I think, in the case of Chapman--
and Chapman being a dramatist as well, and Chapman
being really fascinated by the texture of Homer's language--
Chapman was intrigued by character.
In a way, he gives the lie to my notion
that there's no psychology there,
because he does actually give the Homeric character
some psychology.
But what most intrigues me about Chapman's reading of Homer
is that he reads it as poetry, as a poem, and as poetry.
And he writes some of his most extended and most brilliant
syntactical structures.
He has got enormous, long sentences in his translation.
No other translation that I've read actually
does this kind of architecture with language.
I mean, it's sort of pre-Miltonic.
It's very brilliant.
And I think, for Chapman, Homer represents the otherness
of poetic language.
In other words, it doesn't approach speech.
At no point does it approach speech.
For Auden, of course, sees Homer as, in some way, pre-dramatic,
and as his characters are speaking.
Well, of course, they are speaking.
But none of them--
I speak about it.
I talk about archaeology.
If you look at Homeric language, it
has in it so many different dialect elements and levels.
Nobody in Greece ever spoke Homeric Greek.
And I think that Auden makes a big mistake when he suggests
that it, in a sense, plays into a kind
of spoken dramatic prose.
I think that's the big difference between Chapman
and Homer.
Chapman is intrigued by the otherness and the strangeness
of Homer's language, and is trying
to replicate it in his brilliant and wonderful translation.
Whereas Homer is more interested in the subject matter
and its relevance to the historical moment of fascism,
and then, the emergence of Nazism and the Second World
War.
So that would be their difference.
It's like with Henry V. You have the interpretation of Henry
V, Olivier's version, which is, of course, patriotic,
and so on.
And you have the later anti-war versions of Branagh, and so on.
And they're different plays.
And in fact, I think that's the one I think they betray rather
than use the templates.
Yes?
[INAUDIBLE] than what I was used to, which was that--
kind of opposing what you just said, anyway--
that basically, Homer glorifies the heroes.
And [INAUDIBLE] I know why Odysseus is not
to be considered a hero, because he doesn't die
a beautiful death, [INAUDIBLE].
Doesn't make him cool.
Hmm.
And I was wondering [INAUDIBLE],, because I never quite
got into it.
[INAUDIBLE] Odysseus [INAUDIBLE] too much.
And I always want to disregard him as a hero.
[INAUDIBLE] there has been that other view.
And it's just always been kind of intriguing to me.
I think you're dead right about Odysseus.
I mean, Odysseus.
Wily Odysseus, wise Odysseus.
He loses every single one of his shipmates on the way home.
And when he gets home, he then kills all the young men
in Ithaca because they're fighting against him.
So you're right.
I mean, he's, in a funny sort of way, a kind of anti-hero,
though we always regard him as a hero.
I think he's a loathsome character.
Whereas Telemachus is rather cheerful, isn't he?
Nice sort of fellow.
No.
Again, but are we right to read him in this way?
Are we right to read in this way at all?
Or are we supposed to see his actions as,
in some way or other, historical,
neutral in some way?
Because Homer doesn't judge.
Well, I guess Homer does judge, in a sense.
Yeah.
I don't see it that way at all.
I think that it's a representation
of the form of justice that they had in those days,
and that they didn't have justice like we see it,
where we can have a trial and judge.
In those days, justice had to do with hospitality
and with honor.
Mm-hmm.
And his society dishonored him, the men
that we're left who are the suitors of the woman Penelope
was there.
They're spoiling his goods, his lands,
trying to become the king themselves
if they can be chosen by her, because she only has
a position if she's married.
An unmarried women didn't have status.
So she only has status as long as he's still alive
and can return.
So the only justice that's available--
and it's driven by the gods, not by the men--
is that they have to be removed because they violated
the hospitality, which is the way the civilization is
interpreted at that time.
And so his honor, his class, has to be sustained by the gods,
because they invented it.
But do you think--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
--have a human participant in their drama.
He's the one.
That's why he is the chosen person that Athena supports.
She supports him because he does everything he wants him to do,
and he does it correctly.
But what about all the other people in his--
[INAUDIBLE]
What about all the other people in his crew?
And why is it necessary at the end?
I agree with you, actually.
I think you're right, because I've been really
puzzled, in the other poem, about why
Achilles swallows Menelaus and Agamemnon's horrible character.
I mean, Agamemnon is a monster.
It's because Agamemnon is the king,
and he has to, in the end.
And Agamemnon makes himself as repulsive as possible,
really, to enforce the fact of hierarchy, if you like.
But why, at the end of "The Odyssey,"
does he actually end up killing the kids?
