CARSON, A The idea of university

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The Idea of a University (After John Henry Newman)
Author(s): Anne Carson
Source: The Threepenny Review, No. 78 (Summer, 1999), pp. 6-8
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THE_ 
THREEPENNY 
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The Idea of a University 
(after John Henry Newman) 
Anne Carson 
Editor's Note: This talk was given in 1998 at an honorary occasion at McGill 
University, where Anne Carson teaches classics, a discipline that no longer exists 
as a separate department at McGill. The topic was assigned to her; the method is 
her own. 
I HAVE TO say I found it hard to 
write this talk. I make my living as 
a classical philologist, not an ideologue 
of institutions. Faced with the title 
"The Idea of a University," I found I 
had no idea whatsoever what to say 
about it. I felt like that anonymous per- 
son in the 83rd verse of Psalm 119 who 
says, "For I am become like a bottle in 
the smoke." Now, being a philologist I 
have to mention in passing that this 
verse is itself a bottle in the smoke. For 
the word that the King James version 
renders as bottle is an anachronism for 
an original Hebrew word meaning 
some sort of vessel made out of animal 
skin or leather. And the phrase that 
says "in the smoke" (which is carried in 
all the Hebrew manuscripts and all the 
English and French translations I could 
find in the library) goes astray some- 
how in both the Greek of the Septu- 
agint and the Latin of the Vulgate, 
appearing in these as a quite different 
phrase meaning "in the frost." Frost 
and smoke don't seem to me very easily 
confusable phenomena, and none of 
the textual experts I consulted on this 
problem had any ready explanation of 
what the discrepancy might mean. 
That's the way it goes with philology: 
the closer you look at a word the more 
distantly it looks back at you. 
John Henry Newman took a very 
close look at the word university in an 
essay called "On the Scope and Nature 
of University Education," and there he 
tells us that this word reveals itself, first 
of all, etymologically. I shall quote him: 
"A university by its very name profess- 
es to teach universal knowledge." What 
does Newman mean by universal 
knowledge? Possibly (I thought at first) 
knowledge that has the universe as its 
content. But no (I discovered on further 
research), Newman's thinking about 
what a university should teach is not 
oriented toward content at all. For 
knowledge that is oriented is knowl- 
edge that has a use. In Newman's view, 
the knowledge that results from a real 
university education has no use. It is 
useless. Or what he calls "liberal." 
Liberal, from Latin liber, means 
"free." It is the opposite of servus, 
"servile," and denotes that which 
refuses to be informed by an end or 
constrained to necessity. In their 
ancient context the Latin words liber 
and servus obviously signify class dis- 
tinction, free man and slave. 
But we should note the odd linguistic 
fact that the Latin adjective liber mean- 
ing "free" is exactly the same word as 
the Latin noun liber meaning "book." 
Surely this is no more than a random 
homonym. Yet free men and books do 
sort out together in many a pedagogical 
theory, not least of all Newman's, 
whose institutional product is charac- 
terized by Newman as the state or con- 
dition or habit of mind of a gentleman. 
He emphasizes this: 
Liberal education makes not the Christian, 
not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is 
well to be a gentleman, it is well to have a 
cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a can- 
did, equitable bearing in the conduct of 
life-these are the connatural qualities of a 
large knowledge; they are the objects of a 
university. 
And what exactly does Newman mean 
by a "large knowledge"? I quote again: 
Knowledge is called by the name of Science 
or Philosophy when it is acted upon, 
informed, or if I may use a strong figure 
impregnated by Reason. Reason is the prin- 
ciple of that intrinsic fecundity of 
Knowledge which, to those who possess it, 
is its especial value, and which dispenses 
with the necessity of their looking abroad 
for any end to rest upon external to itself. 
Newman's universal knowledge rests 
upon a principle of reason that frees it 
to be useless. This reason need look for 
no end outside itself, its value is intrin- 
sic. Newman's ideal university is a 
place where gentlemen may reason for 
no reason. 
