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7 Greeks

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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.

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.

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!"

'7 Greeks - Translations by Guy Davenport.' New York: New Directions, 1995. Paperbook 799, 241 pages. ISBN 0811212882

Superb translations of 4 poets, 2 philosophers, and a composer of rakish mimes - Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman, Anakreon, Herakleitos, Diogenes and Herondas - with a 23-page Introduction and Notes.

My favorite is Davenport's Herakleitos which is pithy, pungent, very much to the point, and reads better than any other I know of:

16. "Awake, we see a dying world; asleep, dreams."

82. "Defend the law as you would a city wall."

97. "Life is bitter and final, yet men cherish it and beget children to suffer the same fate."

Contrast this with Kathleen Freeman's translation of the same fragment: "When they are born, they are willing to live and accept their fate (death); and they leave behind children to become victims of fate" Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels (Forgotten Books) p.26.

107. "Having cut, burned, and poisoned the sick, the doctor then submits his bill."

Davenport's Diogenes was also for me a wonderful find and I'm still chuckling over this one:

Diogenes 109. "I've seen Plato's cups and table, but not his cupness and tableness."

The rest of the book reads extremely well too.

According to most commentaries it appears that Davenport's versions of these Ancient Greek poems might not carry the most accurate word for word rendition. Of the various translations of these poets that I've read however, no one captures their stark, spare beauty anything like Guy Davenport.

There is beauty. Then there is a strange, iridescent, dreamy thing beyond it and that is Davenport's Sappho:

"Where leaf melody
In the apples
Is a crystal crash,
And the water is cold.
All roses and shadow,
This place, and sleep
Like dusk sifts down
From trembling leaves."
Sappho 2

The warlike poetry of Archilochos and the maiden songs of Alkman are glorious too. If you are going to only read one translation of the Ancient Greek lyric poets, I would make it Davenport's.

Guy Davenport was a Professor of English at the University of Kentucky for practically all of his academic career. Though he died before I got there, I was a graduate student in the same department for one year and got to hear a lot of stories about the man. Intrigued, I read some of his books and this one, a translation of some very ancient greek poets indeed has stuck with me every since because of its lucidity, humor, erudition and quite simply the pleasure it afforded me. When I bought it on Amazon a few months ago I did not expect the pleasure to be diminished and, happily, I was correct. In fact, I was even more in love with the book and, especially, with the writers translated so skillfully within it.

Heidegger claimed that encountering a work of art causes a world to be brought forth. He also claimed that the Greeks in the period before Plato and Aristotle had a relationship with Being that was more fundamental than those who came after them. Though he claimed this in regard to philosophers (especially Heraclitus who is translated in this book), I have often wondered whether he may have made his point clearer by talking about the fragments of these ancient poets. There is a distinct wonder at "Being" in Archilochos who spent everyday staring straight at death. And in the erotic ecstasy/suffering of Sappho, or any of the other poets translated here. We have in these guys glimpses of a world that is both beautiful and terrifying-- both of these because they are so alien to us.

The poets receive stunningly evocative verse translations which at the same time refuse to gloss over the fact that their works exist only in brief snippets in citations and fragments. It actually makes the poems that much more fascinating as you are forced to "think across the gaps" and guess, sometimes from only a few stray phrases amidst yawning lacunae, what the poem would originally have looked like. Archilochos is my favorite of the poets.

Heraclitus and Diogenes' aphorisms get similarly good treatment. Diogenes is a riot! "In the rich man's house there is no place to spit but in his face," etc. Props to Davenport for taking such obscure, fragmentary, overlooked materials and fashioning translations which are not only faithful and readable but wildly enjoyable.

Let's try a short review here: if you are a lover of ancient Greece, get this book.

I especially enjoyed the section on Heraclitus (Herakleitos).

This may be the best book Davenport ever wrote.