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Usually when we look at the trajectory of like

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a great life or a great career, we're totally

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conditioned to expect this beautiful sunset.

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Right. A peaceful ending. Yeah, exactly. We expect

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the artist, the thinker, the creator to reach

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a certain age, look back on their wild youth

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and just, you know, mellow out. We want them

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to hand down this serene, perfectly wrapped package

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of wisdom. Tying up all their life's contradictions

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with a neat little bow. Right. But when you actually

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look closely at certain artists facing the end

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of their lives, that beautiful, calming sunset

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looks more like a terrifying, jagged lightning

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storm. It really does. You see a creative landscape

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that isn't serene at all. It's violently fractured.

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It's difficult. It's frankly an absolute refusal

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to comfort the audience. It is the definition

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of an unresolved catastrophe. And that refusal,

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that deliberate shattering of expectations, is

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actually one of the most profound phenomena in

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all of human creativity. So today we are immersing

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ourselves in a really deeply moving and intellectually

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rigorous concept. It's known as late style. Yes,

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late style. And we are exploring this deep dive

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for you through the lens of the legendary cultural

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critic Edward W. Said and his final posthumously

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published book. It's called On Late Style, Music

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and Literature Against the Grain. Right. And

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we're going to ask a question that gets right

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to the core of what it means to create something

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while knowing you are... Well, running out of

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time. What happens to the mind right before the

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end? Exactly. Because for some of history's greatest

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geniuses, the end of life brings this furious

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rebellion. And to really grasp the gravity of

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this work, you have to understand the deeply

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poignant context of its creation. Say it's on

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life. Right. Edward Say didn't just study lateness

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as some, you know, dry academic exercise. He

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was literally living it. He was writing this

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manuscript. While battling leukemia. Diagnosed

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in 1991. So he lived with this shadow for over

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a decade until he passed away in 2003. He was

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acutely physically aware of his own shortage

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of time. His wife, Miriam C. said, detailed this

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in the foreword of the book, which is just heartbreaking.

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Yeah, she recounted how they were in Europe in,

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I think, August of 2003. And he fell terribly

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ill. They rushed back to New York. And after

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weeks of this high fever, he had a brief window

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where he actually felt a bit better. And he sat

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at breakfast. and meticulously detailed to her

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exactly what he planned to write the following

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week so he could finish the book by december

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he literally left notes for his family and then

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three days later he was gone yeah so the book

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we're analyzing today is itself an unfinished

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late work about unfinished late works. But here

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is the really critical distinction for you to

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keep in mind. Sid wasn't writing this as a self

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-pitying memoir. No, not at all. He wasn't using

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it to say a gentle goodbye. He was utterly fascinated

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by artists who, facing their own mortality, became

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like... more untamed. He was drawn to the creators

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who pushed back against the dying of the light

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with a really highly structured, almost agonizingly

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complex roar. Right. He was looking at how the

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approaching death of the artist infects the works

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themselves. Now, as Saad points out, a piece

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of music or a novel doesn't have an organic life

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to lose. A book doesn't catch a virus. The symphony

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doesn't get old. Exactly. But the shadow of mortality

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enters the style. It bends the light. Let me

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jump in here, though, because my natural instinct

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is to push back on this a little bit. Sure, go

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ahead. When I think of late works, the first

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things that pop into my head are the ultimate

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examples of peace and resolution. Like what?

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I think of Shakespeare's The Tempest, right?

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Where Profero literally breaks his magical staff,

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gives up his power, and forgives his enemies.

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The classic example. Or Sophocles writing Oedipus

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at Colonus, where this... Blind, suffering, exiled

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king finally finds miraculous transfiguration

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and unearthly serenity. It's beautiful. Isn't

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ripeness is all the standard template? I mean,

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look at Rembrandt's warm, glowing late self -portraits.

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That is the accepted historical narrative, and

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Sedd completely acknowledges that. Okay, so he's

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not denying it exists. No, he admits that anyone

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could readily supply a massive list of evidence

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showing how late works crown a lifetime of aesthetic

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endeavor with harmony. Right. But said is exclusively

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interested in the exceptions. The outliers. Yes.

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He wants to study the artists whose late works

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are defined by intransigence, difficulty and

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unresolved contradictions. He wants to look at

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artists who use their final style as a form of

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exile from their own era. Right. What if age

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and ill health. don't produce the serenity of

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ripeness? What if they produce an angry, disturbed

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artist who tampers irrevocably with the very

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possibility of closure? So we are looking at

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style as a deliberate act of sabotage against

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neat endings. Sabotage is a great word for it.

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And to understand this rebellious late style,

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we have to start with the timeline of human life

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itself. SED draws on the great founders of the

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science of history here, like Ibn Khaldun and

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Gian Battista Vico. Breaking down how we understand

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our own stories. Because we aren't just talking

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about biological decay here. We're talking about

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human history, the secular constructed world

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we make for ourselves. And SED breaks this self

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-making into three distinct phases, right? Yes.

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Phase one is beginnings. This is about locating

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origins. Think of a birth. Or in literary terms,

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think of the invention of the novel form with

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something like Robinson Crusoe. Oh, like orphanhood,

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finding roots, building a totally new world from

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scratch. Exactly. Which leads to phase two, continuity

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or maturity. The middle of the story. This is

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the exfoliation from birth. In literature, it's

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the buildings Roman, you know, the novel of education

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and growth. Like George Eliot's Middlemarch.

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Yes. Driven by Darwinian plots of generation,

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community building, and social integration, the

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artist is building their grand, cohesive worldview.

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And then we hit phase three, lateness. The decay

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of the body, the realization that the road ahead

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is shorter than the road behind. And society

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assumes a certain timeliness to all of this.

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There is a season for everything. Right. What

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is appropriate for a young rebel is not appropriate

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for an aging master. Sedd points out that the

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entire genre of comedy is built around restoring

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this timeliness. Yes, the humor in a classic

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comedy comes from someone acting out of their

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proper time, an old man trying to act like a

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young lover, or a philosopher throwing an infantile

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temper tantrum. And how does comedy usually end?

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With a festive marriage of young lovers, which

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essentially restores the proper, timely, biological

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order of the universe. But the artist said is

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interested in completely violate that timely

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compact. Which brings us to a philosopher named

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Theodore Adorno. Yes. And his absolute obsession

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with a deaf, isolated, aging Ludwig von Beethoven.

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Adorno was a towering, notoriously difficult

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German philosopher from the Frankfurt School.

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And in 1937, he wrote an essay fragment on Beethoven's

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third and final period. We're talking about the

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last five piano sonatas, the Ninth Symphony,

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the Missus Lemnis, and those famously baffling

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late string quartets. Right. To set the stage,

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Beethoven is completely deaf at this point. He

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is isolated, misanthropic, and suffering physically.

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The easy, conventional historical tate is to

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listen to these bizarre late works and say, well,

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poor Beethoven. Yeah, he couldn't hear what he

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was doing. He was dying. So his music got strange

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and fragmented. It's just a tragic diary of a

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sick man. But Adorno rejects that completely,

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doesn't he? He violently rejects it. Adorno warns

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that if you treat the music merely as a psychological

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diary of a dying man, You strip the art of its

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aesthetic rights. You reduce a masterpiece to

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a medical chart. Exactly. Adorno argues these

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works are an alienated aesthetic event. He actually

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calls Beethoven's late style a catastrophe in

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the history of art. Catastrophe is a brutal word

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to use for music that is universally revered

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today. What does he mean by that? He means it

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structurally. Think about Beethoven's middle

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period. Think of the Eroica Symphony or the famous

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Fifth Symphony, the dun -dun -dun -dun. Oh yeah,

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the classic. That music is incredibly integrated.

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It is driven, relentless, and organically whole.

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Every single note feels like it organically propels

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the next note forward. Right. In this grand,

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heroic narrative of synthesis, the music conquers

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its own themes. But in the late period, that

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heroic drive vanishes. The music suddenly becomes

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episodic. It feels distracted. It is full of

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what Adorno calls shishuras, sudden, shocking

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discontinuities, dead stops, and silences. Okay,

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let's use a visual analogy here. It's like Beethoven

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spent his middle period building a beautifully

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cohesive, gleaming suspension bridge. A real

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marvel of engineering. I like this. But in his

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late period, he decides to build a bridge, but

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leaves huge, terrifying gaps in the middle of

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the roadway. Yes. He just leaves the naked structural

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steel beams exposed over a plunging drop and

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expects you to walk across it. That is an incredibly

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precise analogy because Adorno explicitly says

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that Beethoven leaves behind unmastered material.

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Exposing the steel beams. Exactly. Let's look

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at the musical mechanics of this. Beethoven takes

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conventional musical rhetorical devices, things

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that were standard toolkit items for composers

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of his era, like a trill, an appoggiatura, or

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standard cadence. And he splinters them off.

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Yes. Stop right there, though, because we need

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to translate that for those of us who aren't

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classically trained musicians. What exactly is

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an appoggiatura? Okay, so an appoggiatura is

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basically a musical sigh or a lean. A lean. It's

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a note that... It clashes slightly with the underlying

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chord to create a moment of emotional tension,

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but it immediately resolves down to a comfortable,

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harmonious note. Oh, it builds a tiny bit of

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tension and instantly releases it. Yes. It's

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the sound of yearning followed by satisfaction.

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So what does late Beethoven do with it? He gives

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you the leaning, clashing note, and then he just

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leaves it there. What? He doesn't resolve it.

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He refuses to resolve it. Or he isolates a trill,

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which is usually just a pretty decorative fluttering

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between two notes at the end of a phrase, and

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he turns it into a harsh mechanical grating vibration

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that goes on for pages. Completely disconnected

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from any melody. Exactly. He doesn't integrate

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these elements into a beautiful emotional flow.

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They just sit there feeling almost primitive

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or student -like. Right next to massive, incredibly

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complex polyphonic writing where multiple different

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melodies are warring with each other simultaneously.

