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Title: 7 Greeks by Guy Davenport ISBN: 0-8112-1288-2 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: June, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Davenport's Greeks
Comment: This is a gem of a book for anyone who is interested in ancient Greece. Guy Davenport is a wonderful interpreter of Archilochos, Sappho, and the rest; his introduction, describing each poet is as interesting as the poetry itself. Davenport's explication of how translation of the ancient poets is done is fascinating, and lends integrity to the book. Mr. Davenport tells you when the papyrus he is translating is simply too worn to read (explaining gaps in the verse), but he also speculates about what the original poem might have been, when, for example, the entire left side of a papyrus page is missing. His "wishful thinking" about how a certain poem of Sappho's might have read (if we had the entire text) gives us a better idea why the Greeks and Romans loved her, but Davenport scrupulously identifies what is his "tuckpointing" and what is the actual text. Mr. Davenport's translations of the fragments of Archilochos are particularly powerful to me. He has captured with great sensitivity the thinking of this remarkable soldier-poet who is the second oldest Western poet after Homer. Archilochos' writing brings us a view of war in the sixth century before Christ with a realistic pen, and also a passionate one. This was the poet who could write in one poem of throwing down his shield and running away at the height of the battle ("somehow life seemed more precious"), and in another speak with respect of bravery and defense of home ("remember us, remember this earth when, with hearts against despair, our javelins held Thasos from her enemies"). In all, another fine book from an extraordinary author who range of learning is enormous, and is used to entertain as well as to educate.
Rating: 5
Summary: Scrupulously accurate, thoroughly modern
Comment: This is a little book that will take your breath away. Most of the poets here survive only in tatters, rags of verse and words quoted by other authors. Yet the power that dwells in a handful of scattered words from a great verse is poetry itself, like haiku. Sappho and Archilochos read as though they could have been contemporaries of Ted Hughes. The key here is Davenport, a man of incredible sensibility, and the best bridge-builder between the ancient and the modern since Ezra Pound.
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Title: The Hunter Gracchus: And Other Papers on Literature and Art by Guy Davenport ISBN: 1887178554 Publisher: Counterpoint Press Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Objects on a Table : Harmonious Disarray in Art and Literature by Guy Davenport ISBN: 1582430357 Publisher: Counterpoint Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
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Title: The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays (Nonpareil Book, 78) by Guy Davenport ISBN: 1567920802 Publisher: David R Godine Pub. Date: October, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Death of Picasso: New & Selected Writing by Guy Davenport ISBN: 1593760027 Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Da Vinci's Bicycle: Ten Stories (New Directions Classics) by Guy Davenport ISBN: 0811213501 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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