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(More customer reviews)The main interest in Loeb Classical Library's Greek Lyric I is Sappho. Identified with the city of Mytilene, on the isle of Lesbos, ca. 7th - 6th centuries B.C., Sappho exemplified, for the ancient Greek and Roman critics (e.g., Ovid, Catullus, Longinus, Plutarch), consummate skill in the craft of poetry--especially with her ability to deploy the Greek language (within the ancient Aeolic dialect) for the most subtle musical/meterical effects and thrilling invocations. Her peers are only the greatest of love poets. What Aristotle says of Sophocles applies equally to Sappho: She has only to name the nightingale and she sings. With one exception, her poetry exists for us only in the briefest of quotations, often no more than half a line here, half a word there-- but these are sufficient to document her greatness. It were worth studying Greek so as to enjoy her very words. The translation is fairly literal, but do read the Greek text aloud and thereby relish the compression of her language and the music of her song (ah, the genius of ancient Greek-- so seductive that the rabbis of old forbade the study of Greek until the scholar had attained the years of prudence, i.e., 40+). Essential to any library for gentle-folk. Let me add that at least three great achievements in poetry come to us from the eastern Mediterranean--Homer, Sappho, and King David. The poetry of these three wordsmiths is, first, to be sung, or incanted, with instrumental acompaniment. And, while translations are often splendid (especially with Psalms, or Tehillim), yet each poet bends the words to his/her will (to paraphrase Luther's appreciation of J Des Prez).
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This volume contains the poetic fragments of the two illustrious singers of early sixth-century Lesbos: Sappho, the most famous woman poet of antiquity, whose main theme was love; and Alcaeus, poet of wine, war, and politics, and composer of short hymns to the gods. Also included are the principal testimonia, the ancients' reports on the lives and work of the two poets.
The five volumes in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Greek Lyric contain the surviving fragments of solo and choral song. This poetry was not preserved in medieval manuscripts, and few complete poems remain. Later writers quoted from the poets, but only so much as suited their needs; these quotations are supplemented by papyrus texts found in Egypt, most of them badly damaged. The high quality of what remains makes us realise the enormity of our loss.
Volume I presents Sappho and Alcaeus. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the Anacreontea; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and other sixth-century poets are in Volume III. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). Volume V contains the new school of poets active from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth century and also collects folk songs, drinking songs, hymns, and other anonymous pieces.
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