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November 19, 2007 • KR Blog • Reading

Hasten on, Wayfarer, Lest you Stir Up the Hornets

By Tyler Meier

In thinking recently about Andy Grace’s consideration of the American short poem, I can’t help but think of Archilochos’ fragments, which I remember first seeing in graduate classes taught by Richard Kenney. Guy Davenport put out 7 Greeks in 1995: it is a collection of his earlier translations of the early Greek poets (Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman, Anakreon, Herakleitos, Diogenes, and Herondas.) If there’s an authorial fog shrouding Homer, of whom we only know much of what we don’t know–

“We do not know his father, his mother, or his own “real” name. We are uncertain of his birthplace, his class origins, his patrons, his audience…The best-known version of the life is the one dubiously attributed to Herodotus. From that and other sources we can devise, as readers did right up to the eighteenth century, a more or less cogent story.” (from The First Poets by Michael Schmidt)

–then of Archilochos we have a slightly more trustworthy biographic foothold. Born on Paros in the first half of the seventh century, let’s say that Archilochos gives us, in the broken and fragmented hindsight of our current vantage, the clearest sense of a first member in the “Cult of the Poet.” (He was soon to be joined by Sappho, incidentally.) It is known that he was both a mercenary and poet (not two positions that often go together, but a possible new addition to the list of what one can do with an MFA degree.) The title of this post is the supposed inscription on his grave marker. Davenport says this of him:

“As a poet, he was both a satirist and lyricist. Iambic verse is his invention. He wrote the first beast fable known to us. He wrote marching songs, love lyrics of frail tenderness, elegies…there is a tradition that wasps hover around his grave. To the ancients, both Greek and Roman, he was The Satirist.” (from the the introduction to 7 Greeks)
To read the surviving fragments, then (most of which we have come by as the burial wrappings of Egyptian mummies, or as quoted examples in the text of later grammarians–we have no complete texts) is to exercise a tonal whirligig. Here’s what most of the surviving text looks like:
archilochos.jpg
Tender, obscene, juvenile, epigrammatic, terse or generous–the gamut is there in the work that we have, a certifiable poetic horn of plenty. And yet, per Davenport: “Not all poets can be so broken and still compel attention.” Many of the fragments are so broken as to obscure context—but contextually, across the body of the work that we have, the pieces fit together and sketch a voice versed in war and love, in the banal and beautiful, in the rude body, in vengeance and celebration, and in exasperation and satisfaction. Collectively, it is a voice of distinction, eerily prescient of contemporary poetry–and the contemporary short poem. It’s hard to guess what the full poems looked like–but reading these, isn’t one compelled to guess?
Here are some of the fragments translated by Davenport, with corresponding number:
3
Let him go ahead.
Ares is a democrat.
There are no privileged people
On a battlefield
5
Listen to me cuss
9
With ankles that fat
It must be a girl.
20
Decks awash,
Mast-top dipping,
And all
Balanced on the keen edge
Now of the wind’s sword,
Now of the wave’s blade.

21
Dazzling radiance.

35
And the heart
Is pleased
By one thing
After another.

117
Damp crotch.

151
Sparks in wheat.

In the class taught by Richard Kenney, we would be challenged to forge an Archilochos fragment. These were collected, and inserted in a photocopied batch of Davenport’s translations of the original fragments. We’d have to sniff out the fakes. I can say with aplomb–Davenport was dead-on in remarking how compelling Archilochos is, despite how little of his poetry remains. Teaching how one should discover his or her “voice” is a poor workshop exercise. But that class–which never explicitly set out to teach us about poetic voice–was the best instruction I’ve ever had in the matter. It was nearly impossible to forge Archilochos with any regular accuracy.

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