The Homeric Hymns : A Translation, with Introduction and Notes (Joan Palevsky Classic Literature Book)

Rating:
Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: A Splendid New Translation
Review: For those unfamiliar with the "Homeric Hymns," translated in this case by Diane Rayor: they are a set of thirty-three or thirty-four short and long poems in honor of the major -- and a few minor -- Greek Gods, in the dactylic hexameter used in the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," and other early Greek poems. They are attributed to Homer in the surviving manuscripts, and some allusions and quotations in classical writing. This is not taken seriously, but provides a label. Some are clearly early, a few are suspected of being Hellenistic, or even post-Christian. The longer hymns combine invocation, praise, and extended narratives; the shorter hymns lack the narrative, and in few cases are little more than invocations. They also vary considerably in the solemnity with which they approach the gods (see the trickster Hermes as a baby in Hymn 4). The two opening hymns survive in one damaged manuscript, so "To Dionysos" is a set of fragments, and, "To Demeter," has several gaps. The third, "To Apollo," is suspected of being two separate works linked by an ancient editor. The last piece, "To Hosts," is sometimes excluded, as it is a reminder that hospitality is a sacred duty, and not actually a hymn, and is also found in other contexts. All but a few are clearly intended for public performance, either as short introductions (proems), or as major pieces in themselves.

As I have commented in reviews of other translations, by Apostolos N. Athanassakis (Johns Hopkins, 1976), Jules Cashford (Penguin Classics, 2003, with Introduction and Notes by Nicholas Richardson) and Martin L. West ("Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer," Loeb Classical Library, 2003, with a newly-edited Greek text), this long-neglected body of texts has received several bursts of attention over the last few decades.

After a gap between World War I (Evelyn-West's old Loeb bilingual edition of 1914, last revised 1936; probably still available for awhile) and the 1960s, we now have English renderings by Boer (1970; a second edition [1975?] restored a Hymn to Apollo), Sargent (W.W. Norton, 1973), Athanassakis, Shelmerdine (Focus, 1995), Crudden (Oxford World's Classics, 2002), Cashford, West, and now Diane Rayor (University of California, 2004) -- counting only those currently in print. There are also editions and translations of individual hymns. Although English readers await a modern full critical text edition (the most recent are Italian: West, following the Loeb format, gives only major manuscript variants and those emendations he uses, with minimal, albeit useful, notes), and a full commentary to replace the venerable Allen, Halliday and Sikes (second edition, 1936), this is still a superabundance. "Get just one, or collect the whole set!" comes to mind.

A recent review by a professional classicist (Stephen Evans, on-line in the "Bryn Mawr Classical Review" 2004.08.02) points out that the Crudden, Cashford, and Rayor translations all have annotations and / or introductions which survey recent literature on the hymns, but that they tend to favor different approaches, and so display remarkably little overlap in their coverage.

Rayor does join Crudden in discussing Near-Eastern parallels to the hymns. Where Crudden cites comparisons of Hymn 3, the great Hymn (or Hymns) to Apollo, to Babylonian and Assyrian compositions about the exploits of the warrior-god Ninurta, though, Rayor is willing to go back to their Sumerian predecessors for the Hymn to Aphrodite. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that the stripping of the love-goddess Inanna (= Ishtar) of her magic vestments as she passes the gates of the Netherworld has much to do with the undressing of the disguised (as a mortal) Aphrodite by the Trojan prince Anchises in Hymn 5 -- particularly since the living body of Inanna is described throughout in terms of the materials of her own cult statue (something even the smitten Anchises would have noticed). The passage comes from "The Descent of Inanna," which Rayor calls a hymn, although it is usually classed as a narrative. These are not mutually exclusive, as both Greek and Mesopotamian examples show, but if it *is* a hymn, it is *not* to Inanna, but to her rival, the Queen of the Netherworld: it ends with the invocation "Holy Ereshkigal, sweet is your praise!" Still, taken as a "type-scene," it is an interesting parallel, particularly since the setting of the Hymn to Aphrodite is explicitly *not* Greece, but "foreign" (Asia Minor); and Greek re-workings even of Greek sources can be rather drastic.