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So he is deliberately refusing to synthesize

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the extremes. He's taking the opposite ends of

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the musical spectrum and refusing to introduce

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them to one another. Adorno writes that the late

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work is furrowed, even ravaged. Devoid of sweetness,

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bitter and spiny, they do not surrender themselves

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to mere delectation. Wow. Beethoven realized

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that in a fractured world, no grand heroic synthesis

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is actually honest anymore. To write a perfect,

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cohesive symphony would be a lie. Adorno says

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it's as if Beethoven's subjectivity, his very

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self, forcibly brings these musical extremes

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together, shatters them against each other, and

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then physically disengages from the music. Leaving

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only the naked tones and the wreckage behind.

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The work falls silent the instant the creator

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abandons it. turning its emptiness outward toward

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the listener. It's a chilling concept. But what's

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equally fascinating to me is how much Adorno

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clearly identifies with this. Oh, absolutely.

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The way he describes Beethoven is exactly how

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Adorno writes his own philosophy. Adorno himself

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is the ultimate embodiment of late style. He

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really is. I mean, trying to read Adorno is notoriously

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punishing. He is entirely unskimmable. You can't

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just breeze through it. No. He refuses to offer

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his readers any summaries, any bullet points,

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or any false optimism. Think about how we consume

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content today. Everything has a TLDR, a quick

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summary, a neat takeaway. Adorno is actively

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hostile to that. He's the anti -TikTok. He demands

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you suffer through the fragments. Adorno was

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writing from a place of profound philosophical

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exile. He was a wealthy, highly educated bourgeois

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figure, a man raised in extreme privilege and

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high European culture. Who defected from his

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class to become a Marxist. But as Said points

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out, Adorno didn't become a revolutionary throwing

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Molotov cocktails. Right. He injected Marxism

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with a vaccine that dissolved its agitational,

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crowd -pleasing force. He looked at the world

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of the 1950s and 60s, what he called the totally

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administered society, and he loathed it. What

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did he mean by the totally administered society?

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Oh, well, he meant the post -WWII capitalist

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machine that turned absolutely everything, even

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art and rebellion, into a safe, consumable product.

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A society that manages your desires. Yes, it

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feeds you mass culture and gives you the illusion

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of freedom while perfectly controlling the parameters

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of your life. So if everything is a neatly packaged

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product, how does a philosopher fight back? By

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becoming impossibly, deliberately difficult to

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consume. He writes in Discontinuous Fragments.

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His most famous book, Minima Moralia, is literally

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subtitled Reflections from Damaged Life. It is

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not a cohesive philosophical treatise? No, it's

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a cascading series of dense, thorny fragments

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that assault the idea of fictitious unities.

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He attacks the philosopher Hegel's idea of a

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grand historical synthesis. For Adorno, modern

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society is a fallen, unredeemed reality. To write

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smoothly and cohesively about a broken world

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would be to participate in the lie. So his writing

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style is a self -imposed exile. He uses his incredibly

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refined, elite background to critique everything

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00:13:32,480 --> 00:13:35,559
from the perspective of an aging, disobliging

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former colleague who just won't let you enjoy

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your comforting illusions. He becomes a furious

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intellectual machine. decomposing itself into

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smaller and smaller parts. Yes. Now, if Beethoven's

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late style was about tearing the house down to

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expose the structural beams, our next artist

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00:13:51,590 --> 00:13:53,690
decided to build an entirely different house,

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lock the heavy oak doors, and pretend the 20th

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century simply wasn't happening. I know exactly

305
00:13:58,870 --> 00:14:00,309
who you mean. I'm talking about the composer

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Richard Strauss. Richard Strauss presents a profound,

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00:14:03,330 --> 00:14:06,049
almost infuriating dilemma for music historians.

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00:14:06,389 --> 00:14:08,750
Why is that? If you look at his early career,

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he was the alternate radical. In the first decade

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of the 1900s, he wrote the operas Salome and

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Electra. And those were wild. These pieces pushed

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what we call Wagnerian chromaticism to its absolute

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breaking point. Let's define that real quick.

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Wagnerian chromaticism. Sure. So in traditional

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00:14:25,820 --> 00:14:27,879
Western music, you stay within a specific key,

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00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:31,240
say C major, use the notes in that scale, and

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00:14:31,240 --> 00:14:33,980
it sounds grounded and predictable. Like home

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00:14:33,980 --> 00:14:36,860
base. Right. Chromaticism is when you start using

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00:14:36,860 --> 00:14:39,340
all the notes between the keys, the accidentals.

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00:14:39,399 --> 00:14:41,980
Okay. It creates a feeling of wandering, of instability,

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00:14:42,440 --> 00:14:45,019
of intense psychological yearning because the

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00:14:45,019 --> 00:14:47,779
ear never gets the relief of returning to a home

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00:14:47,779 --> 00:14:51,470
base. Richard Wagner pioneered this. But in Salome

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and Electra, Strauss pushed it so far that the

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music was practically screaming. It was violent,

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dissonant, and shockingly modern. But then, right

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after establishing himself as the terrifying

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vanguard of modern music, he does a massive U

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00:15:05,929 --> 00:15:09,370
-turn. A complete 180. In 1911, he writes Der

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Rosenkavalier, and suddenly he slides backward

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00:15:12,409 --> 00:15:16,600
into a sugary, safe, tonal... waltz -filled 18th

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00:15:16,600 --> 00:15:18,480
century world. And for the rest of his life,

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he stays there. The standard historical critique

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is that he just gave up. He ignored the massive

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musical revolutions happening right next to him.

336
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The total abandonment of keys by Arnold Schoenberg,

337
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the violent, jagged rhythms of Igor Stravinsky.

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People viewed Strauss as a dinosaur, a man who

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survived into the 20th century, but... refused

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00:15:37,019 --> 00:15:39,379
to live in it. But Said brings in the legendary

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Canadian pianist Glenn Gould to mount a brilliant

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defense of Strauss. Gould boldly claimed that

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Strauss was actually the greatest musical personality

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of the 20th century. Which is quite a claim.

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00:15:50,100 --> 00:15:52,379
Gould argued that Strauss wasn't just a cowardly

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conservative. He was doing something much more

347
00:15:54,440 --> 00:15:57,539
subversive. He was defying the historical summation

348
00:15:57,539 --> 00:16:00,399
of collective chronology. He was taking the absolute

349
00:16:00,399 --> 00:16:03,200
fullest, most opulent riches of late romantic

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tonality and subjecting them to extreme, rigorous,

351
00:16:06,820 --> 00:16:09,120
formal disciplines. Okay, I want to unpack this

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00:16:09,120 --> 00:16:11,779
with a very specific and honestly highly disturbing

353
00:16:11,779 --> 00:16:14,980
historical detail. Let's hear it. Strauss writes

354
00:16:14,980 --> 00:16:18,200
his final opera, Capriccio. He finishes it in

355
00:16:18,200 --> 00:16:22,100
1941 and it premieres in Munich in 1942. Okay,

356
00:16:22,159 --> 00:16:24,059
right in the thick of it. Let's look at the plot.

357
00:16:24,460 --> 00:16:27,850
It is set in a beautiful... opulent 18th century

358
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drawing room outside Paris. A wealthy countess

359
00:16:31,129 --> 00:16:34,230
is being courted by two men, Olivier, a poet,

360
00:16:34,350 --> 00:16:37,629
and Flamand, a composer. Sounds lovely. The entire

361
00:16:37,629 --> 00:16:40,049
opera is essentially a deeply refined, polite

362
00:16:40,049 --> 00:16:42,669
philosophical debate over a cup of hot chocolate

363
00:16:42,669 --> 00:16:45,049
about whether words or music are more important

364
00:16:45,049 --> 00:16:47,629
in art. A very safe topic. Right. Meanwhile,

365
00:16:47,830 --> 00:16:49,529
literally just outside the walls of the Munich

366
00:16:49,529 --> 00:16:52,590
Theater in 1942, Nazi Germany is executing the

367
00:16:52,590 --> 00:16:55,159
Holocaust. The world is quite literally tearing

368
00:16:55,159 --> 00:16:58,259
itself apart in blood and fire. It is a staggering,

369
00:16:58,360 --> 00:17:00,639
almost sociopathic disconnect between the art

370
00:17:00,639 --> 00:17:03,159
and the reality of the time. Exactly. And I have

371
00:17:03,159 --> 00:17:05,339
to push back hard here. How is this not just

372
00:17:05,339 --> 00:17:08,500
pure, unadulterated escapism? I see your point.

373
00:17:08,740 --> 00:17:11,460
How on earth can we elevate this to the level

374
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of a profound late style? It feels like the ultimate

375
00:17:15,319 --> 00:17:18,339
grotesque example of fiddling while Rome burns.

376
00:17:18,920 --> 00:17:21,619
How is this not just moral cowardice dressed

377
00:17:21,619 --> 00:17:24,490
up in a powdered wig? That is a completely valid,

378
00:17:24,650 --> 00:17:26,910
visceral reaction, and it's one that Theodore

379
00:17:26,910 --> 00:17:29,349
Adorno entirely shared. He didn't like Strauss

380
00:17:29,349 --> 00:17:31,789
either. Adorno was merciless towards Strauss.

381
00:17:31,789 --> 00:17:34,450
He accused him of having a conciliatory innocence,

382
00:17:34,869 --> 00:17:37,930
comparing Strauss's late music to a bland official

383
00:17:37,930 --> 00:17:40,990
speaker placidly quoting classical poetry while

384
00:17:40,990 --> 00:17:44,319
atrocities happen in the streets. Ouch. Adorno

385
00:17:44,319 --> 00:17:47,420
called his late work a mix of senility and infantilism,

386
00:17:47,539 --> 00:17:50,000
a total failure of moral and aesthetic nerve.

