{"id":2746,"date":"2024-04-18T13:39:52","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T13:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2746"},"modified":"2024-04-18T13:40:31","modified_gmt":"2024-04-18T13:40:31","slug":"christopher-childers-the-penguin-book-of-greek-and-latin-lyric-verse-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2746","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Childers, The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse – review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Childers\u2019 The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse<\/em> is a vast undertaking with a great deal to offer those like me who enjoy reading classical literature but can\u2019t read it in its original languages. Epic and drama are excluded, as is the prose literature, but \u2018lyric\u2019 is defined very widely indeed, covering both what the ancients would have understood by the term \u2013 poems written for performance to the lyre and in a range of metres associated with such performance \u2013 and more broadly short or medium length poems speaking in the first person and \/ or veering towards song, as Childers puts it.<\/p>\n

This means, of course, that the book reflects an enormous variety of life experiences and attitudes towards both them and life in general. Readers gain insight into how the world changed for its people as Greek society evolved through the hundreds of years between the time of Archilochus in the seventh century BCE with its tiny city states, and the great Hellenistic kingdoms with their polyglot populations, wide geographical spread and cultural memory, or again as Roman society evolved from republic to empire, and Latin literature from dependence on Greek originals to its own distinctive flowerings. Vivacious introductions to different contexts and historical phases guide the reader through these developments and separate introductions to different writers bring their distinguishing features into focus.<\/p>\n

In the Translator\u2019s Preface Childers explains his fundamental decision to represent different Greek and Latin genres and metres by using what seem to him appropriate English metres and rhyme schemes. He hopes this will help him achieve the lapidary quality that he finds in Greek and Latin poetry, whose conventions strongly marked its difference from non-poetic utterance. As different metres were associated with different occasions and genres, poets could invoke these associations across vast spaces of time. This might be to build on them \u2013 as the Roman Horace adopted the metre of the Archaic Greek Alcaeus for his carpe diem ode, \u2018elevating the Mytilenean\u2019s gruff particularity to universality and transcendence\u2019 as Childers puts it \u2013 or it may ironically subvert them, as Ovid does in using the metre of martial elegy in Amores<\/em> I.9.<\/p>\n

Such an argument is strong in principle. Problems can arise from the scale of Childers\u2019 undertaking \u2013 a single author translating eighty poets spanning eight centuries, and, as he says, doing so \u2018according to consistent principles\u2019. Of course rhyme and conventional metre can lend power to utterance of all kinds, passionately exalted, intimately conversational, persuasive or didactic. However, producing such verse rapidly and in bulk is a challenge to the most skilful rhymer. Childers\u2019 translations of Sappho\u2019s invocation of Aphrodite (Fragment 1) and her expression of envy of a man sitting by a woman that Sappho herself desires (Fragment 31) both have fine phrases in them. However, to my ear, rhyming gives their overall movement a glibness that robs them of feeling and makes them far less effective than several of the other versions I know. The longer fragments that seem to me to work best in Childers\u2019 versions are 44 (the marriage of Hector and Andromache) and 2 (inviting Aphrodite to come from her home in Crete). 44 is indeed strongly marked as poetry by the fact that each of its lines is split into two half lines. However, it barely rhymes, and the midline pauses throw emphasis on individual phrases, so that its distance from ordinary speech enhances its power. And Childers\u2019 Fragment 2 is extremely beautiful. Rhymes again are lightly touched and unobtrusive. The translator\u2019s exquisitely evocative phrasing conveys both the physical beauties of the place Sappho is describing and her own reverent delight in them. Shifting between full and half rhymes, the poem combines the pleasure of fulfilled expectation with the energy of surprise:<\/p>\n

Here, through the apple boughs, the lapse of water
\nsounds icy-clear, and here, rose-shadow fills
\nthe grass, as through the leaf-light and leaf-flutter
\na trance distills.<\/p>\n

And here are meadows where the buds of spring
\nexuberantly bloom, where horses graze,
\nand, honey-sweet, the wind goes whispering …<\/p>\n

The success of this longer fragment (I\u2019ve omitted two stanzas) is matched by that of many of the very short ones, also unconstrained by rhyme and \u2013 perhaps consequently \u2013 as vivid in Childers\u2019 versions as in those of other translators.<\/p>\n