The debate about whether reason 
should have a reason, about whether 
education should be useful or useless, is 
as old as the profession of reason itself. 
The first professional reasoners in the 
Western tradition, I suppose, were the 
sophists. Here is how the sophist 
Protagoras (in Plato's dialogue of that 
name) describes hisown educational 
program to a young man who has 
come to him with his money in his 
hand: 
But from me this young man will learn not 
but what he has come to learn. My subject: 
care of personal affairs, so that he may best 
manage his household, and care of political 
affairs, so he becomes a real power in the 
city, both a doer and a talker. 
Protagoras' idea of a university is note- 
worthy. He imagines a school in which 
the student will dictate his own syl- 
labus. "The young man will learn not 
but what he has come to learn," says 
Protagoras. This student already knows 
what he wants to know; he is filled not 
with questions but with an information 
deficit. The spaces for the data are 
ready and waiting inside him. He has 
only to download whatever he needs 
from Protagoras' program and pay the 
price and carry it off as his own. The 
price was high: by all accounts Pro- 
tagoras made enough money as a 
sophist to dedicate a life-size solid gold 
statue of himself at Delphi. But perhaps 
we should calculate this price not only 
in gold. For does not an education that 
is entirely career-oriented, does not a 
university that defines its mission as 
that of producing professional compe- 
tencies, risk closing itself and its stu- 
6 THE THREEPENNY REVIEW 
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dents off from an experience of some 
considerable importance? I mean the 
experience of error. Not error in the 
sense of getting an incorrect answer, but 
error in the sense of asking the wrong 
question, or asking no question at all. 
Let us consider another description 
offered by Protagoras of how he thinks 
higher education should work. His 
model is that of learning the alphabet: 
You know how, when children are not yet 
good at writing, the writing teacher traces 
outlines with the pencil before giving them 
the slate and makes them follow the lines as 
a guide in their own writing... Whoever 
strays outside the lines is punished... 
Protagoras uses the handy Greek word 
paradeigmata ("paradigms") of the 
patterns that children trace over and 
over in learning their letters. Repro- 
ducing paradigms is both the end and 
the means of this kind of education. It 
reminds me of Michel Foucault's char- 
acterization of the modern university as 
an "institutional apparatus through 
which society ensures its own unevent- 
ful reproduction, at least cost to itself." 
The fact is, for all their performative 
dash and cutting-edge rhetoric and sen- 
sational prices, the sophists were pro- 
foundly conservative people. If they 
were around today they would certain- 
ly dominate professorships at major 
universities, not to say the talk-show 
circuit. For they perform that impor- 
tant cultural work of distressing and 
destabilizing the status quo in just such 
a way as to preserve it. That is, cosmet- 
ically. Cosmetic distress appeals to 
wealthy young men as an educational 
experience. And insofar as it remains 
cosmetic, they can usually get their 
fathers to pay for it. So a sophist's crite- 
rion of what education should be is 
whatever the market will bear. What 
sells, they teach, and so their teaching 
seeks out and confirms a lowest com- 
mon denominator of opinion on all 
matters of inquiry, especially the 
inquiry into what education should 
inquire into. Protagoras' student will 
find himself in the sad state of the 
post-Heideggerian tourist who travels 
the world only to encounter himself 
everywhere. 
To encounter oneself is to arrive at 
an end, a closed place, an answered 
question. It has been a strong belief of 
educators from Sokrates to Immanuel 
Kant, Wilhelm von Humboldt, New- 
man, Nietzsche, and Heidegger that 
questioned questions, open places, and 
beginnings should be the locus of edu- 
cation. Sokrates, as Plato depicts him, is 
always digging behind the answers peo- 
ple give him to find the questions that 
underlie them, then digging behind 
those questions to find the prior ques- 
tion on which they can rest. There 
seems to be no end to it. Indeed for a 
thinker like Heidegger there is no end 
to it. Heidegger tells us that behind all 
the questions we can think up lies 
another question, which is an abyss. 