I know they're resisting, and they're
going to put up a fight.
But why doesn't he talk to them?
He's a great talker.
He talks to Priam.
He talks to Achilles.
He's a great reasoner.
The reason that he cannot leave them alive is that they could
rebel against him later and take over his land.
This is Stalin, isn't it?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
--that he and descendants should be forever kings,
because kingship is the only form of government
that they know.
They do not really have democracy yet.
They don't have participatory government in any way.
He is a missing king.
He comes back.
And he can be king again if he can survive.
He has to--
Hmm.
But he has to be able to remove the threats.
And so all of these young suitors who wanted to be king,
they don't care whether Odysseus comes back.
They're going to remove Telemachus anyway.
Athena has to remove him so that he could survive it.
But it seems to me--
I agree.
I think you're probably right in terms
of the structure of the poem.
And in a way, what you're saying proves
that the Odyssey is probably earlier than the Iliad.
Because had it been, if they had the man
who came back to Ithaca--
Because the reason that Odysseus weeps and is moved by
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
--telling of the building of the horse,
is because he invented it.
I know, but--
And his fame--
Hmm.
--is why he [INAUDIBLE].
No, but I think the composition could be earlier, couldn't it?
It's like, in fact, "Paradise Regained" was
written before "Paradise Lost."
And the composition could be earlier.
And in fact, we don't know who composed it.
But what I'm trying to say is that the Odysseus who
reasons with Achilles, the Odysseus who keeps peace
among the warriors in Troy, is not
necessarily the Odysseus who will only be violent in Ithaca.
In other words, in Ithaca, it would
have been possible for the statesman Odysseus
to be a statesman.
But instead, he is actually a very primitive warlord.
Sorry.
I was curious about when you talk about psychology
and how these characters don't have psychology.
I guess I'm curious if you could maybe
just describe what psychology is, and why [INAUDIBLE]..
Is psychology necessarily a modern thing
that replaces the gods and all these other things [INAUDIBLE]..
Well, when we read Shakespeare, modern critics
often pretend or suggest that his characters
have psychologies.
And I think most of us might agree
that in Shakespeare's poems--
I mean, Ted Hughes wrote a whole book about this--
the characters don't have psychologies, but humors.
They have dominant humors.
As in, I think, suppose, in the Greek drama,
you have various characteristics that don't, as it were,
add up to a psychology.
A psychology implies-- well, how would we define a psychology?
I think what I'm trying to suggest
is that the characters in Homer aren't deep in the way
that characters in O'Neill or Miller are deep.
They're not dramatic, if you like.
They're historical.
They're tied, as that gentleman was saying, into certain rather
rigid social forms.
There are certain actions that are expected of them.
And that to break the patterns of expectation,
as Achilles does at the very end of "The Iliad, "
are moments of great beauty and great, if you like,
forgiveness.
But to have a psychology would be
to have a much more complex set of motives, to be free.
If we have a psychology within those contexts,
would be to be free to act in certain ways.
And I don't think that freedom is
allowed to most of the characters in the Greek poems.
Am I wrong?
You look as I'm wrong.
I'm just wondering [INAUDIBLE] that's a literary thing
or if that's a cultural theme.
What's the difference?
Is it just that that's the way that they're written about?
Or is that an actual--
I mean, maybe there's [INAUDIBLE]..
Is it actually the way we are as humans?
Is that what's [INAUDIBLE]?
I think the way we think about our humanity is very different.
I think what, again, that gentleman
was saying about Odysseus going home and the certain things
that were expected of him, that there are certain roles we have
to fulfill if we are certain types of person in earlier
poems.
I guess a good point of illustration
might be Hamlet, where almost everyone in the play
is acting according to role, apart from Hamlet.
And Hamlet is struggling to break a kind of mold.
And with Hamlet, you have a kind of psychology.
Whereas, possibly, with the other characters,
you have less of a sense of-- it's probably a loose word.
I should probably-- but don't know
what word I would use if I don't say, a psychology.
I mean, it's a bourgeois thing, isn't it?
Psychology is a sort of bourgeois construct.
People exist in relation to one another,
or they exist in relation to themselves.
And I think in the epics, they exist entirely in relation
to one another.
Even Odysseus, as he sheds his mates, as it were,
as he comes home.
So I guess part of what you're saying,
I think it would be fair to say, that an actual ancient Greek
individual would have a psychology in the way
that literary characters in the [INAUDIBLE],,
a psychology that's shaped by their own personal histories
[INAUDIBLE] the expectations of their roles of the part
that they're playing in the structure of the [INAUDIBLE]..
