This post was inspired by the recent publication of Andrea Rotstein’s The Idea of Iambos
I’ve debated adding Archilochus (ca. 680 – 645 BC) to the Folio list. The reasons against are strong – his work only exists in mangled, scattered fragments and he is not well-studied (The Folio methodologically consists of the most written about poets). Readers often assumed that Guy Davenport, his main translator into English, invented the poet [So it’s clear: He didn’t]. When the entire corpus was assembled and translated in the early 1960s, it amounted to less than 25 pages. Short enough that I, and every other Archilochus fan I know, first devoured the collection in one sitting. If you have the time, you might well read all of it – the Carmina Archilochi [behind a JSTOR paywall]. A small enough collection that a 30-line erotic papyrus discovered in the 1970s transformed the direction of Archilochus criticism.
So why Archilochus? We could easily begin with “the firsts”: he is the first extant poet to write lyric work in the first person. He invented poetry’s I. In addition, he is the first extant poet to write in Iambic meter. [Not pentameter, but rather trimeter. Chaucer likely invented iambic pentameter, superseding the rhyming octosyllabic couplet of Medieval French poetry that his friend John Gower employed in Middle English as well as the Anglo-Saxon accentual tetrameter of Beowulf.] Between those two ideas, Archilochus is perhaps the most innovative poet of western literature. Not bad for 25 pages.
But innovative still isn’t enough. Was Archilochus any good? For an answer, I’ll let Roberto Bolaño speak. From the semi-autobiographical “Meeting with Enrique Lihn“:
I’m talking about 1981 or 1982, when I was living like a recluse in a house outside Gerona, with no money and no prospect of ever having any, and literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies, except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where any false move could be fatal, with only the poems of Archilochus to guide me. It’s like that for all young writers. There comes a time when you have no support, not even from friends, forget about mentors, and there’s no one to give you a hand; publication, prizes, and grants are reserved for the others, the ones who said “Yes, sir,” over and over, or those who praised the literary mandarins, a never-ending horde distinguished only by their aptitude for discipline and punishment—nothing escapes them and they forgive nothing. Anyway, as I was saying, all young writers feel this way at some point or other in their lives. But at the time I was twenty-eight years old and under no circumstances could I consider myself a young writer. I was adrift. I wasn’t the typical Latin-American writer living in Europe thanks to some government sinecure. I was a nobody and not inclined to beg for mercy or to show it.
If for no other reason, we can thank Archilochus for sustaining Bolaño long enough to write The Savage Detectives, 2666, and The Romantic Dogs. But Folio Found is about poetry and not in the business of reviewing fiction, so I have to suspend that policy to say read those books if you haven’t already.
Biographical details are scarce: He was born on the island of Paros but moved to a colony founded by his father at Thasos, supposedly at the command of the Delphic Oracle. Archilochus lived his days as a mercenary, rootless. Those facts are about all we know with any certainty. He has a handful of great legends swirling about him though. A persistent one has it that the poet was promised the daughter of Lycambes’ hand in marriage. Subsequently refused, Archilochus sang mocking lyrics so vicious that Lycambes and his daughters hanged themselves as a family [JSTOR paywall again].
Which brings us to the poetry. It’s written in a fairly archaic Greek and is quite fragmentary, so even those who have studied Ancient Greek are likely to have trouble with the language. Your best bet is to get a copy of the side-by-side Loeb Greek Iambic Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries B.C. collection if you want to examine the original. The most famous piece, the last fragment included in this sample, inspired Isaiah Berlin’s popular The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History
67.
Heart, my heart, so battered with misfortune far beyond your strength,
up, and face the men who hate us. Bare your chest to the assault
of the enemy, and fight them off. Stand fast among the beamlike spears.
Give no ground; and if you beat them, do not brag in open show,
nor, if they beat you, run home and lie down on your bed and cry.
Keep some measure in the joy you take in luck, and the degree you
give way to sorrow. All our life is up-and-down like this.
11.
Uninspired but sentimental
Over one sadness or another
As a subject for his poems,
The voluble poet whets his stylus.
17.
The oxherd picks tarantulas from his oxen,
The cocksman keeps his prick dainty and clean:
The nature of man is diverse and surprising,
Each finding his pleasure where the heart wills,
And each can say, I alone among mankind
Have what’s best, what’s fine and good
From Zeus, God, Father of men and gods.
Yet Eurymas finds fault with everybody.
24.
Some Saian mountaineer
Struts today with my shield.
I threw it down by a bush and ran
When the fighting got hot.
Life seemed somehow more precious.
It was a beautiful shield.
I know where I can buy another
Exactly like it, just as round.
27.
As one fig tree in a rocky place
Feeds a lot of crows,
Easy going Pasiphile
Receives a lot of strangers.
37.
What a burden off my neck!
What a joy to escape marriage!
Another time, Lykambes,
father-in-law almost.
I can’t bring you to your knees.
Honor presupposes a sense of shame,
And that you haven’t got.
50.
How many times,
How many times,
On the grey sea,
The sea combed
By the wind
Like a wilderness
Of woman’s hair,
Have we longed,
Lost in nostalgia,
For the sweetness
Of homecoming.
52.
And the heart
Is pleased
By one thing
After another.
54.
Night.
The wind
Blows landward.
Branches
Creak.
65.
What breaks me,
Young friend,
Is tasteless desire,
Dead iambics,
Boring dinners.
98.
Old and
At home.
105.
Damp
Crotch.
127:
Fortune is a wily one
Fire in her right hand,
Water in her left.
151.
When you upbraid me
For my poems,
Catch also a cricket
By the wings,
And shout at him
For chirping.
153.
Fox knows many,
Hedgehog one
Solid trick.
Folio Found. 