“It is because of the Muses and far-shooting Apollo
Men on the earth are singers and players of the lyre,
And because of Zeus, they are kings. Whomever the Muses
Love is blessed: a sweet sound flows from his mouth.
Even if some fresh concern worries a man’s spirit,
And the affliction desiccates his heart, just let some singer,
the Muses’ servant, celebrate in song the glories of folks
From olden times and the blessed Olympian gods,
That man quickly forgets his blues, does not remember his cares–
Just like that, the Muses’ gifts change his disposition.”
Some say a force of horsemen, some say infantry
and others say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
thing on the dark earth, but I say it is
the one you love
It is altogether simple to make this understood
since she whose beauty outmatched all,
Helen, left her husband
a most noble man
And went sailing to Troy
Without a thought for her child and dear parents
[Love] made her completely insane
And led her astray
This reminds me of absent Anaktoria
I would rather watch her lovely walk
and see the shining light of her face
than Lydian chariots followed by
infantrymen in arms
“Solon the Athenian, the son of Eksêkestides, when his nephew sang some song of Sappho at a drinking party, took pleasure in it and asked the young man to teach it to him. When someone asked why he was eager to learn it, he responded: “So, once I learn it, I may die.”
Some say a force of horsemen, some say infantry
and others say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
thing on the dark earth, but I say it is
the one you love
It is altogether simple to make this understood
since she whose beauty outmatched all,
Helen, left her husband
a most noble man
And went sailing to Troy
Without a thought for her child and dear parents
[Love] made her completely insane
And led her astray
This reminds me of absent Anaktoria
I would rather watch her lovely walk
and see the shining light of her face
than Lydian chariots followed by
infantrymen in arms
“Solon the Athenian, the son of Eksêkestides, when his nephew sang some song of Sappho at a drinking party, took pleasure in it and asked the young man to teach it to him. When someone asked why he was eager to learn it, he responded: “So, once I learn it, I may die.”
Some say a force of horsemen, some say infantry
and others say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
thing on the dark earth, but I say it is
the one you love
It is altogether simple to make this understood
since she whose beauty outmatched all,
Helen, left her husband
a most noble man
And went sailing to Troy
Without a thought for her child and dear parents
[Love] made her completely insane
And led her astray
This reminds me of absent Anaktoria
I would rather watch her lovely walk
and see the shining light of her face
than Lydian chariots followed by
infantrymen in arms
“Solon the Athenian, the son of Eksêkestides, when his nephew sang some song of Sappho at a drinking party, took pleasure in it and asked the young man to teach it to him. When someone asked why he was eager to learn it, he responded: “So, once I learn it, I may die.”
Some say a force of horsemen, some say infantry
and others say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
thing on the dark earth, but I say it is
the one you love
It is altogether simple to make this understood
since she whose beauty outmatched all,
Helen, left her husband
a most noble man
And went sailing to Troy
Without a thought for her child and dear parents
[Love] made her completely insane
And led her astray
This reminds me of absent Anactoria
I would rather watch her lovely walk
and see the shining light of her face
than Lydian chariots followed by
infantrymen in arms
“No lover can avoid the catalogue of the charms of his mistress. Petrarch is eloquent in sonnet and canzone on the subject of Laura’s eyes. Shall our mistress lack eyes? Again, your true lover is sublimely indifferent to the fact that the audience is utterly unacquainted with the object of his adoration, and so even after many years of close communion with Greek, I was capable in 1869 of holding forth ecstatically on its physical charms, for I am enough of a heathen to recognize in physical beauty the only true incentive of love. It is the physical beauty of Greek that constitutes its intimate attraction, that redeems, for instance, the tedious obviousnesses of the old man eloquent, and I could still rhapsodize, as I did forty years ago, on the sequences of vowels and the combinations of consonants, the concert of mute and liquid, the clear-cut outline of every word in Greek, clear and sharp as the sky-line of the mountains of Greece, as the effigies on Greek coins. I could still wax lyrical about the paradigm of the Greek verb. The Greek verb is, indeed, a marvel.
‘Flexible and exact, simple in its means, abundant in its applications, with varying tones for colorless statement, for eager wish, for purpose, for command, now despatching the past with impatient haste, now unrolling it in panoramic procession, but bringing forth its treasure of vowels and diphthongs to mark the striving of the will, the thought, the desire, toward the future,’ and so on and so on. Perhaps discourse like this might rouse the curiosity of the student and win here and there a friend for Greek. The teacher can never know whether shall prosper either this or that. I remember to have read in Gogol’s ‘Dead Souls’ a eulogy of Russian that would have Inspired me, if I had been endowed with ample leisure, to attempt the acquisition of that difficult idiom. But I am not quite sure that this unverifiable laudation Is the right way to lend vitality to the study. ‘The king’s daughter is all glorious within.’ But he that is without remains cold as a rule. The love of a language from this point of view is a matter of individual experience, a business to be transacted under four eyes only, and as much of the physical beauty of a language depends on the pronunciation, it may be well to relegate the whole thing to the realm of ‘fancy,’ that admirable old word for love. I will, therefore, waive the whole subject of the perfection of the Greek language, both in Its form and Its function, the wealth of its vocabulary, and the flexibility of its syntax, and limit myself to a few remarks on the relation of Greek to our daily life.”