In a wider view, I often found the use of rhyme alienating in a way that made it hard to read much of the book at a stretch. I have the same problem with James Michie\u2019s Horace. My objection is not, of course, to rhyme per se, or to its application to Latin and Greek verse. Derek Mahon\u2019s very few, unforgettably brilliant versions of lyrics by Horace and Ovid get much of their wit and driving power from the flair of their rhyming. But Mahon translates very freely. The translator committed to following the precise contours of meaning and implication in the original as closely as possible finds his choice of rhymes inhibited by that very fact. The result can easily be a structure that seems mechanically and externally imposed on the poem, like a skin graft that\u2019s failed to take, rather than something organically involved in its growth. For continuous reading I personally would have preferred it if Childers had allowed himself greater formal freedom.<\/p>\n

And yet, and yet, when everything does come together in individual poems Childers\u2019 approach gives great delight. Here\u2019s his version of Horace\u2019s famous Pyrrha Ode (I. 5). In it, exuberantly colloquial language gives an air of immediate, spontaneous utterance to thoughts that the poem\u2019s structural complexity makes linger in our minds in a richly interwoven shimmering of suggestions:<\/p>\n

Pyrrha, now who\u2019s the skinny\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 young thing on top of you,
\ndrizzled in perfume, rolling\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 on beds of roses laid
\nxxxxxxxxxxxx<\/span>deep in some grotto\u2019s shade?
\nxxxxxxxx<\/span>Who is it for, that blond hair-do<\/p>\n

so careful to seem careless?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Poor kid! How many tears
\nhe\u2019ll shed at the shifting weather,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 surprised by the deities\u2019
\nxxxxxxxxxxxx<\/span>mood swings, and the rough seas
\nxxxxxxxx<\/span>and black winds, wet behind the ears,<\/p>\n

who\u2019s so in love now, thinking\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 you\u2019re golden through and through,
\nthat you\u2019ll be free forever,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 you\u2019ll be forever kind,
\nxxxxxxxxxxxx<\/span>and doesn\u2019t know the wind
\nxxxxxxxx<\/span>deceives. Poor bastards, for whom you<\/p>\n

glitter before they sail.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not me \u2013 a seaside shrine
\nshows on a votive plaque that\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve hung this dedication
\nxxxxxxxxxxxx<\/span>to the great Power of Ocean:
\nxxxxxxxx<\/span>my sailor\u2019s clothes, still wet with brine.<\/p>\n

Childers\u2019 translation of the ode is amplified by detailed contextual notes. I can\u2019t evaluate these in the way a classical scholar might but as a general reader I found them immensely helpful. They combine close reading of the words themselves \u2013 sensitive exploration both of metaphors, going well beyond what I\u2019d noticed for myself on previous readings, and of the implied ambivalence of the speaker\u2019s feelings \u2013 with background information only a scholar could give. This involves the poem\u2019s generic contexts and metrical allusiveness. For the enthusiast prepared to follow up references to relevant poems included in the volume, such information offers starting points for developing a sense of classical literature as a living, evolving whole. In relation to this specific poem, it prompts a deeper appreciation of Horace\u2019s dazzling artistic synthesis of earlier subgenres and motifs.<\/p>\n

Poem after poem gets similar treatment, exploring it both in itself and in relation to other poems. This brings us back to the sheer scale of what Childers has done in this volume \u2013 some 550 pages of poems (including the broad introductions to periods and writers) and another 320 pages of notes to individual texts. These look forward as well as back \u2013 to modern and Early Modern authors influenced by the ancients as well as to the predecessors the ancients themselves drew on or deliberately alluded to. At the highest points we have outstanding single poems where the brilliance of a great original is matched by the brilliance of the translation. However, the special achievement of the volume is in the sheer amount of translated poetry, background information and synthesising comment it offers the reader, in the process both illuminating these outstanding single works and opening wide fields of reading pleasure.<\/p>\n

The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse<\/em> translated and edited by Christopher Childers. \u00a340.00 hardback. Penguin Classics. ISBN: 9780241567449<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would like to thank David Cooke for his permission to repost this essay, written for his magazine The High Window<\/a>.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Childers\u2019 The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse is a vast undertaking with a great deal to offer those like me who enjoy reading classical literature but can\u2019t read it in its original languages. Epic and drama are excluded, as is the prose literature, but \u2018lyric\u2019 is defined very widely indeed, covering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2746"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2750,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions\/2750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}