Gasparov poetry of Pindar. Pindar's Olympic songs - Everything in chocolate - LiveJournal. Ancient Greek choral lyrics

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The book by Academician M. L. Gasparov, a famous literary critic and translator, includes essays from different years dedicated to the work of Greek and Latin poets. For the most part, these works were written as prefaces and afterwords to the editions of Pindar, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and others in Russian translations. They are united by the fact that the work of each author is presented in the inextricable unity of philosophical and aesthetic principles.

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Ancient Greek choral lyrics Poetry of Pindar Catullus, or the inventor of feeling Virgil, or the poet of the future Horace, or the gold of the middle Ovid in exile Ancient Greek epigram Ausonius and his time Topics and composition of Horace's hymns Poetry and prose - poetics and rhetoric Ancient rhetoric as a system Statuses of accusation in the story A .P. Chekhov's “Chorus Girl” (1886)

From the author

The essays included in this book were written, for the most part, as prefaces and afterwords to editions of Greek and Latin poets in Russian translations. Hence their popular science character. For a separate edition they have been slightly modified and supplemented with quotations and illustrations. Unfortunately, it was not possible to update them in accordance with the latest scientific literature - even books that were not new were not always available in Moscow. However, we tried to write mainly not about history or psychology, but about the poetics of each author - and here revolutions in science occur less frequently. I was told that all my poets turn out to be similar to each other: each is like a student of a historical school, by the sweat of his brow overcoming the tasks facing him in poetics. It's probably true. Poetics in antiquity was closely related to rhetoric; Therefore, the book ends with articles on rhetoric, although their material is not so much poetry as prose, and even not only ancient, but also Russian.

Under the leadership of the musician Apollodorus (or Agathocles) and the poet Las of Hermione. Traveled a lot, lived in Sicily and Athens. The name of his wife is known - Megaklea, two daughters - Eumetis and Protomachus, son - Diaphantes. Died in Argos.

Creation

Pindar's works belong to the choral lyric poetry (melika): these were hymns and paeans addressed to the gods, dithyrambs to Dionysus, prosody (songs for ceremonial processions), encomia (songs of praise), laments and epinikia (odes in honor of the winners of the pan-Greek games).

Four incomplete cycles of epinikia have reached us, including 14 in honor of the winners of the Olympic Games, 12 Pythian, 11 Nemean and 8 Isthmian. What survives is barely a quarter of what the poet produced, since the edition of Pindar, prepared by Alexandrian scholars, included 17 books. We now get an idea of the lost 13 books only from random fragments. The earliest work of Pindar that can be dated is the 10th Pythian Canto, 498 BC. e. , at the latest - the 8th Pythian Hymn, 446 BC. e.

Pindar's epinicia are an example of the genre. For the caste ideology of the Greek aristocracy, athletic success had value primarily as a manifestation of “class valor”; Accordingly, the victorious hero was to be glorified in the light of the exploits of mythological characters, from whom a noble family usually descended.

The introduction usually mentions the victory won, but without any specific description of the competition that took place. From the glorious present, the poet throws a “conventional bridge” appropriate to the occasion to the glorious past, to the “suitable” myth, which will form the main part of the poem. The final part often contains a direct appeal to the winner, often in the form of instructions to behave worthy of the legendary ancestors and what he himself has accomplished. Almost all of Pindar's odes are written in strophic triads (1 to 13), and each triad (traditionally) consists of a stanza, an antistrophe, and an epode. Occasionally the thematic and formal divisions in the odes coincide (Ol. 13), but more often the poet played up the discrepancy between these divisions; large tirades with an incredible number of subordinate clauses flow from stanza to stanza, blurring metrically clear boundaries.

Pindar's odes are considered to be a kind of standard of mystery. The complexity of Pindar's poetry is partly due to the unusual order of words: Pindar sacrificed simplicity of syntax in order to build the desired sequence of images (although commentators believe that the dithyrambic style even dislikes simplicity). Pindar's text is distinguished by the “spontaneous” power of language, bold associativity, and rich rhythmic pattern. The method of presentation he adopted is also unique: Pindar does not retell the myth, as in an epic, but refers only to those episodes that seem to him the most important for the context of a particular poem. Behind all this, Pindar's images are magnificent and moving; its main tools are inversion, hyperbole, metaphor and neologism.

