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How is writing related to a world-view? Is poetry for all? Would we lose ourselves without poetry? Is schooling against nature and awareness? What kind of thinking impedes convention?
Tom Schulman: Dead Poets Society
Excerpts from the script of Peter Weir's movie, Dead Poets Society
Page 4
KEATING Precisely, Meeks. Greek for the herd. However, be warned that, when you say "the hoi polloi" you are actually saying the the herd. Indicating that you too are "hoi polloi."
[ Note by ellopos.net : "Hoi" in Greek corresponds to the English "the" (it is in this context masculine and plural: an accurate translation of "hoi polloi" would be "the many"). Therefore, duplication of the article "the" ("the the herd") in this context is not a typo. If we can understand what Keating means, is that by this unconscious duplication of the article (in Greek and in English, like saying "the the many", while Keating, carefully, said "the term 'hoi polloi'), because of their ignorance, they create the herd in their very thought and language. If this is true, then for Keating a heard consists mainly of quasi-individuals, reduced to exact copies of each other, and they are not needed in a society that remains a living organism, just as the two "the" are not needed. ]
Keating grins wryly. Meeks smiles. More chuckles. Keating paces to the back of the room.
KEATING Now, many will argue that nineteenth-- century literature has nothing to do with business school or medical school. They think we should read our Field and Pipple, learn our rhyme and meter, and quietly go about it our business of achieving other ambitions.
He slams his hand on the wall behind him. The wall booms like a drum. The boys jump and turn around.
KEATING (defiant whisper) Well, I say drivel! One reads poetry because he is a member of the human race and the human race is filled with passion! Medicine, Law, Banking-these are necessary to sustain life-but poetry, romance, love, beauty! These are what we stay alive for. I read from Whitman. Oh me, Oh life of the questions of these recurring. Of the endless trains of the faithless of cities filled with the foolish... skipping... What good amid these O me, O life? Answer: That you are here- That life exists and identity That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
Keating pauses. The class sits, taking this in.
Cf. Wordsworth's Lines & Strange fits of passion - Cf. Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet | Plato, Whom are we talking to? | Kierkegaard, My work as an author | Emerson, Self-knowledge | Gibson - McRury, Discovering one's face | Emerson, We differ in art, not in wisdom | Joyce, Portrait of the Artist
