WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.540 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.540 --> 00:00:03.430 align:middle line:84% It's an honor to be here, and I'm really, really grateful 00:00:03.430 --> 00:00:04.290 align:middle line:90% for the invitation. 00:00:04.290 --> 00:00:05.685 align:middle line:90% Excuse me while I undress. 00:00:05.685 --> 00:00:08.880 align:middle line:90% 00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:13.300 align:middle line:84% And I think that it's a particular pleasure 00:00:13.300 --> 00:00:15.550 align:middle line:90% to be here during Poetry Month. 00:00:15.550 --> 00:00:18.040 align:middle line:84% I think Poetry Month may be a bit too long for poetry. 00:00:18.040 --> 00:00:19.998 align:middle line:84% I think you should probably have a Poetry Week. 00:00:19.998 --> 00:00:21.315 align:middle line:90% But Poetry Month is ambitious. 00:00:21.315 --> 00:00:22.690 align:middle line:84% In England, we have a Poetry day, 00:00:22.690 --> 00:00:24.315 align:middle line:84% and that exhausts everybody completely. 00:00:24.315 --> 00:00:26.500 align:middle line:90% So I'm full of admiration. 00:00:26.500 --> 00:00:28.230 align:middle line:90% The book I've just finished-- 00:00:28.230 --> 00:00:29.980 align:middle line:84% not just finished writing, but that's just 00:00:29.980 --> 00:00:32.355 align:middle line:84% been published in this country is called The First Poets. 00:00:32.355 --> 00:00:35.613 align:middle line:84% And it's about the Greek poets, starting with Homer-- well, 00:00:35.613 --> 00:00:37.030 align:middle line:84% starting with the legendary poets, 00:00:37.030 --> 00:00:38.290 align:middle line:90% and then going on to Homer. 00:00:38.290 --> 00:00:41.920 align:middle line:84% And tonight I'm talking about Homer, 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:45.460 align:middle line:84% and I'm talking about Homer in relation 00:00:45.460 --> 00:00:51.280 align:middle line:84% to his otherness, the things that we don't necessarily 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:52.930 align:middle line:84% take into account when we read Homer-- 00:00:52.930 --> 00:00:55.390 align:middle line:84% his remoteness, in a sense, from us, 00:00:55.390 --> 00:00:57.640 align:middle line:84% and what we might learn from him if we understand 00:00:57.640 --> 00:00:59.500 align:middle line:90% that remoteness, that otherness. 00:00:59.500 --> 00:01:02.140 align:middle line:84% And I'd like to start with a reflection. 00:01:02.140 --> 00:01:04.450 align:middle line:84% When I was in Boston, just a couple of weeks ago-- just 00:01:04.450 --> 00:01:06.670 align:middle line:84% a week ago, actually, I was given 00:01:06.670 --> 00:01:13.930 align:middle line:84% to read an essay that Simone Weil wrote about Homer in 1940, 00:01:13.930 --> 00:01:15.580 align:middle line:90% just before she died. 00:01:15.580 --> 00:01:21.310 align:middle line:84% And in it, she talks about the strange relevance of Homer 00:01:21.310 --> 00:01:24.670 align:middle line:84% to Europe at the time of the beginning of the Second World 00:01:24.670 --> 00:01:27.280 align:middle line:84% War, after the Spanish Civil War. 00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:29.140 align:middle line:84% And she talks about how in Homer, she 00:01:29.140 --> 00:01:32.140 align:middle line:90% hears a tone of bitterness. 00:01:32.140 --> 00:01:34.768 align:middle line:90% And it's a very brilliant essay. 00:01:34.768 --> 00:01:36.310 align:middle line:84% It hasn't been, as far as I can tell, 00:01:36.310 --> 00:01:37.990 align:middle line:84% collected in any of her books of essays. 00:01:37.990 --> 00:01:41.290 align:middle line:84% It's also, I think, totally wrong about the tone of Homer. 00:01:41.290 --> 00:01:44.770 align:middle line:84% I'd like to address that, but also possibly-- 00:01:44.770 --> 00:01:47.860 align:middle line:84% maybe in the questions, we can address this issue of otherness 00:01:47.860 --> 00:01:53.150 align:middle line:84% and the notion possibly of Homer's relevance 00:01:53.150 --> 00:01:55.970 align:middle line:84% to us in our current historical, as it were, 00:01:55.970 --> 00:02:01.670 align:middle line:84% situation, especially of the Iliad, a poem, as you know, 00:02:01.670 --> 00:02:07.100 align:middle line:84% about the invasion of another country. 00:02:07.100 --> 00:02:10.680 align:middle line:84% Very different, of course, from the modern country. 00:02:10.680 --> 00:02:13.220 align:middle line:84% I'd like to begin with a poem which grows directly out 00:02:13.220 --> 00:02:16.490 align:middle line:84% of the Iliad, a poem which was written at the same time 00:02:16.490 --> 00:02:17.520 align:middle line:90% as Simone Weil's-- 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:18.770 align:middle line:90% excuse me while I adjust this. 00:02:18.770 --> 00:02:25.410 align:middle line:84% There-- as Simone Weil's essay, and a poem which 00:02:25.410 --> 00:02:29.370 align:middle line:84% has captured my imagination quite strongly 00:02:29.370 --> 00:02:31.540 align:middle line:90% in the last two to three years. 00:02:31.540 --> 00:02:36.180 align:middle line:84% It's a poem called "The Shield of Achilles" by W. H. Auden. 