Pindar's worldview is conservative; any criticism of “traditional values” is completely unusual for him. He firmly believes in divine omnipotence, does not trust knowledge, values wealth and fame, and recognizes only innate virtues. Pindar reflects on the power of the gods and the unknowability of their plans, recalls mythical heroes - the ancestors of the winner, calls for the comprehensive development of the capabilities inherent in man; victory is achieved by the favor of fate, the innate valor of the winner and his own efforts (on which the favor of fate depends not least). The “refinement” of this aristocratic ideology (characteristic of the religion of Apollo of Delphi) finds a full-fledged exponent in Pindar; Pindar is the last poet of the Greek aristocracy, his significance “is not in the creation of new forms, but in the ascension of old ones to unattainable heights.” The richness of the stanzas, the splendor of the images, the solemnity and oratorical expressiveness of the language, harmonious with his archaic worldview, place Pindar among the most important Greek lyricists.

Pindar musician

The surviving literary works of Pindar allow us to confidently assert that the poet not only knew the genres and forms of contemporary music, accurately described the ethos of musical instruments (for example, the lyre in Pyth. 1), and used “technical” terms (“many-headed nome” in Pyth. 12) , but perhaps he himself was a melurgist (“composer”). It is also certain that Pindar had excellent command of the lyre and accompanied a choir on the instrument. However, no notated monuments of Pindar's music (as well as many other poets and musicians of the classical era) have survived. In the wake of the next European “revival” of ancient Greek culture, Athanasius Kircher announced that during his travels in 1637-38. in Sicily discovered a notated fragment of the first Pythian ode. This piece called Musicae veteris specimen(“A Specimen of Ancient Music”), published by Kircher in his (huge) treatise Universal Musurgy (1650), has long been considered the most ancient piece of music extant. Nowadays, musicologists and source scientists consider the “Ode of Pindar” to be Kircher’s invention, the first loud evidence of musical hoax.

Reception

Pindar was considered the most famous of the Nine Lyricists (in poetic dedications to the Nine Lyricists he is always called the first). According to legend, the gods themselves sang his poems; one traveler, lost in the mountains, met the god Pan, who was singing a song of Pindar. Both the birth and death of Pindar were miraculous. When he, a newborn, lay in the cradle, the bees flew to his lips and filled them with honey - as a sign that his speech would be sweet as honey. When he was dying, Persephone appeared to him in a dream and said: “You have sung all the gods except me, but soon you will sing me too.” Ten days passed, Pindar died; Another ten days passed, he appeared in a dream to his relative and dictated a hymn in honor of Persephone.

The glory of Pindar in Greece was so great that even a hundred years later, when Alexander the Great conquered the rebellious Thebes, he, having ordered to destroy the city to the ground, ordered to preserve only the temples of the gods and the house of Pindar (whose descendants, the only ones in the entire city, were also preserved freedom ). Democratic Athens disapproved of the aristocrat and conservative Pindar, but in the Hellenistic and Roman eras, Pindar's oratorical solemnity aroused interest throughout the Mediterranean, and the school valued the ethical content of his poetry.

Pindar's epinikia influenced the development of the ode genre in modern European literature. While Pindar continued to be regarded as a great master in modern times, some writers were perplexed at why Pindar would use a highly complex array of images and structures to describe the victory of such and such a runner, boxer or jockey. Voltaire wrote:

Rise from the grave, divine Pindar, you, who in days gone by glorified the horses of the most worthy burghers from Corinth or Megara, you, who had the incomparable gift of speaking endlessly without saying anything, you, who knew how to measure out verses that no one understands, but are subject to strict admiration...
Original text(French)

Sort du tombeau, divin Pindare, Toi qui célébras autrefois Les chevaux de quelques bourgeois Ou de Corinthe ou de Mégare; Toi qui possédas le talent De parler beaucoup sans rien dire; Toi qui modulas savamment Des vers que personne n"entend, Et qu"il faut toujours qu"on admire.
Voltaire. Ode XVII

Hölderlin's German translations of Pindar are widely known. Pindar was translated into Russian by M. S. Grabar-Passek, V. I. Vodovozov, Vyach. I. Ivanov, G. R. Derzhavin (it is believed that he completed the first translation from Pindar, “The First Pindaric Pythic Hymn to the Ethnian Chiron, King of Syracuse, for the Victory of His Chariot”, g.).