The abyss he calls the question about 
being. He thinks it may be the only 
question worth asking. It lies slightly. 
before the beginning of all other begin- 
nings. This is (I would imagine) a dark 
place, we might say an aorist place- 
boundless, unlimited, and indetermi- 
nate-where things become like a bot- 
tle in the smoke. It is a place with 
which Sokrates was very familiar. For 
he discovers it and rediscovers it in his 
conversations with people, which often 
end up in that situation called in Greek 
an aporia, meaning literally "wayless- 
ness," i.e., bafflement, puzzlement, 
impasse, a wrong answer to a wrong 
question. Sokrates usually claims to be 
surprised when he and his interlocutor 
arrive at aporia and often, at that point, 
he brightly proposes starting the con- 
versation all over again. Almost no one 
takes him up on this. Nonetheless, to 
judge from the accounts of Plato and 
Xenophon, it is no accident that 
Sokratic conversations repeatedly find 
their way to aporia. Sokrates spent 
years of his life standing around Athens 
asking questions of people who gave 
the wrong answers, indeed asking ques- 
tions in such a way as to elicit wrong 
answers. Plato went out of his way to 
record the whole history of these ques- 
tions and wrong answers, rather than 
simply to summarize the main issues 
and reduce the "problematic" of 
G 
Sokrates to a neat Home Page. Both 
Plato and Sokrates appear to have 
thought there was something valuable 
to be got from arriving at aporia, from 
standing in the place of the wrong 
answer, from being in an aorist dark- 
ness where not only answers but ques- 
tions become questionable. This is the 
experience of error. Let's see what it 
feels like. 
F COURSE the best way to experi- 
ence error would be to engage in 
an aporetic dialogue with Sokrates. But 
we live in an Iron Age and will have to 
make do with an analogy. A brief anal- 
ogy. (Was it not Marilyn Monroe who 
said, "I read poetry to save time"?) 
Here is a poetic example of the state of 
mind we call error: 
[?] made three seasons, summer 
and winter and autumn third 
and fourth spring, when 
there is blooming but to eat enough 
is not. 
(Alkman fragment 20 Poetae Melici Graeci) 
This is a simple poem and contains a 
plain arithmetic error. The poet does 
not appear to know that 3+1=4. 
Perhaps a few facts about this poet 
would be helpful. Alkman lived in 
Sparta in the seventh century BC. 
Sparta was a poor place and it is 
unlikely Alkman led a wealthy or well- 
fed life there. He will have grown his 
own food and known what it felt like 
to arrive at that pale green early spring 
season when "to eat enough is not." 
Hunger always feels like a mistake 
when it happens to you. Alkman makes 
us experience this mistake with him by 
an effective use of arithmetic error. For 
a poor Spartan poet with nothing left in 
his cupboard at the end of winter, 
along comes spring like an afterthought 
of the natural economy, unbalancing 
his checkbook and enjambing his verse. 
The poem breaks off unexpectedly, 
leaving us three beats into an iambic 
metron, hungry for an explanation of 
where spring came from and surprised 
by its intrusion into the poetic account. 
Surprise at the intrusion of truth is an 
important constituent of the experience 
of error. This moment is often marked 
in the Sokratic dialogues by the appear- 
ance of a blush on someone's cheek. 
Aristotle describes it, more psychologi- 
cally, as an event that puts the soul in 
conversation with itself: 
For it becomes quite clear that one has 
learned something, because of the contra- 
diction, and the soul seems to say, How 
true,yet I mistook it! 
A mistake for Aristotle is a moment of 
dramatic recognition and reversal, 
when the soul turns to look at its own 
reasoning process. If we glance again at 
Alkman's poem we can see where this 
look is directed: it goes back to the 
beginning of the four seasons that start- 
ed out to be three seasons and there we 
find, before the first word of the first 
verse of the poem, standing as the agent 
of the act of creation, a question mark: 
[?]. At least in the English translation it 
is a question mark-in the Greek text 
there is nothing at all: Alkman's main 
verb has no subject. 