387
00:17:50,119 --> 00:17:52,519
So how does Edward Said rescue Strauss from that

388
00:17:52,519 --> 00:17:55,420
completely justified criticism? Said argues that

389
00:17:55,420 --> 00:17:57,779
this perfectly smooth, flawless, frictionless

390
00:17:57,779 --> 00:18:00,319
surface is the defiance. How so? Think about

391
00:18:00,319 --> 00:18:02,960
what Strauss's contemporaries were doing. Composers

392
00:18:02,960 --> 00:18:05,059
like Benjamin Britten with Peter Grimes or Kurt

393
00:18:05,059 --> 00:18:07,099
Weill with the Three Penny Opera were using their

394
00:18:07,099 --> 00:18:10,000
art to critique society. To show human suffering.

395
00:18:10,160 --> 00:18:12,660
Yes, to hold a harsh mirror up to the darkness

396
00:18:12,660 --> 00:18:15,160
of the 20th century. They were giving the 20th

397
00:18:15,160 --> 00:18:17,960
century exactly the anguish it demanded. Strauss

398
00:18:17,960 --> 00:18:21,059
flatly refuses to do that. He builds an impenetrable

399
00:18:21,059 --> 00:18:23,519
fortress of 18th century aristocratic privilege.

400
00:18:23,799 --> 00:18:27,420
Yes, by setting capriccio. or composing his late

401
00:18:27,420 --> 00:18:29,740
instrumental works like The Metamorphosis for

402
00:18:29,740 --> 00:18:34,000
23 solo strings, in this highly abstract, technically

403
00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:37,319
fiendish pre -revolutionary world, Strauss is

404
00:18:37,319 --> 00:18:39,880
staging a retreat that is actually an assertion

405
00:18:39,880 --> 00:18:43,259
of supreme individual power. It is a world entirely

406
00:18:43,259 --> 00:18:46,079
free from the brutal pressures of the 1940s.

407
00:18:46,099 --> 00:18:48,480
It's a world of limitless capacity for luxury

408
00:18:48,480 --> 00:18:52,119
and debate. Said sees this as a distinctly 20th

409
00:18:52,119 --> 00:18:54,849
century manifestation of late style. Here's an

410
00:18:54,849 --> 00:18:57,150
aging artist who is an absolute master technician,

411
00:18:57,430 --> 00:19:00,170
creating music of glorious, infallible harmonic

412
00:19:00,170 --> 00:19:02,829
beauty and using that mastery to simply stand

413
00:19:02,829 --> 00:19:05,630
aside. He completely renounces the metaphysical

414
00:19:05,630 --> 00:19:07,869
political claims of his era. It's a minimalist

415
00:19:07,869 --> 00:19:10,720
aesthetic hiding inside an opulent one. The music

416
00:19:10,720 --> 00:19:13,500
doesn't complain. It doesn't cry out. It is completely

417
00:19:13,500 --> 00:19:15,779
unthreatening. And that total lack of real tension

418
00:19:15,779 --> 00:19:18,779
is deeply unsettling when you know the historical

419
00:19:18,779 --> 00:19:22,000
context. It's like Strauss is saying, your modern

420
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:24,880
reality is so barbaric, so devoid of culture,

421
00:19:25,019 --> 00:19:27,660
that I refuse to even grant it the dignity of

422
00:19:27,660 --> 00:19:29,940
reflecting it in my music. I will not let your

423
00:19:29,940 --> 00:19:32,819
war touch my chords. I will only reflect an idealized

424
00:19:32,819 --> 00:19:37,119
past. Precisely. It is an unregimented, uncooptable

425
00:19:37,119 --> 00:19:40,500
assertion of the individual will. Even Adorno

426
00:19:40,500 --> 00:19:43,839
grudgingly called it a will to style. Strauss

427
00:19:43,839 --> 00:19:46,720
takes the 18th century and turns it into a supple,

428
00:19:46,720 --> 00:19:49,559
resourceful symbol of his own art, completely

429
00:19:49,559 --> 00:19:52,099
divorced from the horrors of his present. Strauss

430
00:19:52,099 --> 00:19:54,660
retreated into this stylized 18th century world

431
00:19:54,660 --> 00:19:57,539
largely because he absolutely idolized Wolfgang

432
00:19:57,539 --> 00:20:00,680
Amadeus Mozart. He actually dedicated his late

433
00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:03,339
wind sonatas to the immortal spirit of the divine

434
00:20:03,339 --> 00:20:06,180
Mozart. But if we look closely at Mozart's own

435
00:20:06,180 --> 00:20:08,700
late work, we find that the 18th century wasn't

436
00:20:08,700 --> 00:20:10,839
just a safe haven of powdered wigs and polite

437
00:20:10,839 --> 00:20:13,680
hot chocolate debates. We find a drawing room

438
00:20:13,680 --> 00:20:15,819
comedy that is deeply terrifying in its own right.

439
00:20:16,180 --> 00:20:19,480
Let's look at Mozart's Cosi Fantute. Cosi Fantute

440
00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:22,440
is Mozart's third and final collaboration with

441
00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:24,980
the brilliant librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. Their

442
00:20:24,980 --> 00:20:27,480
first two operas together, The Marriage of Figaro

443
00:20:27,480 --> 00:20:31,640
and Don Giovanni, are universally beloved. They

444
00:20:31,640 --> 00:20:34,819
are expansive, politically transparent, and bursting

445
00:20:34,819 --> 00:20:38,200
with rich character history. In Figaro, you intimately

446
00:20:38,200 --> 00:20:40,259
know who the characters are, you understand the

447
00:20:40,259 --> 00:20:42,599
social class struggle they represent, and you

448
00:20:42,599 --> 00:20:45,759
feel their genuine heartbeat. But Cozy is a completely

449
00:20:45,759 --> 00:20:47,740
different animal. It's incredibly different.

450
00:20:47,900 --> 00:20:50,859
It is concentrated, internalized, and almost

451
00:20:50,859 --> 00:20:54,019
entirely opaque. Historically, it was despised.

452
00:20:54,140 --> 00:20:57,359
Even Beethoven, our hero of late style. hated

453
00:20:57,359 --> 00:20:59,900
Cosi Fantute. He thought the plot was trivial,

454
00:21:00,059 --> 00:21:02,599
cynical, and scandalous, and he felt Mozart had

455
00:21:02,599 --> 00:21:05,960
profoundly wasted his divine musical genius on

456
00:21:05,960 --> 00:21:07,720
a dirty joke. To give you all the quick setup

457
00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:10,579
of this dirty joke, Don Alfonso, an older cynical

458
00:21:10,579 --> 00:21:13,099
philosopher, makes a bet with two young military

459
00:21:13,099 --> 00:21:16,539
officers, Ferrando and Guglielmo. The young men

460
00:21:16,539 --> 00:21:18,460
are boasting about how perfectly faithful their

461
00:21:18,460 --> 00:21:21,539
fiancés are, two sisters named Fioradiligi and

462
00:21:21,539 --> 00:21:24,839
Dorabella. Alfonso basically laughs at them and

463
00:21:24,839 --> 00:21:27,660
bets that if put to the test, these women will

464
00:21:27,660 --> 00:21:30,400
be unfaithful within a day. So the men pretend

465
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:32,559
to be called off to war, but they immediately

466
00:21:32,559 --> 00:21:35,839
return to the house disguised as heavily mustachioed

467
00:21:35,839 --> 00:21:38,119
Albanians. They then proceed to aggressively

468
00:21:38,119 --> 00:21:41,920
seduce each other's fiancés. And, spoiler alert,

469
00:21:42,140 --> 00:21:45,200
they succeed. The women cave. On the surface,

470
00:21:45,440 --> 00:21:48,940
it's a silly, misogynistic farce. But Sade's

471
00:21:48,940 --> 00:21:51,980
reading uncovers a geometry of absolute cruelty.

472
00:21:52,400 --> 00:21:54,460
Unlike Figaro, the characters in Cozy have no

473
00:21:54,460 --> 00:21:57,819
real history. They are blank slates. They exist

474
00:21:57,819 --> 00:22:00,640
purely to be tested in this closed, airtight

475
00:22:00,640 --> 00:22:03,619
system. And Mozart's music reflects this perfectly.

476
00:22:03,880 --> 00:22:07,319
It's highly symmetrical, echoic, utilizing rigorous

477
00:22:07,319 --> 00:22:09,839
mathematical counterpoint. I used to think of

478
00:22:09,839 --> 00:22:11,680
it like a mad scientist running an experiment,

479
00:22:11,779 --> 00:22:13,720
but that's too chaotic. It's actually more like

480
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:16,259
a computer algorithm or a cold mathematical proof.

481
00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:18,519
Human emotions are just swapped out like variables

482
00:22:18,519 --> 00:22:20,559
in an algebra equation to prove that the sum

483
00:22:20,559 --> 00:22:23,210
is always zero. You swap variable A for variable

484
00:22:23,210 --> 00:22:25,269
B, the men change costumes, the women change

485
00:22:25,269 --> 00:22:27,069
partners, and the math still works out perfectly.

486
00:22:27,289 --> 00:22:29,309
That is exactly what it is. And the mathematician

487
00:22:29,309 --> 00:22:32,650
running the algorithm is Don Alfonso. Sed draws

488
00:22:32,650 --> 00:22:35,710
a brilliant, highly unsettling parallel here.

489
00:22:35,849 --> 00:22:38,569
He compares Don Alfonso to a contemporary of

490
00:22:38,569 --> 00:22:41,519
Mozart's. The Marquis de Sade. Wait, Don Alfonso,

491
00:22:41,519 --> 00:22:43,900
the comic opera baritone, is like the Marquis

492
00:22:43,900 --> 00:22:46,839
de Sade, the guy whose name literally gave us

493
00:22:46,839 --> 00:22:49,599
the word sadism. The very same. That's a massive

494
00:22:49,599 --> 00:22:51,660
leap. Let's trace the logic there. We have to

495
00:22:51,660 --> 00:22:53,319
look at it through the lens of the French philosopher

496
00:22:53,319 --> 00:22:57,140
Michel Foucault, whom said sites. Foucault noted

497
00:22:57,140 --> 00:22:59,740
that Sade wasn't just a chaotic monster. Right.