“Then for two days and two nights he was tossed about
On the swollen wave, and often his heart was expecting destruction.
But when well-tressed Dawn rose on the third day
And the wind stopped as a windless peace overtook the sea,
Then as he scanned sharply around he saw land so near
On the horizon as he was lifted by a great wave.
Then, just as welcome as the life of a father appears
To his children when he has been stretched out sick suffering strong pains,
Worn down for a long time—and some hateful god afflicts him,
And it so welcome when the gods relieve him of this evil,
That’s how welcome the sight of the land and forest was to Odysseus.
And he swam, struggling to reach the shore with his feet.”
“The poet furnishes the most noble examples using [stories of parents] for how it is right to act toward parents. Also in the Iliad: “they say that Menoitios still lives, and Peleus Aiakidês lives among the Myrmidons, and we have grief for both of them especially.”
“When he was wasting away with Kalypso, [Odysseus] was longing for Ithaka, but now that he is in the sea he doesn’t long to find the city, but only the dry substance itself.”
Sometimes in our paroxysms of surprise and despair–our shitgasms, if you will--we lose sight of all those reasons for wonder and delight. One of the more insidious things about the current news cycle and the nihilistic solipsism of our current presidency is that we are given such little time to pause–each day brings new and justified reasons for anxiety and, to tell the truth, rage.
As a tonic, here are (1) the most beautiful lyric poem ever written (Sappho fr. 16), (2) a list of love-compounds, and (3) completely subjective aesthetic pronouncements about the beauty of Ancient Greek
Some say a force of horsemen, some say infantry
and others say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
thing on the dark earth, but I say it is
the one you love
It is altogether simple to make this understood
since she whose beauty outmatched all,
Helen, left her husband
a most noble man
And went sailing to Troy
Without a thought for her child and dear parents
[Love] made her completely insane
And led her astray
This reminds me of absent Anactoria
I would rather watch her lovely walk
and see the shining light of her face
than Lydian chariots followed by
infantrymen in arms
“No lover can avoid the catalogue of the charms of his mistress. Petrarch is eloquent in sonnet and canzone on the subject of Laura’s eyes. Shall our mistress lack eyes? Again, your true lover is sublimely indifferent to the fact that the audience is utterly unacquainted with the object of his adoration, and so even after many years of close communion with Greek, I was capable in 1869 of holding forth ecstatically on its physical charms, for I am enough of a heathen to recognize in physical beauty the only true incentive of love. It is the physical beauty of Greek that constitutes its intimate attraction, that redeems, for instance, the tedious obviousnesses of the old man eloquent, and I could still rhapsodize, as I did forty years ago, on the sequences of vowels and the combinations of consonants, the concert of mute and liquid, the clear-cut outline of every word in Greek, clear and sharp as the sky-line of the mountains of Greece, as the effigies on Greek coins. I could still wax lyrical about the paradigm of the Greek verb. The Greek verb is, indeed, a marvel.
‘Flexible and exact, simple in its means, abundant in its applications, with varying tones for colorless statement, for eager wish, for purpose, for command, now despatching the past with impatient haste, now unrolling it in panoramic procession, but bringing forth its treasure of vowels and diphthongs to mark the striving of the will, the thought, the desire, toward the future,’ and so on and so on. Perhaps discourse like this might rouse the curiosity of the student and win here and there a friend for Greek. The teacher can never know whether shall prosper either this or that. I remember to have read in Gogol’s ‘Dead Souls’ a eulogy of Russian that would have Inspired me, if I had been endowed with ample leisure, to attempt the acquisition of that difficult idiom. But I am not quite sure that this unverifiable laudation Is the right way to lend vitality to the study. ‘The king’s daughter is all glorious within.’ But he that is without remains cold as a rule. The love of a language from this point of view is a matter of individual experience, a business to be transacted under four eyes only, and as much of the physical beauty of a language depends on the pronunciation, it may be well to relegate the whole thing to the realm of ‘fancy,’ that admirable old word for love. I will, therefore, waive the whole subject of the perfection of the Greek language, both in Its form and Its function, the wealth of its vocabulary, and the flexibility of its syntax, and limit myself to a few remarks on the relation of Greek to our daily life.”
