a boy who's living in kind of a college town that's divided between the. It's like a town and gown situation where it's a lot of white collar workers like his father. And then there are all of these kids who go to the university also in this town. And so he's kind of on the outside looking in at these intellectuals and he decides to kind of leapfrog over them. He learns Italian and he starts wearing Italian clothes. He becomes a bicycle racer and he starts speaking Italian to his parents and playing opera and all of this stuff. And Chandler, Professor Chandler had said during class, he said, you know, this is kind of what Keats did. He was, you know, he was a cockney, he was an outsider to this group of poets. And he decided that he wasn't going to write working class poetry. He was just going to be the best poet and leapfrog all of these critics and all of these people who kind of implied that he wasn't qualified or he wasn't capable of doing it. And I'm wondering, I guess that begs the question, is part of your attraction to Keats because of his personal life story and how it might have resonated with you?
- [32:16]
Anahid Nursessian
You know, it's funny because in some ways Keats was very much an outsider and as you said, he was lumped in with a group of poets and writers that were referred to in the mainstream press as the Cockney school of poetry, which is a description that has a really strong class inflection to it. So the idea was that Keats was working class, which is true. I mean, he was kind of lower middle class, born lower middle class, that Keats was working class, that he was uneducated because he hadn't received a university education. He very famously could not read Greek, although he could read Latin. And that set him at a distance from classical literature, which of course, as a poet in the 19th century, you were supposed to know front to back in, in the original language. So in some ways he was an outsider, but in another sense he did find a community of like minded writers and so, and was very supported by those people. So, you know, I think that he's somebody who made his own way in the world to great effect. And even though, again in the mainstream press his writing was always pilloried and he was pilloried in very, very personal terms. And again, terms that had a very strong kind of completely undisguised class inflection to them, he did find a way to be an insider within his own community. But, you know, as for whether or not I connected with that aspect of Keats's biography, I think. I think, yes, I think I must have. And some subconscious way, I think Keith's always felt as though he didn't belong. And I always, you know, like that, too, when I was younger. And I also kind of didn't belong, you know, I mean, the people that I went to school with and that I was surrounded by had very, very different lives and very, very different backgrounds than I did, you know.
- [33:57]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Right.
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Anahid Nursessian
Yeah. I mean, they didn't come home and speak a foreign language. Right. They didn't, you know, have to, like, you know, have go through airport security and have their dad pulled over every time and his bag searched every time, you know, which I did. So.
- [34:13]
Jack Wilson
Right.
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Anahid Nursessian
In that sense, I certainly felt like an outsider in the same way that Keats did. But it wasn't so much about class. It was more about ethnic background, Ethnic and national background, you know. But I think the thing that drew me the most to Keats, besides his sort of marginal status in the world of letters, was just that he's incredibly lovable. Yeah, it's like the hero of Breaking Away, whose name I'm desperately trying to remember. But it's very, very lovable and very endearing. And a lot of Keats scholars have a relationship to Keats that feels much more intimate than the relationships that they might have to other writers. Partly for that reason that you just think, man, I would have loved to have known this person. He seems like such a mensch. So some of it is just a kind of the personal charisma that Keats has that was so strong that it lasts on the page 200 years later is probably what drew me to him more than anything.
- [35:08]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Do you think that the appeal of Keats comes from the letters as much as his poetry? He comes across in the letters as so earnest and so endearing, I think. Was that something that drew you to Keats, or are we just talking about the poetry here?
- [35:24]
Anahid Nursessian
Well, I encountered the letters before I encountered the poems, so for sure. And I think that most people would tell you that the Keats of the letters is what really enchants them into the world of Keats poetry and makes them Keats converts. And it's true, because he is in his letters, you know, of which there are many, given the fact that he died so young, because he was a prolific letter writer. But, you know, in the letters, he comes across not just as, you know, very lovable and very endearing and very sweet and very earnest, but also just as, you know, sometimes kind of bitchy and mean and insecure. And very, very funny and very well, well meaning, you know, and sometimes he has these crises of self confidence and other times he's just absolutely, you know, completely enraptured with the possibility that he's as good a writer as any that's existed in the English language. And so in that sense, he's like all of us. And the letters record him in the fullness of his personality. Personality. So, you know, vulnerable. You see him being arrogant, you see him being depressed and melancholy. You see everything. And so when you have that full picture of somebody, and there are very few writers who we have that full and intimate a picture of in English history, anyway, it's easy to become really smitten with them and, you know, to feel as though they are your. Your friend or your. Your buddy in some way.
