The 2022 Presidential Interview - Stephen Fry in conversation with Michael Scott

well stephen it's a huge pleasure and privilege to be with you today and i think we need to start off by saying thank you to you for acting as honorary president of the classical association this year great honor one which would astonish my latin and greek teachers when i was young possibly but i hope they'd be pleased and proud that something stuck if nothing more than enthusiasm and of course this film is being shown for the first time at the swansea classical association conference on on the first night of the conference on the eve of a couple of days of discussion and debate about this which has been held back i gather for three years three years darlings yes so i i sent my um salutation cell way um to you and then a bit of cod latin i guess it's an omnium gathering of all that's brightest and best in the classical world and i'm sure that means that you'll be doing a huge amount of what the greeks did when they got together to think which is to drink so um if it isn't too late uh for you actually to hear me because you're already lying on your backs rubbing your tummy is burping um i send you my love and good wishes for a fabulous conference have a great time i feel like we should be asking the question of the ca conference how many kraters is this symposium going to be there's that wonderful fragment isn't there from yukulas where they say you look after three kratos the sensible man goes home but after that it's breaking the furniture so if this is going to be a full kratos then we better watch out but i think it would be a great pleasure and privilege to say on behalf of both of us congratulations to the organizers of the conference for their tenacity during this period of the third attempt to get this conference off the ground because of kovid and we wish you all the very very best absolutely right so we have some questions for you and then we're going to move into some questions that have been brought forward by some of our youngest up-and-coming classicists um from age under 11 upwards we're going to be going but we had to start off by asking about your own youth when when where how was your first encounter with the classical world it was a mixture it was a mixture of the myths um i i read a collection of them when i was quite small five or six and they had wonderful illustrations and i became very absorbed in this entire world i love the idea of the appearances of the gods it mostly told the stories of arachne and narcissus and those you know the the transformations and i just found it instantly appealing it spoke to some part of me but the second half of it is language really and to be honest and this sounds like you know i don't know false modesty or passive aggression even but i i was hopeless that everything the boys were supposed to be good at i couldn't couldn't do sport i couldn't run in a straight line i'd you know bump into a tree i couldn't catch a ball you know i still clapped at him like a dyspraxic fool which is probably what i was and so i was very uncoordinated but i loved stories and i loved language latin then began it was the kind of old-fashioned english school where you did you were taught that in the age of about eight um and i adored it and i was thinking about this as i was on my way here in a way it was something like a video game you know how there are characters in video games who have certain powers they can do some things but not other things and where where other boys were sort of confounded by things like um final clauses and as they were called and um deponent and semi-deponent verbs which are special verb forms that appear to be passive but uh active and it's all very sounds very dry and academic but i thought of them as being like alice you had to be the right side to get into that keyhole so you alter a word in order to make it work for the game and so i i rather excelled at that and i have to say and that meant that this very shy and wonderful master called mr knight came to me and asked if i was interested in learning greek i was about nine then probably and i lept it the idea of having this separate alphabet as well so i can write my name language of your life through a little oops at the end you know and i it was thrilling and i would you know teach it to other boys and we'd pass notes in in english but using greek characters like sure everyone is local do you have a favorite latin or greek word actually when i was learning greek and this is again one of the pleasures is it gave you new vocabulary by showing you where possible how there was a similar word in english so graphene to inscribe to write you know telegraph or graphic and you know and all those sort of anti-obvious things i suppose and grammy and and and all those phone us and so on and you could see their english equivalence telephones and telegrams and all the rest of it and then some few chapters later there was a new verb to learn it was thaumazo which is i marvel i wonder and uh it said this is easily remembered by thinking of the english word thaumaturge so nine-year-old boys so i've never forgotten it because it was so bizarre i mean i guess it works exactly it means a worker of wonders and a miracle worker and so so i've always remembered that it's like when someone comes up and goes of all the 30 of english words that have a latin root you know kind of or something like