Pindar's Victory Songs

Pindar's world, and the circumstances of his writing, are so foreign to ours that it's hard to expect any translation to bring over the features of his Victory Odes into English. Nisetich himself is the first to clue you into this, with a thorough apparatus of explication, history, metrical analysis, and gloss that prepares you for exactly what not to expect from Pindar--business-as-usual "my heart sings" lyricism that Pindar, writing for pay for elaborate choral events, had little time for. Instead, the sudden shifts in reference, narrative gaps, and apparently oddball approach to commemoration (whole victory odes where the victor's not mentioned; the hero celebrated negatively only by the qualities he lacks) are explained as features of an archaic world-view that was already antique by Euripides's time. The translations are direct and adequate, broken up like modern free verse, and framed with ode-by-ode intros that make this book a helpful combination of poetry and archaeology.

Pindar, arguably the greatest lyric poet of ancient Greece, presents the translator with a difficulty--how to retain the often grandiose beauty of Pindar's Greek (and perhaps even show something of the form of Pindar's odes) while not departing far into the land of the unreadable.This translation is the only one that does it. These are renditions that are literal, and yet can be read out loud and impress the ear with a beauty that can only be called Pindaric. And every ode is laid out on the page in a fashion that, without clutter, conveys the structure of the ancient Greek song-and-dance performance that these choral odes originally were.Moreover, this edition provides you with an ideally informative and insightful introduction. The only thing wrong with it is the high price--though you do get a superbly made, sewn-binding, oversize paperback for your money.One final note--whether your interest is specifically in ancient Greek poetry, or in poetry period, you should also check out Holderlin's "Hymns and Fragments" (ISBN 0691014124), which are informed by the spirit of Pindar and early Greek religious feeling like nothing else written by a modern human being.