Talk:Bacchylides

New edit

The present article is full of scholarly information but it is poorly structured and it includes a lot of unreferenced opinion. I might do some work on this article myself, though my Bacchilides resources are threadbare. I'll pull stuff off the www where I can. On the other hand, I might get bored and do nothing. Amphitryoniades (talk) 00:04, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the article and its sources more closely, I now find that it has been lifted, often verbatim, from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. I don't think we can cite another encyclopaedia as a reference and thus most of the scholarly info in this article is unusable in its present form. Or can we retain it as commonplace knowledge? I doubt it. Anyhow, my interest level increases and I'll have a pop at this. Amphitryoniades (talk) 00:20, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I'll be making considerable use of a Google digitalized version of Sir Richard Jebb's amazing work 'Bacchylides: The Poems and Fragments' 1905. It shows what a real scholar can do - I don't have enough brain power to light his candle let alone his entire library! Holy smoke. Some of us struggle just to remember words. Guys like Jebb must have instant recall and simply glide on to more cerebrally challenging studies. Also I'll be using David Campbell's 'Greek Lyric Poetry'. That's all at the moment. The moral of the story hopefully is this - high intelligence is like a teabag: it might be quicker than a brewed pot of tea but does it taste as good? NO IT DOES NOT! Amphitryoniades (talk) 08:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Other texts I'll be using:

• Douglas Gerber A companion to the Greek Lyric Poets
• David Slavitt Epinician Odes and Dithyrambs of Bacchylides
• Herwig Maehler Bacchylides: a selection (top stuff)

And some more things I can't be bothered to record here as they furnish only some brief quotes and I've already spent too much time writing this.

One thing bothers me after this research - as far as I can tell, Bacchylides and Pindar are not really rhythmically minded at all (poets who are strongly rhythmical use strong rhythms). Pindar and Bacchylides are more centred on verbal texture, or what Proffessor Higgins in My Fair Lady called 'magical mixtures of sound' - like John Keats as opposed to Percy Shelley. But nowhere have I yet found this mentioned in the scholarly texts I've looked at. Have I missed something? Anyhow, without some scholarly support, I can't state this significant fact about B and P. Amphitryoniades (talk) 12:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

'last lyric poet'

Hi Wetman! I wrote this about Bacchylides: "and he is generally considered to be the last lyric poet of any significance." I thought this was a reasonable paraphrase of Jebb: "no purely lyric poet attained to high rank after Bacchylides." Can you please tell me what was the problem with my edit? Would you like me to change it to "any major significance?" Amphitryoniades (talk) 05:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

My error. I was skimming through Jebb's introduction and missed the remark. In replacing it, why not attribute the remark to Jebb? rather than make of it a Wikipedia statement. What do you suppose Jebb meant by that, in 1905? Anything more reflective than that B. was included in the Alexandrian canon of nine? (an arbitrary number, intended surely to reflect the Muses as much as anything else).

I detect hints in the article that its author knew that Bacchylides was a "new" poet in 1897, with Kenyon's editio princeps. The discovery of the Bacchylides papyrus brought from Egypt to the British Museum in 1896 is surely worth telling for the Wikipedia reader.--Wetman (talk) 17:34, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! The scholars who rescue the work of poets like B are a story in themselves and I think it's a great idea to add a summary of their work here. So yes, I'll follow that up. I already have at least one Jebb quote lined up so I am relying on paraphrase for the rest. I've just found that Jebb is still referenced in the OCD - I guess he's reached the status of a classic himself. I am going to add 'major' to my sentence on your suggestion. There were other lyrical poets but they are associated with the decline in their art, such as the dithyrambs of Philoxenus. I've never read him and, considering the press he gets, I don't think I ever will or will ever be able to. Cheers! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Amphitryoniades (talk • contribs) 21:46, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

There needs to be a sentence explaining the narrower definition of "lyric" among Greeks, who associated lyric poetry, I understand, with certain meters that went out of fashion. Thus Bacchylides may have been the last lyric poet of consequence, in part because lyrical themes began to be couched in other forms. I post this thought, you'll quickly detect, as one no less illiterate in Greek than the average Wikipedia reader.--Wetman (talk) 05:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes there will be a section about his poetry and its significance within the changing landscape of Greek poetry. And yes, B was the last purely lyric poet because of that changing landscape - those bloody Athenians were imposing their drama on the world. Amphitryoniades (talk) 23:24, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

where it's headed

I'm intending to quote at length from a translation of Ode 5 - 40 lines! The reason is, it's hard to communicate the essential Bacchylides in just a few lines. He has a lovely, easy-going style, with natural transitions between thoughts, and that doesn't come across in just a few lines. I suppose the best option is to place the quote near the bottom of the article, titled Ode 5 and to refer it for points of style in an earlier section, Bacchylides's poetry.

There is a lot of material in the article that seems to have been lifted from the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a lot of it will have to be deleted as it includes few citations. I'll keep what I can. Anybody overseeing this work in progress should shout above the jackhammers or I won't hear your advice and suggestions. Amphitryoniades (talk) 02:23, 14 March 2010 (UTC)