Pure Pagan: Seven Centuries of Greek Poems and Fragments

First of all, this book has the greatest title ever. Guy Davenport didn't seem to like it, though; in his otherwise fantastic introduction he subtly pokes fun at it. But I find it a great choice for the collection. Burton Raffel is one of my favorite translators; his "Don Quijote" and "Gargantua and Pantagruel" translations are the only ones for me. So I was very happy to discover this, a collection of Raffel translations of ancient Greek lyric and epigrammatic poetry spanning from the 7th Century BCE to the 1st Century CE. I'm sure there are some dilettantes out there who will quibble that some of the poems are not "exactly" translated, but I'm not one of them. Raffel makes it clear in his preface that he did not want to produce a literal translation, and so much the better for the poems themselves. The effect is, rather than a stuffy tome of exact translations, a little book filled with the wit and wonder of these long-forgotten bards. Several poets are spotlighted, most represented by a few lines of their surviving poetry. The depressing part is that the majority of their work is lost. Raffel has a brief bio for each poet in the back of the book; most of the bios state either "No reliable data" or "Such and such was a famous poet. None of his work survives." And that's the heart of it. The deeper one gets into the study of the ancient world, the more fully one understands how MUCH has been lost. It's not only sad, it's despicable. And I'm sure we all know what religious group to blame for the loss... "Pure Pagan" is filled with lines that stick in your brain. There's Meleager, who taught his muse "to run on barbed feet," Antipater of Sidon, who in his poem to Ares claims that the god of war wants "trophies hacked by the sword," Callimachus with his nihilistic poem on the fact that there is no afterlife (yet "meat is cheap down here"), Menecrates with his poem on old age: "Old age is a debt/We like to be owed/Not one we like to collect." There are also a wealth of anonymous epigrams, no less insightful or meaningful for their anonymity. Guy Davenport's introduction is one of the best I've read. In just a few pages he brings the ancient Greeks to life, recreating the milieu in which these poems were created and appreciated. I've read entire books on the ancient world which didn't convey the detail and enthusiasm that Davenport provides. I've yet to read his own collection of ancient Greek poetry translations, "7 Greeks," but I've already ordered it. I first read this book on a rainy day, a bottle of wine by my side. I couldn't imagine a better atmosphere. These poets speak across the ages to us, through the centuries of change, death, and destruction, and they sound very much alive. In today's mediated, euthanized, Christian Right-ruled times, perhaps we need a "Pure Pagan" message from the depthless past more than ever.

This volume of Greek poetry is a great find. If you have even the slightest interest in ancient Greece, this book is indispensible. Essentially a collection of short poems--mostly epitaphs, inscriptions, and fragments of otherwise long-lost authors--Pure Pagan is moving, hilarious, and always enjoyable. My only complaint is a very small one. In the introduction, Guy Davenport makes note of the hundreds of fragments left over from the Hellenic world--so why is this collection so short? What's here is so enjoyable I was left wanting much, much more. Highly recommended.

"I hate poems that go on & on", writes Callimachus, an ancient Greek whose poetry has been translated and compiled in this anthology, along with the work of other bards both familiar and obscure, and his is a credo which the Greeks seem to have lived up to admirably: the poems here represented possess an extraordinary power and descriptive beauty despite their extreme, often jarring brevity. Take the poetry of Alkaios: Boy: Boy: Wine and Truth Or Alkman: The thread runs thin The need runs hard Hard. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Greek's lyrics are their timelessness and universality. The Greeks were a people evidently much preoccupied with death, and the transitory nature of all things: thus a large number of their poems and fragments are comprised of poignant elegies and "epitaphs". Plato: I am a drowned man's tomb/there is a farmer's. Death waits for us all/ whether at sea or on land. Anonymous: "I'm dead, but waiting for you/and you'll wait for someone/the darkness waits for everyone, it makes no distinctions" Yet the writing of the Greeks could also be marvelously comic and erotic: A boy bent to drape flowers on his stepmothers grave/thinking that death had changed her/but the stone toppled and killed him/Stepsons! Be wary even when they're dead! "We'll be four, each with his woman/eight's too many for one keg of wine/Go tell Aristus the keg I bought/is only half-full, a gallon short, maybe two...hurry! They're coming at five. Many of the Greek's poems are also heartbreakingly human. Alkaios: Friend's? My friends are nothing/And I weep for them, and for me. Philodemus: I came through the rain, soaked/dodging my husband/and now we sit and do nothing,neither talk/nor sleep as lovers ought to sleep/ As the title attests, many of these poems are "fragments": consequently their language and style is at times rough and awkward. Again, again/pigs whip up/ muck, mud, slop, again Yet ultimately this anthology, despite a few crude temple scrawls, is littered throughout with magnificent gems of literature, providing, without the use of annotations or footnotes of any sort, but through their own words, an incredibly fresh and fascinating glimpse into the lives of an artistic and philosophical people who, though physically vanished, will endure forever in the treasures they left behind.

Simplicity can go a long way and a few well-chosen words can carry great weight. This seems to have been the idea behind Greek lyric poetry. In some cases, an entire poem is hardly more than a sentence, and that suffices. The poems are less anchored in image than idea. If the reader is looking a progenitor of modern Imagism, it isn't here. What the reader will find are philosophic musings on life, death, love and other always timely topics.

This book of epigrams and fragments of poems did more towards helping me to understand and appreciate the ancient Mediterranean peoples than anything I've ever read. I constantly found myself empathizing with the poets. Many of the poems are about drinking, sex, war and women. All of them are entertaining. All well chosen for this collection. The introduction by Guy Davenport is interesting and a must read. If studying ancient peoples is your cup of tea you need this book in your library.