Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Odes of Anacreon
    The Odes of Anacreon
    The Odes of Anacreon
    Ebook113 pages40 minutes

    The Odes of Anacreon

    By Thomas Moore

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    The Odes of Anacreon
    Author

    Thomas Moore

    Thomas Moore is the author of the bestselling Care of the Soul and twenty other books on spirituality and depth psychology that have been translated into thirty languages. He has been practicing depth psychotherapy for thirty-five years. He lectures and gives workshops in several countries on depth spirituality, soulful medicine, and psychotherapy. He has been a monk and a university professor, and is a consultant for organizations and spiritual leaders. He has often been on television and radio, most recently on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday.

    Read more from Thomas Moore

    Related to The Odes of Anacreon

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Reviews for The Odes of Anacreon

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Odes of Anacreon - Thomas Moore

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Odes of Anacreon, by Thomas Moore

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: The Odes of Anacreon

      Author: Thomas Moore

      Release Date: December 6, 2011 [EBook #38230]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ODES OF ANACREON ***

      Produced by Steven Giacomelli, Margo Romberg and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

      file was produced from images generously made available

      by Case Western Reserve University Preservation Department

      Digital Library)

      THE ODES OF ANACREON.

      'Nec, si quid olim lusit Anacreon

      Delevit ætas.'    Hor.

      THE ODES OF ANACREON.

      TRANSLATED BY THOMAS MOORE.

      WITH FIFTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIVE DESIGNS BY

      GIRODET DE ROUSSY.

      NOW FIRST PRODUCED IN ENGLAND.

      LONDON:

      JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY.

      LONDON:

      Strangeways and Walden, Printers,

      Castle St. Leicester Sq.

      INTRODUCTION

      TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.

      Amongst the innumerable translators of Anacreon, there was one—a Frenchman by birth—who was both an illustrious painter and a literary enthusiast. Girodet de Roussy, inspired by a genius altogether Greek in its character, has translated Anacreon better by his pencil than he could have been translated by words. One might fancy that his designs had been executed under Anacreon's own eye by some Greek artist, who had himself witnessed that soft and voluptuous existence, where song and pleasure are one.

      Seldom indeed have chasteness of execution and voluptuousness of character been so curiously and indissolubly blended. Seldom has a modern artist so happily caught the spirit of an ancient poet. We seem to be transported, as in a dream, to the vines, and orange-groves, and cloudless skies of Greece, and the wearied spirit abandons itself for a while to the soft influences of the azure heaven, the countless luxuriance of roses, the undulating forms of the fair girls dancing in the shade, while youthful attendants brim the beaker with wine. Under such influences we remember that youth, and love, and mirth are immortal, and we say with Horace,—

      'Nec, si quid olim lusit Anacreon

      Delevit ætas.'   Hor.[A]

      In that close wrestle of the genius that imitates with the genius that creates, Girodet alone came out from the trial successfully. He has shown himself the rival of Anacreon in grace, in abandon, in naïveté. He has succeeded in depicting his poet's theme with equal elegance and delicacy. Loving with a real love those old Greek songs, he has displayed them in living beauty before our eyes in fifty-four exquisite drawings. To attempt such a masterpiece required a poet's as well as a painter's skill; and Girodet was both a painter and a poet.

      [A]

      'Time cannot raze Anacreon's name,

      Nor prey upon his youthful strains.'

      In examining these compositions, one cannot abstain from a certain kind of surprise: all the odes of Anacreon revolve upon two or three central ideas, expressed in a manner full of grace, unquestionably, but still always the same ideas. The artist, while not deviating from the narrow circle traced for him by the poet, shows a fecundity and variety that are truly marvellous—that astonish and enchant us at the same time. The nobility, elegance, and wealth of accessories that prevail throughout the whole series might, as we have already hinted, lead us to suppose that we owed them to one of the famous artists that Greece produced: the painter and the poet

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1