00:02:36.180 --> 00:02:40.830 align:middle line:84% You'll remember that Achilles, the man who 00:02:40.830 --> 00:02:44.310 align:middle line:84% killed Hector and, really, whose activities led 00:02:44.310 --> 00:02:47.760 align:middle line:84% to the downfall of Troy, was half divine. 00:02:47.760 --> 00:02:51.150 align:middle line:84% His mother was a nymph called Thetis, 00:02:51.150 --> 00:02:54.750 align:middle line:84% and Thetis was owed great debts by Hephaestus-- 00:02:54.750 --> 00:02:59.970 align:middle line:84% Vulcan-- who was the great maker of armor. 00:02:59.970 --> 00:03:03.420 align:middle line:84% Also the great architect, if you like, of Olympus. 00:03:03.420 --> 00:03:07.350 align:middle line:84% She went to Hephaestus, and he prepared in the Iliad 00:03:07.350 --> 00:03:09.990 align:middle line:84% the most beautiful armor ever for Achilles. 00:03:09.990 --> 00:03:13.290 align:middle line:84% It was an armor which showed peace. 00:03:13.290 --> 00:03:14.820 align:middle line:90% It showed plenty. 00:03:14.820 --> 00:03:15.915 align:middle line:90% It showed cities. 00:03:15.915 --> 00:03:17.760 align:middle line:90% It showed the countryside. 00:03:17.760 --> 00:03:21.030 align:middle line:84% And it showed a kind of cosmic harmony. 00:03:21.030 --> 00:03:29.010 align:middle line:84% And what Auden shows is Thetis going to Vulcan, asking 00:03:29.010 --> 00:03:34.910 align:middle line:84% him to make a shield for her son, and what he makes 00:03:34.910 --> 00:03:36.230 align:middle line:90% is something very different. 00:03:36.230 --> 00:03:38.120 align:middle line:84% What he makes is something that is-- 00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:41.360 align:middle line:84% her expectation is that he's going to do the kind of thing 00:03:41.360 --> 00:03:44.270 align:middle line:84% that he did in the Iliad, but he does something quite different. 00:03:44.270 --> 00:03:46.430 align:middle line:84% And the something he does relates very closely 00:03:46.430 --> 00:03:49.040 align:middle line:84% to the Spanish Civil War, and to Auden's own experiences 00:03:49.040 --> 00:03:51.020 align:middle line:90% in the Spanish Civil War. 00:03:51.020 --> 00:03:53.552 align:middle line:84% Now, as you probably know, Keats got a lot of his imagery 00:03:53.552 --> 00:03:55.010 align:middle line:84% for the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" from 00:03:55.010 --> 00:04:01.430 align:middle line:84% the original Homeric "Shield of Achilles." 00:04:01.430 --> 00:04:02.570 align:middle line:90% This is very different. 00:04:02.570 --> 00:04:04.940 align:middle line:84% What is, I think, beautiful about the Auden poem 00:04:04.940 --> 00:04:07.370 align:middle line:84% is, it does rather what Simone Weil does. 00:04:07.370 --> 00:04:09.050 align:middle line:90% It's in two forms. 00:04:09.050 --> 00:04:11.330 align:middle line:84% There's an old-fashioned lyric form, 00:04:11.330 --> 00:04:14.690 align:middle line:84% and then there is another form, and it's interspersed. 00:04:14.690 --> 00:04:17.779 align:middle line:84% So you get this short, beautiful, lyrical voice 00:04:17.779 --> 00:04:22.720 align:middle line:84% of Thetis, and you get this other voice, 00:04:22.720 --> 00:04:25.090 align:middle line:84% which is much more matter-of-fact and objective. 00:04:25.090 --> 00:04:27.790 align:middle line:84% "She looked over his shoulder for vines and olive 00:04:27.790 --> 00:04:30.850 align:middle line:84% trees, marble, well-governed cities, and ships 00:04:30.850 --> 00:04:33.070 align:middle line:90% upon untamed seas. 00:04:33.070 --> 00:04:35.800 align:middle line:84% But there on the shining metal, his hands 00:04:35.800 --> 00:04:39.670 align:middle line:84% had put instead an artificial wilderness and a sky 00:04:39.670 --> 00:04:40.660 align:middle line:90% like lead." 00:04:40.660 --> 00:04:43.660 align:middle line:84% Then there's a change of key in the verse form. 00:04:43.660 --> 00:04:47.860 align:middle line:84% "A plain without a feature, bare and brown, no blade of grass, 00:04:47.860 --> 00:04:50.830 align:middle line:84% no sign of neighborhood, nothing to eat, 00:04:50.830 --> 00:04:52.510 align:middle line:90% and nowhere to sit down. 00:04:52.510 --> 00:04:55.480 align:middle line:84% Yet congregated on its blankness stood 00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:57.820 align:middle line:90% an unintelligible multitude-- 00:04:57.820 --> 00:05:02.050 align:middle line:84% a million eyes, a million boots in line, without expression, 00:05:02.050 --> 00:05:04.210 align:middle line:90% waiting for a sign. 00:05:04.210 --> 00:05:06.520 align:middle line:84% Out of the air, a voice without a face 00:05:06.520 --> 00:05:11.770 align:middle line:84% proved by statistics that some cause was just in tones as dry 00:05:11.770 --> 00:05:13.690 align:middle line:90% and level as the place. 00:05:13.690 --> 00:05:16.990 align:middle line:84% No one was cheered, and nothing was discussed. 00:05:16.990 --> 00:05:19.570 align:middle line:84% Column by column, in a cloud of dust 00:05:19.570 --> 00:05:24.250 align:middle line:84% they marched away, enduring a belief whose logic brought them 00:05:24.250 --> 00:05:26.800 align:middle line:90% somewhere else to grief." 00:05:26.800 --> 00:05:28.780 align:middle line:90% Then back to the lyric voice. 00:05:28.780 --> 00:05:31.660 align:middle line:84% "She looked over his shoulder for ritual pieties, 00:05:31.660 --> 00:05:36.050 align:middle line:84% white flower-garlanded heifers, libation and sacrifice. 