Day 5: A Love-Letter to Lysanias, by Callimachus
Day 5: A Love-Letter to Lysanias, by Callimachus
ἐχθαίρω τὸ ποίημα τὸ κυκλικόν, οὐδὲ κελεύθωι
χαίρω τίς πολλοὺς ὧδε καὶ ὧδε φέρει,
μισέω καὶ περίφοιτον ἐρώμενον, οὐδ᾽ ἀπὸ κρήνης
πίνω: σικχαίνω πάντα τὰ δημόσια.
5Λυσανίη σὺ δὲ ναιχὶ καλὸς καλός — ἀλλὰ πρὶν εἰπεῖν
τοῦτο σαφῶς, Ἠχώ φησί τις ‘ἄλλος ἔχει᾽.
I can’t stand cyclic poetry, nor do I
enjoy the well-trodden track;
I hate a guy who sleeps around, nor would I drink
from a public fountain: I loathe all common things.
Lysanias, you are beautiful – truly beautiful. But before I
can speak out, some Echo says, “he is another’s”.
— Callimachus, Epigram 28, trans. me
This poem reminded me that I love reading Greek poetry during my first year at University. It also ended up inspiring my undergrad dissertation on different epigrams by the same poet, Callimachus (3rd century BCE). He was known in the ancient world for being sharp-tongued and highly discerning in his taste, literary and otherwise. The first line above, about ‘cyclic poetry’, is a thinly-veiled dig at the trend in his day of mimicking Homer by writing long tomes of Epic poetry. Based on his style (and what he wrote about other living people), he comes across to me like a catty Queen. He would’ve loved Rupaul’s Drag Race.
He was criticised in the Ancient World for being pretentious – his poems often come across as manicured – but the result is short pieces with layers of meaning to un-peel as you read the poem. The first four lines look like an inverted ‘priamel’ based on one by Sappho about what different people love. Sappho goes on to link these to her lover (what she loves); Callimachus inverts the narrative, calling Lysanias beautiful (as opposed to all the hated ‘common’ things) – and then again at the end (beautiful, but common after all).
Imagine being Lysanias and seeing this published! (We have no idea if Lysanias was real.)
Featured Image: Sorry to nerd out so completely, but this the actual page from the 10th-century manuscript that preserves this poem – the Palatine Anthology, stored in Heidelberg University Library. I found out during my diss-writing (in lockdown) that the entire thing has been digitised online. Someone ‘discovered’ the text in the 17th century in Heidelberg, and it spent time in the Vatican, and then Paris, before returning to Heidelberg (although the last ~100 pages are still in Paris, for some reason).
TJC 