that people go sisyphean yeah that's that's the word we get and you just think well hang on a sec it's probably not the most obvious ones yet telephone in your pocket and moving from language to kind of characters obviously you talk about how you love your stories do you have a character from the ancient world that you identify with the most yes i mean as a boy sometimes the you know the boys who like phaeton who who who foolishly you know trapped his father uh the sun god or sun titan uh into allowing him to drive the chariot of the sun across the sky and um um and so i kind of pictured that because you know my my brother who was older than me was begging his father oh let me drive the car just in the driveway go on you know and it was so real and everything else that presented a story that i knew wasn't true for a young person nearly always there are good people and there are bad people heroes and villains and and from the very first in the greek stories people were good and bad they were mischievous they were they lied they they were boastful uh they made mistakes but they were charming and they were witty and you know the hermes is the perfect example he's a thief but he's also the god of storytelling i'm getting an indication of what your answer might be to a question later on this is the second time hermes has come out of this conversation yeah you're letting it so there was it was really that it was the anicarus which is a similar sort of story really flying and you know even today it's almost impossible to read of an important news story and not map it to a to a myth that other point you make as well that none of the characters from the ancient world are strict heroes or villains no that makes it ambiguous there's the grey in the middle isn't there which kind of is so important it really is we remind people that we have that yes i mean it was shakespeare who really took on the job of showing the complete complexity of the human character and it's a mistake not to remember that in ancient greece particularly the ancient greece on which the myths were invented you know the archaic and pre-archaic greece rather than the one we think of as being civilized and full of justice and democracy but even that greece of course they weren't quite like us they didn't have the same priorities about human living and it would be a mistake to think that but nonetheless the basic primal human appetites one of the great i mean we're talking about the greeks not the romans which is revealing perhaps but um don't tell anyone prefer the greeks exactly as as i'm sure many of you know when you meet a fellow classicist they often say are you a hellenist or a latinist you know um i won't begrudge the answer but but um but one of the things about the greeks i think is that they were aware that they were different and they knew they combined two forms of human humanity that had never really been combined in that way before that is the reasoning capacity the ability to count to think to be you know to use a rational sense to order the world around them and to think about how it can be improved and to progress so many of their myths are about changing and progressing and being punished for it and becoming comfortable yeah and it's understanding that the nature of a human is and this you know it was uh the darling man nietzsche who best expressed it that this that we have an apollo inside us and the golden apollo of reason and oratory and truth-telling um and music plagues but we also have a dionysus which is a god of frenzy and appetite and addiction and bloodlust you know and those two things are at war with each other all the time as they were in groups now i'm not sure what you're going to reply to the question about apollo or homies later on i can't decide which side you're on so if you were hosting your dinner party and you could have anyone any any should we say historical character yeah let's put it in front from the roman or from the greek world who would you have well i think if let's say we have a dinner a few guests i think we'd have to have socrates i mean it's so obvious he's an extraordinary man i mean he is the patron saint of teachers or you must find that as a teacher he's um you've got problems with him i don't know if i want to have the reputation that he had definitely no students aren't saying anything quite of course he humiliated a lot of his students or seemed to humiliate them simply by was almost like stripping their skin by just questioning what they meant but it is the great method it's still a great method really and once do it to oneself uh what do i mean by that am i being honest and at this time of culture wars and everything else we have to be very sure about our biases and the socratic method can help peel them away and so that we can really examine what we feel what we see and what we know um without without all the the prejudices and biases and pride and other human things and he is in that sense of an extraordinary master so socrates is there yes and for glamour i would have to say two glamorous guests i mean it's terrible i'm not inviting a woman but we have to accept that women were not privileged much in ancient greece and there are some extraordinary uh female heroines in myth and and in real greek life but i'm choosing two men of strange natures in some ways one was a friend and enemy of socrates okay and the other is alexander the great i mean