So that wouldn't be written into the poem.
Right.
Yeah.
[INAUDIBLE] kind of [INAUDIBLE] poetry
because Homer [INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
[INAUDIBLE] whatever god represents the emotion
that is being [INAUDIBLE].
Does that happen, or does the god come in to, as it were--
when Hector is fleeing from Achilles,
the goddess comes and says to Achilles,
I'm going to stop him running.
And so she pretends to be his close friend.
And he and his close friends stop.
And they're going to fight with Achilles.
And he turns around, and his friend isn't there.
And he suddenly realizes he's been duped by the goddess.
In other words, they're playing tricks.
But what you're suggesting is that the tricks they play
are, in a sense, some aspect of a [INAUDIBLE]..
It could be their passion, or their [INAUDIBLE]..
Or [INAUDIBLE] by a god coming [INAUDIBLE]..
That's very much the case when you get to Apollonius of Rhodes
and the voyage of the Argonauts.
But that comes much later.
I think that use of the gods to express a subjectivity
through an objectivity, if you like, that comes a bit later.
But I'm not sure if you could say that of Homer.
Maybe you could.
I see Achilles as an anti-hero, not Odysseus.
And the reason is this.
Achilles has got a choice.
His mother tells him that he can have a long life
if he goes home--
Yeah.
--and abandons the war.
He can go on home.
He can have a long life if he likes, and without pain.
Or we can have a short life with pain.
"Let me die soon," he says.
Because this society is driven by honor,
and because Patroclus, his great friend,
has been killed by Hector, he has to avenge that.
And so he therefore is driven to choose the short life.
Doesn't he chose the short life before?
He has to sustain his honor.
But later in "The Odyssey," when he talks to Odysseus--
Achilles talks to Odysseus in the underworld.
He says, "it would have been better
to have been the slave of a man of poor means
than the king of all of these dead."
In other words, he realized, when
he made the choice for fame and the short life,
that it was the wrong choice.
When he made it, or after he'd made it?
No, he realized when he was in Hades, talking to--
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He realized he made the wrong choice.
He should have just said, I'm going
to go home, get out of here.
This is stupid.
But he didn't do that.
[INAUDIBLE] was because it's a fame-driven society.
But that doesn't make him an anti-hero.
--of the man was more important than the life of the man.
In our society today, if we see a lost cause, we just go home.
We don't always.
I mean, sometimes the government says,
well, we're going to go fight for this stupid cause,
so we can't do it.
But we shouldn't do it.
In our society today, we should say, you know what?
This is not a cause we want to fight for.
So finally, everybody went home from Vietnam.
But who is we?
I mean--
[INAUDIBLE]
I don't think you found one man after another coming home
from Vietnam.
You found a great withdrawal.
And I think that the Greeks in Troy
had the choice of leaving individually.
Achilles had the choice of going, and chose not to go.
So it's a different situation.
--really have that choice?
Because--
He says so.
There's a speech in book 12 where he says,
I could go home now.
I could-- yeah.
He could do that.
Hmm.
He realized that he can't do it.
Hmm.
Then his mother brings him the armor.
So now he's got the armor.
Now, here's the question.
This is what I want answered.
Uh-oh.
Odysseus gets this armor when he fights Ajax.
And he beats Ajax.
And Thetis gives him the armor as the reward.
What happens to the armor?
Where is it?
Well, there's a big fight over the armor later on,
isn't there?
No, Odysseus wins it.
Odysseus wins.
Yeah.
But where is it now?
Doesn't Astyanax get it when he comes in?
I can't remember.
You tell me.
He was taking it on board ship, or something with him.
And he must have had it all the way
till the time when his ship was lost,
the last ship with the last comrades
after they went through the whirlpool, the [INAUDIBLE]
or something like that.
So he must've lost his armor there.
So where is it?
Who has it?
Because armor that's made by Hephaestus is immortal armor.
It has to go to somebody later.
It has to be reborn.
That just a question I've never got [INAUDIBLE]..
Well, it's a bit like the Holy Grail, isn't it?
Well, we know where the grail is.
OK.
Well, no.
I mean, if you watch Harrison Ford, the grail [INAUDIBLE]
Lot 42 [INAUDIBLE] with 7,000 other grails in a parking lot
with the government.
It's the government's grail.
Yeah, yeah.
There was a question over there.
Over there.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question?
No?
Go on, ask a question.
No, [INAUDIBLE].
Oh, go on.
OK.
It was a comment to something--
Oh, comments?
Say it.
--forgot, so.
Oh, OK.
No worries.
Good.
We have a silence.
Either an angel is passing, or it's all over.