Love, Worship and Death Part 1

Love, Worship and Death.

by Rennell Rodd.

INTRODUCTION

Among the many diverse forms of expression in which the Greek genius has been revealed to us, that which is preserved in the lyrics of the anthology most typically reflects the familiar life of men, the thought and feeling of every day in the lost ancient world. These little flowers of song reveal, as does no other phase of that great literature, a personal outlook on life, kindly, direct and simple, the tenderness which characterised family relations, the reciprocal affection of master and slave, sympathy with the domestic animals, a generous sense of the obligations of friendship, a gentle piety and a close intimacy with the nature G.o.ds, of whose presence, malignant or benign, the Greek was ever sensitively conscious. For these reasons they still make so vivid an appeal to us after a long silence of many centuries. To myself who have lived for some years in that enchanted world of Greece, and have sailed from island to island of its haunted seas, the sh.o.r.es have seemed still quick with the voices of those gracious presences who gave exquisite form to their thoughts on life and death, their sense of awe and beauty and love. There indeed poetry seems the appropriate expression of the environment, and there even still to-day, more than anywhere else in the world, the correlation of our life with nature may be felt instinctively; the human soul seems nearest to the soul of the world.

The poems, of which some renderings are here offered to those who cannot read the originals, cover a period of about a thousand years, broken by one interval during which the lesser lyre is silent. The poets of the _elegy_ and the _melos_ appear in due succession after those of the _epic_ and, significant perhaps of the transition, there are found in the first great period of the lyric the names of two women, Sappho of Lesbos, acknowledged by the unanimous voice of antiquity, which is confirmed by the quality of a few remaining fragments, to be among the greatest poets of all times, and Corinna of Tanagra, who contended with Pindar and rivalled Sappho's mastery. The canon of Alexandria does not include among the nine greater lyrists the name of Erinna of Rhodes, who died too young, in the maiden glory of her youth and fame. The earlier poets of the _melos_ were for the most part natives of

'the sprinkled isles, Lily on lily that overlace the sea.'

Theirs is the age of the austerer mood, when the clean-cut marble outlines of a great language matured in its n.o.blest expression. Then a century of song is followed by the period of the dramatists during which the lyric muse is almost silent, in an age of political and intellectual intensity.

A new epoch of lyrical revival is inaugurated by the advent of Alexander, and the wide extension of h.e.l.lenic culture to more distant areas of the Mediterranean. Then follows the long succession of poets who may generally be cla.s.sified as of the school of Alexandria. Among them are three other women singers of high renown, Anyte of Tegea, Nossis of Locri in southern Italy, and Moero of Byzantium. The later writers of this period had lost the graver purity of the first lyric outburst, but they had gained by a wider range of sympathy and a closer touch with nature. This group may be said to close with Meleager, who was born in Syria and educated at Tyre, whose contact with the eastern world explains a certain suggestive and exotic fascination in his poetry which is not strictly Greek. The Alexandrian is followed by the Roman period, and the Roman by the Byzantine, in which the spirit of the muse of h.e.l.las expires reluctantly in an atmosphere of bureaucratic and religious pedantry.

These few words of introduction should suffice, since the development of the lyric poetry of Greece and the characteristics of its successive exponents have been made familiar to English readers in the admirable work of my friend J.W. Mackail. A reference to his _Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology_ suggests one plea of justification for the present little collection of renderings, since the greater number of them have been by him translated incomparably well into prose.

Of the quality of verse translation there are many tests: the closeness with which the intention and atmosphere of the original has been maintained; the absence of extraneous additions; the omission of no essential feature, and the interpretation, by such equivalent as most adequately corresponds, of individualities of style and a.s.sonances of language. But not the least essential justification of poetical translation is that the version should const.i.tute a poem on its own account, worthy to stand by itself on its own merits if the reader were unaware that it was a translation. It is to this test especially that renderings in verse too often fail to conform. I have discarded not a few because they seemed too obviously to bear the forced expression which the effort to interpret is apt to induce. Of those that remain some at least I hope approach the desired standard, failing to achieve which they would undoubtedly be better expressed in simple prose. And yet there is a value in rendering rhythm by rhythm where it is possible, and if any success has been attained, such translations probably convey more of the spirit of the original, which meant verse, with all which that implies, and not prose.

The arrangement in this little volume is approximately chronological in sequence. This should serve to ill.u.s.trate the severe and restrained simplicity of the earlier writers as contrasted with the more complex and conscious thought, and the more elaborate expression of later centuries when the horizons of h.e.l.lenism had been vastly extended.

The interpretation of these lyrics has been my sole and grateful distraction during a period of ceaseless work and intense anxiety in the tragic years of 1914 and 1915.

R.R.

MIMNERMUS

7TH CENTURY B.C.

CARPE DIEM

Hold fast thine youth, dear soul of mine, new lives will come to birth, And I that shall have pa.s.sed away be one with the brown earth.

SAPPHO

7TH AND 6TH CENTURY B.C.

I

A BITTER WORD

Dying thou shalt lie in nothingness, nor after Love shall abide here nor memory of thee; For thou hast no portion in the roses of Pieria; But even in the nether world obscurely shalt thou wander Flitting hither thither with the phantoms of the dead.

Note 1

II

THE BELOVED PRESENCE

Blest as the G.o.ds are esteem I him who alway Sits face to face with thee and watching thee forgoes not The voice that is music and the smile that is seduction, Smile that my heart knows Fluttered in its chambers. For lo, when I behold thee Forthwith my voice fails, my tongue is tied in silence, Flame of fire goes through me, my ears are full of murmur, Blinded I see naught: Sweat breaketh forth on me, and all my being trembles, Paler am I grown than the pallor of the dry gra.s.s, Death seemeth almost to have laid his hand upon me.-- Then I dare all things.

Note 2

III

HESPER

Thou, Hesper, bringest homeward all That radiant dawn sped far and wide: The sheep to fold, the goat to stall, The children to their mother's side.

IV

OUT OF REACH

Like the apple that ripens rosy at the end of a branch on high, At the utmost end of the utmost bough, Which those that gather forgot till now.

Nay, did not forget, but only they never might come thereby.

ANACREONTICA

ANACREON, 6TH CENTURY B.C.