Diane Rayor's translations are not only the product of a distinguished classicist; they have been polished over several years of public readings, and with her students, to create a version which actually works in performance -- at least in American English. Most other available translations are worth reading aloud (with perhaps the exception of Boer's visually experimental free verse, and certainly of Evelyn-White's stodgy prose), but Rayor's alone invites it.

Here is a sample of three recent versions of The (Delian and Pythian) Hymn(s) to Apollo (Hymn 3), lines 331-339, for comparison. Hera, Queen of the Gods, is furious over the many children fathered on others by her husband Zeus, the successful rebel against their father Kronos and his fellow Titans, and current King of the Gods -- particularly the "motherless" Athena, who emerged from his head.

*Cashford*
When she had spoken, she went away from the gods,
Her heart very angry. Then immediately
She prayed, the lady Hera with her cow-eyes,
And she struck the earth
With her hand flat against it, saying:
`Hear me now, Gaia, and broad Ouranos high above,
and you Titan gods who live beneath the earth
around great Tartaros from whom men and gods come.
Listen to me now, all of you,
And give me a child apart from Zeus
And one not lesser than him in strength.
Rather, may he be as much stronger than Zeus,
Who sees all things, as Zeus, for his part,
Is stronger than Kronos.'

*West*
So saying, she went apart from the gods, angry at heart. Then straightway she prayed, did the mild-eyed lady Hera, and struck the earth with the flat of her hand and said, "Hear me now, Earth and broad Heaven above, and you Titan gods who dwell below the earth around great Tartarus, and from whom gods and men descend; all of you now in person, hear me and grant me a son without Zeus' help, in no way falling short of him in strength, but as much superior as wide-sounding Zeus is to Kronos."

*Rayor*
In great fury, she stormed from the gods.
Eyes dark and wide as a cow's, Queen Hera prayed
And with down-turned palms struck the earth:
"Now hear me Earth and wide Heaven above,
and Titans, gods beneath the earth, dwelling around
great Tartaros, from whom men and gods derive:
all hear me and grant me a child apart from Zeus,
in no way weaker in strength than he, a child greater
than Zeus by as much as Zeus is greater than Kronos."

Rating:
Summary: up-to-date, page-turning translation, superb notes & intro!
Review: These dynamic translations of the Homeric Hymns will interest both beginners and more advanced readers. There's no greater testimony to the power and influence of stories of the gods. Almost a century ago D. H. Lawrence anticipated Brad Pitt and proposed, unbelievingly, that "There are no gods, and you can please yourself." But the classical tradition is hollow without the gods and their mysteries. Where to turn, then, if you're unconvinced and dissatisfied by Hollywood's most recent Achilles, who unexplicably eschews the brutality and pomo scepticism of his warrior ethic, giving it all up for the love of the slave girl? How about the hymn to Aphrodite, which celebrates her beauty yet dwells on her come-uppance: Zeus takes her down by making her fall in love with the mortal Anchises (mortal men take note: he proves deserving).

Strange births, a staple of tabloid fare and celebrity lives, appear throughout. Dionysos is a premature baby rescued and incubated in the thigh of his father, Zeus. Athena's power-mad father Zeus swallows her mother, but Athena is nonetheless born full-grown and fully-armed from his head. The most substantive narratives center on the origins, powers, and mishaps of the gods and goddesses. There's the struggle of Demeter with Zeus to recover from Hades the kidnapped girl, Persephone. As Rayor's notes reminds us, this complex story provided the basis for a mystery cult that persisted for more than 1200 years. Rivalies between siblings are another current: one hymn celebrates and cheers on Hermes as the trickster god, the newborn baby who steals and slaughters the cattle of his older brother, Apollo, and gets away with it. Apollo, for his part, appears as the immortal founder of the oracle, with more than a whiff of the tyrant about him, gifted in many aspects but unlucky in love, where he loses out, even to mortals.

