Pure Pagan: Seven Centuries of Greek Poems and Fragments

By Burton Raffel and Guy Davenport

“For there is indeed something we can call the spirit of ancient Greece–a carefully tuned voice that speaks out of the grave with astonishing clarity and grace , a distinctive voice that, taken as a whole, is like no other voice that has ever sung on this earth.”
–BURTON RAFFEL, from his Preface

For centuries, the poetry of Homer, Aristophanes, Sophocles, Sappho, and Archilochus has served as one of our primary means of connecting with the wholly vanished world of ancient Greece. But the works of numerous other great and prolific poets–Alkaios, Meleager, and Simonides, to name a few–are rarely translated into English , and are largely unknown to modern readers. In Pure Pagan, award-winning translator Burton Raffel brings these and many other wise and witty ancient Greek writers to an English-speaking audience for the first time, in full poetic flower. Their humorous and philosophical ruminations create a vivid portrait of everyday life in ancient Greece –and they are phenomenally lovely as well.

In short, sharp bursts of song, these two-thousand-year-old poems speak about the timeless matters of everyday life:
Wine (Wine is the medicine / To call for, the best medicine / To drink deep, deep)
History (Not us: no. / It began with our fathers, / I’ve heard).
Movers and shakers (If a man shakes loose stones / To make a wall with / Stones may fall on his head / Instead)
Old age (Old age is a debt we like to be owed / Not one we like to collect)
Frankness (Speak / As you please / And hear what can never / Please).
There are also wonderful epigrams (Take what you have while you have it: you’ll lose it soon enough. / A single summer turns a kid into a shaggy goat) and epitaphs (Here I lie, beneath this stone, the famous woman who untied her belt for only one man).

The entrancing beauty, humor, and piercing clarity of these poems will draw readers into the Greeks’ journeys to foreign lands, their bacchanalian parties and ferocious battles, as well as into the more intimate settings of their kitchens and bedrooms. The poetry of Pure Pagan reveals the ancient Greeks’ dreams, their sense of humor, sorrows, triumphs, and their most deeply held values, fleshing out our understanding of and appreciation for this fascinating civilization and its artistic legacy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 18, 2007
• ISBN: 9780307431646

Guy Davenport

Guy Davenport (1927–2005) was an American writer, artist, translator, and teacher who was best known for his short stories that combined a modernist style with classical subjects. Originally from South Carolina, Davenport graduated from Duke University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford, where he wrote his thesis on James Joyce. After earning a PhD from Harvard, he taught English at Haverford College from 1961 to 1963 before accepting a position at the University of Kentucky, where he remained until his retirement in 1990. In 2012, the university appointed its inaugural Guy Davenport Endowed English Professor. Davenport won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his literary achievements and an O. Henry Award for his short stories. He was also a visual artist whose illustrations were included in several of his books. His works include Da Vinci’s Bicycle, Eclogues, Apples and Pears, and The Jules Verne Steam Balloon.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

ALKAIOS

ALKMAN

ANONYMOUS

ANTIPATER OF SIDON

ANTIPATER OF THESSALONIKA

ANYTE

ARATUS

ASCLEPIADES

CALLIMACHUS

DIONYSIOS OF ANDROS

GLAUKOS

HEGEMON

LEONIDAS

LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM

MELEAGER

MENANDER

MENECRATES

PERSES

PHALAECUS

PHILODEMUS

PHOCYLIDES

PLATO

POSIDIPPUS

SIMONIDES

TERPANDER

THEODORIDAS

THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD

FINDING LIST

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

ABOUT THE POETS

Copyright Page

FOR GILES ANDERSON

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

We have come to know Homer well, in this Greekless age. We know Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides; we know Aristophanes; we know Sappho and even Archilochus. Shorter (lyric) Greek poetry before the Christian era has also been remarkably well preserved, considering the accidents of time and the malice of authority. Yet with a few isolated exceptions we do not know (or even encounter) Alkaios or Alkman, Anyte or Callimachus, Meleager or Simonides. And those other, nameless wonders of Greek poetry that have come down to us through the centuries, now necessarily piled in a generic heap and ascribed to the universal authorship of Anonymous, are even less known, though often no less piercingly beautiful, no less witty or wise.

For there is indeed something we can call the spirit of ancient Greece, a carefully tuned voice that speaks out of the grave with astonishing clarity and grace, a distinctive voice that, taken as a whole, is like no other voice that has ever sung on this earth. We know a great deal of ancient Greece when we know Homer; we know a great deal when we know the tragedians and Aristophanes, when we know Sappho and Archilochus. But the picture is incomplete, sometimes sadly incomplete, unless we also have some awareness of the sharp, keen bursts of song that are represented in the pages that follow.

There are many poets who have drunk and studied at this fount; some such poets still exist in our time, notably the magnificent C. P. Cavafy. It is not, I think, platitudinous to suggest that ancient Greek lyric poetry is virtually an inexhaustible resource, one that contemporary writers can always resort to with plain profit both for themselves and for their readers. I would myself classify most of the poetry in this book as more quintessentially modern than most of what you will find in our contemporary literary periodicals. That, I would maintain, is neither a platitude nor a conundrum. To see why, simply read the poems: they have better answers than I do.

Most of what has survived is from written (manuscript) sources, some fragmentary, some put together in collections or anthologies. (Printing had, of course, not been invented until long after the final entry in the Greek Anthology had been recorded.) But we must remember that the material on which things were written was emphatically not the paper we know today, most

Reviews for Pure Pagan

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

These are Greek lyrics translated by one of my favorite poet-translators, Burton Raffel. The poets included in this anthology provide a glimpse into archaic Greek culture through their poetry. Among them are the very obscure to the somewhat less obscure, with a few familiar names like Plato. There are poems and fragments of poems for everyone's taste. I enjoyed making connections with my own life and our twenty-first century culture. It was also interesting to see the influence that these ancient poets had on some of our greatest modern poets. Overall it is a beautiful selection of poetry.

[g026r · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An OK collection. Though I can't comment with regards to their fidelity to the originals, the translations themselves read well. Lacks any notes to explain the poems context, and strangely organizes them in alphabetical order by poet, rather than the in my mind more sensible chronological.