00:05:36.050 --> 00:05:39.310 align:middle line:84% But there on the shining metal, where the altar should 00:05:39.310 --> 00:05:43.030 align:middle line:84% have been, she saw by his flickering forgelight 00:05:43.030 --> 00:05:46.270 align:middle line:90% quite another scene." 00:05:46.270 --> 00:05:47.440 align:middle line:90% Change of key. 00:05:47.440 --> 00:05:50.650 align:middle line:84% "Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot, 00:05:50.650 --> 00:05:54.310 align:middle line:84% where border officials lounged, one cracked a joke, 00:05:54.310 --> 00:05:57.430 align:middle line:84% and sentries sweated, for the day was hot. 00:05:57.430 --> 00:06:01.120 align:middle line:84% A crowd of ordinary, decent folk watched from without, 00:06:01.120 --> 00:06:04.900 align:middle line:84% and neither moved nor spoke as three pale figures were 00:06:04.900 --> 00:06:07.600 align:middle line:84% led forth and bound to three posts driven 00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:09.520 align:middle line:90% upright in the ground. 00:06:09.520 --> 00:06:11.890 align:middle line:84% The mass and majesty of this world, 00:06:11.890 --> 00:06:15.580 align:middle line:84% all that carries weight and always weighs the same, 00:06:15.580 --> 00:06:17.980 align:middle line:90% lay in the hands of others. 00:06:17.980 --> 00:06:21.070 align:middle line:84% They were small, and could not hope for help, 00:06:21.070 --> 00:06:22.840 align:middle line:90% and no help came. 00:06:22.840 --> 00:06:27.340 align:middle line:84% But what their foes like to do was done. 00:06:27.340 --> 00:06:31.390 align:middle line:84% Their shame was all the worst could wish. 00:06:31.390 --> 00:06:35.170 align:middle line:84% They lost their pride, and died as men before their bodies 00:06:35.170 --> 00:06:36.400 align:middle line:90% died." 00:06:36.400 --> 00:06:37.700 align:middle line:90% Change of key again. 00:06:37.700 --> 00:06:40.600 align:middle line:84% "She looked over his shoulder for athletes at their games, 00:06:40.600 --> 00:06:43.840 align:middle line:84% men and women in a dance moving their sweet limbs, 00:06:43.840 --> 00:06:46.250 align:middle line:90% quick, quick to music. 00:06:46.250 --> 00:06:49.180 align:middle line:84% But there on the shining shield, his hands 00:06:49.180 --> 00:06:54.120 align:middle line:84% had set no dancing floor but a weed-choked field. 00:06:54.120 --> 00:06:57.360 align:middle line:84% A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, 00:06:57.360 --> 00:06:59.850 align:middle line:90% loitered about that vacancy. 00:06:59.850 --> 00:07:03.240 align:middle line:84% A bird flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone. 00:07:03.240 --> 00:07:10.440 align:middle line:84% The girls are raped, the two boys knife a third, 00:07:10.440 --> 00:07:13.860 align:middle line:84% were axioms to him who'd never heard of any world where 00:07:13.860 --> 00:07:19.480 align:middle line:84% promises were kept, or one could weep because another wept. 00:07:19.480 --> 00:07:21.520 align:middle line:84% The thin-lipped armorer--" that's Hephaestus. 00:07:21.520 --> 00:07:25.390 align:middle line:84% "The thin lipped armorer, Hephaestus, hobbled away. 00:07:25.390 --> 00:07:27.790 align:middle line:84% Thetis of the shining breasts cried out 00:07:27.790 --> 00:07:30.430 align:middle line:84% in dismay at what the god had wrought 00:07:30.430 --> 00:07:34.450 align:middle line:84% to please her son, the strong, iron-hearted, man-slaying 00:07:34.450 --> 00:07:37.947 align:middle line:84% Achilles, who would not live long." 00:07:37.947 --> 00:07:38.780 align:middle line:90% So that's the point. 00:07:38.780 --> 00:07:43.320 align:middle line:84% It's the difference between expectation and effect. 00:07:43.320 --> 00:07:45.320 align:middle line:84% And what I think is powerful about that poem 00:07:45.320 --> 00:07:47.970 align:middle line:84% is the theme of this lecture, really. 00:07:47.970 --> 00:07:52.730 align:middle line:84% It is this notion of the disparity between expectation 00:07:52.730 --> 00:07:55.640 align:middle line:84% and reality, and the way that the poet actually, in some way 00:07:55.640 --> 00:08:00.800 align:middle line:84% or other gives us, as much as the poet can, the reality. 00:08:00.800 --> 00:08:04.165 align:middle line:84% But the Iliad is a very odd poem in lots of ways. 00:08:04.165 --> 00:08:05.540 align:middle line:84% And when we speak of the poet, we 00:08:05.540 --> 00:08:09.380 align:middle line:84% speak of the poet with lots of qualifications. 00:08:09.380 --> 00:08:10.940 align:middle line:84% And just before I came to the States, 00:08:10.940 --> 00:08:13.400 align:middle line:90% I went to the British Museum. 00:08:13.400 --> 00:08:15.122 align:middle line:90% And when I used to be-- 00:08:15.122 --> 00:08:16.580 align:middle line:84% when I was writing this book, which 00:08:16.580 --> 00:08:17.840 align:middle line:84% took about four or five years, I used 00:08:17.840 --> 00:08:18.890 align:middle line:84% to go to the British Museum and always 00:08:18.890 --> 00:08:19.932 align:middle line:90% go to the Greek sections. 00:08:19.932 --> 00:08:22.730 align:middle line:84% This time, I decided I would not go to the Greek section. 