you know what what an extraordinary man he was and to meet him would be just i mean he was taught by aristotle so i must assume that he you know and believe that he had a you know a training and a way of logic after all aristotle i'd love to see socrates have a go at alexander the great it wouldn't be without spidey's as the moderator media the moderator now he's had an extraordinary life himself he was a hot head and a and a liar and a braggart but also incredibly charismatic at this dinner party if we were put back into the symposium and you had your drinking cups and you were the symposium master and so you were you were picking your drinking set your your kylie cares for the for the occasion and you could have any image on your drinking cup oh on the characters what what would be your kind of key images that you would you would want to see well i'm a romantic and i'm a gay man so to me one of the most common kind of coverings uh of engravings was a scene from the life and and death indeed of of achilles and patroclus absolutely and and and i think that would that would please me there's one achilles bathing it's a famous one bathing the wounds of protractors after he's died now we've had a question about about what's the most surprising reaction you've ever had uh after you've told somebody a story from the ancient greek and roman worlds kind of how have people reacted to it the weirdest of the most surprising reaction well it was the impetus for me to write the book mythos really was i was at a party i won't dignify it with the term dinner parties everybody was eating with some friends but i said it's a you know it's a bit like the neutering of of the gelding of of uh of uranus of uranus and they said what do you mean so i started to tell the story of the you know gaia and uranus and then kronos and the uh the the scythe you know and um and aphrodite being born and connecting it to the birth of venus the famous painting and they were staring at me and saying why didn't i ever know this what how do you know it i said well i've always just found those stories interesting and i realized that a lot of people are like that with the with the with the greek myths and the whole that sort of world that they knew the names but they didn't know the connection and i thought well tell those stories was there a particular myth or story that you've dealt with in one of your books that was harder for you to kind to put across than others was there a particular moment where you were how do i tell this story i think the third book troy was was difficult because well partly because a certain amount of that story is told better than anyone has ever taught the story in the iliad of homer but also that it's so bloody it you know you you can't really understand what's going on in troy unless you move into the mindset of the warrior caste and of what it means the blood and the honor and you know the the also the sacrifices and the um you know the nature of what happens after you die how you're honored you know which is at the very basis of the fundamental arguments uh towards the end of the iliad is all all to do with the you know the bearing of the bodies and and it really matters and then and and so i i didn't want to tell it as an adventure purely but i didn't want to go too deeply into the sort of psychology or to patronize the greeks by saying well they felt less than they thought this but to just try and enter their world view which is always exciting but uh but you know you have to be very you know you're walking isn't it talked a little bit about this but is there a is there a lesson from antiquity that you think that people desperately need to remember and or at least have in their minds today that's a really interesting one i mean i suppose it is to recognize what is inside us that we are compounded of different instincts and impulses qualities and characteristics and you could call that a pantheon we could we have gods inside us some of which look after our appetites and some of which tend us towards the countryside and to being celebrating and being part of nature and others that uh impel us to war and to others that want us to make things with our hands you know that the that we have all these qualities and that the the olympian um you know 12 kind of pretty well cover most of that and i just think that what the ancient world's wider view if it were of humanity is more realistic and practical uh and truer and and i think we lost it for uh for a while and then it was reborn and literally renaissance and and some of it came back and helped us towards a perhaps a more balanced way but we still should learn remember that we are victims of all kinds of fury and appetite now alongside just talking about and loving and enjoying the ancient world obviously one of our jobs is to inspire the next generation yes and how do you think is the best way to get a younger audience excited and interested about the ancient world it's interesting that the three most successful phenomena in storytelling of our age are george rr martin's game of thrones and obviously the harry potter series and uh in fact the foremost i suppose you could say hobbit and the uh you know the middle earth stories of tolkien and of course the mcu the marvel cinematic universe and all of these have an enormous debt to to greek myth and in a sense they're a return to it and so you're going back to discover that actually