- [36:51]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [36:52]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
And you see him, and it's kind of a young person's. It's kind of a young person's style in some ways. But you see him wrestling with ideas and so devoted to poetry.
- [37:04]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, yeah, very. I mean, very devoted to poetry. And also very aware of the fact that poetry is something you have to work really hard at.
- [37:11]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Yeah.
- [37:11]
Anahid Nursessian
So one of the things that I find moving and, you know, just impressive about the letters, given that, as you say, they're written by some. Somebody who's so young, is he had a sense of poetry as a labor that you had to return to again and again and again until you got better at it. So a lot of times he'll talk about doing a poem as a kind of endurance. Writing a poem as a kind of endurance test or an experiment or as an opportunity to learn something so that the next thing that he writes will be better. So I think he saw himself as undergoing a very rigorous training in the art of poetry. Poetry. And that's something that is very compelling to me too. You know, that idea that you really have to work hard at this thing in order to make that thing seem utterly effortless when it ends up on the page.
- [37:56]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [37:56]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
So we're right on the edge of me asking you about your book, but I just want to close off one more thing about your biography. Was there someone or something or some moment where you felt like you had permission to go ahead and. And become a scholar in this type of literature?
- [38:14]
Anahid Nursessian
I don't think that there was any particular moment. I think that I just sort of bumbled along and did what I wanted to do. And I recognized pretty early on that I was not very good at math, but I was pretty good at English. And so it Seemed like something I could do, and I kind of just fell into doing it in a more regular way. And then as soon as I realized that there was such a thing as a university professor, I thought, well, that sounds like a really good, good gig. And so I'm interested in that. I mean, like Keats, interestingly enough, like Keats, I had aspirations to become a doctor, but I was so intimidated by chemistry in high school that I thought, I'll never survive chemistry at a college level. So that. That was not in the cards. But he's also trained as a doctor and then gave it for poetry. So that's another connection. But that connection didn't dawn on me until much later in life when I realized, like, oh, I also, you know, almost got into that. That track and then didn't.
- [39:07]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Right. Okay, so let's turn to the book. What made you decide to write a book about Keats's odes? I mean, there have been a lot of books about Keats. What did you have to contribute that hadn't been explored before?
- [39:21]
Anahid Nursessian
Well, so, you know, the dirty truth of it is I actually didn't have a conscious intention to write this book. And my editor, my editor at the University of Chicago Press then asked me to do it. And what I had a conscious intention to do was to write something in a more personal vein that explored my relationship to canonical writers from a more autobiographical angle. So that was already percolating, and I had had that since I had just finished my second academic book. So I've written two academic monographs, and I've edited an edition of a long poem by Percy Shelley. So all of my work has been very academic and nature. And I was kind of feeling like it was time to do something else, or I felt the impulse to do something else, but it hadn't taken concrete shape yet. And then my editor effectively asked if I could. Would be interested in writing something like this. And I said, yeah, sure. And because we had the intention of the book coming out in time to correspond with the bicentenary of Keats death, which is about a month away on February 23, 2021, I didn't have very long to write it. I had to hit the ground running. And fortunately, I was able to do that because of the fact that I've been thinking and writing about these poems for a very long time and teaching them for a very long time. So there was a set of, you know, just a set of thoughts that I had had about the poetry that I was able to access very quickly. So, you know, In a way, it just fell into my lap. I think what makes the work different is there have been a handful of kind of memoir type books written by people who are also thinking about Keats. So these very personal books about the writer's relationship to Keats and to Keats's poetry and to Keats life. But all of those books have been written by men. And that's always sort of puzzled me because a lot of the most important scholarly work on Keats has been written by women. So it seemed as though there was a divide between the kind of person that felt they were able to relate to Keats or attached to Keats in a personal way, and the kind of person that was perhaps more obligated to keep their relationship to Keats in a much more formal register. So it is, as far as I know, my book is, as far as I know, the first memoir or, you know, kind of critical text come memoir written by a woman about Keats. So, you know that that is new. And so I hope that that is interesting to people. I hope that's exciting to people.