00:08:22.730 --> 00:08:24.503 align:middle line:84% As soon as I got to the British Museum, 00:08:24.503 --> 00:08:25.670 align:middle line:90% I went to the Greek section. 00:08:25.670 --> 00:08:27.710 align:middle line:90% And I saw a vase-- 00:08:27.710 --> 00:08:30.620 align:middle line:84% I love the Greek vases, the brown and black vases. 00:08:30.620 --> 00:08:33.980 align:middle line:84% And I saw a vase I had not seen during the writing of the book. 00:08:33.980 --> 00:08:36.679 align:middle line:84% It was from the Campana collection, 00:08:36.679 --> 00:08:39.458 align:middle line:84% and it showed the death of Priam. 00:08:39.458 --> 00:08:41.000 align:middle line:84% Now, you probably all know that Priam 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:43.669 align:middle line:90% was the king of the Trojans. 00:08:43.669 --> 00:08:44.990 align:middle line:90% He was the father of Hector. 00:08:44.990 --> 00:08:49.400 align:middle line:84% He was the father of Paris and a bunch of other princes. 00:08:49.400 --> 00:08:53.540 align:middle line:84% And he was a symbol of a stable society. 00:08:53.540 --> 00:08:54.530 align:middle line:90% He was venerable. 00:08:54.530 --> 00:08:55.560 align:middle line:90% He was old. 00:08:55.560 --> 00:08:59.540 align:middle line:84% He had ruled over a society of beautiful buildings, 00:08:59.540 --> 00:09:06.500 align:middle line:84% wide streets, and a wonderful sort of horse-raising society. 00:09:06.500 --> 00:09:11.240 align:middle line:84% On this particular vase, he's being killed. 00:09:11.240 --> 00:09:14.720 align:middle line:84% The Greeks have overrun the city of Troy, and he's being killed. 00:09:14.720 --> 00:09:18.440 align:middle line:84% He's being killed, in fact, on the altar of Zeus, 00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:20.660 align:middle line:84% the father of the gods and the father of Troy. 00:09:20.660 --> 00:09:22.610 align:middle line:84% So the father of Troy is being bent 00:09:22.610 --> 00:09:26.060 align:middle line:84% back over the altar of Zeus, and he's being bludgeoned to death. 00:09:26.060 --> 00:09:28.700 align:middle line:84% The man who's bludgeoning him to death 00:09:28.700 --> 00:09:31.670 align:middle line:84% is the son of Achilles, Neoptolemus, who's 00:09:31.670 --> 00:09:33.950 align:middle line:84% been brought to Troy after his father has 00:09:33.950 --> 00:09:35.480 align:middle line:90% been killed by Paris. 00:09:35.480 --> 00:09:38.510 align:middle line:84% And he has come in with the invading Greek forces, 00:09:38.510 --> 00:09:41.900 align:middle line:84% and he's there killing Priam, who 00:09:41.900 --> 00:09:45.140 align:middle line:84% was the father of the man who killed his father. 00:09:45.140 --> 00:09:49.107 align:middle line:84% And what is he using to bludgeon this old man to death with? 00:09:49.107 --> 00:09:50.690 align:middle line:84% If you look closely, you see that he's 00:09:50.690 --> 00:09:52.580 align:middle line:90% holding the corpse of a child. 00:09:52.580 --> 00:09:56.920 align:middle line:84% He's bludgeoning Priam to death with the body 00:09:56.920 --> 00:09:59.440 align:middle line:90% of his grandson, Hector's son-- 00:09:59.440 --> 00:10:03.460 align:middle line:84% Hector, who had, of course, been killed by Achilles' father. 00:10:03.460 --> 00:10:04.120 align:middle line:90% Astyanax. 00:10:04.120 --> 00:10:08.020 align:middle line:84% So you have this really terrifying scene. 00:10:08.020 --> 00:10:08.920 align:middle line:90% Unsentimental. 00:10:08.920 --> 00:10:09.700 align:middle line:90% Unsentimentalized. 00:10:09.700 --> 00:10:16.690 align:middle line:84% It's obviously one of the legends of the Trojan War. 00:10:16.690 --> 00:10:19.990 align:middle line:84% He's beating Priam to death with the body of his infant 00:10:19.990 --> 00:10:22.150 align:middle line:90% grandson. 00:10:22.150 --> 00:10:27.935 align:middle line:84% And looking on is Andromache, Hector's widow and the child's 00:10:27.935 --> 00:10:29.560 align:middle line:84% mother, with her arms raised like that. 00:10:29.560 --> 00:10:32.800 align:middle line:84% The whole bowl is in black and brown, 00:10:32.800 --> 00:10:40.200 align:middle line:84% except for the hair the beard and the hair of Priam, and-- 00:10:40.200 --> 00:10:42.510 align:middle line:90% I hear a child. 00:10:42.510 --> 00:10:45.330 align:middle line:84% And the flesh of Andromache, who's-- 00:10:45.330 --> 00:10:47.280 align:middle line:84% she's got a white chest and a white face. 00:10:47.280 --> 00:10:52.710 align:middle line:84% It's a very, very powerful image, and a very unsettling 00:10:52.710 --> 00:10:53.430 align:middle line:90% one. 00:10:53.430 --> 00:10:58.560 align:middle line:84% And this is in a sense the essence, to me, 00:10:58.560 --> 00:11:01.470 align:middle line:84% of the kind of truths that Homer tells, and the kind of truths 00:11:01.470 --> 00:11:05.280 align:middle line:84% that those who learn from Homer in the Greek period tell-- 00:11:05.280 --> 00:11:09.720 align:middle line:84% unsentimental, unvarnished, and alarming in lots of ways. 00:11:09.720 --> 00:11:15.930 align:middle line:84% This vase is dated from 540 BC, and it's from Athens. 