I like underdogs.  I am also an admirer of modest excellence.  Milton is not a poet I read for pleasure, or, indeed, much at all these days, while I do look at Marvell from time to time.  And this is not because I am so determined an eccentric.  On the contrary, I'd claim that my judgement is the normative one, the reaction of an amateur (!) who is not a part of the academic establishment and whose views, therefore, are not much influenced by which poets lend themselves to pedagogical exercises.  Nobody runs courses in Herrick, but that doesn't mean Herrick isn't a great poet.  Indeed, he is so good that there is almost nothing to say about his work...Bacchylides deserves attention not because he is beetling, like Pindar, but because he is not.  He relies on craftsmanshbip and reliably displays an attractive grace and elegance.  The English poet Bacchylides most resembles, I think, is neither Herrick nor Marvell but Dryden...reasons enough for me to take a look....

He also gives as good a description of the function of this kind of ode for both Pindar and Bacchylides as I have  read:
 

It is true that, to the modern reader, an epinician ode is at best a stretch.  These are victory poems about sporting events!  And there are stories with gods and heroes woven into them, as compliments to a rich patron whose horses had won and from whom the poet was looking to be paid.  They seem to us, at least at first blush, just a little extravagant, as mannered displays of strenuous and elaborate toadying.

Well, yes, in a way they are.  But if the poet can relate the patron and subject...to gods and heroes, it is a connection that works both ways; and it follows that, through poetry, those grand and shadowy figures are...revivified and refreshed.  These poems, then and the occasions they celebrate, are the blood without which the disembodied spirits cannot speak.  It is this doubtless that legitimates these pieces and makes them interesting.

As Velazquez's treatment of patron, landscape and classical motif do the same for the eye -- well and good, but what about the translations?   Are they new blood through which disembodied spirits can speak to us 2500 years later?
 

Hail Deinomenes' son,
the winner of garlands.
To him the people shout,
"Oh thrice-blessed!"
Zeus has appointed him
to rule over many Greeks,
and he does not hide his
staggering wealth away
under night's mattress,
but temples are busy with traffic
of spotless cattle
for sacrifice; the streets
are crowded with strangers
secure in the laws of hospitality.
Gold is everywhere, a glitter
of finely wrought
tripods that flank the Delphic
temple's entrance where Phoebus
presides.  The ability thus
to honor the god is the true
wealth, the spirit's mettle.
Consider Croesus, the ruler
of Lydia's horsemen....
    from Ode III, Bacchylides

The comparison of the story of Croesus to that of Hieron, the owner of the horses and the poet's patron, goes on in considerable detail to show the connection between the known, earthly behavior of Hieron and his mythical  roots.   Even if none of this were true of Hieron, the poet is saying what that it should be. Even if he's making it all up, the ironic distance between fact and poet's praise have a real cultural purpose beyond the art, just as Velazquez's sometimes odd focus on a royal subject could indicate an otherwise forbidden opinion.  All well and good, and not entirely foreign to such writing today, if not in sports, then in the arts themselves -- but what else?

What struck me while reading this and the other odes is the clarity of Slavitt's translation.  There's no dodge behind affected diction, no pretense at imitating a particularly Greek sound, which only rarely works in translation.  This shouldn't be a surprise.  Slavitt is a poet himself, with twelve books to his credit that I know of; the truth of the saw that "poets make the best translators" seems apt enough here.   While I don't particularly understand Slavitt's line breaks in this ode (but do in others), they don't detract from the movement through the piece.  In fact, aloud, it sounds lively and dramatic, which is appropriate (it is likely these odes were sung in the original).
 

You, the Graces with your golden
distaffs, your gift of fame inspires
the minds of men.
Mouthpiece of the sloe-eyed Muses,
I am about to sing the praises of Phlius
and the rich plain of Nemean Zeus,
where pale-armed Hera reared
the sheep-slaughtering, roaring lion,
ast the first of Herakles' far-renowned labors.
            from Ode IX, Bacchylides
 

The poet and translator makes no effort to fill in the blanks in the original material.  Where the work is incomplete, Slavitt simply puts in rows of dots to indicate missing lines.   The gaps are distressing at first, but guessing at what might have been there, or trying to glean something from what is can be entertaining.

A number of dithyrambs, very different poems that tell straightforward narratives of gods and the royal, conclude the book.  The story of Minos's efforts to seduce Eriboea and their resistance by Theseus by his claim that both were children of gods (Dithyramb III) has the same brightness and clarity as Slavitt's versions of the 14 odes -- as if the poem were written this year, not in the 5th century BC.
 

"We are both sons of gods, then war lord of Knossos,
and I bid you cease and desist.  Restrain yourself
from what you intend.
If you assault one of these youngsters
or force yourself on one of them, the dawn
and its lovely light is something you'll hate to see,
for that will be the day that you and I
will try the force of our ours and let the gods
decide between us...."
    from Dithyramb III

Epinician Odes and Dithyrambs of Bacchylides is highly recommended.
 

                                Arthur Mortensen

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