Greek Lyric: An Anthology in Translation

by Andrew W. Miller (Translator)

Successfully integrating elegance and a close fidelity to the Greek, these new translations aim to provide Greekless students with as close a sense as possible of how the Greeks themselves thought and wrote about the world. Miller's skillful introduction places the works in historical context and briefly describes the different metrical forms represented in the selections. Headnotes to each section highlight the background of the poet whose works follows. Complete with a glossary of names and a select bibliography.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, School, Nonfiction, Read For School, Class, Ancient History

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 451

Reviews

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the books on my exam list in school, and I find it to be one of the best English translations of selections of lyric poetry that I have ever read. The book is organized chronologically, with a brief introduction to each author and his/her style of composition, and includes choral as well as the shorter works of authors like Sappho. He includes a wide variety of works by Pindar so that the reader can get a good sense of the scale of Pindar’s work. The most famous odes, such as the Olympian and the Pythian are included in this volume. I always found poetry much harder to read than prose, when reading the works in the original Latin or Greek. My opinion is that Miller’s translations are clear and logically follow the sense of the original Greek much better than the Loebs. Miller includes many notes and a glossary for those who have a limited background in Greek myth, and comments on papyri finds within the last 50 years, which have added to the corpus and knowledge of these poets and the genre.

[Casandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my Lyric Poetry of Greece and Rome class at University.

4.0 stars

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This compact collection of Greek lyric verse presents works and fragments of works chronologically from a two century span (from the 7th to the 5th centuries BC), encompassing most extant poets of Archaic and Classical Greece. It is intended as a digestible overview and bears the strengths and weaknesses of such a format.

The first half of the collection is the weaker, consisting of mainly short, and often fragmentary pieces by 15 different authors. One certainly gets a sense of the sheer variety of Greek verse, and there are ample good examples of various styles of ode, dithyramb, maiden-song and so forth. However, the impressions of these works are too fleeting to cut deeply. Reading them is like sifting through singed leaves from a bonfire, and one struggles to imagine the full ouevres of which these are the remains. Even mighty Sappho falls within this pile of scar bits, and does not particularly shine from within their midst.

The second half, however, gives a considerably more generous sampling (75 pages) of Pindar and a reasonably good selection (30 pages) of his contemporary, Bacchylides. These are excellent translations, nicely curated with judicious overviews of the context and structure of each poem along with limited explanatory notes. They not only provide a good introduction to Pindar and Bacchylides, but also to that most peculiar form, the epinicion or Victory Ode. Commissioned works celebrating victories in various athletic competitions, the epinicia are in fact complex works of mythologized genealogy, constructing deep portraits of inidividual athletes as culminations of their families' histories and mythic connections. The present is mapped deeply onto the past.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can sit and read german books that say Sophocles, Parmenides, etc (everyone prior to plato) were on a whole nother level of consciousness totally foreign to our modernized hijinks and effortlessly turned out poetry-of-the-earth. Yet most of these poems predate by centuries such things as the famous antigone chorale, and make it clear that the earliest of the poets were not quite the spirit-possessed sages some wish them to be. The earliest poems here are exploratory and novel as the poets seek to figure out what they can do with the medium, talking frankly and at times formulaically - and it is with figures like Sappho, Pindar, Theognis, those notably special individuals, who manage to tease out, deliberately and artist-like, that wispy style of modulating focus, spiritual attunement, metaphorical fluidity. Hoelderlin who went insane trying to become a figure like Pindar in a way knew this - for his poems were a constant set of revisions, constantly poking and shifting trying to find the things he could and could not say. And yet for this, the story goes, he went insane, unable to believe that he could combine this deliberate artistry with the unconscious spirit he tapped into - compare Pindar, who despite clear work comes off as effortless, who can bring in a flatly political topic or a tufting moral quipping, appearing to lack any concern. And yet we can see that, despite the front of mysticism, his process is the result of mind and thought (and he lived contemporaneously with Aeschylus, died 40 years before Sophocles) - we can compare his peer Bacchylides, who writes in the same mold and succeeds lesser, giving in too often to awkward transitions and inserted aphorisms.

In translation no doubt the effect is lessened but we can reflect on the concerns and utility of the poetry. If it is mistaken to presume that these people were on a state even the wackiest drugs can't induce in us, it may not be mistaken to presume that the 'poetry' here is of an entirely different purpose - to be sung in public gatherings for the sake of specific individuals, not read as a private aria in the quiet of a room - and indeed perhaps the social function of the Athenians, the way they thought about and talked to their friends, is what really steps this aside from what we might call modern poetry, and cuts through the efforts to imitate the Dithryambic or Ode model. Perhaps hoelderlin ought to have drank more wine, and sought after more homosexual lovers (and ones cuter, and less thoughtful, than Friedrich Schiller).

Note - this volume is alright, the translation seems adequate though of course nothing profound as english poetry itself; the Sappho here seems to reflect more favorably on Anne Carson's translation than I had initially expected. However, there are vague and unclear degrees of exclusion; Despite nearly 80 pages there are still missing Pindar odes that are popular enough to receive reference in other sources.

[Ryan Schaller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection. Andrew Miller's translations are fresh and poetic. I particularly loved that the notes for each poem/fragment followed immediately after the text, eliminating the annoying need to flip to the back of the book every few lines. The notes are good and the glossary at the end are good as well.

This is comparable to Oxfords' Greek Lyric Poetry edited and translated by M.L. West. The Oxford contains works from more poets total, but I personally prefer the notes and introductions to the poets in this new book.

[Stephen Angliss · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit disappointing, mostly because most of the poetry was incomplete. I am glad I purchased this work and had the chance to read these great Greek poets, but most of them comprise nothing but scattered fragments of unrelated works. This made the work hard to read as a sit-down book. While I've already written on Sappho and my love for her work, I did not not enjoy her male counterparts as much.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5.

Disappointing for two reasons, neither the fault of the author: the poems were very fragmented, and studying classics in translation is a bit pointless. Frustrating not to see any of the original metre or rhyme, especially for lyric poetry. Maybe it’s time to learn some Ancient Greek.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for class. I really enjoyed most of the poems in here! I loved the perspectives from the poets with military experience.

[Anna Snider · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sappho >>>>> everything else

[Leilani Tañeza]

SAPPHO!!!!!

[Tri · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for the breadth of the collection and translation.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

[27/04/2021: can someone who has this edition agree with me that there is just too much pindar and bacchylides at the end of this book and it is set out in such a repetitive way as to just make it dull? i know praise poetry is repetitive but miller, mix it up a bit please]

i have made the executive decision to review every book i read this year so i can judge myself in the years to come. critical reading and all that.

had to read for *uni* - some parts very interesting, some parts mind-numbingly dull (i'm sorry pindar and bacchylides, i just really don't like your olympic odes). sappho, corinna and alcaeus, however? stunning. also, the translation was nice.