- [41:58]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Well, I was interested and excited as I read it and. And part of my interest and excitement was knowing how much it fit with this podcast and the listeners to it. I think listeners are going to really appreciate it in a way that they might not typically appreciate or be able to access more academic driven work. I know that I've had other professors on who have talked about their works of scholarship, and it's a little bit. It can be a little bit hard for someone outside of academia to access it because it feels a little bit like you're arriving late at a party and there's an ongoing conversation that you didn't hear the first half of or something. And. And your book is not like that at all.
- [42:39]
Anahid Nursessian
Oh, thank you.
- [42:40]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
It's clear that you love the poems and you've been thinking about them very thoughtfully for a long time and you have things that have kind of gathered along the way, whether it's information about Keats or whether it's information about yourself or, you know, anecdotes or stories or things that fit in with the poems and help deepen our appreciation for the poem. So I would say the book works. I'm glad your editor is moving in that direction and moved you in that direction.
- [43:11]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, I think a lot of academics are right now trying to find ways to incorporate a more personal voice into their writing for a lot of the reasons that you mentioned. You know, at a certain point it starts to be depressing to Feel as though you're only reaching a very, very small readership, and that if you try to write for a larger readership, that readership may be alienated by the. You have expertise that you bring into your writing or by the ways in which you can't make that expertise accessible to others. So I have a lot of respect for scholarship proper. I have a lot of respect for academics and for academia. But I do think that all critical writing needs to become less hermetic if it's going to have any kind of effect on the people that encounter it. I am certainly trying to move more in that direction in my own work.
- [44:00]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Right. Okay, good. So you say the book is a love story between me and Keats, and not just Keats. So let's break that into two parts. So what do you mean by it's a love story between you and Keats?
- [44:13]
Anahid Nursessian
Well, it's really. You know, I wouldn't say that I have a crush on Keats. That probably is not quite accurate. But I do have a tremendous amount of love for and tenderness toward Keats for the reasons that we were talking about earlier. I mean, I feel. And a lot of people who read a lot of Keats feel this way. I feel that I know him in a way that I don't feel. I know many writers, either living or dead. You know, I mean, there's a way in which his letters, but also his poetry give you access to a character that is so, you know, familiar, and that is so. That feels so alive, you know, that it feels as though you were just talking to him yesterday. It's hard to believe he's been dead for 200 years. So I feel a closeness to Keats that is, to me, remarkable. And it's described that closeness as love. You know, that's the kind of attachment that it is that I want to. I'm always happy to see him, you know, I'm always happy to be in the presence of Keats. I think about Keats a lot. I feel excited, continue to feel excited by Keats, even though I've been reading his poetry for as long as I have. So it's a very intense attachment that I have to him as a writer, but also as a human being. So in that sense, it's a love story, but it's also, I think, in a larger sense, a story about what it means to have poetry change your life. And I think that we changed by works of art as dramatically and in some cases as traumatically as we're changed by our relationships with other People. So, you know, in. In describing, in each of the essays that make up the book, my thoughts about these poems. And, you know, these poems I've been thinking about for years and years. I'm trying to stage that kind of relationship. You know, the kind of relationship to a work of art that could change your life or make you live your life differently. So that sense of sustained attention and sustained and committed attention is, to me, a pretty good description of what love is, you know, or. Or how we act toward the things that we love on a good day. But, of course, you know, sometimes when we love things or people, we also behave really poorly towards them as well. So, you know, I think the whole book tries to explore these various aspects of love and these various aspects of intimate attachment from different angles.
- [46:29]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [46:30]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
And you say at one point that as you were reading old poetry that you began to hope that the past might need you as much as you needed it. What did you mean by that?
- [46:42]
Anahid Nursessian
That thought actually came to me when I was in college and I decided that I would take a creative writing class. Even though I had never had any interest in being a poet myself. I decided to take a class in poetry just to sort of see how it's done from the inside and, you know, to see, I guess, how hard it is. Right. Because it always struck me as very difficult to write poetry. And I think it's extremely difficult to write good poetry. So I thought I would take this class and see, you know, what was what. And I just remember thinking, God, you know, I'm terrible at this. But also, so are most people. You know, most poetry is. Most poetry is really bad.