00:11:15.930 --> 00:11:18.060 align:middle line:84% I'd like to look at this book, into a little part 00:11:18.060 --> 00:11:19.685 align:middle line:84% of the introduction called "Otherness," 00:11:19.685 --> 00:11:22.980 align:middle line:84% because it's in this part where I discuss the thing that really 00:11:22.980 --> 00:11:25.290 align:middle line:84% fascinated me most in writing the book, which 00:11:25.290 --> 00:11:28.500 align:middle line:84% was this distance from our culture, from our sensibility, 00:11:28.500 --> 00:11:32.390 align:middle line:90% of the early Greek sensibility. 00:11:32.390 --> 00:11:35.810 align:middle line:84% "'Why did the whole Greek world exalt over the combat scenes 00:11:35.810 --> 00:11:38.060 align:middle line:90% in the Iliad,' asks Nietzsche?" 00:11:38.060 --> 00:11:41.030 align:middle line:84% Friedrich Nietzsche. "'We modern readers do not even begin 00:11:41.030 --> 00:11:44.480 align:middle line:84% to understand them in a sufficiently Greek manner,' he 00:11:44.480 --> 00:11:45.470 align:middle line:90% says. 00:11:45.470 --> 00:11:49.370 align:middle line:84% If we understood them in Greek, we should shudder.'" Title 00:11:49.370 --> 00:11:50.540 align:middle line:90% of the lecture. 00:11:50.540 --> 00:11:52.880 align:middle line:84% Nietzsche does not mean in the Greek language 00:11:52.880 --> 00:11:55.490 align:middle line:84% but, I think, in the Greek spirit. 00:11:55.490 --> 00:11:59.210 align:middle line:90% Whoever reads the Iliad-- 00:11:59.210 --> 00:12:00.740 align:middle line:84% or many of the other earlier poets, 00:12:00.740 --> 00:12:04.925 align:middle line:84% like Hesiod in the Theogony, or Archilochus or Hipponax-- 00:12:04.925 --> 00:12:09.430 align:middle line:84% has to come to terms with this profound otherness 00:12:09.430 --> 00:12:11.640 align:middle line:84% of a tradition that's at the root of our tradition, 00:12:11.640 --> 00:12:13.090 align:middle line:84% but that our tradition in a sense 00:12:13.090 --> 00:12:15.720 align:middle line:84% has lost this directness of content. 00:12:15.720 --> 00:12:18.600 align:middle line:84% 'When one speaks of humanity,' Nietzsche says, 00:12:18.600 --> 00:12:21.120 align:middle line:84% 'the idea is fundamental that this is something which 00:12:21.120 --> 00:12:23.940 align:middle line:84% separates and distinguishes man from nature. 00:12:23.940 --> 00:12:27.270 align:middle line:84% In reality, however, there is no such separation. 00:12:27.270 --> 00:12:30.930 align:middle line:84% Thus the Greeks, the most humane men of ancient times, 00:12:30.930 --> 00:12:36.120 align:middle line:84% have a trait of cruelty, a tigerish lust to annihilate, 00:12:36.120 --> 00:12:39.540 align:middle line:84% a trait that is also very distinct in that grotesquely 00:12:39.540 --> 00:12:42.540 align:middle line:84% enlarged mirror image of the Hellenes in Alexander 00:12:42.540 --> 00:12:45.960 align:middle line:84% the Great, but that really must strike fear into our hearts 00:12:45.960 --> 00:12:49.020 align:middle line:84% throughout their whole history and mythology if we approach 00:12:49.020 --> 00:12:52.920 align:middle line:84% them with a flabby concept of modern humanity.'" Then he 00:12:52.920 --> 00:12:55.380 align:middle line:84% tells us this really dreadful story about Alexander 00:12:55.380 --> 00:12:58.377 align:middle line:84% the Great, who fancied himself as a kind of Greek hero, 00:12:58.377 --> 00:13:00.210 align:middle line:84% even though, of course, he was a Macedonian. 00:13:00.210 --> 00:13:02.550 align:middle line:84% He was spreading Hellenistic culture 00:13:02.550 --> 00:13:04.170 align:middle line:90% throughout the Mediterranean. 00:13:04.170 --> 00:13:08.170 align:middle line:84% "'When Alexander has the feet of Batis, 00:13:08.170 --> 00:13:12.730 align:middle line:84% the brave defender of Gaza, pierced and ties him alive 00:13:12.730 --> 00:13:16.450 align:middle line:84% to his carriage to drag him about while his soldiers mock, 00:13:16.450 --> 00:13:20.050 align:middle line:84% that is a revolting caricature of Achilles.' 00:13:20.050 --> 00:13:23.590 align:middle line:84% Alexander re-enacts with deliberation-- and conceit, 00:13:23.590 --> 00:13:24.460 align:middle line:90% if you like-- 00:13:24.460 --> 00:13:28.270 align:middle line:84% what Achilles, after 10 years of deprivation and struggle 00:13:28.270 --> 00:13:32.290 align:middle line:84% in Troy, had done instinctively and angrily 00:13:32.290 --> 00:13:35.950 align:middle line:84% in revenge for the death of his own dear friend Patroclus. 00:13:35.950 --> 00:13:40.300 align:middle line:84% And in the end, Alexander did not hand Batis' body back 00:13:40.300 --> 00:13:41.440 align:middle line:90% to Gaza's Priam. 00:13:41.440 --> 00:13:43.990 align:middle line:84% He didn't give the body back, but he left it 00:13:43.990 --> 00:13:46.090 align:middle line:90% as carrion for the dogs to eat. 00:13:46.090 --> 00:13:48.760 align:middle line:84% Alexander's crude literary gesture is out of key 00:13:48.760 --> 00:13:51.585 align:middle line:84% with Homer's compelling impartiality." 00:13:51.585 --> 00:13:52.960 align:middle line:84% And I think the word impartiality 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:55.630 align:middle line:84% is the one that I'd like us all to take away with us tonight 00:13:55.630 --> 00:13:56.770 align:middle line:90% after this talk. 00:13:56.770 --> 00:14:00.070 align:middle line:84% "It's an impartiality determined by the way in which the poems 00:14:00.070 --> 00:14:02.140 align:middle line:90% were composed and transmitted. 