7 Greeks: Translations by Guy Davenport

The first thing I’m gonna say is that I don’t particularly like reading poetry in translation (look, I don’t even read much poetry in the original). However, Tom (Wuthering Expectations) gave me this book because of my fascination with the ancient Greece, so here we go. And it’s interesting.   

Artilochos 

A bigger problem than reading in translation is that we don’t have the poems in their entirety—only fragments. Artilochos seems good though. 

There are some interesting bits about war. 

3 

Let him go ahead. 

Ares is a democrat. 

There are no privileged people 

On a battle field. 

184 

In the hospitality of war

We left them their dead 

As a gift to remember us by.

My favourite bits are the dirty, raunchy ones. 

11 

Like Odysseus under the ram 

You have clung under your lovers 

And under your love of lust, 

Seeing nothing else for this mist, 

Dark of heart, dark of mind. 

36 

He comes, in bed, 

As copiously as 

A Prienian ass

And is equipped 

Like a stallion. 

96 

To engage with an insatiable girl, 

Ramming belly against belly, 

Thigh riding against thigh. 

These horny poems make me think of Aristophanes. 

Sappho 

I have read Sappho before, in the Penguin translation by Aaron Poochigian. I know she’s important and highly regarded, but can’t say I have any strong feelings about the fragments I’ve read. 

I suppose I like these: 

15 

Desire has shaken my mind

As wind in the mountain forests 

Roars through trees. 

65 

I

Percussion, salt and honey, 

A quivering in the thighs; 

He shakes me all over again, 

Eros who cannot be thrown, 

Who stalks on all fours

Like a beast. 

II 

Eros makes me shiver again

Strengthens in the knees, 

Eros gall and honey, 

Snake-sly, invisible. 

213 

I 

The moon has set, and the Pleiades, 

It is the middle of the night, 

Hour follows hour. I lie alone. 

II 

The moon has gone 

To her Endymion 

The Pleiades

Their seven lovers please. 

Since Esperos glistened 

And the moon rose red

I have listened 

Alone in my bed. 

Alkman 

Judging by these fragments, the poems of Alkman (or Alcman) aren’t raunchy like the poems of Artilochos, nor erotic like Sappho’s.  

4 

There is the god’s revenge. 

Happy the man of calm mind 

who weaves his day 

unweeping. But I sing

the light of Agido: I see 

her as the sun, which she, 

Agido, calls 

to shine, its witness. 

But I may not 

praise or blame her. 

Our mastersinger

must come first, 

as in a field

the sleek, galloping 

stallion, 

winner of races, 

stands apart, 

as if seen in a dream. 

I like that image. 

7 

And is not Hagesikhora, 

the fine-ankled, ours? 

Does not she keep close to Agido? 

She honors the feastday. 

Hear them, gods, 

gods whose ends they fulfil. 

O choirmaster, 

I am a mere girl, 

I sing like the rafter owl, 

yet I sing

to welcome the goddess of the dawn, 

the queller of pain, 

the Hagesikhora has led us 

the lovely way to peace. 

Anakreon 

Guy Davenport has a rather interesting section in the Introduction talking about the real Anakreon versus a group of poems by imitators that “inspired and was imitated so beautifully by Belleau, Ronard, and Herrick” (it wasn’t discovered till the 19th century that those poems were not by Anakreon). 

The fragments in this book are by the real Anakreon. 

I like a few. 

19 

In the month of Posideion, 

When the clouds are fat with rain, 

Wild storms bring us Zeus. 

20 

Can myrrh rubbed on a chest 

Sweeten the great round heart inside? 

33 

I climb the white cliff again 

To throw myself into the grey sea, 

Drunk with love again. 

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. 

What time remains is short and sweet. 

Therefore I often cry and dread 

Dark Tartaros where I shall meet 

In dreary rooms the weeping dead. 

For Hades’ house is dark, and black

The downward road, the hateful way, 

Unwilling and with no way back, 

Downward ever, and there to stay.

Who says the ancient Greeks were alien? Who says we can’t relate to their writings? 

Herakleitos 

Better known as Heraclitus, he’s a philosopher, not a poet like the previous ones in the collection. His central ideas are the unity of opposites, and change (everything is constantly changing, becoming). 

Ovid may have been influenced by him? 

21 

One cannot step twice into the same river, for the water into which you first stepped has flowed on.

I didn’t know that line was from an ancient Greek! 

65

At night we extinguish the lamp and go to sleep; at death our lamp is extinguished and we go to sleep.

101 

Sea water is both fresh and foul: excellent for fish, poison to men. 

Diogenes 

Another philosopher. I don’t particularly care for his writings. 

There are just some funny lines. 

17 

How proud you are of not being proud, Plato says, and I reply that there is pride and pride. 

58 

I’m turning that invitation down: the last time I was there, they were not thankful enough that I came. 

Herondas

Herondas (or Herodas) was a poet who wrote “mimos, or mime played by a single maskless actor taking all the parts, probably in city squares of an afternoon or on small stages in wine shops”, notes Guy Davenport.  

I have nothing to say, as I just find them strange—unlike any drama I’ve read. Judging by Herondas and Aristophanes, the ancient Greeks seem to like bawdy jokes. 

My favourites in the collection are Artilochos, Anakreon, and Herakleitos.