- [47:22]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Oh, boy. You know, you should listen to our episode. We have an episode called Bad Poetry in which I confess my attempt to write a Keatsian poem at a young age. And I compare it with some of the worst poetry that's ever been written in the history of literature.
- [47:41]
Anahid Nursessian
I would love to see your Keatsian poem. You know, I mean, it's really hard to write a good poem. I think it's much easier to write a kind of passable novel, you know, bad novel. And it's like that old saw about pizza. Even when it's bad, it's still pretty good. That's kind of what I think about novels. You know, they're always more entertaining. They pass the time. That's. We have the phenomenon of airport novels, but not the phenomenon of airport poetry. Anything if you're, you know, on the plane. So, yeah, I had that thought when I was in college. And I was thinking, God, this is terrible, you know? And I realized with full force the divide between my creative capacities, which are basically nil, and my critical capacities, which I have a certain degree of faith in. So, you know, I think what I was trying to say there is. I felt in reading poetry and thinking about poetry as a scholar, a certain kind of intellectual confidence that enabled me to adopt this as a career and to feel as somebody has something to learn from reading my scholarship and this kind of stuff that I write about, the literature that I write about is mostly well served by my attention to it.
- [48:58]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [48:58]
Anahid Nursessian
I mean, I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't be a professor if I didn't feel like the literature that I write about is well served by what I do.
- [49:07]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
And so when we're talking about students who are required to take these courses and to read these things, if they have a bad experience, the poems end up just being inert or irritating or something that they avoid or dismiss. And instead, with someone like you who can champion them or advocate for them or just interpret them in the right way, that you're bringing back to life the energy and the. The spirit that should come out of poetry like that, you know?
- [49:40]
Anahid Nursessian
I hope so. In the second chapter of the book, I talk about this open letter that four Columbia University students wrote about the core curriculum at Columbia, which is a curriculum that I've taught because my first job, Columbia. And they write about the experience of a student who, in a class on Ovid's Metamorphoses, felt very, very, very upset by the fact that the teacher only wanted to focus on the aesthetic beauty of the poems of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and not on the fact that the metamorphoses are dominated by scenes of sexual violence. And in the letter, they describe the student going to talk to the professor about this, and the professor brushing the student off and saying, well, well, you know, that's not really what interests me, or that's not a valuable contribution or whatever. And then the student, of course, as you might expect, becomes unwilling to talk in class, kind of detaches from the classroom experience, sits in the back, doesn't raise her hand, and basically was shut out of the discussion. And when I read that letter, it's not that I was surprised, but I was just so. As a teacher, I was so enraged by it. That kind of. I mean, you know, leaving aside the fact that Ovid's Metamorphosis and I talk about this in the chapter is quite obviously a long poem about sexual violence. And it's not. You don't have to impose that reading on the poem, and it's explicitly what it's about. It just seems any teacher who would shut down a student or dismiss an interpretation or suggest that a certain point of view wasn't wanted or warranted in class, class is doing such an incredible disservice, not just to the student, but also to the literature. So, you know, if any. I mean, I'm always trying, as a. As a teacher and as a professor to keep the classroom as open as possible to whatever anybody wants to bring into it. I think that that is an ethical obligation as well as a pedagogical one.
- [51:39]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Right. And because it just seems so obvious that what that student was looking for was to deepen the experience of reading the poem and to deepen the understanding that everyone could have about the poem. And the teacher was in cutting that off. If you're cutting off the enthusiasm that people have for what seems to be important to them and what will matter most to them, why would you take away the energy that the student's going to bring into the classroom? And, you know, you're just. At that point, you might as well just be lecturing to a bunch of robots.
- [52:17]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, but that's what a lot of people want to do.
- [52:20]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Right, Right. It's easier.
- [52:22]
Anahid Nursessian
It's much easier. It's much easier to present yourself as the unassailable expert than it is to have your ideas challenged, you know, I mean, so. But it's bad. I mean, it definitely is bad teaching. There's no question about it. And bad teaching kind of makes my blood boil.
