We were reading today, in a class,
some poems of Zbigniew Herbert.
He was a Polish poet, a few years older than I am,
whom I revere.
I think he's a great poet.
And I was talking about affinities
that I felt, in the humblest possible way,
with the thing that Herbert is doing.
And one of them was the use of ancient myth
for very close, personal, contemporary, private feelings.
And I wanted to read a poem that seemed to me that kind of poem.
It's a poem called "The Judgment of Paris."
Now, I don't know how to go into this
without embarrassing all of us.
And I'm not going to ask for a show of hands
as to who know about the Judgement of Paris.
I'm just going to tell you a little bit
about the Judgement of Paris to refresh your memories,
the story, the matrix of myth out of which the Homeric poems
come.
We know a great deal about the history of the Trojan War,
more than most historians thought they
would know a hundred years ago.
But, by the time of the age when Homer was writing,
the myth about it was that the Trojan War
happened because Paris--
County Paris, as he was called--
Paris, who was a prince, had abducted Helen of Troy--
Helen, who became Helen of Troy--
from her wife, Menelaus.
Menelaus had sworn all of the other kings of Greece
at the time to come to his aid if anyone ever took Helen away
from him.
There's a story behind that, of course.
And before Paris made this abduction, he had--
of course, there's a great story behind Paris.
He was one of these heroes who had been exposed at birth
because of terrible predictions, and had
been left on a hillside, and was brought up by a shepherd.
And he returned to his life as a shepherd
because he liked it better than the palace, when he finally
went back there.
And while he was a shepherd, one day these three naked women
appeared to him in the field.
And he was aware that these were not three ladies
from the local nightclub.
I mean, these were--
there was something extremely powerful
happening in that field.
He understood the whole thing.
And his choice-- they asked him to choose
who was the most beautiful.
You can see that this was terribly
loaded all the way along.
And his choice led to him being given,
in effect, Helen, whom he took away.
And, of course, the whole Trojan War followed.
Now, you can start interpreting that if you like,
but this is the poem, called "The Judgment of Paris."
"Long afterwards, the intelligent
could deduce what had been offered and not recognized.
And they suggest that bitterness should be confined to the fact
that the gods chose for their arbiter a mind and character so
ordinary, albeit a prince, and brought up
as a shepherd, a calling he must have liked,
for he had returned to it.
When they stood before him, the three, naked, feminine,
deathless, and he realized that he
was clothed in nothing but mortality,
the strap of his quiver of arrows
crossing between his nipples, making it seem stranger.
And he knew he must choose and on that day.
The one with the gray eyes spoke first.
And whatever she said, he kept thinking
he remembered, but remembered it woven with confusion and fear.
The two faces that he called father,
the first sight of the palace where the brothers were
strangers, and the dogs watched him and refused to know him.
She made everything clear.
She was dazzling.
She offered it to him, to have for his own.
But what he saw was the scorn above her eyes.
And her words, of which he understood few,
all said to him, take wisdom, take power.
You will forget anyway.
The one with the dark eyes spoke.
And everything she said, he imagined
he had once wished for, but in confusion and cowardice,
the crown of his father, the crowns, the crown bowing
to him, his name everywhere like grass, only
he and the sea triumphant.
She made everything sound possible.
She was dazzling.
She offered it to him to hold high.
But what he saw was the cruelty around her mouth.
And her words, of which he understood
more, all said to him, take pride, take glory.
You will suffer anyway.
The third one, the color of whose eyes
later he could not remember, spoke last and slowly
and of desire.
And it was his, though up until then
he had been happy with his river nymph.
Here was his mind filled utterly with one girl gathering
yellow flowers, and no one like her.
The words made everything seem present, almost present,
present.
They said to him, take her.
You will lose her anyway.
It was only when he reached out to the voice
as though he could take the speaker herself that his hand
filled with something to give, but to give
to only one of the three, an apple, it is told.
Discord itself in a single fruit,
its skin already carved to the fairest.
Then a mason, working above the gates of Troy in the sunlight,
thought he felt the stone shiver.
In the quiver on Paris's back, the head
of the arrow for Achilles' heel smiled in its sleep.
And Helen stepped from the palace to gather,
as she would do every day in that season,
from the grove, the yellow ray flowers, tall as herself,
whose roots are said to dispel pain."