00:14:02.140 --> 00:14:05.200 align:middle line:84% Alexander is a theorist, if you like, a theoretical reader-- 00:14:05.200 --> 00:14:09.700 align:middle line:84% an idealist trying to make a general case out of Achilles' 00:14:09.700 --> 00:14:11.600 align:middle line:90% very particular experience. 00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:14.230 align:middle line:84% He understands the Iliad is, in some way, exemplary, 00:14:14.230 --> 00:14:16.510 align:middle line:84% teaching us how to act, whereas in fact, it's 00:14:16.510 --> 00:14:20.290 align:middle line:84% how to act under specific circumstances. 00:14:20.290 --> 00:14:22.180 align:middle line:84% 'Before we begin seriously reading Greek 00:14:22.180 --> 00:14:25.810 align:middle line:84% poetry,' Nietzsche says, 'we need to exercise and strengthen 00:14:25.810 --> 00:14:27.440 align:middle line:90% our concept of humanity. 00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:31.040 align:middle line:84% We have to be prepared to recognize a cultural difference 00:14:31.040 --> 00:14:35.440 align:middle line:84% so basic that we cannot assimilate it to our own ends.' 00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:38.200 align:middle line:84% We seek not distance-- objective detachment-- 00:14:38.200 --> 00:14:40.660 align:middle line:84% but what he calls engagement that leads 00:14:40.660 --> 00:14:43.480 align:middle line:84% to illumination, a self-effacement that 00:14:43.480 --> 00:14:44.620 align:middle line:90% yields understanding. 00:14:44.620 --> 00:14:49.190 align:middle line:84% We have to, as it were, put aside our own prejudices, 00:14:49.190 --> 00:14:50.652 align:middle line:90% our own expectations. 00:14:50.652 --> 00:14:52.360 align:middle line:84% And Nietzsche is right, but I don't think 00:14:52.360 --> 00:14:54.160 align:middle line:84% he takes into account sufficiently 00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:56.680 align:middle line:84% the formal challenge of Greek poetry-- 00:14:56.680 --> 00:15:01.040 align:middle line:84% its origins, its prosody, and indeed its oral nature, 00:15:01.040 --> 00:15:03.250 align:middle line:84% especially in the case of Homer, obviously. 00:15:03.250 --> 00:15:07.240 align:middle line:84% And Auden, too, insists on this distance between us 00:15:07.240 --> 00:15:10.330 align:middle line:84% and the Homeric, but again, without focusing 00:15:10.330 --> 00:15:18.210 align:middle line:84% on formal issues beyond the oddness of the metaphor. 00:15:18.210 --> 00:15:20.820 align:middle line:84% Archaic and classical Greek poetry 00:15:20.820 --> 00:15:23.640 align:middle line:90% concentrate on male experience. 00:15:23.640 --> 00:15:25.500 align:middle line:84% One talks about the Odyssey as having 00:15:25.500 --> 00:15:27.958 align:middle line:84% a lot of female experience, and it has very little, really, 00:15:27.958 --> 00:15:33.410 align:middle line:84% in relation to the experience of Telemachus and Odysseus. 00:15:33.410 --> 00:15:36.930 align:middle line:84% There is one big exception, and that's, of course, Sappho, 00:15:36.930 --> 00:15:38.390 align:middle line:90% but she is an exception. 00:15:38.390 --> 00:15:41.600 align:middle line:84% And Homer's female figures, apart from the goddesses 00:15:41.600 --> 00:15:44.930 align:middle line:84% and sorceresses, are compelling and credible, 00:15:44.930 --> 00:15:48.440 align:middle line:84% but move in very restrictive space restricted spaces." 00:15:48.440 --> 00:15:50.660 align:middle line:84% So it's only the goddesses who are truly, 00:15:50.660 --> 00:15:54.590 align:middle line:84% in a sense, feminine in a way that we might identify with. 00:15:54.590 --> 00:15:57.500 align:middle line:90% 00:15:57.500 --> 00:16:00.490 align:middle line:84% And I think that is one of the determining features 00:16:00.490 --> 00:16:04.750 align:middle line:90% of the Homeric. 00:16:04.750 --> 00:16:08.080 align:middle line:84% Nietzsche insists that at the heart of all Greek-- 00:16:08.080 --> 00:16:11.410 align:middle line:84% early Greek poetry, especially the Homeric, 00:16:11.410 --> 00:16:15.610 align:middle line:84% and the pre-classical is the Agon, the trial 00:16:15.610 --> 00:16:18.730 align:middle line:90% or contest of the individual. 00:16:18.730 --> 00:16:23.890 align:middle line:84% Battle besting revenge, keeping face, retaining divine support, 00:16:23.890 --> 00:16:27.520 align:middle line:84% they're all compelling male motives. 00:16:27.520 --> 00:16:31.450 align:middle line:84% And Nietzsche saw the city-state and paradoxically I 00:16:31.450 --> 00:16:33.670 align:middle line:84% guess the emergence of Athenian democracy, 00:16:33.670 --> 00:16:39.280 align:middle line:84% is in some way hostile to this kind of culture 00:16:39.280 --> 00:16:40.930 align:middle line:90% and morally destructive of it. 00:16:40.930 --> 00:16:46.060 align:middle line:84% He's-- somehow democracy was effeminating if you like. 00:16:46.060 --> 00:16:49.690 align:middle line:84% Delphi was the ultimate museum of Greek hatred for Greeks, 00:16:49.690 --> 00:16:53.020 align:middle line:84% of mutually inflicted suffering immortalized 00:16:53.020 --> 00:16:56.830 align:middle line:84% in the loftiest works of art, again to quote Nietzsche. 