Text: John Patterson, “Some Lyrics of Anacreon or ‘Pseudo-Anacreon’,” Poet-Lore: A Magazine of Letters (Boston, MA), vol. IX, no. 3, July-September 1897, pp. 400-407

[page 400:]

SOME LYRICS OF ANACREON OR “PSEUDO-ANACREON.”

WINE and love were the changeless theme of Anacreon's lyre, but expanded in verses whose simplicity, pure imagery, neatness, and sweetness charm us still. The metric of the choruses of those musician-poets Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, with their intricate [page 401:] art for expressing excitement, passion, and contrast of emotions must have been understood only by the cultured. The body of the people must have turned with a truer appreciation from the magnificent measures of the drama to the simpler lyric sentences of the humbler poets whose “Songs gushed from the heart.” The groups employed in the choruses of the drama bore strictly determined antithetical relation to each other, and were arranged in complicated periods; but the lyric systems used previously by Anacreon were uniform and little else than lines, not true verses. They have, however, a ring about them which strongly appealed to the demos, freighted as the verses are with delicacy of fancy, lightness of theme, and variety of illustration.

Among the vineyards of Teos about the time that Cyrus the Great began to reign over the Persians, B. c. 559, the Greek lyric poet was born. Little is known of his life except that, on account of his genius, he was cultivated by Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos, and afterward invited to Athens by Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus. After the death of the latter he is supposed to have returned to Teos, where he died in his eighty-fifth year, choked, as legend tells us, by a stone of the fruit whose joyful juice he loved and sang.

Of his writings only some sixty lyrics and fragments are extant; and most of the odes are admitted to be spurious. It is not the purpose of this article to discuss the authenticity of the verses here translated, but to endeavor to show something of their rhythmic and meaning, whether they be the art of Anacreon or “Pseudo-Anacreon.” In the following unaffected, vivid panorama of the passing of spring I have rendered the Greek, foot for foot, into English, with possibly a few exceptions of a pyrrhic ⏑ ⏑, at the beginning of a line altered to a trochee, — ⏑. This will give some suggestion to the ear of how the Greek verses sound, although, as Greek poetry depends on vowel-quantity, not chiefly on accent, like the English, the suggestion is imperfect: —

In the second line ρόδα βρν́ονσιν means rather, make the roses burst forth. In the ninth line, τὰ βροτων εργα, “the work of mortals,” refers to the cultivation of the fields; and the last three verses mean that the gatherer's hand has caused the grape-clusters to make flowers-of-color of the juice of the boisterous god exude over leaf and tendril.

The next ode which I shall translate, attempting, not so exactly as in the first, to reproduce the original metre, is addressed to Cupid. Apart from the simple beauty of the original ode and its fine, almost dramatic movement, expressed in language whose subtle coloring is the despair of translation, it may possess an attraction for the reader, because he sees in it the first hint to Edgar Poe of his ‘Raven,’ about whose conception Poe chose to weave such a skilful and fanciful fabric: —

ΕΙΣ ΕΡΩΤΑ.

This ode, combined with the following one, in which a bird speaks, seems to me sufficient substance on which Poe with his fertile fancy might have built ‘The Raven,’ although I believe that he has nowhere referred to Anacreon as the source of his famous composition. It is not my aim to disprove Poe's own ingenious account of the creation of his poem, but only to suggest in passing that the marvellous poem had its origin in these carmina.

This supposition is further supported by the fact that in a poetical introduction to his 1831 volume, afterward suppressed, he wrote:

I proceed with my purpose of giving to the reader some faint gleam of the beauty of these lyrics, by an imitation in English of the ode Είς Περιστεράν.

TO A DOVE.

The dove is made to exhibit delicately and tenderly the affection which it feels for both the lyric master and his shell, by the use of such words as τὸν οινον ον προπίνει, the wine which Anacreon sips first, and δεσπότην εμοισι πτεροίσι συσκιάξω, cover my master with the shadows of my wings; again, with επ αυτω τω βαρβίτω καθεύδω, sleep upon the shell itself. What supreme bliss to slumber upon that melodious lyre-heart! This ode is also an example of the simple strength of Anacreon's style of expression with verbs exquisitely shaded in meaning, apt nouns and so few adjectives.

The ode, one of several, Είς 'Εαυτόν, ‘To Himself,’ has a delicious airiness about it, light with careless sophistry:

Anacreon's love for the rose is set forth in the following tribute to it, which I translate with no attempt at the Greek metre: —

ΕΙΣ ΡΟΔΟΝ.(1)

In the last ode to be translated, another ‘To Himself,’ the philosophy of the old sybarite is fully expressed, still with his inimitable grace lingering in light sweetness over a haunting pathos: —

ΕΙΣ ΕΑΥΤΟΝ.

The word τερίναις, “polished,” in the first line, means worn smooth, and possibly insinuates the frequent use by the poet of this jovial couch; and προπίνειν, “tipple,” in the third, conveys the idea, also, of a health drunk first to Eros. In the sixth line the fine choice of Anakreon's verbs is again discovered in διακονείτω, which has an underlying meaning of hurry as well as serve, harmonizing with the following simile of the chariot-swiftness of life's flight. The eleventh and twelfth lines of the carmen refer to the custom of the ancients of pouring perfumes on sepulchres, and “libations,” χοαί, of oil and honey on graves, in honor of the dead.

The poet may lack the art of “The pure violet-weaver” Sappho, the divine chief lyrist, in weaving adjectives whose splendor and color of meaning are like elusive rainbows; but an accurate shading defines his verbs, and a clearness rings and gleams from his nouns and adjectives, which emit a tenderness of tone and tint, to dwell in the sense once experiencing them. His songs pervade the heart and make it mellow, if they do not lift the beauty-drunken soul on Sapphic wings of longing.

John Patterson.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 402:]

1 The extended hand of Boötes touches the tail of Arktos (the Great Bear). Compare the original metre

with the ‘Raven.’

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 403:]

1 A gad-fly.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 405:]

1 This translation first appeared in Peterson's Magazine, and afterward in the Author's book, ‘Lyric Touches.’