The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse

Composed between the early-agricultural ''song culture'' of 800 BCE, when praise poems and dirges mingled in a world peopled with gods and monsters, and the time of Imperial Rome, the corpus of Greek and Latin lyric poetry is as densely rich in formal interrelation and allusion as anything we know in English verse. Poets like the Greek Callimachus and the Roman Horace self-consciously modelled themselves on earlier bards - Sappho and Mimnermus, Pindar and Alcaeus - and produced poetry thick with references and resonances from the work of their exemplars. Yet, as a rule, for the reader in English translation, much of this fascinating interplay is inaccessible. One translator approaches a given poet in one way; another translator approaches the next poet in another. We receive the part, but lose the whole.In an undertaking of astonishing ambition, Chris Childers has sought to remedy this situation by translating the most representative and significant poems from both languages in a single volume, and according to consistent principles of translation. No other book now available so much as attempts this. A decade in the making, The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse gives us back the full complexity and play of two immortal traditions as we have never seen them before.>

Auteur
Christopher Childers studied Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and poetry at Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Baltimore, where he teaches Latin, coaches squash and tennis and watches over his pet fish and budgies. Christopher Childers studied Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and poetry at Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Baltimore, where he teaches Latin, coaches squash and tennis and watches over his pet fish and budgies.

Texte du rabat
'Inspired and enlightening ... here is a work of staggering ambition, exceptional accomplishment, and surprisingly pleasant reading ... an excellent gift for anyone interested in classical literature' A. E. Stallings, Telegraph'An extraordinary feat ... Over and over, I was impressed both by Childers's technical abilities and his vivid way of evoking the multiple voices in this rich tradition' Emily Wilson, translator of the Odyssey and the Iliad'Where does the lyric begin? One answer - a capacious and generous one - is given by Christopher Childers's anthology, in which translations of both Greek and Latin lyric poetry are offered in large servings, with extensive and ambitious commentary ... bold and worthwhile ... readable and learned' Peter McDonald, TLS'An extraordinary achievement, in scope, scale and skill' Richard Jenkyns, author of Classical LiteratureThe poems in this lively, wide-ranging and richly enjoyable anthology are the work of priestesses and warriors; of philosophers and statesmen; of teenage girls, concerned for their birthday celebrations; of drunkards and brawlers; of grumpy old men, and chic young things. Their authors write - or sing - about hopes, fears, loves, losses, triumphs and humiliations. Every one of them lived and died between 1,900 and 2,800 years ago. The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse is a volume without precedent. It brings together the best of two traditions normally treated in isolation, and in doing so tells a captivating story about how literature and book-culture emerged from an oral society in which memory and learning were transmitted through song. The classical vision of lyric poetry as understood by the greatest ancient poets - Sappho and Horace, Bacchylides and Catullus - mingles and interacts with our expansive modern vision of the lyric as the brief, personal, emotional poetry of a human soul laid bare. Anyone looking for a picture of what ancient poets were up to when they were simply singing to the gods, or to their friends, or otherwise opening little verbal windows into their life and times can find it here. It is a volume full of fire and life: an undertaking of astonishing reach, and an accomplishment magisterial in its scope.