Now it is unusual in Greek for a 
main verb to have no subject. In fact 
you could call it a grammatical mis- 
take. Strict philologists will tell you this 
mistake is not interesting, just a sign 
that Alkman's poem is a fragment bro- 
ken off a longer text; and they will 
assure you that Alkman almost certain- 
ly did name the agent of creation in 
some verse now lost to us that came 
before the beginning of what we have 
here. On the other hand, it is, as you 
know, a principle aim of strict philolo- 
gy to reduce all textual delight to an 
accident of transmission and I am per- 
sonally uneasy with any claim to know 
exactly what a poet means to say or 
how a poem came to be. So I prefer to 
leave the question mark there at the 
start of verse one and to admire 
Alkman's nerve in confronting the apo- 
ria that it brackets. The fact remains, it 
is very hard to see what came before 
the beginning. But I can appreciate 
Heidegger's suggestion that this is the 
question worth asking. 
W HEN SOKRATES suggested to the 
judges at his trial that instead of 
putting him to death they give him a 
free dinner every night in the town hall 
of Athens, he was offering them the 
chance to risk everything they had in 
exchange for a moment they couldn't 
see the edges of. He was offering them 
the possibility of total error and the 
likelihood of complete loss of profit. 
He was offering an Idea. I think I agree 
with John Henry Newman that the 
presence or absence of an Idea is what 
makes the difference between sophistry 
and a university. I wish, therefore, that 
I had an Idea to give you. But there it 
is. I don't. 
So instead I'll offer a philological 
observation. Given the amount of time, 
thought, research, energy and sheer 
anxiety that I have expended on efforts 
to come to grips with my own Idea of 
the University-all of which came up 
zero-I can only conclude that this title 
I was given, The Idea of the University, 
is an oxymoron. Ideas do not arise in 
places like universities. And if they do 
arise there they cannot long survive. As 
St. Matthew implies in his description 
of the angel who sat on Christ's tomb, 
a real idea has about the longevity of a 
bolt of lightning and may be equally 
difficult to come to grips with. 
But maybe coming to grips is not the 
point. After all, the effectiveness of an 
oxymoron lies in the fact that it cannot 
be grasped, its components cancel each 
other out-or would do so if they had 
to meet in the phenomenal world. 
Sweet and sour sauce is an exception; 
generally speaking, oxymora do not 
survive translation to reality. But that 
doesn't mean they are pointless. As a 
figure of thought, an oxymoron serves 
two functions. It causes contradiction 
in the mind and discomfort to the sens- 
es. Take, for example, an oxymoron 
that turns up in the scholia to the man- 
uscripts of the Agamemnon of 
Aeschylus: peirar apeiron means literal- 
ly "limitless limit" or "endless end." 
The phrase is composed of a noun and 
an adjective; the adjective apeiron is 
cognate with the noun peirar-in fact is 
SUMMER 1999 
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a negative version of it. The noun is 
thought to derive from a very old word 
meaning "rope end"-that is, the knot 
tied in the end of a rope to keep it from 
unraveling. The plural form of this 
noun means a whole lot of rope end 
and therefore a net or woven mesh. 
This oxymoron occurs in a scholiastic 
paraphrase of the death scene of 
Agamemnon; here the scholiast is 
describing the famous net in which 
Clytemnestra envelops Agamemnon so 
that she can stab him to death. 
Obviously the phrase is a bad pun as 
well as an oxymoron (not to say ill- 
omened in its context) and I hesitate to 
commend it as poetic invention. But it 
may provide us with a usefully intricate 
image of our situation as a university. 
Think of the university as a network 
of rope ends, each of them holding 
tight to its place in the mesh so as to 
prevent the unraveling of the whole. 
Each rope end is a point of finitude and 
the university is a sum of these fini- 
tudes. Yet, oddly enough, this summary 
finitude has infinity as its attribute. 
