Wednesday, March 09, 2022
Modishly Crude Translations
Anne Pippin Burnett, Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho (London: Duckworth, 1983; rpt. 1988), p. 15:
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In recent times, however, Archilochus has been the subject of another kind of admiration, for modishly crude translations have made him the brother of certain contemporary poets, while scholars have set him at the opening of their histories of the so-called Western mind.This is probably an allusion to Carmina Archilochi: The Fragments of Archilochus. Translated from the Greek by Guy Davenport. Forward by Hugh Kenner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), reviewed unfavorably by Burnett in Classical Philology 60.1 (January, 1965) 49-51, e.g. (at 50):
...his intention being to transform the old poet into something preciously modern: the affected, apocryphal familiar of some youthful pseudo-Pound.