- [52:37]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [52:38]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
So when you were setting out to write this book, it does have the feel of things that you've taught and mentioned in the classroom and learned along the way as you've studied these poems and written about these poems, maybe in other formats or read other criticism or essays about the poems. Were there things that you discovered that you didn't know, whether it's about Keats or about the poems or. Or about yourself? Or was this your chance to kind of summarize and get into print the things that you had long been thinking about these poems?
- [53:15]
Anahid Nursessian
I think it was certainly a chance to summarize thoughts that I had had or things that I had read as a way of kind of initiating a discussion of each poem? But then as I writing. One of the things that is so. So again, remarkable to me about Keats is that you can always discover something new reading the poems because they're so Intricately put together. So it's as though every time you discover a kind of a new joint or a new turn or a new way that things are fit together, or you understand that the reason that he chose this word to rhyme with that word instead of another word was to suggest a certain kind of effect. And so I wouldn't say that you forget the poems when they're not in front of you, but you do always come to them anew. They have that sense of perpetual freshness about them. So as I was writing, I would find myself having to forget or leave behind things that I had always thought to be true about the poems. Because I suddenly realized that actually something completely different was at work. And I am really enamored of that process of being forced to relinquish what you thought you knew about a work of literature that's very close to you. So that sense of perpetual discovery certainly animated the writing of the book right.
- [54:32]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Now, I don't mean to put you on the spot, because this was not a question that I. And I have a surprise bonus question for you where I will put you on the spot. But this is one I probably should have previewed for you in advance. And if the answer is you just cannot answer the question question, that's fine, too. But I'm wondering, do you have a favorite among the odes, or is there one that resonates with you in particular?
- [54:55]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, My favorite of the odes is Ode to Psyche. And I would go so far on a limb to say that it may be my favorite poem.
- [55:04]
Jack Wilson
Favorite poem? Yeah.
- [55:06]
Anahid Nursessian
I have a student who came to me and said, I think it's so wonderful that when you teach this poem, you tell us it's your favorite poem. And I thought, oh, yes, I do do that. And he said, and I think it's so wonderful that when you read it out loud, you cry. And I thought, I cry when I read this poem out loud. Because I hadn't been aware of that at all. And so I realized that apparently, when I've been reading this poem aloud to my students, I've been choking up or tearing up slightly in a way that's visible to them, even though it was not visible to me.
- [55:35]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Right.
- [55:35]
Jack Wilson
And what is it?
- [55:37]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
I think I might have to do a whole episode now on the Ode to Psyche. What? At what point do you find yourself getting emotional?
- [55:46]
Anahid Nursessian
Really? That kind of thing makes me cry from the word go. Or at least I think it makes me cry from the word go, since I'm not aware of having been crying. In public when I've been reading the poem aloud. But I think as soon as you start encanting the language of Keats and you start connecting into the emotional world of that poem, you're filled with a sense of sacredness that is akin to walking into a church. And that's a probably apt comparison, because one of the things Keats is trying to do in that poem is imagine an idea of the sacred that is distinct from any kind of religious belief. So I think that there is a sense of solemnity and. Yeah, let's say a sense of solemnity about that poem that I find very moving. And then it's a love poem, you know, It's a poem about discovering these mythological figures, Cupid and Psyche, lying together on the grass. They've ostensibly just been, you know, having sex, and so now they're sleeping side by side. And the. The description of the way that their bodies are sort of breathing together and the way that they're almost touching but not quite touching. I just find it really, really precise and beautiful. So the poem casts a spell on me, and I evidently am helpless to resist it.
- [57:06]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
It's funny that you chose that one, because as I was looking through the odes and reading about them and the critical reception to them, that one had stood out as one of the overlooked of the odes. And I read one argument by Ayumi Mizukoshi who said that early audiences didn't support the Ode to Psyche because it turned out to be too reflexive and internalized to be enjoyed as a mythological picture. And I wonder if people were just looking for something that it wasn't and kind of missing what it actually was.