Because you can never stop trying to 
put an end to infinity. Just as you can 
never stop trying to come to grips with 
the Idea of the University. That is the 
net in which we are caught. To keep 
trying to have this Idea is why we are 
here. But it is important to remember 
that the object of our creativity is an 
a negative version of it. The noun is 
thought to derive from a very old word 
meaning "rope end"-that is, the knot 
tied in the end of a rope to keep it from 
unraveling. The plural form of this 
noun means a whole lot of rope end 
and therefore a net or woven mesh. 
This oxymoron occurs in a scholiastic 
paraphrase of the death scene of 
Agamemnon; here the scholiast is 
describing the famous net in which 
Clytemnestra envelops Agamemnon so 
that she can stab him to death. 
Obviously the phrase is a bad pun as 
well as an oxymoron (not to say ill- 
omened in its context) and I hesitate to 
commend it as poetic invention. But it 
may provide us with a usefully intricate 
image of our situation as a university. 
Think of the university as a network 
of rope ends, each of them holding 
tight to its place in the mesh so as to 
prevent the unraveling of the whole. 
Each rope end is a point of finitude and 
the university is a sum of these fini- 
tudes. Yet, oddly enough, this summary 
finitude has infinity as its attribute. 
Because you can never stop trying to 
put an end to infinity. Just as you can 
never stop trying to come to grips with 
the Idea of the University. That is the 
net in which we are caught. To keep 
trying to have this Idea is why we are 
here. But it is important to remember 
that the object of our creativity is an 
oxymoron. Both the sweet and the 
sour, the finite and the infinite parts of 
the compound are real and necessary. 
They guarantee one another, somehow. 
oxymoron. Both the sweet and the 
sour, the finite and the infinite parts of 
the compound are real and necessary. 
They guarantee one another, somehow. 
Not even a sophist can take the rope 
out of a rope end. Yet the two things 
are not identical. Our university can 
never become its own Idea. No one but 
Not even a sophist can take the rope 
out of a rope end. Yet the two things 
are not identical. Our university can 
never become its own Idea. No one but 
a sophist would claim that a business 
school can appropriate infinitude. 
Universities and Ideas of Universities 
seem to exist in a strife that is real and 
a sophist would claim that a business 
school can appropriate infinitude. 
Universities and Ideas of Universities 
seem to exist in a strife that is real and 
necessary. So far as I can see, our task 
is to maintain this strife as stubbornly 
as possible-not to collapse it, not to 
blur it, not to pretend it isn't there, not 
necessary. So far as I can see, our task 
is to maintain this strife as stubbornly 
as possible-not to collapse it, not to 
blur it, not to pretend it isn't there, not 
to decorate it with alibis like creative 
restructuring. But to acknowledge it as 
strife and keep it where it is-in the 
space between us and them,the space 
between the way things are and the 
way they could be, that space with 
brackets around it containing not quite 
a bottle, not quite smoke-that space 
which some ancient Greeks called dai- 
monic. 
Speaking ofdaimonic, I suppose you 
know the story of the two devils on 
Tuesday afternoon. One Tuesday after- 
noon in hell, two devils were sitting 
around debating with one another how 
best they might discourage human 
beings from seeking after God. One 
devil said, "It's easy. All we have to do 
is tell them there is no heaven." The 
other devil said, "No, that won't work. 
In fact, I think we should tell them 
there is no hell." So they argued back 
and forth for some time and at last, 
unable to resolve the question, went to 
consult an expert. Satan was in his 
office. He let them in and listened to 
their problem, then sat pulling on his 
beard for a few moments. Finally he 
looked up. "Actually, you're both 
wrong," he said. "If you really want to 
stop human beings from seeking after 
God, it's no use telling them there is no 
heaven. No use telling them there is no 
hell. Just tell them there is no 
difference." D 
to decorate it with alibis like creative 
restructuring. But to acknowledge it as 
strife and keep it where it is-in the 
space between us and them, the space 
between the way things are and the 
way they could be, that space with 
brackets around it containing not quite 
a bottle, not quite smoke-that space 
which some ancient Greeks called dai- 
monic. 