498
00:22:59,799 --> 00:23:02,299
He was a libertine who subjected the absolute

499
00:23:02,299 --> 00:23:05,619
messy chaos of human sexual desire to a strict,

500
00:23:05,759 --> 00:23:08,019
lucid, almost bureaucratic order of representation.

501
00:23:08,710 --> 00:23:11,430
Sade constructs rigid, suffocating scenes where

502
00:23:11,430 --> 00:23:13,710
bodies and desires are conjugated like verbs

503
00:23:13,710 --> 00:23:16,670
in a strict grammar lesson. Everything is cataloged

504
00:23:16,670 --> 00:23:19,049
and tested. Don Alfonso does the exact same thing

505
00:23:19,049 --> 00:23:22,529
in Così. He is an amorous virtuoso. He orchestrates

506
00:23:22,529 --> 00:23:24,950
this elaborate hoax, this strict sequence of

507
00:23:24,950 --> 00:23:27,529
scenes, to definitively prove a philosophical

508
00:23:27,529 --> 00:23:30,390
point. That human identity, love, and loyalty

509
00:23:30,390 --> 00:23:32,289
are entirely fluid and ultimately meaningless.

510
00:23:32,630 --> 00:23:35,630
And the terrifying climax of this proof comes

511
00:23:35,630 --> 00:23:39,359
in Act II. Alfonso finally states his philosophy

512
00:23:39,359 --> 00:23:42,599
clearly. He sings this little motto, così fan

513
00:23:42,599 --> 00:23:46,259
tutte, which translates to, thus do all women.

514
00:23:46,519 --> 00:23:48,359
Though the opera makes it clear the men are just

515
00:23:48,359 --> 00:23:51,369
as malleable. Exactly. But the key is the music

516
00:23:51,369 --> 00:23:54,089
he sings it to. He sings it in C major, utilizing

517
00:23:54,089 --> 00:23:57,150
the most rudimentary, basic harmonic progression

518
00:23:57,150 --> 00:24:00,309
possible, the I -I -V -V -I progression. Yes,

519
00:24:00,349 --> 00:24:03,049
the I -I -V -V -I progression. For context, this

520
00:24:03,049 --> 00:24:05,769
is the absolute foundational bedrock of Western

521
00:24:05,769 --> 00:24:07,829
tonal music. It is the first thing you learn

522
00:24:07,829 --> 00:24:10,240
in a piano lesson. It is the essence of logic

523
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:13,039
and resolution. Mote's art pairs the most fundamental,

524
00:24:13,299 --> 00:24:15,660
unquestionable law of musical harmony with the

525
00:24:15,660 --> 00:24:18,119
most devastating, cynical realization about human

526
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:20,119
nature. He mathematically proves that we are

527
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:22,619
infinitely fickle. Identities are swapped without

528
00:24:22,619 --> 00:24:24,799
memory or loyalty. And that is where the horror

529
00:24:24,799 --> 00:24:27,480
beneath the comedy lies. If our deepest identities

530
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:29,880
and our most passionate loves are so easily swapped

531
00:24:29,880 --> 00:24:32,200
without consequence, what anchors human existence

532
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:34,740
at all? The realization of Cosi is that we are

533
00:24:34,740 --> 00:24:37,380
entirely replaceable. We are just cogs in a machine

534
00:24:37,380 --> 00:24:40,019
of desire. It's a bottomless sea of existential

535
00:24:40,019 --> 00:24:42,920
dread wrapped in a pretty melody. And we must

536
00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:45,500
remember the context of Mozart's life. He wrote

537
00:24:45,500 --> 00:24:49,660
this in 1789 and 1790, very near the end of his

538
00:24:49,660 --> 00:24:52,000
tragically short life. In a famous letter to

539
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:55,039
his father Leopold, Mozart spoke of death not

540
00:24:55,039 --> 00:24:57,960
as a terror, but as a best and truest friend.

541
00:24:58,220 --> 00:25:00,759
He viewed his own mortality with a deeply soothing,

542
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:04,059
illusionless fatalism. He accepted that death

543
00:25:04,059 --> 00:25:07,400
is the true, inescapable goal of existence. Cozy

544
00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:10,240
Fantude reflects this late -style fatalism. It

545
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:12,900
pushes ordinary experiences of love and identity

546
00:25:12,900 --> 00:25:15,779
to their absolute limits, and it offers the audience

547
00:25:15,779 --> 00:25:18,940
zero moral comfort. Don Alfonso doesn't preach

548
00:25:18,940 --> 00:25:21,559
a better way. He just cheerfully reveals the

549
00:25:21,559 --> 00:25:24,279
dark truth that constancy is a biological illusion.

550
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:27,079
It's a late -style realization that holds its

551
00:25:27,079 --> 00:25:29,339
ominous vision just barely in abeyance beneath

552
00:25:29,339 --> 00:25:32,099
the surface of candid fun. So Mokart playfully

553
00:25:32,099 --> 00:25:34,339
dissolve human identity and loyalty on the theater

554
00:25:34,339 --> 00:25:36,359
stage. But what happens when an artist takes

555
00:25:36,359 --> 00:25:38,900
that exact same dissolution of identity and weaponizes

556
00:25:38,900 --> 00:25:40,920
it in the real world? In the middle of a bloody

557
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:44,059
anti -colonial war? Exactly. That is what the

558
00:25:44,059 --> 00:25:46,859
French writer Jean Genet did. Jean Genet is one

559
00:25:46,859 --> 00:25:49,680
of the most remarkable boundary crossing and

560
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:52,990
controversial figures of the 20th century. Said

561
00:25:52,990 --> 00:25:55,250
vividly recall seeing Jeanne speak in the spring

562
00:25:55,250 --> 00:25:58,329
of 1970 at Columbia University. During a massive

563
00:25:58,329 --> 00:26:00,150
rally in support of the Black Panthers. Yes.

564
00:26:00,329 --> 00:26:02,230
I just want to pause here for a second and remind

565
00:26:02,230 --> 00:26:05,250
you, the listener, of our mission. When we discuss

566
00:26:05,250 --> 00:26:08,569
Jean Jeanne, we are stepping into highly charged,

567
00:26:08,809 --> 00:26:12,930
real -world political territory. The Algerian

568
00:26:12,930 --> 00:26:14,910
War of Independence, the Palestinian Liberation

569
00:26:14,910 --> 00:26:17,289
Movement, the Black Panthers. Very intense history.

570
00:26:17,609 --> 00:26:21,000
And per the rules of this deep dive. We are impartially

571
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:23,200
reporting Genet's and Said's viewpoints here

572
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:25,319
without taking any political sides ourselves.

573
00:26:25,859 --> 00:26:28,500
We are not endorsing a political platform. We

574
00:26:28,500 --> 00:26:31,220
are strictly analyzing Genet's artistic and personal

575
00:26:31,220 --> 00:26:33,900
philosophy of late style. Absolutely. And to

576
00:26:33,900 --> 00:26:35,819
understand Genet's late style, you really have

577
00:26:35,819 --> 00:26:37,559
to understand where he came from. He was not

578
00:26:37,559 --> 00:26:39,920
a bourgeois intellectual like Adorno. Not at

579
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:42,480
all. Genet was an illegitimate child, a gay man,

580
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:45,779
a thief, a vagabond, and an ex -convict who spent

581
00:26:45,779 --> 00:26:48,660
years in the brutal matri -penal colony. He wrote

582
00:26:48,660 --> 00:26:51,000
his first masterpieces, like Our Lady of the

583
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:53,539
Flowers, while sitting in a prison cell. He was

584
00:26:53,539 --> 00:26:56,200
the ultimate outsider. But later in his life,

585
00:26:56,279 --> 00:26:58,720
he completely abandoned the metropolitan literary

586
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:02,140
center of France. He allied himself passionately

587
00:27:02,140 --> 00:27:04,779
with the oppressed. Specifically, the Algerians

588
00:27:04,779 --> 00:27:07,640
fighting French colonialism in his massive play

589
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:10,480
Les Pérevons, The Screams. And later, the Palestinians

590
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:13,700
in his final posthumously published memoir, Le

591
00:27:13,700 --> 00:27:16,839
Captif Amoureux, Prisoner of Love. But the crucial

592
00:27:16,839 --> 00:27:19,660
thing is how he allied himself. He didn't approach

593
00:27:19,660 --> 00:27:22,559
these groups as a benevolent liberal white savior

594
00:27:22,559 --> 00:27:25,660
studying exoticism. He didn't write policy papers

595
00:27:25,660 --> 00:27:27,960
for them. Right. He entered their space out of

596
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:30,440
a radical, almost erotic sense of solidarity.

597
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:33,119
He lived with them. Yes. But this brings up a

598
00:27:33,119 --> 00:27:35,660
massive defining contradiction in his late style.

599
00:27:35,859 --> 00:27:38,440
If Genet loved these revolutionary causes so

600
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:41,369
much. Why is his late style defined by the concept

601
00:27:41,369 --> 00:27:43,309
of betraying them? Right. He seems to support

602
00:27:43,309 --> 00:27:45,150
the revolution, but actively roots against the

603
00:27:45,150 --> 00:27:47,930
revolutionaries actually winning. Why? That is

604
00:27:47,930 --> 00:27:50,609
the core of Genet's genius, what Said calls his

605
00:27:50,609 --> 00:27:54,569
antithetical imagination. Genet supported these

606
00:27:54,569 --> 00:27:56,450
revolutions out of love for the marginalized

607
00:27:56,450 --> 00:27:59,049
and a burning desire to disrupt the establishment.

608
00:27:59,549 --> 00:28:02,289
But he had absolutely zero interest in what happens

609
00:28:02,289 --> 00:28:04,869
after the revolution wins. He believed, with

610
00:28:04,869 --> 00:28:07,309
total fatalism, that the moment a revolution

611
00:28:07,309 --> 00:28:10,630
succeeds, it inevitably hardens into a new authority.

612
00:28:10,930 --> 00:28:13,670
It writes new laws, builds new prisons, creates

613
00:28:13,670 --> 00:28:16,390
its own bureaucracy, and deploys its own police

614
00:28:16,390 --> 00:28:18,650
forces. The oppressed become the oppressors.