humans have always gloried in thinking about how humans can transform themselves and how you can make stories and myths and legends out of human activity that that is somewhere between fantasy and if you like symbol and metaphor it's a way of looking at the world you see you can look back at something like an ordinary fireplace and you can see in it if you have eyes you're there you can see i can see the ionic egg and dart it's called and you can yeah i don't expect everyone to know that now in the portland vars and various other elements of the ram's head scrolling never has this fireplace been given such kind of detailed study but it's ionic i can say but the point is that without us knowing it sleeping inside our buildings inside our language inside our pictures and our history and our even our way of thinking deep inside it is a greek and a latin you know roman way of thinking and being that has that we're built up on and and it's an energy inside us that is often unreleased long may you carry on telling those stories and if the tables were turned here and you were sitting in the interviewer's chair yeah you could have anyone again from the ancient world to interview so not a relaxed dinner party conversation but really to put under the spotlight and and get them to nail their colours to the mast who who would that be that's an interesting one i mean you know i love the i mean the glorious achilles and odysseus is a natural hero but i suppose you could go back a few generations and say that he takes probably more character from theseus before theseus heroes were like um bellerophon or or heracles you know they were incredibly strong and brave and sometimes loyal and charming and you know and holy almost but but but theseus he used his brain and he was he was the patron that is the patron of of athens thesis would be in the chat okay well i'd love to see that when that's next broadcast perhaps at the next ca yeah if we can tempt you back now we have to move on to some questions that have come in from the next generation of classes this comes from chris zagowski shah who asks which ancient monster are you most afraid of i would say there's a there's a monster called the linnaean hydra lived in a lake yes because the hydra was pretty much unbeatable i mean even herakles couldn't do it on his own the thing is it's like a many-headed monster filled with the most appalling venom the most terrible terrible deadly poison um and if you cut off a head and a number more would grow i don't think we ever settled on how many more different differences you know it's and it's used as a as a sort of metaphor these days that a particular problem can be a like a many headed hydra and you cut off the head more grow more grow more great so he had to get his um get his nephew to uh to hold a burning torch and he'd cut the cut the head off and then the torch would cauterize the the stump well i hope we haven't given crushed nightmares uh now no now we're moving on to matilda bird the judgment of stephen is required this is a snog marry or a void snog marry or a void you've got hera aphrodite and athena oh goodness um snog aphrodite obviously it's a beautiful beautifully formed lips marry athena i mean i was in love with athena as a boy there was you know as soon as her gray eyes appeared in a story i would think oh and say fans you know because also i like the heroes she liked so i liked odysseus and she was very very tight with odysseus um and here i would definitely avoid it here i had a nasty temper and she's always described as cow eyed which sounds appalling but but actually i think it was supposed to be a compliment but still probably best avoid it i think i think i'm with you on that one for me susanna uh susanna filippo has come back which role from ancient greek drama would you most like to have acted oh that's interesting i i have acted actually the two parts that i would have you know i said are probably amongst the best in in greek drama for men one of the beauties of greek drama is how fantastically women are you know and clyde minister and so on but uh i would say um i i played when i was about 17 crayon or creon i couldn't crayon because crayon sounds like a thing yeah you draw with i agree um and he he was the brother-in-law of of oedipus and brother of jocasta um and he has an important role particularly in antigone which is perhaps the masterpiece of of sophocles but certainly one of the great plays of the ancient world unquestionably um and he is a difficult man to play because he seems like a brutal alpha male or at least you know what we would call a toxic male these days um and he pits himself against and his um niece but it is i think a great role it's an important role to get right and he's not he's not so sure of himself doesn't he and ends up not knowing anything right so that transition and that journey exactly the key thing and you can have an evening in which you have oedipus in the first half and because the plays are short and you can you can have so you can have tiranosa's rex at the beginning and you can have uh antigone in the second half and there you see creon in the first half he's he's more of you see how pragmatically he is and how he wants it all to work out and he has pride in family but then it all goes to his head yeah you know so he's a good role creon i think is wonderful but he deposits a well we'll move on to to peter hulse's question