7 Greeks [Paperback]

Guy Davenport (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1995

"Overall, this volume will afford great pleasure to scholars, teachers, and also those who simply love to watch delightful souls disport themselves in language."—Anne Carson

Here is a colorful variety pf works by seven Greek poets and philosophers who lived from the eighth to the third centuries BC. Salvaged from shattered pottery vases and tattered scrolls of papyrus, everything decipherable from the remains of these ancient authors is assembled here. From early to later, the collection contains: Archilochos; Sappho; Alkman; Anakreon; the philosophers Herakleitos and Diogenes; and Herondas. This composite of fragments translated by Guy Davenport is the most complete collection of its kind ever to appear in one volume.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Taken from mummy wrappings and other relics, these are found poems of the most literal sort?all the words that remain from a gang of seven who lived between the 7th and 3rd century B.C.: Sappho, Archilochos, Herakleitos, et al. Davenport, fiction writer (Table of Green Fields) and essayist (Geography of the Imagination) as well as translator, has constructed an exhaustive scholarly anthology, sometimes offering multiple translations of a piece. About half of the selections read as though complete, or possibly so; the rest is made up of scraps of words whose context was lost in the parchment that dissolved around them. Reading these fragments is like moving through an art museum where just the titles remain ("Sparks in wheat") or, thanks to the author's accessible vernacular and the randy spirits of our ancients, browsing in the local video mart ("Butt kisser!"). Diogenes serves up aphorisms and witticisms that crack on Plato; lengthier segments sing of wars, gods and virgins. Readers are left wanting for that which has turned to dust.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Davenports' Pleiad of Greeks—four poets, two philosophers, and a less familiar composer of rakish mimes—provides a vivid insight into the heart and mind of a Greece still rising, in the brilliant of these poets, to its Periclean apogee. (John Frederick Nims )

If you don't read Greek, read Davenport; if you do, read Davenport and learn to read Greek better. (D. S. Carne-Ross )

Davenport has made us again discover that the Greeks, who gave us most of our culture, are our most lively, poignant, humorous, and profound writers whom we should read today as contemporaries....His exciting original versions are appropriately an immediate modern classic. (Willis Barnstone )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 242 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (June 17, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811212882
• ISBN-13: 978-0811212885
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #146,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Davenport's Greeks, October 7, 2000

By 

Andrew J. Kinney (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 7 Greeks (Paperback)

This is a gem of a book for anyone who is interested in ancient Greece. Guy Davenport is a wonderful interpreter of Archilochos, Sappho, and the rest; his introduction, describing each poet is as interesting as the poetry itself. Davenport's explication of how translation of the ancient poets is done is fascinating, and lends integrity to the book. Mr. Davenport tells you when the papyrus he is translating is simply too worn to read (explaining gaps in the verse), but he also speculates about what the original poem might have been, when, for example, the entire left side of a papyrus page is missing. His "wishful thinking" about how a certain poem of Sappho's might have read (if we had the entire text) gives us a better idea why the Greeks and Romans loved her, but Davenport scrupulously identifies what is his "tuckpointing" and what is the actual text. Mr. Davenport's translations of the fragments of Archilochos are particularly powerful to me. He has captured with great sensitivity the thinking of this remarkable soldier-poet who is the second oldest Western poet after Homer. Archilochos' writing brings us a view of war in the sixth century before Christ with a realistic pen, and also a passionate one. This was the poet who could write in one poem of throwing down his shield and running away at the height of the battle ("somehow life seemed more precious"), and in another speak with respect of bravery and defense of home ("remember us, remember this earth when, with hearts against despair, our javelins held Thasos from her enemies"). In all, another fine book from an extraordinary author whose range of learning is enormous, and who understands how to entertain while enlightening.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scrupulously accurate, thoroughly modern, January 10, 2000

By 

Douglas Harper (Lancaster, Pa., U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 7 Greeks (Paperback)

This is a little book that will take your breath away. Most of the poets here survive only in tatters, rags of verse and words quoted by other authors. Yet the power that dwells in a handful of scattered words from a great verse is poetry itself, like haiku. Sappho and Archilochos read as though they could have been contemporaries of Ted Hughes. The key here is Davenport, a man of incredible sensibility, and the best bridge-builder between the ancient and the modern since Ezra Pound.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The first of autumn you shall be my guest.", April 12, 2005

By 

Jan Dierckx (Belgium, Turnhout) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 7 Greeks (Paperback)

It has no sense to tell you this book is very good and you ought to read it. Instead I'll give a short introduction to each poet and a short example of their work. So you can judge by yourself if it is interesting enough.
I
The first poet is Archilochos. He lived in the seventh century B.C. He was born on the island of Paros, one of the cyclades. He left it for good when he became a mercenary.
He was at his best as a satirist. His work came to us in fragments (like for many poets in this collection).
(# 36)
"He comes in bed,
As copiously as
A Prilnian ass
And is equipped
Like a stallion."
II
Sappho! Who doesn't know her, at least from hearsay!
If we can believe Plato she was the tenth Muse and someone called her poetry "as refreshing as a morning breeze."
(# 18)
"With eyes like that, stand still,
Gaze with a candor from that beauty,
Bold as friends before each other."
III
Alkman lived also in the 7th century B.C. He was born in Sparta. Only a few fragments survived and a 'Partheneion', a song for a girl's choir.
(# 35)
"My hearth is cold but the day will come
When a rich pot of red bean soup
Is on the table, the kind Alkman loves.
Good peasant cooking, nothing fine
The first day of autumn, you shall be my guest."
IV
Anakreon lived in the 6th century B.C. His poems are about wine, love and getting old. They are easy to read thanks to his humor, vivid expressions and originality. For hundreds of years after the dead of Anakreon there were a lot of anonymous imitators who wrote poems called the 'Anakreontea'.
(# 53)
"And now my hair is thin and white,
Grizzled the locks above my ears.
Youth's gone, and with it, all delight.
My teeth are going with the years
..."
V
Herakleitos (ca.500B.C.) a philosopher, was from Ephesus and his nickname was 'The obscure'. He was called that way because his main work 'De Natura' consists of about 120 sayings, a lot of them as hard to understand as the oracles of Delphi.
(# 2)
"Let us therefore notice that understanding is common
to all men. Understanding is common to all, yet each man acts as if his intelligence was private and all his own".
VI
From Diogenes, the Cynic (= 'who lives like a dog'), nothing survived. The sayings ascribed to him are from the 2nd century B.C.
(# 112)
" A lecher is a fig tree on a cliff: crows get the figs."
The legend goes that when Alexander The Great went to see Diogenes and asked him if there was anything he could do to help him, Diogenes answered:"Step aside please, you're blocking the sunlight!".
VII
Herondas (3th century B.C.) wrote dialogues that were satiric and were often performed for the public in the streets.
An excerpt from 'The Dream':
"Get up, Psylla! Get up, girl!
...
You sleep so hard it makes you tired. Get up!
Light the lamps. Put the pig out to pasture.
She's driving me crazy. Grumble and scratch!"