00:16:56.830 --> 00:16:59.245 align:middle line:84% Other critics are much less comfortable than Nietzsche 00:16:59.245 --> 00:17:02.380 align:middle line:90% was with this fact. 00:17:02.380 --> 00:17:06.730 align:middle line:84% The historical horrors attendant on heroizing the male rage 00:17:06.730 --> 00:17:08.450 align:middle line:90% as Eleanor Wilner calls it. 00:17:08.450 --> 00:17:10.569 align:middle line:84% And Donald Davie talks about this, too, 00:17:10.569 --> 00:17:13.750 align:middle line:84% when he's writing of The Iliad and the psalms of David. 00:17:13.750 --> 00:17:16.930 align:middle line:84% The darker the deed, the brighter the fiction 00:17:16.930 --> 00:17:19.599 align:middle line:84% it has generated he says, the worst atrocities 00:17:19.599 --> 00:17:22.599 align:middle line:84% requiring nothing less than divine sanction. 00:17:22.599 --> 00:17:24.460 align:middle line:84% And it's in this spirit that Alexander 00:17:24.460 --> 00:17:26.380 align:middle line:84% marks his conquest of Gaza and ties 00:17:26.380 --> 00:17:29.320 align:middle line:90% Batis' ankles to his chariot. 00:17:29.320 --> 00:17:32.140 align:middle line:84% The difference, I think, between the Old Testament 00:17:32.140 --> 00:17:34.390 align:middle line:84% and the Greek poems is that in the Old Testament, 00:17:34.390 --> 00:17:36.400 align:middle line:90% the Jews are the chosen people. 00:17:36.400 --> 00:17:39.220 align:middle line:84% There is a strong sense in which if the Jews are punished, 00:17:39.220 --> 00:17:42.100 align:middle line:84% they're punished for bad conduct in relation to their God 00:17:42.100 --> 00:17:44.265 align:middle line:84% whereas in the Homeric texts, there's 00:17:44.265 --> 00:17:46.390 align:middle line:84% a great sympathy, a really profound sympathy, which 00:17:46.390 --> 00:17:49.030 align:middle line:84% we'll come to in just a moment for, the Trojans-- 00:17:49.030 --> 00:17:50.530 align:middle line:90% for the Trojan plight. 00:17:50.530 --> 00:17:53.125 align:middle line:84% And it is this I think that makes 00:17:53.125 --> 00:17:58.850 align:middle line:84% the work such an amazing, amazing work to read. 00:17:58.850 --> 00:18:02.690 align:middle line:84% So over the psalms of David, we have the vindictive figure 00:18:02.690 --> 00:18:07.190 align:middle line:84% of Jehovah; over the Homeric poems 00:18:07.190 --> 00:18:08.780 align:middle line:90% we have a multitude of gods. 00:18:08.780 --> 00:18:10.310 align:middle line:84% Well, not a multitude, a population 00:18:10.310 --> 00:18:17.370 align:middle line:84% of gods each backing, sponsoring his or her own heroes 00:18:17.370 --> 00:18:20.280 align:middle line:84% and each of them in a sense supporting 00:18:20.280 --> 00:18:21.345 align:middle line:90% one cause or another. 00:18:21.345 --> 00:18:28.960 align:middle line:90% 00:18:28.960 --> 00:18:31.870 align:middle line:84% The gods are not as real perhaps to Homer 00:18:31.870 --> 00:18:34.810 align:middle line:84% as they were to those poets who came before him as they 00:18:34.810 --> 00:18:39.400 align:middle line:84% were perhaps to Orpheus, assuming that he ever existed. 00:18:39.400 --> 00:18:43.790 align:middle line:84% The gods have become humanized in various ways. 00:18:43.790 --> 00:18:47.980 align:middle line:84% There's a very interesting author called Roberto Calasso 00:18:47.980 --> 00:18:50.470 align:middle line:84% who writes about this, and he speaks 00:18:50.470 --> 00:18:54.990 align:middle line:84% about the way in which in Homer the gods don't 00:18:54.990 --> 00:18:57.330 align:middle line:84% appear to everyone in all their fullness. 00:18:57.330 --> 00:19:02.130 align:middle line:84% They appear in some way diminished, in some way 00:19:02.130 --> 00:19:04.140 align:middle line:90% lessened, if you like. 00:19:04.140 --> 00:19:05.880 align:middle line:84% They're always taking on other forms. 00:19:05.880 --> 00:19:08.550 align:middle line:90% They never appear as themselves. 00:19:08.550 --> 00:19:11.825 align:middle line:84% And this moving back from the real presence, 00:19:11.825 --> 00:19:13.200 align:middle line:84% which George Steiner talks about, 00:19:13.200 --> 00:19:15.930 align:middle line:84% is one of the declines in the sense 00:19:15.930 --> 00:19:18.630 align:middle line:84% that the Homeric poems are built upon. 00:19:18.630 --> 00:19:22.800 align:middle line:84% The real in Homer is always the material reality. 00:19:22.800 --> 00:19:25.260 align:middle line:84% Language and the things that language names 00:19:25.260 --> 00:19:28.020 align:middle line:90% exist in a rare harmony. 00:19:28.020 --> 00:19:29.880 align:middle line:84% As classical poetry develops, the gods 00:19:29.880 --> 00:19:35.490 align:middle line:84% continue to recede those that we meet in Apollonius Rhodius are 00:19:35.490 --> 00:19:37.282 align:middle line:84% feeble and innervated beside those 00:19:37.282 --> 00:19:38.490 align:middle line:90% in The Iliad and The Odyssey. 00:19:38.490 --> 00:19:40.740 align:middle line:84% Magic has taken over from divine power. 00:19:40.740 --> 00:19:42.810 align:middle line:84% And when it reaches the Alexandria, 00:19:42.810 --> 00:19:46.770 align:middle line:84% poetry comes out of the sun and moves into the library. 