615
00:28:18,869 --> 00:28:21,549
To Genet, a successful revolution becomes the

616
00:28:21,549 --> 00:28:24,109
very establishment he despises. So to remain

617
00:28:24,109 --> 00:28:27,470
truly free, he believes he has to keep betraying

618
00:28:27,470 --> 00:28:30,009
whatever becomes the new status quo. He has to

619
00:28:30,009 --> 00:28:32,849
stay in a state of perpetual exile. Look deeply

620
00:28:32,849 --> 00:28:35,690
at Le Paravent, his play about the Algerian War.

621
00:28:35,970 --> 00:28:38,849
The protagonist of the play is a wretched, cowardly

622
00:28:38,849 --> 00:28:41,569
outcast named Sed, a coincidence of name that

623
00:28:41,569 --> 00:28:44,089
Edward Sed surely noted with some irony. In the

624
00:28:44,089 --> 00:28:46,309
play, this character, Sed, becomes a traitor

625
00:28:46,309 --> 00:28:49,009
to the Algerian revolutionary cause. But Genet

626
00:28:49,009 --> 00:28:51,750
doesn't condemn him for it. The ultimate moral

627
00:28:51,750 --> 00:28:54,230
center of the play is actually Sed's mother.

628
00:28:54,410 --> 00:28:57,009
She tells her son not to be co -opted by the

629
00:28:57,009 --> 00:28:59,839
revolutionaries. Tu ne vas pas flancher, she

630
00:28:59,839 --> 00:29:03,519
says. Do not yield. Do not become a domesticated

631
00:29:03,519 --> 00:29:06,420
symbol or a noble martyr for the new revolutionary

632
00:29:06,420 --> 00:29:09,519
state. When her son dies, she actively refuses

633
00:29:09,519 --> 00:29:12,359
to let his revolutionary comrades turn him into

634
00:29:12,359 --> 00:29:14,880
a commemorative song or a statue. He celebrates

635
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:16,759
the traitor because the traitor is the only one

636
00:29:16,759 --> 00:29:18,960
who guarantees the prerogative of freedom and

637
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:21,200
beauty for an individual. It's an exhausting,

638
00:29:21,420 --> 00:29:24,240
relentless position to hold. You can never rest.

639
00:29:24,359 --> 00:29:26,400
You can never build a home. There's a quote highlighted

640
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:28,900
in the text that perfectly sums this up. Genet

641
00:29:28,900 --> 00:29:34,460
defines genius as rigueur in despair. La rigueur

642
00:29:34,460 --> 00:29:36,799
dans le désespoir. It's a beautiful, terrible

643
00:29:36,799 --> 00:29:39,960
phrase. Genet is akin to Adorno in that both

644
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:42,160
are ultimate dissolvers of identity and grand

645
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:44,259
narratives. But their physical manifestations

646
00:29:44,259 --> 00:29:47,220
of late style are completely opposite. Where

647
00:29:47,220 --> 00:29:49,819
Adorno works in microscopic, highly intellectual,

648
00:29:50,019 --> 00:29:53,779
dry fragments, Genet is a poet of massive Dionysiac,

649
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,779
carnivalesque theatrical forms. He writes huge,

650
00:29:56,859 --> 00:29:59,420
swirling ceremonies of death and subversion.

651
00:29:59,559 --> 00:30:02,819
He completely refuses bourgeois stability, finding

652
00:30:02,819 --> 00:30:05,579
beauty only in the eternal doomed revolt. His

653
00:30:05,579 --> 00:30:08,099
late style is a fierce unyielding identification

654
00:30:08,099 --> 00:30:11,119
with struggle, completely stripped of any romantic

655
00:30:11,119 --> 00:30:14,940
hope for a utopian future. So Genet rooted for

656
00:30:14,940 --> 00:30:16,779
the destruction of the establishment from the

657
00:30:16,779 --> 00:30:19,599
absolute bottom rung of society. But what does

658
00:30:19,599 --> 00:30:21,880
late style look like when you are sitting at

659
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:24,920
the very top of a society that is slowly crumbling

660
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:27,119
beneath your feet? What does it look like when

661
00:30:27,119 --> 00:30:29,440
you are the establishment and history is passing

662
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:32,000
you by? That takes us to the world of Giuseppe

663
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:35,619
Tomasi di Lampedusa and Lucchino Visconti. Giuseppe

664
00:30:35,619 --> 00:30:37,900
Tomasi di Lampedusa was the Duke of Palma and

665
00:30:37,900 --> 00:30:40,460
Prince of Lampedusa. He was quite literally the

666
00:30:40,460 --> 00:30:43,559
last descendant of an ancient... fabulously wealthy

667
00:30:43,559 --> 00:30:46,779
noble line in Sicily. And in 1954, he was in

668
00:30:46,779 --> 00:30:49,599
his late 50s. He knew his family line would end

669
00:30:49,599 --> 00:30:52,660
with him, and he was acutely aware that the aristocratic

670
00:30:52,660 --> 00:30:55,460
world of his ancestors was entirely irrevocably

671
00:30:55,460 --> 00:30:58,079
gone. So he sat down and wrote a single brilliant

672
00:30:58,079 --> 00:31:00,619
novel, The Leopard. Let's hit the scene for The

673
00:31:00,619 --> 00:31:03,640
Leopard. The novel takes place in the 1860s during

674
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,500
the Italian Risorgimento, the bloody and complex

675
00:31:06,500 --> 00:31:09,490
unification of Italy. The protagonist is the

676
00:31:09,490 --> 00:31:12,009
Prince of Salina, a massive, physically imposing,

677
00:31:12,269 --> 00:31:15,710
patriarchal figure based on Lampedusa's own great

678
00:31:15,710 --> 00:31:17,950
-grandfather. Throughout the novel, the prince

679
00:31:17,950 --> 00:31:20,670
watches his aristocratic class become entirely

680
00:31:20,670 --> 00:31:24,049
obsolete. They are being replaced by a new, crude,

681
00:31:24,329 --> 00:31:27,029
opportunistic, money -grubbing middle class,

682
00:31:27,269 --> 00:31:29,210
represented in the book by a character named

683
00:31:29,210 --> 00:31:32,130
Don Collegero. And worst of all, the prince watches

684
00:31:32,130 --> 00:31:35,380
his own beloved... Dashing, calculating nephew

685
00:31:35,380 --> 00:31:38,000
Tancredi cynically ally himself with these new

686
00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:40,140
middle -class men to ensure his own political

687
00:31:40,140 --> 00:31:42,839
and financial survival. This brings in a major

688
00:31:42,839 --> 00:31:45,220
piece of political theory that Said uses to frame

689
00:31:45,220 --> 00:31:48,200
the book, Antonio Gramsci's concept of the Southern

690
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:50,859
Question. Yes, Antonio Gramsci was a brilliant

691
00:31:50,859 --> 00:31:53,640
Marxist theorist who analyzed the massive disparities

692
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:56,400
in Italy. The Southern Question was his analysis

693
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:59,420
of how southern Italy, places like Sicily, Naples,

694
00:31:59,539 --> 00:32:02,299
Sardinia, was kept intentionally frozen in agrarian

695
00:32:02,299 --> 00:32:04,619
poverty, essentially functioning as an exploited

696
00:32:04,619 --> 00:32:07,299
colony for the wealthier industrial north. Gramsci

697
00:32:07,299 --> 00:32:09,940
believed the only solution to this massive social

698
00:32:09,940 --> 00:32:12,900
disintegration was a revolutionary union between

699
00:32:12,900 --> 00:32:15,619
the northern industrial factory workers and the

700
00:32:15,619 --> 00:32:18,299
southern peasant farmers. So does Lampedusa,

701
00:32:18,519 --> 00:32:21,559
seeing his beloved Sicily falling apart, write

702
00:32:21,559 --> 00:32:24,980
a manifesto to fix this? Does he offer a Gramscian

703
00:32:24,980 --> 00:32:27,400
solution to save his homeland? Exactly the opposite.

704
00:32:27,779 --> 00:32:30,559
Lampedusa offers absolutely no Gramscian solution.

705
00:32:30,759 --> 00:32:33,700
He doesn't even offer hope. The novel is steeped

706
00:32:33,700 --> 00:32:37,460
in decay, decrepitude, and an overwhelming sensual

707
00:32:37,460 --> 00:32:40,259
sense of death. The prince has what Lampedusa

708
00:32:40,259 --> 00:32:43,380
calls an abstract energy. An elusive inwardness,

709
00:32:43,559 --> 00:32:46,019
an obsession with astronomy and the stars that

710
00:32:46,019 --> 00:32:48,740
refuses to engage in the petty, dirty scrabble

711
00:32:48,740 --> 00:32:52,190
for new power. The novel is a profound late -style

712
00:32:52,190 --> 00:32:54,750
negation. It's Tancredi, the opportunistic nephew,

713
00:32:54,970 --> 00:32:57,289
who delivers the most famous cynical line of

714
00:32:57,289 --> 00:32:59,710
the book. If we want things to stay as they are,

715
00:32:59,750 --> 00:33:01,549
they will have to change. It's a devastating

716
00:33:01,549 --> 00:33:03,869
line. It means the aristocracy will just put

717
00:33:03,869 --> 00:33:06,109
on new democratic clothes, marry the daughters

718
00:33:06,109 --> 00:33:08,210
of the rich merchants, and continue exploiting

719
00:33:08,210 --> 00:33:10,430
the presence exactly as they always have. Nothing

720
00:33:10,430 --> 00:33:12,630
actually gets better. And the novel's ending

721
00:33:12,630 --> 00:33:15,740
is incredibly bleak. It jumps ahead several decades.

722
00:33:16,099 --> 00:33:18,960
The prince has been dead for a long time. His

723
00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:22,579
daughter, Conchetta, who's lived a rigid, unforgiving,

724
00:33:22,599 --> 00:33:25,240
loveless life clinging to the past, suddenly

725
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:27,720
realizes her entire existence has been empty.

