WEBVTT

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We were reading
today, in a class,

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some poems of Zbigniew Herbert.

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He was a Polish poet, a
few years older than I am,

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whom I revere.

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I think he's a great poet.

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And I was talking
about affinities

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that I felt, in the
humblest possible way,

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with the thing that
Herbert is doing.

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And one of them was
the use of ancient myth

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for very close, personal,
contemporary, private feelings.

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And I wanted to read a poem that
seemed to me that kind of poem.

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It's a poem called "The
Judgment of Paris."

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Now, I don't know
how to go into this

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without embarrassing all of us.

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And I'm not going to
ask for a show of hands

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as to who know about
the Judgement of Paris.

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I'm just going to
tell you a little bit

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about the Judgement of Paris
to refresh your memories,

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the story, the matrix of myth
out of which the Homeric poems

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come.

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We know a great deal about
the history of the Trojan War,

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more than most
historians thought they

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would know a hundred years ago.

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But, by the time of the
age when Homer was writing,

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the myth about it was
that the Trojan War

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happened because Paris--

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County Paris, as he was called--

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Paris, who was a prince,
had abducted Helen of Troy--

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Helen, who became
Helen of Troy--

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from her wife, Menelaus.

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Menelaus had sworn all of
the other kings of Greece

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at the time to come to his aid
if anyone ever took Helen away

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from him.

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There's a story behind
that, of course.

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And before Paris made
this abduction, he had--

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of course, there's a
great story behind Paris.

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He was one of these heroes
who had been exposed at birth

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because of terrible
predictions, and had

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been left on a hillside, and
was brought up by a shepherd.

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And he returned to
his life as a shepherd

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because he liked it better than
the palace, when he finally

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went back there.

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And while he was a shepherd,
one day these three naked women

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appeared to him in the field.

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And he was aware that
these were not three ladies

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from the local nightclub.

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I mean, these were--

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there was something
extremely powerful

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happening in that field.

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He understood the whole thing.

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And his choice-- they
asked him to choose

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who was the most beautiful.

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You can see that
this was terribly

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loaded all the way along.

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And his choice led
to him being given,

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in effect, Helen,
whom he took away.

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And, of course, the whole
Trojan War followed.

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Now, you can start
interpreting that if you like,

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but this is the poem, called
"The Judgment of Paris."

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"Long afterwards,
the intelligent

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could deduce what had been
offered and not recognized.

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And they suggest that bitterness
should be confined to the fact

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that the gods chose for their
arbiter a mind and character so

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ordinary, albeit a
prince, and brought up

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as a shepherd, a calling
he must have liked,

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for he had returned to it.

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When they stood before him,
the three, naked, feminine,

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deathless, and he
realized that he

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was clothed in
nothing but mortality,

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the strap of his
quiver of arrows

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crossing between his nipples,
making it seem stranger.

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And he knew he must
choose and on that day.

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The one with the gray
eyes spoke first.

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And whatever she
said, he kept thinking

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he remembered, but remembered it
woven with confusion and fear.

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The two faces that
he called father,

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the first sight of the palace
where the brothers were

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strangers, and the dogs watched
him and refused to know him.

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She made everything clear.

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She was dazzling.

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She offered it to him,
to have for his own.

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But what he saw was the
scorn above her eyes.

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And her words, of which
he understood few,

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all said to him, take
wisdom, take power.

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You will forget anyway.

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The one with the
dark eyes spoke.

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And everything she
said, he imagined

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he had once wished for, but
in confusion and cowardice,

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the crown of his father,
the crowns, the crown bowing

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to him, his name
everywhere like grass, only

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he and the sea triumphant.

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She made everything
sound possible.

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She was dazzling.

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She offered it to
him to hold high.

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But what he saw was the
cruelty around her mouth.

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And her words, of
which he understood

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more, all said to him,
take pride, take glory.

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You will suffer anyway.

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The third one, the
color of whose eyes

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later he could not remember,
spoke last and slowly

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and of desire.

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And it was his,
though up until then

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he had been happy
with his river nymph.

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Here was his mind filled
utterly with one girl gathering

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yellow flowers, and
no one like her.

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The words made everything
seem present, almost present,

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present.

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They said to him, take her.

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You will lose her anyway.

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It was only when he
reached out to the voice

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as though he could take the
speaker herself that his hand

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filled with something
to give, but to give

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to only one of the three,
an apple, it is told.

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Discord itself in
a single fruit,

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its skin already
carved to the fairest.

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Then a mason, working above the
gates of Troy in the sunlight,

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thought he felt
the stone shiver.

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In the quiver on
Paris's back, the head

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of the arrow for Achilles'
heel smiled in its sleep.

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And Helen stepped from
the palace to gather,

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as she would do every
day in that season,

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from the grove, the yellow
ray flowers, tall as herself,

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whose roots are said
to dispel pain."

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