少女福利

Visiting scholar Ryan Shea gave a Friday afternoon lecture on September 23 titled 鈥淥rpheus, Metaphor, and the Transformation of Vision: How Poetry Might Teach Us to Read the Book of Nature.鈥� The talk took place in the Farrell Room on the third floor of St. Edmund’s Hall to a rapt audience of students and faculty alike. People gathered in the Farrell Room early, eager to chatter amongst themselves, and soon the room was full.

Ryan Shea holds the attention of a full house in the Farrell Room on September 23. (photo by Kaylee Sayers)

Professor Christina Root of the English Department and co-chair of the Humanities Center, organized the event. She introduced Shea before the lecture as 鈥渁 philosopher both in disposition and by training,鈥� and praised his warm character.

Shea began his lecture with the introduction of the figure of Orpheus, a character in Greek mythology whose lyre could tame animals and whose story, according to Shea, can provide a lens through which to approach the challenge of discovering meaning in nature.

Shea shared eight poems with the audience. The first is was 鈥淏lue Iris鈥� by Mary Oliver, followed by 鈥淭omorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow鈥� from William Shakespeare鈥檚 Macbeth, 鈥淟anguage is Fossil Poetry鈥� by Ernest Weekly, 鈥淭he Holy Longing鈥� by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 鈥淭he Wild Iris鈥� by Louise Gl眉ck, 鈥淚t was a hard thing to undo this knot鈥� by Gerard Manly Hopkins, 鈥淪onnets to Orpheus. V鈥� by Rainer Maria Rilke, and finally Mary Oliver bookended the list with 鈥淧raying.鈥�

All of the above poems respond to the question that Shea posed to the audience which was, 鈥淲hat is the eco-niche of the human?鈥� Or what is the 鈥渉uman vocation?鈥� Further, Shea suggested that questions such as, 鈥渨hat is the meaning of life?鈥� and, 鈥渨hat is the meaning of nature?鈥� might be understood in terms of whether we, like natural phenomena, have a 鈥渘iche.鈥� The audience was not left to flounder in these questions.

Shea was quick to posit that 鈥渋f we are going to be reading the Book of Nature, that means it must be meaningful.鈥� In order to explore where meaning resides, he proceeded to show the audience a series of images that the eye interprets as different depending on the person. One slide was of a drawing that looks like a duck or a rabbit depending on how you look at it. Another was a photo of a cloud in the shape of a dolphin. These dual images suggest the degree to which the mind is involved in acts of perception.

Similarly, according to Shea, metaphor is not just a fun tool that poets use, but an aspect of thinking that we use every day in order to make sense of what we see. 鈥淟anguage is fundamentally metaphorical,鈥� Shea said, 鈥淏ut do we create the meaning and project it out, or do we find the meaning out there?鈥�

He argued analogously that 鈥測ou can read the same book at five, 15, and 50 years old鈥� and the text becomes radically different.鈥� He went further to say the first transformation for finding meaning that needs to happen is somewhat radical鈥�Like Orpheus, we need to undertake a kind of journey to the underworld in ourselves that will help us discover if it is possible to go beyond simply constructing the meaning that we reflect back to ourselves鈥�and instead determine if there could be implicit meaning, and the job of the human could be to bring it into intelligibility.

Shea鈥檚 last remarks, especially, sparked a lively debate after his talk with members of the audience who both shared their reservations about his arguments and their own instances of similar ideas and claims.