726
00:33:28,119 --> 00:33:30,720
Lampedusa symbolizes this by having her finally

727
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,859
throw out the taxidermied, moth -eaten skin of

728
00:33:33,859 --> 00:33:37,220
her father's favorite hunting dog, Bendico. As

729
00:33:37,220 --> 00:33:39,279
the stuffed dog is thrown out the window into

730
00:33:39,279 --> 00:33:41,779
the courtyard, it literally turns to dust in

731
00:33:41,779 --> 00:33:44,759
the air. It's the ultimate, uncompromising image

732
00:33:44,759 --> 00:33:47,900
of an inner emptiness and a completely irrecoverable

733
00:33:47,900 --> 00:33:50,730
past. But Sesed then transitions to a fascinating

734
00:33:50,730 --> 00:33:54,349
twist on this narrative. In 1963, The Leopard

735
00:33:54,349 --> 00:33:56,589
was adapted into a famous film by the legendary

736
00:33:56,589 --> 00:33:59,490
Italian director Lucchino Visconti. And Visconti

737
00:33:59,490 --> 00:34:01,430
was a walking contradiction himself. He was a

738
00:34:01,430 --> 00:34:03,890
devoted, card -carrying Marxist who was also

739
00:34:03,890 --> 00:34:06,269
a born aristocrat, the Count of Linnaeus Pizzolo.

740
00:34:06,619 --> 00:34:09,360
And Visconti subtly but profoundly changes the

741
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:11,219
focus of the leper. How does he change it? So

742
00:34:11,219 --> 00:34:13,280
while Lampedusa's book is like reading the private

743
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:15,579
diary of a dying man in a dark, quiet room, what

744
00:34:15,579 --> 00:34:18,280
does Visconti do? Visconti drags that death out

745
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:20,599
into the town square, puts a massive Hollywood

746
00:34:20,599 --> 00:34:23,099
spotlight on it, and sells tickets. He turns

747
00:34:23,099 --> 00:34:26,010
private grief into a blockbuster. Lampedusa's

748
00:34:26,010 --> 00:34:29,070
novel is highly internal. It focuses on the ungraspable

749
00:34:29,070 --> 00:34:32,309
isolation of the prince. Visconti, working with

750
00:34:32,309 --> 00:34:35,210
massive cinematic backing, turns this private

751
00:34:35,210 --> 00:34:38,289
decay into a gorgeous, sprawling, opulent visual

752
00:34:38,289 --> 00:34:41,210
spectacle. He casts Burt Lancaster as the prince.

753
00:34:41,389 --> 00:34:44,429
Exactly. The ultimate Hollywood patriarch. And

754
00:34:44,429 --> 00:34:46,909
the climax of the film is a famous, almost hour

755
00:34:46,909 --> 00:34:49,210
-long ballroom scene. In the book, the ball's

756
00:34:49,210 --> 00:34:51,090
important, but it's filtered through the prince's

757
00:34:51,090 --> 00:34:54,190
tired, internal monologue. In the film, Visconti

758
00:34:54,190 --> 00:34:56,599
bathes you in it. The camera sweeps over the

759
00:34:56,599 --> 00:34:59,559
luxurious dresses, the sweating faces, the glorious

760
00:34:59,559 --> 00:35:02,360
architecture, the waltzing couples. Visconti

761
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:05,380
uses the power of cinema, a modern mass -consumer

762
00:35:05,380 --> 00:35:08,659
art form, to luxuriate in the irrecoverable past,

763
00:35:08,980 --> 00:35:11,460
essentially obliterating the very pastness that

764
00:35:11,460 --> 00:35:13,920
Lampedusa was mourning. Visconti replaces the

765
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:16,039
novel's private, silent death with a beautiful

766
00:35:16,039 --> 00:35:18,820
object for mass consumption. It's a very different

767
00:35:18,820 --> 00:35:21,340
kind of late style. It's one that plays dangerously

768
00:35:21,340 --> 00:35:23,960
with the society of the spectacle, turning decay

769
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:26,159
into a commodity you can feast your eyes on.

770
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:29,199
It really is. Now let's pivot from the grand

771
00:35:29,199 --> 00:35:32,679
historical sweep of Sicilian aristocracy to an

772
00:35:32,679 --> 00:35:35,679
artist who waged his late -style rebellion purely

773
00:35:35,679 --> 00:35:38,000
in the realm of physical performance and technology.

774
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:40,860
Let's talk about the virtuoso as intellectual.

775
00:35:41,539 --> 00:35:43,860
Glenn Gould. We mentioned Gould earlier when

776
00:35:43,860 --> 00:35:46,199
he was defending Richard Strauss. Gould himself

777
00:35:46,199 --> 00:35:50,239
was an absolute prodigy. A Canadian pianist who

778
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:52,699
completely upended the classical music world

779
00:35:52,699 --> 00:35:55,659
when he boosted onto the scene in the mid -1950s.

780
00:35:55,679 --> 00:35:59,329
And he was wildly... notoriously eccentric in

781
00:35:59,329 --> 00:36:01,210
his physical reality. Let's paint the picture

782
00:36:01,210 --> 00:36:03,230
of this guy because it's essential to understanding

783
00:36:03,230 --> 00:36:05,869
his style. He refused to sit on a normal piano

784
00:36:05,869 --> 00:36:09,050
bench. He used this incredibly low, rickety,

785
00:36:09,170 --> 00:36:11,730
customized wooden chair that his father made

786
00:36:11,730 --> 00:36:13,730
for him, where his face was practically level

787
00:36:13,730 --> 00:36:16,050
with the keyboard. He wore heavy winter coats

788
00:36:16,050 --> 00:36:18,750
and gloves in the middle of summer. He soaked

789
00:36:18,750 --> 00:36:20,969
his hands in scalding hot water before playing.

790
00:36:21,340 --> 00:36:24,039
And while he played, he hummed loudly you can

791
00:36:24,039 --> 00:36:26,019
hear it on the recordings, and he conducted the

792
00:36:26,019 --> 00:36:28,699
music with his free hand. He was a visual shock

793
00:36:28,699 --> 00:36:31,519
to the system. But more importantly, he completely

794
00:36:31,519 --> 00:36:34,519
rejected the standard repertoire that made pianists

795
00:36:34,519 --> 00:36:36,960
famous back then. If you wanted to be a superstar

796
00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:40,480
pianist, you played sweeping, emotional, romantic

797
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:45,420
music. Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky used lots of

798
00:36:45,420 --> 00:36:48,139
rubato, stretching the time for emotional effect.

799
00:36:48,519 --> 00:36:51,420
Gould rejected all of that. He made his name

800
00:36:51,420 --> 00:36:53,480
with Johann Sebastian Bach, specifically the

801
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:55,880
Goldberg Variations. Why was that so revolutionary?

802
00:36:56,489 --> 00:36:59,170
Because Gould represented a totally new stage

803
00:36:59,170 --> 00:37:02,730
in virtuosity. He had a staggering, almost terrifying

804
00:37:02,730 --> 00:37:05,909
technical ability, a clarity, independence of

805
00:37:05,909 --> 00:37:08,530
fingers, and sheer speed that was comparable

806
00:37:08,530 --> 00:37:11,210
only to someone like Vladimir Horowitz. But instead

807
00:37:11,210 --> 00:37:13,349
of using that technique to play flashy romantic

808
00:37:13,349 --> 00:37:16,630
showpieces, he applied it to massive polyphonic

809
00:37:16,630 --> 00:37:19,389
contrapuntal music. Let's define polyphony and

810
00:37:19,389 --> 00:37:21,409
counterpoint really clearly. Think of a standard

811
00:37:21,409 --> 00:37:24,179
pop song. You have one main melody that the singer

812
00:37:24,179 --> 00:37:26,920
sings, and underneath it, the band plays chords

813
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:30,300
to support it. That's hominal. Polyphony, or

814
00:37:30,300 --> 00:37:33,539
counterpoint, is like having three or four completely

815
00:37:33,539 --> 00:37:35,860
independent melodies playing at the exact same

816
00:37:35,860 --> 00:37:39,260
time, weaving in and out of each other, and mathematically

817
00:37:39,260 --> 00:37:42,159
combining to make perfect sense. It is incredibly

818
00:37:42,159 --> 00:37:45,179
dense. Most people at the time considered Bach's

819
00:37:45,179 --> 00:37:48,829
contrapuntal music to be dry, academic, or just

820
00:37:48,829 --> 00:37:52,070
school exercises. Gould played it with such blazing

821
00:37:52,070 --> 00:37:54,409
clarity that he made the intellectual structure

822
00:37:54,409 --> 00:37:57,150
sound electric. But the biggest shock of his

823
00:37:57,150 --> 00:37:59,730
career didn't come from a performance. It came

824
00:37:59,730 --> 00:38:03,469
in 1964. Gould was at the absolute height of

825
00:38:03,469 --> 00:38:05,710
his international fame. He could have sold out

826
00:38:05,710 --> 00:38:08,449
any concert hall in the world, and he just quit.

827
00:38:08,590 --> 00:38:11,309
He abandoned live performance entirely and never

828
00:38:11,309 --> 00:38:14,170
played a public concert again. Why? Was it just

829
00:38:14,170 --> 00:38:16,809
severe stage fright? Not at all. It was a deeply

830
00:38:16,809 --> 00:38:20,070
philosophical late style decision. Gould came

831
00:38:20,070 --> 00:38:22,789
to believe that the live concert was an institutionalized

832
00:38:22,789 --> 00:38:25,630
box office ideal. He felt that performing live

833
00:38:25,630 --> 00:38:28,829
forced the artist into a gladiator arena. You

834
00:38:28,829 --> 00:38:30,690
constantly have to worry about keeping the audience

835
00:38:30,690 --> 00:38:32,909
entertained. You have to play louder, faster

836
00:38:32,909 --> 00:38:35,230
or more dramatically to keep them from coughing

837
00:38:35,230 --> 00:38:37,489
or getting bored. Gould believed this dynamic

838
00:38:37,489 --> 00:38:39,849
was fundamentally hostile to the music itself.