Speaking ofdaimonic, I suppose you 
know the story of the two devils on 
Tuesday afternoon. One Tuesday after- 
noon in hell, two devils were sitting 
around debating with one another how 
best they might discourage human 
beings from seeking after God. One 
devil said, "It's easy. All we have to do 
is tell them there is no heaven." The 
other devil said, "No, that won't work. 
In fact, I think we should tell them 
there is no hell." So they argued back 
and forth for some time and at last, 
unable to resolve the question, went to 
consult an expert. Satan was in his 
office. He let them in and listened to 
their problem, then sat pulling on his 
beard for a few moments. Finally he 
looked up. "Actually, you're both 
wrong," he said. "If you really want to 
stop human beings from seeking after 
God, it's no use telling them there is no 
heaven. No use telling them there is no 
hell. Just tell them there is no 
difference." D 
The Haunted Mere 
[Beowulf, lines 1310-1379] 
After the attack on Heorot Hall by Grendel's mother, King Hrothgar tells Beowulf about the monsters and their underwater den 
The Haunted Mere 
[Beowulf, lines 1310-1379] 
After the attack on Heorot Hall by Grendel's mother, King Hrothgar tells Beowulf about the monsters and their underwater den 
Beowulf was quickly brought to the chamber: 
the winner of fights, the arch-warrior, 
came first-footing in with his fellow troops 
to where the king in his wisdom waited, 
still wondering whether Almighty God 
would ever turn the tide of his misfortunes. 
So Beowulf entered with his band in attendance 
and the wooden floor-boards banged and rang 
as he advanced, hurrying to address 
the prince of the Ingwins, asking if he'd rested 
since the urgent summons had come as a surprise. 
Then Hrothgar, the Shieldings' helmet, spoke: 
"Rest? What is rest? Sorrow has returned. 
Alas for the Danes! Aeschere is dead. 
He was Yrmenlafs elder brother 
and a soul-mate to me, a true mentor, 
my right hand man when the ranks clashed 
and our boar-crests had to take a battering 
in the line of action. Aeschere was everything 
the world admires in a wise man and a friend. 
Then this roaming killer came in a fury 
and slaughtered him in Heorot. Where she is hiding, 
glutting on the corpse and glorying in her escape, 
I cannot tell; she has taken up the feud 
because of last night, when you killed Grendel, 
wrestled and racked him in ruinous combat 
since for too long he had terrorized us 
with his depredations. He died in battle, 
paid with his life; and now this powerful 
other one arrives, this evil force 
out to avenge her kinsman's death... 
I have heard it said by my people in hall, 
counselors who live in the upland country, 
that they have caught glimpses of two such creatures 
Beowulf was quickly brought to the chamber: 
the winner of fights, the arch-warrior, 
came first-footing in with his fellow troops 
to where the king in his wisdom waited, 
still wondering whether Almighty God 
would ever turn the tide of his misfortunes. 
So Beowulf entered with his band in attendance 
and the wooden floor-boards banged and rang 
as he advanced, hurrying to address 
the prince of the Ingwins, asking if he'd rested 
since the urgent summons had come as a surprise. 
Then Hrothgar, the Shieldings' helmet, spoke: 
"Rest? What is rest? Sorrow has returned. 
Alas for the Danes! Aeschere is dead. 
He was Yrmenlafs elder brother 
and a soul-mate to me, a true mentor, 
my right hand man when the ranks clashed 
and our boar-crests had to take a battering 
in the line of action. Aeschere was everything 
the world admires in a wise man and a friend. 
Then this roaming killer came in a fury 
and slaughtered him in Heorot. Where she is hiding, 
glutting on the corpse and glorying in her escape, 
I cannot tell; she has taken up the feud 
because of last night, when you killed Grendel, 
wrestled and racked him in ruinous combat 
since for too long he had terrorized us 
with his depredations. He died in battle, 
paid with his life; and now this powerful 
other one arrives, this evil force 
out to avenge her kinsman's death... 
