"Creatures of a day! What is a man? What is it NOT?" This famous question, from Pythian 8, comes from someone who has experienced the outside, who has left humanity behind, so to speak. He knows there is no human nature, only becoming and strife.
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The kouros is pindaric; he bears the eternal archaic smile of the nobility, the geloioi, the smiling ones. And in the diaphanous gleam of victory, the victor experiences the existence of the gods; life becomes divine. Victory is a religious phenomenon, as Pindar's poetry.pic.twitter.com/hBZxLRGDd8
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Pindar's art is fundamentally shamanic. He travels to the solar world of the dead. His schizophrenic metaphors arise from his ability to break on through, to see & breathe with new eyes. The opening to Ol. 1 is a radical reinterpretation of nature, only superficially a priamel.pic.twitter.com/0M2BAK4DcK
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The Greeks went to battle with an acute consciousness of life's finitude & of their individuality. Pindar does not praise Thebes; only the fallen youth & his family. They knew it would all end there, but still calmly marched on to battle; they were in it for the glory.pic.twitter.com/s4HA1YUfzs
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In this poem, Isth. 7, Pindar praises both the victor and his uncle who died in battle, ultimately concluding with this prayer: "O golden-haired Loxias,in the Pythian contest too, grant us one more crown of flowers." "More life, & more victory." - such is the moral of the story.
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Even by Pindar's standard, these lines are difficult. Glory's effect is described as a breath that spreads upon men; manly deeds to conquistador-like exploration, which however has to stop at some point; the Pillars of Heracles, where the world of man, ends.pic.twitter.com/pHFKMMFRdS
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Fascinating chiastic structure here. Pindar recounts how the family were famous for their hippic victories & for their ability in war, before losing most of their men in battle, and, later, winning again at the Games. A B B A He organizes their story as a cyclical process.pic.twitter.com/BqeuBBw8kF
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Pindar expressed himself through an idiolect, a language of his own creation. Homer's Greek is an artificial, codified literary language, but Pindar not only invented his vocabulary, he would modify & bend syntax sometimes to near complete obscurity.
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Replying to @nastyinmuhtaxi
When I first read him I thought it was in Aeolic Greek. Then I realized differences. To this day I find him the most difficult to understand. More than Homer.
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