839
00:38:40,579 --> 00:38:43,400
It forced the performer to produce a momentary,

840
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,179
sensuous thrill, which ruined the intellectual

841
00:38:46,179 --> 00:38:48,900
structure of the music. It made the performer

842
00:38:48,900 --> 00:38:52,619
a slave to chronological passing time. So he

843
00:38:52,619 --> 00:38:54,420
retreats entirely into the recording studio.

844
00:38:54,699 --> 00:38:57,239
Yes, and he didn't just use the studio to capture

845
00:38:57,239 --> 00:39:00,000
a live performance. He fully embraced the technology

846
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,000
of the studio. He loved what he called take -two

847
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:05,239
-ness. The ability to record multiple takes.

848
00:39:05,769 --> 00:39:08,929
to isolate variables, and to literally splice

849
00:39:08,929 --> 00:39:10,789
the magnetic tape together with razor blades

850
00:39:10,789 --> 00:39:13,150
and scotch tape. For him, the studio wasn't a

851
00:39:13,150 --> 00:39:15,449
way to fake a flawless performance. It was a

852
00:39:15,449 --> 00:39:18,210
compositional tool to achieve a higher intellectual

853
00:39:18,210 --> 00:39:21,309
truth. Sed connects this use of the studio to

854
00:39:21,309 --> 00:39:24,329
a classical rhetorical concept, doesn't he? Inventio.

855
00:39:24,489 --> 00:39:28,489
Exactly. Inventio or invention. In the classical

856
00:39:28,489 --> 00:39:30,429
sense, going all the way back to Roman orators

857
00:39:30,429 --> 00:39:33,150
like Cicero and Quintilian invention doesn't

858
00:39:33,150 --> 00:39:35,030
mean creating something brand new out of thin

859
00:39:35,030 --> 00:39:37,289
air like Edison inventing the light bulb. It

860
00:39:37,289 --> 00:39:39,309
means rediscovering and elaborating on existing

861
00:39:39,309 --> 00:39:41,769
arguments. It's about finding the hidden potential

862
00:39:41,769 --> 00:39:45,070
in the topic. By moving into the studio, Gould's

863
00:39:45,070 --> 00:39:48,050
treated box fugues not as pretty songs, but as

864
00:39:48,050 --> 00:39:51,369
profound intellectual arguments. Through repeated

865
00:39:51,369 --> 00:39:54,489
takes and microscopic splices, he could infinitely

866
00:39:54,489 --> 00:39:57,190
elaborate and discover every possible nuance

867
00:39:57,190 --> 00:39:59,230
of those arguments. He transformed the piano.

868
00:39:59,429 --> 00:40:02,909
It was no longer an instrument of momentary theatrical

869
00:40:02,909 --> 00:40:06,110
display for a paying crowd. It became an instrument

870
00:40:06,110 --> 00:40:09,559
of eternal, recorded intellectual debate. His

871
00:40:09,559 --> 00:40:12,000
late style was a deliberate, total withdrawal

872
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:15,659
from the public gaze to create a pristine, technologically

873
00:40:15,659 --> 00:40:18,800
mediated space for pure thought. He exiled himself

874
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:20,900
into the microphone. It is a perfect example

875
00:40:20,900 --> 00:40:22,980
of late style as a form of highly productive

876
00:40:22,980 --> 00:40:25,880
exile. He stopped playing for the crowd so he

877
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:27,579
could finally play for the structure of the universe.

878
00:40:27,900 --> 00:40:31,000
Which brings us to our final exploration. Here,

879
00:40:31,139 --> 00:40:33,619
Sade looks at three artists who obsessively manipulated

880
00:40:33,619 --> 00:40:36,559
time, myth, and the ultimate geography of lateness.

881
00:40:36,980 --> 00:40:38,739
Let's start by going all the way back to the

882
00:40:38,739 --> 00:40:41,800
ancient Greeks, specifically the playwright Euripides.

883
00:40:42,039 --> 00:40:44,920
Sed compares Euripides to his great predecessors,

884
00:40:45,199 --> 00:40:48,760
Aeschylus and Sophocles. Those earlier playwrights

885
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:51,940
presented grand, cohesive myths. Their plays

886
00:40:51,940 --> 00:40:53,900
often end with a sense of profound reconciliation,

887
00:40:54,539 --> 00:40:57,239
a restoration of cosmic order, or the establishment

888
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,760
of a just society. But Euripides is late. He's

889
00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:02,579
writing during the decline of Athens, during

890
00:41:02,579 --> 00:41:05,159
the Peloponnesian War. His work is decadent.

891
00:41:05,539 --> 00:41:08,500
Sedd leans heavily on Friedrich Nietzsche's critique

892
00:41:08,500 --> 00:41:11,500
of Euripides here. Yes, Nietzsche had a fascinating,

893
00:41:11,699 --> 00:41:14,360
somewhat hostile view of Euripides. Nietzsche

894
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:17,139
saw Euripides as the man who took a dying, exhausted

895
00:41:17,139 --> 00:41:19,780
myth and tried to force it into service one last

896
00:41:19,780 --> 00:41:22,659
time, digging it out in old finery. For Nietzsche,

897
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:25,239
Euripides essentially killed the deep mystical

898
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:27,659
power of tragedy by making it too intellectual,

899
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,559
too focused on raw human psychology and debate

900
00:41:30,559 --> 00:41:33,769
rather than divine mystery. And Sedd looks specifically

901
00:41:33,769 --> 00:41:35,969
at Euripides' late masterpiece, the Bacchae.

902
00:41:36,369 --> 00:41:38,869
In this play, the god Dionysus returns to the

903
00:41:38,869 --> 00:41:41,710
city of Thebes, and the young, rigid king Pentheus

904
00:41:41,710 --> 00:41:44,030
refuses to worship him. He tries to lock the

905
00:41:44,030 --> 00:41:46,389
god up. The climax of this play is one of the

906
00:41:46,389 --> 00:41:48,369
most horrific things ever written for the stage.

907
00:41:48,889 --> 00:41:52,269
Pentheus' own mother, Agave, is driven into an

908
00:41:52,269 --> 00:41:55,670
ecstatic, drug -like, Dionysian frenzy by the

909
00:41:55,670 --> 00:41:58,940
god. She literally tears her own son limb from

910
00:41:58,940 --> 00:42:02,239
limb with her bare hands, entirely deluded, thinking

911
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:04,119
she has just hunted and killed a mountain lion.

912
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:06,940
She walks back onto the stage carrying her son's

913
00:42:06,940 --> 00:42:09,059
severed head as a trophy, boasting about her

914
00:42:09,059 --> 00:42:11,539
hunt until the madness wears off and she realizes

915
00:42:11,539 --> 00:42:14,340
what she's holding. It is a scene of unimaginable

916
00:42:14,340 --> 00:42:17,820
psychological horror. Euripides is exposing the

917
00:42:17,820 --> 00:42:20,719
guile, the self -delusion, and the sheer brutal

918
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:23,699
victimization inherent in myth. He doesn't offer

919
00:42:23,699 --> 00:42:25,159
the audience any comfortable reconciliation.

920
00:42:26,050 --> 00:42:28,469
The god Dionysus doesn't offer comfort, he just

921
00:42:28,469 --> 00:42:31,289
destroys them to prove a point. As said notes,

922
00:42:31,570 --> 00:42:34,050
Euripides is openly playing with the configurations

923
00:42:34,050 --> 00:42:37,449
of characters and rhetoric. It's a deeply psychological,

924
00:42:37,989 --> 00:42:40,570
highly artificial performance that declares itself

925
00:42:40,570 --> 00:42:43,090
as an artifice. It's a late style that uses the

926
00:42:43,090 --> 00:42:45,530
hollowed out shells of old myths to expose the

927
00:42:45,530 --> 00:42:48,050
darkest, most terrifying realities of human nature.

928
00:42:48,460 --> 00:42:51,099
From the bloody, exhausted myths of ancient Greece,

929
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:54,400
we move to a modern Greek poet living in Egypt

930
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:57,199
who made an entire career out of looking at exhausted

931
00:42:57,199 --> 00:43:01,159
history. Constantine Cavafy. Cavafy lived his

932
00:43:01,159 --> 00:43:03,599
life in Alexandria, Egypt, working as a civil

933
00:43:03,599 --> 00:43:05,860
servant in the irrigation department and died

934
00:43:05,860 --> 00:43:09,369
in 1933. He is the ultimate poet. of historical

935
00:43:09,369 --> 00:43:12,090
exile. He largely ignored the bustling modern

936
00:43:12,090 --> 00:43:14,590
Arab world around him, choosing instead to write

937
00:43:14,590 --> 00:43:17,269
almost exclusively about the ancient Hellenistic,

938
00:43:17,510 --> 00:43:20,510
Roman and Byzantine past. But his style isn't

939
00:43:20,510 --> 00:43:23,050
grandiose or epic. He doesn't write like Homer.

940
00:43:23,210 --> 00:43:26,090
No, it's minimal, unrhymed, incredibly dry, almost

941
00:43:26,090 --> 00:43:28,659
prosaic. Cavafy writes about moments just before

942
00:43:28,659 --> 00:43:31,860
history closes in. He captures that exact agonizing

943
00:43:31,860 --> 00:43:33,980
instant before everything is lost forever or

944
00:43:33,980 --> 00:43:37,139
the moment of profound anticlimax. Look at his

945
00:43:37,139 --> 00:43:39,500
famous poem, Waiting for the Barbarians. The

946
00:43:39,500 --> 00:43:41,699
leaders and citizens of a city are gathered in

947
00:43:41,699 --> 00:43:44,260
the town square, dressed in their finest robes,

948
00:43:44,260 --> 00:43:47,119
paralyzed, waiting for a barbarian invasion that's

949
00:43:47,119 --> 00:43:48,960
supposed to happen that day. They have stopped

950
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:51,199
passing laws. They are just waiting for the end.