I have heard it said by my people in hall, 
counselors who live in the upland country, 
that they have caught glimpses of two such creatures 
prowling the moors, huge marauders 
from some other world. One of these things, 
as far as anyone can ever discern, 
looks like a woman; the other, warped 
in the shape of a man, moves beyond the pale, 
an unnatural birth, bigger than any man. 
Country people called him Grendel 
in former days. They know no father 
and their whole ancestry is hidden in a past 
of demons and ghosts. They dwell apart 
among wolves on the hills, on windswept crags 
and treacherous keshes, where cold streams 
pour down the mountain and disappear 
under mist and moorland. 
A few miles from here 
a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch 
above a mere; the overhanging bank 
is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface. 
At night there, something uncanny happens: 
the water burns. And the mere bottom 
has never been sounded by the sons of men. 
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts: 
the hart in flight from pursuing hounds 
will turn to face them with firm-set horns 
and die in the wood rather than dive 
beneath its surface. That is no good place. 
When wind blows up and stormy weather 
makes clouds scud and the skies weep, 
out of its depths a dirty surge 
is pitched towards the heavens. Now help depends 
again on you and on you alone. 
The gap of danger where the demon waits 
is still unknown to you. Seek it if you dare." 
-translated from Old English by Seamus Heaney 
prowling the moors, huge marauders 
from some other world. One of these things, 
as far as anyone can ever discern, 
looks like a woman; the other, warped 
in the shape of a man, moves beyond the pale, 
an unnatural birth, bigger than any man. 
Country people called him Grendel 
in former days. They know no father 
and their whole ancestry is hidden in a past 
of demons and ghosts. They dwell apart 
among wolves on the hills, on windswept crags 
and treacherous keshes, where cold streams 
pour down the mountain and disappear 
under mist and moorland. 
A few miles from here 
a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch 
above a mere; the overhanging bank 
is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface. 
At night there, something uncanny happens: 
the water burns. And the mere bottom 
has never been sounded by the sons of men. 
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:the hart in flight from pursuing hounds 
will turn to face them with firm-set horns 
and die in the wood rather than dive 
beneath its surface. That is no good place. 
When wind blows up and stormy weather 
makes clouds scud and the skies weep, 
out of its depths a dirty surge 
is pitched towards the heavens. Now help depends 
again on you and on you alone. 
The gap of danger where the demon waits 
is still unknown to you. Seek it if you dare." 
-translated from Old English by Seamus Heaney 
8 THE THREEPENNY REVIEW 8 THE THREEPENNY REVIEW 
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	Article Contents
	p. 6
	p. 7
	p. 8
	Issue Table of Contents
	The Threepenny Review, No. 78 (Summer, 1999), pp. 1-36
	Front Matter [pp. 1-2]
	Table Talk [pp. 3-5]
	Poem
	Depths [p. 5]
	The Idea of a University (After John Henry Newman) [pp. 6-8]
	Poem
	The Haunted Mere: [Beowulf, Lines 1310-1379] [p. 8]
	Books
	Review: Mysterious Grace [p. 9]
	Poem
	La Chaise Bleue [p. 9]
	Books
	The Literary Dictator [pp. 10-11]
	Poem
	Front Door Man [p. 12]
	Books
	Review: Solving and Dissolving [pp. 13-14]
	Poem
	Sunflower [p. 14]
	Books
	Review: Miss Moore, with Cape and Tricorne Hat [pp. 15-16]
	Poems
	The Call of Coal [p. 17]
	Story [p. 17]
	Fiction
	Flatch [pp. 18-19]
	Miscellany
	Arachne [pp. 20-23]
	Poem
	Hospitable [p. 23]
	Theater
	Review: Family Values [pp. 24-26]
	Poem
	The Oration: After Cavafy [p. 26]
	Fiction
	Gratitude [pp. 27-29]
	Poem
	After a Difficult Decision [p. 29]
	Music
	On Jazz: Notes of an Enthusiast [p. 30]
	Opera
	Review: A Symposium on Peony Pavilion [pp. 31-34]
	Poem
	A Window [p. 35]
	Letters to the Editor [p. 35]
	Back Matter [p. 36-36]