- [57:42]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah. And also, it doesn't have. It doesn't advertise itself as a great poem the way that Odona Grecian urn does or the way does. You know, those are much more compact, and I don't want to say slick, because they're not slick, but they're much more compact and they're much more finely tuned than Ode to Psyche, which is slightly meandering. And where exactly is this going? But that's one of the things that I like about it. I think the poem has a lot of vulnerability, and I admire that Keats was able to register that vulnerability on the page and wasn't tempted to revise it in any substantial way. So it doesn't feel as watertight as some of the other poems. And that's the thing that makes me have as much affection for it as I do.
- [58:29]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [58:29]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Like To Autumn is often viewed as a perfect, almost bulletproof kind of poem. And sometimes that's praised, and sometimes people find that that puts them off a little bit from it.
- [58:40]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah. And, you know, bulletproof is really an apt word, because in the book, I relate the poem to an event that happened right before Keats wrote it, namely the Peterloo Massacre, which was a massacre of innocent protesters in Manchester in 1815. And Keats was very aware of that event. Everyone was very aware of that event. Percy Shelley wrote his famous poem, the Mask of Anarchy, about that. And a lot of people have commented on the fact that To Autumn, although it's written in the wake of those events, doesn't seem to have any explicitly political content at all. So people sometimes take it as a gesture of escapism from contemporary political history. And so in the book, I try to think about what that would mean. And I end up deciding that instead of the poem having. Instead of the poem seeking to praise its own perfection, it actually thinks of its perfection as a kind of tragedy. Because the fact of it is terrible things happen all the time, and yet beauty persists in the world. Right. We are fully aware of all the horrible things that are going on all around us that are sometimes happening to us, that we are sometimes implicated in, and yet we're still able to find a poem beautiful or to find the site of a tree beautiful. And so I think that the poem is very conflicted about that impulse in human beings to continue to love the world even when the world seems very unlovable. So, yeah, I mean, it is perfect, but I don't think that it's proud of being a perfect poem.
- [60:10]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [60:11]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
And, boy, if we ever needed someone to explain for us why it's still relevant to read poetry in 2020 and 2021, I think you just sort of nailed it. Okay, so I do think that Ode to Psyche might have been T.S. eliot's favorite among the odes.
- [60:29]
Anahid Nursessian
Oh, my gosh. Really? I've never heard that before.
- [60:32]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Yeah, I'll have to track that down, but I'm pretty sure that that's something he had said. Okay, so we are now up to the surprise bonus question. And let me say that we've kind of been getting toward it. When we talked about Keats background and with your description just now of the Peterloo Massacre, her. But what I want to fill in for the listeners is that in your introduction to the book, you had connected this idea with Shaw, which to me was very thought provoking. And it was his suggestion that there was an affinity between Keats poetry and the ideas of Karl Marx. And it made me think that had Keats not died so young, their lives would have overlapped. He would have been 53 when the communist Manifesto came out. Yeah, okay, so here's the question after Are you ready?
- [61:29]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, as ready as I'll ever be.
- [61:32]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
After falling asleep in the pleasant shade of a plum tree on a summer's day, you awake from some fantastic dreams to find that a literary genie has appeared. She is a kind hearted spirit who.
- [61:44]
Jack Wilson
Smiles warmly and tells you that she can grant you one wish. Except she can only offer you a very limited choice.
- [61:51]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
You will be permitted to spend an.
- [61:53]
Jack Wilson
Afternoon with one historical figure.
- [61:56]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Either you can meet with the 25 year old Keats to tell him about Karl Marx and his writings and ask him what he thinks, or you can meet with Karl Marx to ask him all the questions you want about Keats and his poetry. You and your companion will be supplied with a nice meal and your beverage of choice as you speak. And then you'll return to the present day. Do either of these meetings appeal to you?
- [62:20]
Jack Wilson
And why or why not?
- [62:22]
Anahid Nursessian
Both of them appeal to me greatly because Keats and Marx are probably my two favorite writers.
- [62:28]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Oh, wow, okay, great.
