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The fact that Pindar is not recognized as the greatest poet to have ever walked the dark-blue earth, has less to do with him being an extremely difficult poet, than with this simple truth, that his readers until a few years ago, were not yet born.
Ol. 11: "Join, Muses, the rejoicing; I can guarantee that there, you will find a people that is hospitable, prosperous, cultured, and warlike." The Muses, being women, favor the healthy and will be attracted to those who are rich, friendly, cultured... and dangerous.
Pindar is the most Indo-European of the Greek poets; this says a lot, both about Pindar & Greek poetry. Here Pindar speaks of poetry as source of immortality, which we also find in the Vedas, 10,4,7: "O Jatavedas, and this my song shall evermore exalt thee."pic.twitter.com/5NA99lnNoJ
"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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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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