00:19:46.770 --> 00:19:49.890 align:middle line:84% Now with The Iliad, there still are points of real vigor, 00:19:49.890 --> 00:19:51.990 align:middle line:90% and I want to-- 00:19:51.990 --> 00:19:54.450 align:middle line:84% extremely powerful vigor-- and I want to actually look 00:19:54.450 --> 00:20:02.100 align:middle line:84% just a couple of these to talk to focus on how Homer makes 00:20:02.100 --> 00:20:04.320 align:middle line:84% us or should make us in a sense shudder, 00:20:04.320 --> 00:20:07.680 align:middle line:84% and there's a letter that Goethe wrote to Schiller which 00:20:07.680 --> 00:20:12.750 align:middle line:84% says from Homer, I every day learn more clearly 00:20:12.750 --> 00:20:16.650 align:middle line:84% that in our life here above ground, we have, 00:20:16.650 --> 00:20:20.630 align:middle line:84% properly speaking, to enact hell. 00:20:20.630 --> 00:20:23.540 align:middle line:84% So, again, Goethe was responding to this element 00:20:23.540 --> 00:20:25.550 align:middle line:90% that Nietzsche identified. 00:20:25.550 --> 00:20:30.170 align:middle line:84% In book eight of The Odyssey, the blind Bard, the blind poet 00:20:30.170 --> 00:20:33.710 align:middle line:84% Demodocus is entertaining King Alcinous 00:20:33.710 --> 00:20:35.180 align:middle line:90% and his anonymous guest. 00:20:35.180 --> 00:20:36.290 align:middle line:90% At this point, we-- 00:20:36.290 --> 00:20:39.920 align:middle line:84% Alcinous doesn't know that his guest is in fact Odysseus. 00:20:39.920 --> 00:20:42.290 align:middle line:90% And-- but we know he's Odysseus. 00:20:42.290 --> 00:20:46.040 align:middle line:84% And Demodocus the poet, who's a blind poet 00:20:46.040 --> 00:20:49.070 align:middle line:84% as Homer was supposed to be blind, 00:20:49.070 --> 00:20:53.580 align:middle line:84% entertains the court with songs about the deeds of the Greeks 00:20:53.580 --> 00:20:55.020 align:middle line:90% during the Trojan War. 00:20:55.020 --> 00:20:57.510 align:middle line:84% In particular, he sings of the wooden horse. 00:20:57.510 --> 00:20:59.760 align:middle line:84% The wooden horse, of course, doesn't come in The Iliad 00:20:59.760 --> 00:21:02.250 align:middle line:84% but in The Odyssey as a kind of recollection 00:21:02.250 --> 00:21:04.890 align:middle line:90% sung about by this blind poet. 00:21:04.890 --> 00:21:09.960 align:middle line:84% It's interesting that the poets that Homer creates are the-- 00:21:09.960 --> 00:21:11.515 align:middle line:90% give us the image of Homer. 00:21:11.515 --> 00:21:13.890 align:middle line:84% I think one of the main reasons we think that Homer might 00:21:13.890 --> 00:21:18.090 align:middle line:84% be blind is that Demodocus is blind or might have been blind. 00:21:18.090 --> 00:21:22.920 align:middle line:84% So the Phaeacian court attends closely to Demodocus's song, 00:21:22.920 --> 00:21:25.890 align:middle line:84% and the guest-- this anonymous guest who is Odysseus-- 00:21:25.890 --> 00:21:28.200 align:middle line:90% weeps into his roughed up hood. 00:21:28.200 --> 00:21:32.300 align:middle line:84% He covers his face and cries into his hood. 00:21:32.300 --> 00:21:34.820 align:middle line:84% He weeps, the poem tells us, the way 00:21:34.820 --> 00:21:37.197 align:middle line:84% that a woman weeps for her husband. 00:21:37.197 --> 00:21:38.780 align:middle line:84% That's an interesting image, isn't it? 00:21:38.780 --> 00:21:42.470 align:middle line:84% He weeps as a woman might weep for her husband. 00:21:42.470 --> 00:21:47.000 align:middle line:84% An arresting simile, the most masculine of men 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:49.760 align:middle line:84% emasculated by his grief if you like. 00:21:49.760 --> 00:21:51.710 align:middle line:84% But the poem doesn't leave it there. 00:21:51.710 --> 00:21:53.150 align:middle line:90% The metaphor goes further. 00:21:53.150 --> 00:21:56.360 align:middle line:84% Like many epic similes, it works towards a metamorphosis, 00:21:56.360 --> 00:21:58.900 align:middle line:90% a real transformation. 00:21:58.900 --> 00:22:02.080 align:middle line:84% And in Samuel Butler's wonderful 19th century-- 00:22:02.080 --> 00:22:05.110 align:middle line:84% late 19th century prose translation of the passage, 00:22:05.110 --> 00:22:09.070 align:middle line:84% we read Odysseus was overcome as he heard him-- 00:22:09.070 --> 00:22:12.340 align:middle line:84% as he heard Demodocus-- and his cheeks were wet with tears. 00:22:12.340 --> 00:22:15.130 align:middle line:84% He wept as a woman weeps when she throws herself 00:22:15.130 --> 00:22:17.350 align:middle line:84% on the body of her husband who has fallen 00:22:17.350 --> 00:22:20.860 align:middle line:84% before his own city and people, fighting bravely in defense 00:22:20.860 --> 00:22:23.370 align:middle line:90% of his home and children. 00:22:23.370 --> 00:22:26.640 align:middle line:84% So it's so real to him, to Odysseus, 00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:29.250 align:middle line:84% that helpless to affect the narrative. 00:22:29.250 --> 00:22:30.750 align:middle line:84% The narrative has now become history 00:22:30.750 --> 00:22:32.400 align:middle line:84% and he can't be-- can't touch it. 00:22:32.400 --> 00:22:36.090 align:middle line:84% All he can do is lament in the unbridled yet formal way 00:22:36.090 --> 00:22:38.360 align:middle line:90% of Mediterranean mourning.