The text throughout is well-informed by recent anthropological approaches that have expanded knowledge of ancient Greek culture, evident in the valuable introduction and notes, which attend to the interrelation of literature, folklore, religion, and geography. Rayor's introduction adopts a practical-minded, functionalist approach to literary problems such as genre and authorship, describing a hymn as a poem of praise, sometimes narrative, addressed to a god, and noting the importance of oral performance in Greek culture. Teachers will delight in the maps and glossary, whose easy-to-follow pronounciation guide anticipates and lays aside the uncertainties about proper names that constitute the greatest single obstacle to the Hymn and to classics, for many contemporary readers. Casual readers will appreciate the clarity and accuracy of the language, with its fast-paced readability: the English of the hymns neither extrapolates nor subtracts from the original texts, balancing the desire for accuracy with creating a translation that is at once concise and musical. Devotees will delight in fairness of the introduction and bibliography, which highlight recent criticism, and the notes, which point to additional ancient and contemporary sources, always stressing the poems' contexts in poetic performance and religious worship in the ancient world.

Rating:
Summary: up-to-date, page-turning translation, superb notes & intro!
Review: These dynamic translations of the Homeric Hymns will interest both beginners and more advanced readers. There's no greater testimony to the power and influence of stories of the gods. Almost a century ago D. H. Lawrence anticipated Brad Pitt and proposed, unbelievingly, that "There are no gods, and you can please yourself." But the classical tradition is hollow without the gods and their mysteries. Where to turn, then, if you're unconvinced and dissatisfied by Hollywood's most recent Achilles, who unexplicably eschews the brutality and pomo scepticism of his warrior ethic, giving it all up for the love of the slave girl? How about the hymn to Aphrodite, which celebrates her beauty yet dwells on her come-uppance: Zeus takes her down by making her fall in love with the mortal Anchises (mortal men take note: he proves deserving).

Strange births, a staple of tabloid fare and celebrity lives, appear throughout. Dionysos is a premature baby rescued and incubated in the thigh of his father, Zeus. Athena's power-mad father Zeus swallows her mother, but Athena is nonetheless born full-grown and fully-armed from his head. The most substantive narratives center on the origins, powers, and mishaps of the gods and goddesses. There's the struggle of Demeter with Zeus to recover from Hades the kidnapped girl, Persephone. As Rayor's notes reminds us, this complex story provided the basis for a mystery cult that persisted for more than 1200 years. Rivalies between siblings are another current: one hymn celebrates and cheers on Hermes as the trickster god, the newborn baby who steals and slaughters the cattle of his older brother, Apollo, and gets away with it. Apollo, for his part, appears as the immortal founder of the oracle, with more than a whiff of the tyrant about him, gifted in many aspects but unlucky in love, where he loses out, even to mortals.

The text throughout is well-informed by recent anthropological approaches that have expanded knowledge of ancient Greek culture, evident in the valuable introduction and notes, which attend to the interrelation of literature, folklore, religion, and geography. Rayor's introduction adopts a practical-minded, functionalist approach to literary problems such as genre and authorship, describing a hymn as a poem of praise, sometimes narrative, addressed to a god, and noting the importance of oral performance in Greek culture. Teachers will delight in the maps and glossary, whose easy-to-follow pronounciation guide anticipates and lays aside the uncertainties about proper names that constitute the greatest single obstacle to the Hymn and to classics, for many contemporary readers. Casual readers will appreciate the clarity and accuracy of the language, with its fast-paced readability: the English of the hymns neither extrapolates nor subtracts from the original texts, balancing the desire for accuracy with creating a translation that is at once concise and musical. Devotees will delight in fairness of the introduction and bibliography, which highlight recent criticism, and the notes, which point to additional ancient and contemporary sources, always stressing the poems' contexts in poetic performance and religious worship in the ancient world.