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Full Description
Hailed by Plato as the "Tenth Muse" of ancient Greek poetry, Sappho is inarguably antiquity's greatest lyric poet. Born over 2,600 years ago on the Greek island of Lesbos, and writing amorously of women and men alike, she is the namesake lesbian. What's left of her writing, and what we know of her, is fragmentary. Shrouded in mystery, she is nonetheless repeatedly translated and discussed - no, appropriated - by all. Sappho has most recently undergone a variety of treatments by agenda-driven scholars and so-called poet-translators with little or no knowledge of Greek. Classicist-translator Jeffrey Duban debunks the postmodernist scholarship by which Sappho is interpreted today and offers translations reflecting the charm and elegant simplicity of the originals. Duban provides a reader-friendly overview of Sappho's times and themes, exploring her eroticism and Greek homosexuality overall. He introduces us to Sappho's highly cultured island home, to its lyre-accompanied musical legends, and to the fabled beauty of Lesbian women. Not least, he emphasizes the proximity of Lesbos to Troy, making the translation and enjoyment of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey a further focus.More than anything else, argues Duban, it is free verse and its rampant legacy - and no two persons more than Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound - that bear responsibility for the ruin of today's classics in translation, to say nothing of poetry in the twentieth century.
Beyond matters of reflection for classicists, Duban provides a far-ranging beginner's guide to classical literature, with forays into Spenser and Milton, and into the colonial impulse of Virgil, Spenser, and the West at large.
Contents
Acknowledgments Abbreviations Guide to Pronunciation Preface Part I. 1. Greek Lyric, Greek Epic, and Old Testament; the Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns 2. Greekless Translators, Theorizing Scholars 3. Selected Lyric Poets of Antiquity: Archilochus, Alcman, Anacreon & Ibycus 4. Sappho: Antiquity's Poetess and Ours 5. Sappho's Eroticism 6. The Loves of Men, Gods, and Primordial Forces 7. Lesbos, Troy, and Environs; the Principal Greek Genres and Dialects Part II. 8. Sappho and the "Lyric Nine," An Aesthetic for Lyric Translation 9. The Aesthetic of English-Language Prosody in the Translation of Classical Verse 10. Translatability: Achieving Charm and Distinction in Translation 11. Translation as the Profession of Ignorance: Mary Barnard, Willis Barnstone, and Others 12. Translations Compared Part III. Translations: sappho alcman anacreon archilochus ibycus Part IV. 13. Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid: The Epic Cycle in Progress 14. Cosmic Preservation and the Heroism of Heracles 15. Self-Perpetuation and the Heroism at Troy 16. Imperishable Fame and the Evolution of Greek Epic 17. Imperishable Fame Denied: Sappho's "Marriage of Hector and Andromache" 18. Cataclysm Averted: Homer's Separation of Helen and Achilles Part V. 19. Homeric and Sapphic Meter, Metric Formulae and Oral Composition, the Origins of Rhyming Poetry, Milton on Blank Verse 20. Accentuation, Sound, and Word Order in Ancient Greek Poetry Part VI. 21. Growing Latin from Greek Roots, Rome's Imperial Vision and Its Aftermath Part VII. Equal to the Gods: Poetic Sublimity, Inner Collapse Equal to a God: Form and Content in Convulsive Union Frenzied Emotion, Expressive Control: Form and Content Bound Modernism Wins Out: Form and Content Abandoned "Freedom, Freedom, Prison to the Free": The Obfuscatory Unfettered Sappho Unbound and Boundaryless- Theorized, Personalized, Politicized Boundaries, Artistic Fit, and What "Art" Means and Does Part VIII. Not Making It New (or Better): Recent Iliads and Aeneids So Old It's New (and Better): The Smith/Miller Hexametric Iliad On Leaving Well Enough Alone: Rejecting Lattimore for R. Fitzgerald Pope's Iliad and E. FitzGerald's Ruba iya t; Pope on Chapman's Iliad Versions and Perversions of Homer: R. Fitzgerald, Fagles, and Logue Ezra Pound: Damage to Sextus Propertius Addendum Notes Bibliography Index