951
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:54,119
But the tragedy of the poem isn't that the barbarians

952
00:43:54,119 --> 00:43:57,079
arrive and burn the city down. The tragedy is

953
00:43:57,079 --> 00:43:59,920
that word comes from the borders, that the barbarians

954
00:43:59,920 --> 00:44:02,000
aren't coming at all. They might not even exist

955
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:04,880
anymore. And the final line of the poem is devastating

956
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:07,960
in its emptiness. And now what's going to happen

957
00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:11,780
to us without barbarians? They were, those people,

958
00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:15,139
a kind of solution. They needed the destruction

959
00:44:15,139 --> 00:44:17,960
to give their lives meaning. Without the catastrophe,

960
00:44:18,139 --> 00:44:20,320
they just have to go back to their boring, decaying

961
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:23,219
lives. Exactly. Or take his other masterpiece,

962
00:44:23,500 --> 00:44:26,079
Ithaca. addressed to Odysseus journeying home.

963
00:44:26,380 --> 00:44:28,579
The poem makes clear that the journey itself,

964
00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:31,019
the accumulation of knowledge, is all that matters

965
00:44:31,019 --> 00:44:33,619
because the destination, Ithaca, has absolutely

966
00:44:33,619 --> 00:44:36,719
nothing left to offer. It's empty. Ithaca won't

967
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:39,400
have fooled you, he writes. Cavafy's basic poetic

968
00:44:39,400 --> 00:44:41,719
gesture is to deliver meaning to someone else

969
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:44,869
while denying its rewards to himself. The novelist

970
00:44:44,869 --> 00:44:47,690
E .M. Forster beautifully described Cabify as

971
00:44:47,690 --> 00:44:50,409
a man standing motionless at a slight angle to

972
00:44:50,409 --> 00:44:53,190
the universe. He holds deep disenchantment and

973
00:44:53,190 --> 00:44:55,969
sensual pleasure in an equal, unbearable tension.

974
00:44:56,309 --> 00:44:58,949
And finally, we arrive at the ultimate geography

975
00:44:58,949 --> 00:45:01,889
of lateness, a city that embodies every single

976
00:45:01,889 --> 00:45:04,150
thing we've been talking about today, Venice.

977
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:07,880
Sad looks at Benjamin Britten's late -life operatic

978
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:11,119
adaptation of Thomas Mann's famous 1911 novella

979
00:45:11,119 --> 00:45:13,960
Death in Venice. Venice is the quintessential

980
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:16,800
late city. It is suspended perpetually between

981
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:19,960
two irreconcilable extremes. Right. Gorgeous,

982
00:45:20,079 --> 00:45:24,780
unexampled artistic creativity and sordid, labyrinthine

983
00:45:24,780 --> 00:45:27,719
physical decay. It is literally sinking. It is

984
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:30,860
rotting. The canals smell. But it is unbearably,

985
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:33,239
heartbreakingly beautiful. In Mann's novella,

986
00:45:33,300 --> 00:45:35,639
the aging, highly disciplined, famous German

987
00:45:35,639 --> 00:45:38,280
author Gustav von Aschenbach travels to Venice

988
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:41,179
to clear his writer's block. There, he descends

989
00:45:41,179 --> 00:45:43,860
into a silent, illicit, completely unconsummated

990
00:45:43,860 --> 00:45:46,460
obsession with a beautiful young Polish boy named

991
00:45:46,460 --> 00:45:48,960
Tadzio. And while Aschenbach stalks this boy

992
00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:51,760
through the alleys, a deadly outbreak of Asiatic

993
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:53,719
cholera is secretly sweeping through the city,

994
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:55,880
covered up by the authorities so they don't lose

995
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:58,199
tourist money. Mann uses a highly controlled

996
00:45:58,199 --> 00:46:00,960
ironic narrator to distance himself from Aschenbach.

997
00:46:01,079 --> 00:46:03,139
The reader reads Aschenbach's internal dissent

998
00:46:03,139 --> 00:46:05,940
from a safe intellectual distance. But Britten,

999
00:46:06,059 --> 00:46:09,219
writing an opera in 1973, near the end of his

1000
00:46:09,219 --> 00:46:12,219
own life, has a different problem. He has to

1001
00:46:12,219 --> 00:46:14,880
put Aschenbach's private, shameful thoughts out

1002
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,679
loud on the stage. He has to externalize the

1003
00:46:17,679 --> 00:46:20,280
internal decay. And how does... Britten's music

1004
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:22,760
reflect this late -style collapse. We talked

1005
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:25,019
about Beethoven's fragments and Strauss's smooth

1006
00:46:25,019 --> 00:46:27,820
tonality. What does Britten do? Britten uses

1007
00:46:27,820 --> 00:46:31,099
polytonal music. Let's define polytonality. We

1008
00:46:31,099 --> 00:46:33,239
talked earlier about being in one key, like C

1009
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:35,400
major. Polytonality is when the orchestra plays

1010
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:37,260
in two completely different keys at the exact

1011
00:46:37,260 --> 00:46:39,659
same time. It creates a sickening, drifting,

1012
00:46:40,019 --> 00:46:43,219
unmoored feeling. Britain uses this to create

1013
00:46:43,219 --> 00:46:45,360
an orchestra that sounds both rigidly European

1014
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:48,539
and exoticized Asiatic, representing Venice as

1015
00:46:48,539 --> 00:46:51,019
both a paradise of art and an inferno of disease.

1016
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:53,920
The opera becomes a massive allegory of the artist

1017
00:46:53,920 --> 00:46:56,320
coming to a much -escavated place, a city built

1018
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:58,719
on both art and garbage, and facing the total

1019
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:01,260
collapse of conscious, rational, artistic communication

1020
00:47:01,260 --> 00:47:05,039
into bestial, diseased chaos. Aschenbach's ordered

1021
00:47:05,039 --> 00:47:07,639
Apollonian soul is completely destroyed by the

1022
00:47:07,639 --> 00:47:10,519
anti -language of the plague and his own irreconcilable

1023
00:47:10,519 --> 00:47:13,699
desires. He dies on the beach, watching the boy

1024
00:47:13,699 --> 00:47:16,579
while the disease takes him. So we have covered

1025
00:47:16,579 --> 00:47:18,480
an immense amount of ground. We've traveled from

1026
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:21,400
Beethoven's fractured, terrifying sonatas to

1027
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,880
Strauss's defiant, escapist powdered wigs. We've

1028
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:27,659
seen Mozart's cruel mathematical geometry of

1029
00:47:27,659 --> 00:47:30,940
love, Jeunet's absolute betrayals of the revelations

1030
00:47:30,940 --> 00:47:34,599
he loved, Gould's sterile studio isolation, and

1031
00:47:34,599 --> 00:47:37,199
Aschenbach dying on a plague -ridden beach. What

1032
00:47:37,199 --> 00:47:40,099
is the ultimate takeaway? Late style. as Edward

1033
00:47:40,099 --> 00:47:42,300
Said formulated it while facing his own death,

1034
00:47:42,519 --> 00:47:44,820
is clearly not about going gently into that good

1035
00:47:44,820 --> 00:47:47,679
night. It is about a deliberate, unproductive

1036
00:47:47,679 --> 00:47:50,260
productiveness. It's about refusing to settle.

1037
00:47:50,380 --> 00:47:52,480
It is about the immense power of the unsaid.

1038
00:47:52,659 --> 00:47:54,639
Said himself was always deeply interested in

1039
00:47:54,639 --> 00:47:56,840
what gets left out, the agonizing tension between

1040
00:47:56,840 --> 00:47:59,280
what we can articulate and what remains silent.

1041
00:47:59,559 --> 00:48:02,539
Late style elucidates our delusions. It strips

1042
00:48:02,539 --> 00:48:04,679
away our comforting narratives and makes it incredibly

1043
00:48:04,679 --> 00:48:06,940
hard for us to go on with our comfortable fictions.

1044
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:10,460
It fully accepts the catastrophe of ending, and

1045
00:48:10,460 --> 00:48:13,019
it forces us to look directly at the tears, the

1046
00:48:13,019 --> 00:48:16,059
gaps, and the fissures of our own existence without

1047
00:48:16,059 --> 00:48:19,039
offering a bandage. Think about your own life,

1048
00:48:19,179 --> 00:48:22,000
your own projects, and your own eventual endings.

1049
00:48:22,460 --> 00:48:25,840
We were deeply conditioned by society to seek

1050
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:28,980
closure to tie a neat bow on our legacies, to

1051
00:48:28,980 --> 00:48:31,820
apologize for our rough edges, and resolve all

1052
00:48:31,820 --> 00:48:34,159
our contradictions so people will remember us

1053
00:48:34,159 --> 00:48:36,300
fondly and peacefully. But what if your greatest,

1054
00:48:36,420 --> 00:48:39,360
most authentic act isn't to reconcile with the

1055
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:41,980
world? What if your masterpiece is to leave your

1056
00:48:41,980 --> 00:48:45,099
work jagged, unresolved, and proudly out of step

1057
00:48:45,099 --> 00:48:48,000
with the times? What if true mastery means letting

1058
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:50,519
the silence and the fractures speak for themselves?

1059
00:48:50,639 --> 00:48:53,559
Because sometimes the most honest sunset isn't

1060
00:48:53,559 --> 00:48:56,659
a smooth, peaceful fade to black. Sometimes it's

1061
00:48:56,659 --> 00:48:59,039
a jagged, terrifying lightning storm that forces

1062
00:48:59,039 --> 00:49:01,579
you to see the world exactly as it is one last

1063
00:49:01,579 --> 00:49:04,239
time. A fractured landscape glowing violently

1064
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:06,400
into life. We encourage you to seek out these

1065
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:09,380
massive, difficult, unapologetic works. Listen

1066
00:49:09,380 --> 00:49:12,500
to late Beethoven, read Cavify, watch The Leopard,

1067
00:49:12,599 --> 00:49:14,920
and explore them on your own terms. Let the difficulty

1068
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:15,539
change you.