Money

an introductory lecture This morning we shall spend a few minutes Upon the study of symbolism, which is basic To the nature of money. I show you this nickel. Icons and cryptograms are written all over The nickel: one side shows a hunchbacked bison Bending his head and curling his tail to accommodate The circular nature of money. Over him arches UNITED STATES OF AMERICA , and, squinched in Between that and his rump, E PLURIBUS UNUM , A Roman reminiscence that appears to mean An indeterminately large number of things All of which are the same. Under the bison A straight line giving him a ground to stand on Reads FIVE CENTS . And on the other side of our nickel There is the profile of a man with long hair And a couple of feathers in the hair; we know Somehow that he is an American Indian, and He wears the number nineteen-thirty-six. Right in front of his eyes the word LIBERTY , bent To conform with the curve of the rim, appears To be falling out of the sky Y first; the Indian Keeps his eyes downcast and does not notice this; To notice it, indeed, would be shortsighted of him. So much for the iconography of one of our nickels, Which is now becoming a rarity and something of A collectors’ item: for as a matter of fact There is almost nothing you can buy with a nickel, The representative American Indian was destroyed A hundred years or so ago, and his descendants’ Relations with liberty are maintained with reservations, Or primitive concentration camps; while the bison, Except for a few examples kept in cages, Is now extinct. Something like that, I think, Is what Keats must have meant in his celebrated Ode on a Grecian Urn. Notice, in conclusion, A number of circumstances sometimes overlooked Even by experts: (a) Indian and bison, Confined to obverse and reverse of the coin, Can never see each other; (b) they are looking In opposite directions, the bison past The Indian’s feathers, the Indian past The bison’s tail; (c) they are upside down To one another; (d) the bison has a human face Somewhat resembling that of Jupiter Ammon. I hope that our studies today will have shown you Something of the import of symbolism With respect to the understanding of what is symbolized.