which is that which lost work of classical literature would you like to have been able to read oh that's a smallest and it's worth saying for those who don't know that um we only have the tippiest tip of the iceberg of the plays that were written in in greece and euripides has the most surviving um and sophocles has nine out of 100 that he wrote because he was quite well known and very very well known he won they were won prizes they were they were significant citizens um and there is a sophocles play i know in these kids plays god i can't even remember who wrote it now um which is uh you're going to think i'm obsessed now which is achilles and petrocus which apparently does represent them as real lovers and that's the that's the rumor that i don't i haven't followed the the actual the sources and the the extracts that prove this but that is i believe the general understanding that there is a play and there are plays about almost every um interesting character you can think of and it's such a shame that we we don't have them because the evidence of the existing clays is that they are likely to have been stunning the last question is from louise andrew um if there was one myth that you could force every politician to read what would it be and why well my first instinct is to say that the portrayal of agamemnon in in the iliad is a warning to all leaders um because it's a brilliant portrait of a bad leader who isn't that bad a man but his judgment was so amiss and it was a mixture of pride and you know the assumption he knew better than people around him and his refusal to listen to good advice i think it's the best portrait of of bad kingship until shakespeare really um but then i suppose yeah it is probably that story again of just trying too hard icarus because we all need that but politicians more than most don't fly too close to the sun they say philippa macedon the father of alexander had a man with a bladder on the end of his stick to bang him on the head who could come in he was licensed you know philip could be in bed with his wife or or someone else he could be around a campaign table with his generals this fellow would come in and bash him on the head say philip of macedon great king and emperor one day you will lie rotting in the grave remember you are just a man right we have come to the quick fire round yes if you are ready like if you need a moment to prepare yourself i'll do my best okay here we go save hector or patroclus hector surprisingly after what i've said there is a real nobility to hector and i can't bear how he died who's the better hero aeneas or odysseus oh what yes yes he's got a brain in here i would love to see that in the in the undergraduate essay come back that's brilliant since he's got a brain better choice that wasn't right the best choice for bedtime reading sophocles all your repeties i mean neither are particularly suffocates for drama you're rippities for psychology best reading for when you're supposed to be working avid or juvenile juveniles preferred costume this is the question we've been building to for the entirety of this interview kind of where you've been you've been leading me down one trail another way you're gonna go preferred costume for yourself to go to a greek gods dressing up party is it apollo or hermes has to be hermes i mean i i mean i would look at my pawn shadow i could only be silenced but but but uh i mean plus you get the props i mean i mean the sandals would be pretty and hermes gave music to apollo anyways if apollo has a liar it really belongs to hermes but he's got his cadis and he's got his um sandals and his little bowler hat and his wings on it and you know he's just oh he's just great done better language for telling a story latin or greek who would say in a not i would say greek for story latin for poetry best quote to live by is it know thyself or nothing in excess i think know thyself is a superb lifelong adventure there's no single answer to it nothing in excess yeah that's good too it's it's one thing i like about zoroastrian is that it's as big a sin to under-indulge as it is to over-indulge and i think that's rather pleasing isn't it so for them someone who says no to everything no no man is is as embarrassing and foolish as someone who says yeah give me more of that no so it's that's a greek idea i suppose the golden you know the gold mean the balance of the right point well it has been a honor and a privilege and a pleasure to interview you thank you so much for your time today and thank you also on behalf of all the creative writing competition winners who have been i mean some of the stories are absolutely fabulous and we cannot wait to kind of hear your reading of the winner and kind of i believe i believe it's madeleine with fates engine that you have been recording and it's a remarkably beautifully written story and like the best short stories this story is so subtle and so beautifully balanced in the way it releases the information of what's going on and where we are that uh i was genuinely genuinely really taken and i had to spend a lot of time with it which is i'm sure a great sign of quality well there couldn't be a better compliment than that stephen thank you so much thank you

Channel: The Classical Association

Views: 57,477

Keywords: Stephen Fry, Michael Scott, Classics, Classical Association

Id: ZIGKr2nVfMY

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 09 2022