WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.720 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.720 --> 00:00:02.070 align:middle line:90% Next poem is about-- 00:00:02.070 --> 00:00:03.445 align:middle line:84% this is good in terms of hearing. 00:00:03.445 --> 00:00:05.487 align:middle line:84% Can you hear all the way in the back pretty well? 00:00:05.487 --> 00:00:06.341 align:middle line:90% Good. 00:00:06.341 --> 00:00:07.724 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:07.724 --> 00:00:09.990 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about Heinrich Schliemann, 00:00:09.990 --> 00:00:15.932 align:middle line:90% who is the man who dug up Troy. 00:00:15.932 --> 00:00:18.450 align:middle line:84% And then recently, a man came to Buffalo 00:00:18.450 --> 00:00:19.830 align:middle line:84% and gave a lecture on Schliemann. 00:00:19.830 --> 00:00:23.010 align:middle line:90% And he was a kind of iconoclast. 00:00:23.010 --> 00:00:25.860 align:middle line:84% He wanted to expose Schliemann, which 00:00:25.860 --> 00:00:30.700 align:middle line:84% seemed like a foolish thing to do, since we owe him so much. 00:00:30.700 --> 00:00:32.280 align:middle line:84% And I think it sort of-- for me, it 00:00:32.280 --> 00:00:35.460 align:middle line:84% suggested the sort of resistance we have to admiring people. 00:00:35.460 --> 00:00:39.190 align:middle line:90% 00:00:39.190 --> 00:00:42.610 align:middle line:84% And this poem really is sort of a celebration of Schliemann, 00:00:42.610 --> 00:00:45.010 align:middle line:84% and the kind of art that Schliemann was 00:00:45.010 --> 00:00:47.260 align:middle line:90% concerned with all his life. 00:00:47.260 --> 00:00:49.600 align:middle line:84% And the way his life itself is a kind 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:53.900 align:middle line:90% of unbelievable work of art. 00:00:53.900 --> 00:00:55.650 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:00:55.650 --> 00:00:56.820 align:middle line:90% Two more? 00:00:56.820 --> 00:00:58.140 align:middle line:90% What should I be saying? 00:00:58.140 --> 00:01:02.010 align:middle line:90% [INTERPOSING VOICES] 00:01:02.010 --> 00:01:05.250 align:middle line:84% Nothing actually, I always have this look. 00:01:05.250 --> 00:01:06.900 align:middle line:90% That was good. 00:01:06.900 --> 00:01:10.920 align:middle line:84% It always helps to have a comedian here, right? 00:01:10.920 --> 00:01:11.800 align:middle line:90% OK, one more. 00:01:11.800 --> 00:01:13.720 align:middle line:84% One more and then we're going to-- that way, 00:01:13.720 --> 00:01:14.680 align:middle line:90% everybody can enjoy. 00:01:14.680 --> 00:01:18.040 align:middle line:90% 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:19.010 align:middle line:90% There, that's it. 00:01:19.010 --> 00:01:20.776 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:01:20.776 --> 00:01:21.500 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:01:21.500 --> 00:01:24.350 align:middle line:90% 00:01:24.350 --> 00:01:26.840 align:middle line:84% Actually, I like those lights before that way. 00:01:26.840 --> 00:01:29.570 align:middle line:84% I mean, so if you want to turn those back, 00:01:29.570 --> 00:01:30.848 align:middle line:90% that's fine with me. 00:01:30.848 --> 00:01:31.348 align:middle line:90% Which ones-- 00:01:31.348 --> 00:01:33.587 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:01:33.587 --> 00:01:35.795 align:middle line:84% Yeah, why don't you turn those to what it was before? 00:01:35.795 --> 00:01:43.810 align:middle line:90% 00:01:43.810 --> 00:01:57.723 align:middle line:90% That's fine, OK. 00:01:57.723 --> 00:01:59.723 align:middle line:84% Let's just wait a couple minutes till everyone-- 00:01:59.723 --> 00:02:00.450 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:02:00.450 --> 00:02:02.090 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:02:02.090 --> 00:02:13.152 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:02:13.152 --> 00:02:15.330 align:middle line:90% OK, let's go home. 00:02:15.330 --> 00:02:20.210 align:middle line:90% 00:02:20.210 --> 00:02:20.930 align:middle line:90% Fantastic. 00:02:20.930 --> 00:02:24.650 align:middle line:90% 00:02:24.650 --> 00:02:30.170 align:middle line:90% All right, Heinrich Schliemann. 00:02:30.170 --> 00:02:32.060 align:middle line:84% It's the main plot in his life, where 00:02:32.060 --> 00:02:35.510 align:middle line:84% his rise from grocer's apprentice and shipwrecked 00:02:35.510 --> 00:02:38.750 align:middle line:84% scrivener, to rich indigo merchant 00:02:38.750 --> 00:02:41.540 align:middle line:90% with a palace in St Petersburg. 00:02:41.540 --> 00:02:44.120 align:middle line:90% The master of a dozen languages. 00:02:44.120 --> 00:02:48.000 align:middle line:84% It would be easy for critics like us to patronize. 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:50.930 align:middle line:84% Easy to grant him a place in the storybook 00:02:50.930 --> 00:02:55.340 align:middle line:84% with Dick Whittington and the woodcutter's youngest son. 00:02:55.340 --> 00:02:58.700 align:middle line:84% And we could pity his distance from the real world, when 00:02:58.700 --> 00:03:01.430 align:middle line:84% he leaves the trading firm in middle age 00:03:01.430 --> 00:03:04.280 align:middle line:84% to learn the ancient Greek of Homer. 00:03:04.280 --> 00:03:07.670 align:middle line:84% And falls in love with an Athenian schoolgirl, 00:03:07.670 --> 00:03:11.540 align:middle line:84% as he hears her recite Andromache's long plea. 00:03:11.540 --> 00:03:17.360 align:middle line:84% And marries her, moving his life from storybook into dream. 00:03:17.360 --> 00:03:19.670 align:middle line:84% As if the noise of traffic outside 00:03:19.670 --> 00:03:25.220 align:middle line:84% the church were the hubbub on the fields around Troy. 00:03:25.220 --> 00:03:28.070 align:middle line:84% If only he hadn't taken it into his head 00:03:28.070 --> 00:03:32.240 align:middle line:84% to dig in a sleepy backwater village for Troy's walls 00:03:32.240 --> 00:03:34.580 align:middle line:90% and somehow found them. 00:03:34.580 --> 00:03:36.920 align:middle line:84% If he hadn't knelt in the dirt all day 00:03:36.920 --> 00:03:40.490 align:middle line:84% with beautiful Sophia, chipping away crust 00:03:40.490 --> 00:03:43.310 align:middle line:84% from the tiles of Priam's palace, 00:03:43.310 --> 00:03:48.650 align:middle line:84% from bracelets that once circled the slim wrists of princesses. 00:03:48.650 --> 00:03:51.980 align:middle line:84% If he hadn't proved that his dream was graspable, 00:03:51.980 --> 00:03:55.340 align:middle line:84% that the stories he loved were fashioned in the high style. 00:03:55.340 --> 00:03:58.760 align:middle line:84% Not to escape the world, but to remember it. 00:03:58.760 --> 00:04:02.150 align:middle line:84% And offering to the dead, to the dead bright ones 00:04:02.150 --> 00:04:05.540 align:middle line:84% whose gestures, vivid as they are in song, 00:04:05.540 --> 00:04:09.500 align:middle line:84% were doubtless in the flesh more dazzling. 00:04:09.500 --> 00:04:10.000 align:middle line:90%