- [62:30]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah. And I don't just, I mean, I really mean that about Marx, that I don't just appreciate Marx as an intellectual or you know, as a scientist, but also as a writer. I mean he's very extraordinary. And of course Marx was very, very, very fond that even that word is too weak, but very fond of Shakespeare and also of Percy Shelley. So, you know, he was a very literary man. And you know, I don't actually know if there's a record of Marx having read Keats, but I think that they, had they met, you know, I think that they probably would have hit it off like gangbusters. I mean, everyone who met Keats kind of hit it off with Keats. Very fun person to be around. So if I had to make the choice, it's very, very hard. I think unsurprisingly, I would have to choose to meet the 25 year old Keats because there's so much more of Marx. You know, he lived a much longer time, he wrote much more than Keats did. And I, and I kind of feel as though they're not, you know, I don't feel as though there are many unanswered questions in Marx's work. I actually think that what's there is enough for everyone to go on if they're inclined to Go on it. But with Keats, there's. I would be very interested to know if he intended to keep writing poetry. Right. He died or when he started dying. When he fell ill for the last time, he had already been thinking about quitting poetry and doing something that would make him more money. So I'm always sort of curious, and I think a lot of people have asked this question, you know, would Keats have continued writing or would he have composed To Autumn, the greatest poem in one of the greatest poems in the English language and called it a day? Right. And decided that he had more to bring the world? I mean, that was something that really started that. That notion of what poetry can or can't bring to the world was something that really troubled him. I don't want to say later in life, because that makes it sound as though he lived to a ripe old age, which of course he didn't. But he was very concerned that poetry didn't really help anyone, that it didn't make anyone healthier or happier, that it wasn't a tool for justice. And that began to weigh on him quite heavily. So I would want to know, you know, what would you have done? You'd want to keep writing. Would you have actually gone and used your medical degree or your medical training, or would you have become a lawyer? Which was something he was kind of toying with. So I think it would have to be Keats.
- [64:47]
Jack Wilson
Do you think if you told him.
- [64:49]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
About Karl Marx and laid out Karl Marx's arguments and observations, that it would have resonated with Keats? It might have put him on a new path?
- [65:01]
Anahid Nursessian
I mean, absolutely. And that's sort of what George Bernard was saying in that essay. Right. You know, so Shaw is talking about a poem, a Keats poem, called Isabella or the Pot of Basil. And he says, oh, you know, the stuff in here wouldn't be out of place in Capital. And that if Keats had lived, he probably would have turned into a Bolshevik. Right. That's that Shaw uses. And it's such a bold and completely out of left field thing to say, but I think it's absolutely accurate. And so Keats, you know, we sort of started this conversation by talking about the circle that Keats ran in the Cockney school of poetry circle. And that circle was very, very politically left wing, to use a contemporary expression, is full of radicals. And that's partly why Keats attracted as much negative attention as he. He did, is because he was associated with this group of radical writers. So I think. Absolutely. I think that, you know, he would very quickly understand Marx's ideas. I think that he would very quickly sign on to them. He was a person who was painfully preoccupied by injustice during his lifetime. And so, yeah, I think. Absolutely. I think he would have been thrilled, delighted. You know, I mean, there's an amazing description of Keats reading the poet Edmund Spenser for the first time and being so excited that he jumps off the bench. You know, he can't contain himself. Not a response that most people would have to Edmund Spencer. But he jumps off the bench and he's so excited. And he ends up. The person who writes this description of Keats, you know, describes Keats as having, you know, just like, as though his whole body is filled with excitement for good poetry. And I think that if you told Keats about Marx, he would have a similar reaction. He would kind of jump into the air and be overwhelmed by the profundity of Marx's ideas.
- [66:49]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Okay, so I think you've answered my next question, which was going to be, what if I told you that the condition was that you would be required to write an essay or a book about the discussion that you had? It sounds like Keats would still be an amazing book to write. Although having a chance to interview Marx about Keats would, I think, be a pretty good book, too.
- [67:09]
Anahid Nursessian
Yeah, that one would also work. I like the idea of staging these conversations between writers that have never met one another and then sort of seeing, you know, imagining what that conversation would be like. That's a cool idea.
- [67:23]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [67:24]
Unnamed Co-Host or Guest
Okay, well, let's leave things there. The book is called Keats's Odes, A Lover's Discourse, published by the University of Chicago Press. Ana Heedner. Sessian. Thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.
- [67:34]
Anahid Nursessian
Well, thank you so much. This was so fun.
- [67:44]
Jack Wilson
Okay, that was it. This is Jack in 2024. Again, I hope you enjoyed that one. Have a happy new year, everyone. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you in 2020. Sa.