A Philosophy Teacher’s Last Lecture

Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World

In the memorial service recently held in honor of my philosophy colleague Alan Paskow, we listened to some observations Alan recorded about his favorite poem, Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill” (to be found at the end of this post).  I share them with you here.  Alan recorded them specially for his funeral service and I think I understand why.

The poem gives Alan words to express his love for life.  Being a philosopher, he must also discourse upon the poem.  In his remarks (I attach an audio clip below), you can hear Alan wrestling with the meaning of his upcoming death and with the relationship between the eternal and the time-bound.  He tells us that his life took on greater meaning when he met his wife Jackie and when his daughter Linnea was born.

Turning to the poem, Alan says that Thomas affirms for him that there is something in our lives “beyond just change.” While Alan does not call this “something” God or a transcendent principle, he says that it lures us and enables us “to see things, feel things, perceive things” and that it “gives a kind of density and, for lack of a better word, significance to what we do.”

In short, here is a man who is trying to put into words the immensity that he is feeling, and trying to figure out the meaning of it all, as he gets weaker by the day.  Poetry and Alan’s philosophic training combine to give us his last lecture.

Alan discussing “Fern Hill” (.mp3–if it doesn’t play upon clicking it, you can right click and save the file to your computer)

By Alan Paskow, Philosophy, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

I’d like to read a poem that’s perhaps my favorite poem, by Dylan Thomas. It’s called “Fern Hill.” It’s a somewhat obscure poem to me. And yet, there are parts of it that beautifully evoke the passage of time and also the meaningfulness of some of those times. After all, a lot of the times that we experience are not very meaningful, but there are other moments or events that are very significant.  These constitute the real thread of my life.

I don’t fully identify with all that Thomas says in the poem. I was not famous among the barns. I didn’t have an especially happy childhood. And so, when I look back on my life, it’s not as though “then I was happy and now I’m not so happy” or “now I’m mature” or “now I know about the painfulness of loss.” In fact, I would say that my life, in a certain sense, began to be a happy one when I got to know Jackie.  I was about 27 years old. I really came to life when I got to know her.

The suggestion of the poem—for me at any rate—is that we appreciate the value of the events of our lives only retrospectively. As Hegel says, “the Owl of Minerva comes at dusk.” Of course, there are certain events in our lives where we feel acutely the passage of time and its significance–for example, at births or at weddings or at deaths–but I think they’re rare. I happened to be present at the birth of our daughter Linnea, and while I had rehearsed the birth in my mind for several months and had read booklets on it and taken classes on the lamaze technique, I really wasn’t prepared for what struck me as the miraculousness of her birth. And I remember just staring at her when she came into the world. It was, for me, an amazing event.

And there are weddings, full of hope for the married couple. I think the weddings, at least for me, are often overshadowed by the pageantry of it all—the food, the drinking, the dancing—so that the very transitory nature of the wedding and of lives generally is not something acutely felt. At deaths, of course, we do experience–or I have experienced–what I think Dylan Thomas is alluding to. The death of my father—I missed the dying, but I was at my father’s side for about an hour after he had died. I think I was very much aware of the loss and of loss generally.

The poem has an interesting interplay between the sun, which seems to symbolize eternity, and time, which is this thing almost like a being, a person, that allows the writer of the poem to live his heedless ways. And I think that sunlight is necessary in order to remind us that the poem is not simply about time, but that there is something that works with time, some transcendent principle that allows our lives to have a kind of significance and beauty that we cherish. After all, if we think about time just as time, it involves change, and change is both loss and gain. But if that were all that there was, then our lives would be meaningless. As least, so I think.

So I do think there has to be, or I feel that there is, something beyond just change that enables our lives to have a certain significance to them. Which is not to say that I believe that God or some transcendent principle governs everything that we do, but more that there is something that lures us and that helps us and that enables us to see things, feel things, perceive things—that gives a kind of density and, for lack of a better word, significance to what we do.

Fern Hill

By Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honored among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

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