Works

According to the late antique biographers of Pindar, the corpus of his works, stored in the Library of Alexandria, consisted of 17 books:

1 book of hymns ( ὕμνοι ) - hymns
1 book of paeans ( παιάνες ) - paeans
2 books of praises ( διθύραμβοι ) - praises
2 books of prosody ( προσῳδίαι ) - prosody (songs during processions)
3 books of the Parthenians ( παρθένεια ) - girls' songs
2 books of hyporchem ( ὑπορχήματα ) - dance songs
1 book of encomia ( ἐγκώμια ) - songs of praise
1 book of frens, or trens ( θρῆνοι ) - lament songs
4 books of Epinikians ( ἐπινίκια ) - odes to sports victories

Modern researchers (for example, Snell and Maehler), based on ancient sources, have tried to restore the dates of writing of the Epinikians:

498 BC e. : Pythian Odes 10
490 BC e. : Pythian Odes 6, 12
488 BC e. : Olympic Odes 14 (?)
485 BC e. : Nemean Odes 2 (?), 7 (?)
483 BC e. : Nemean Odes 5 (?)
486 BC e. : Pythian Odes 7
480 BC e. : Isthmian Odes 6
478 BC e. : Isthmian Odes 5 (?); Isthmian Odes 8
476 BC e. : Olympic Odes 1, 2, 3, 11; Nemean Odes 1 (?)
475 BC e. : Pythian Odes 2 (?); Nemean Odes 3 (?)
474 BC e. : Olympic Odes 10 (?); Pythian Odes 3 (?), 9, 11; Nemean Odes 9 (?)
/473 BC e. : Isthmian Odes 3/4 (?)
473 BC e. : Nemean Odes 4 (?)
470 BC e. : Pythian Odes 1; Isthmian Odes 2 (?)
468 BC e. : Olympic Odes 6
466 BC e. : Olympic Odes 9, 12
465 BC e. : Nemean Odes 6 (?)
464 BC e. : Olympic Odes 7, 13
462 BC e. : Pythian Odes 4
/461 BC e. : Pythian Odes 5
460 BC e. : Olympic Odes 8
/456 BC e. : Olympic Odes 4 (?), 5 (?)
459 BC e. : Nemean Odes 8 (?)
458 BC e. : Isthmian Odes 1 (?)
454 BC e. : Isthmian Odes 7 (?)
446 BC e. : Pythian Odes 8; Nemean Odes 11 (?)
444 BC e. : Nemean Odes 10 (?)

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Notes

Editions and translations

In the “Loeb classical library” series, the works were published in two volumes (No. 56, 485).
In the “Collection Budé” series there are works in 4 volumes (including fragments).

Russian translations:

Creations Pindara. / Per. P. Golenishcheva-Kutuzova. M., .
- Part 1. Containing Olympic odes. 135 pp.
- Part 2. Containing Pythic odes. 123 pp.
Pindar. / Per. prose by I. Martynov. Part 1-2. St. Petersburg, . (in Greek and Russian)
- Part 1. Olympic Odes. Pythian Odes. 483 pp.
- Part 2. Nemean Odes. Isphmic odes. 276 pp.
Pindar. Odes. Fragments. / Per. M. L. Gasparova. // Bulletin of ancient history. 1973. No. 2-4. 1974. No. 1-3.
Pindar. Bacchylides. Odes. Fragments / Ed. preparation M. Gasparov; resp. ed. F. Petrovsky. - M. : Nauka, 1980. - 504 p. - (Literary monuments).
Pindar. . / Per. M. A. Amelina. // New world. 2004. No. 9. P. 92-104.

Literature

Research

Bowra C M. Pindar. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964 (and many reprints).
Yarkho V. N., Polonskaya K. P. Antique lyrics. - M., 1967.
Greenbaum N. S. Language of ancient Greek choral lyrics: (Pindar). - Chisinau, Stintsa, 1973. - 282 p.
Gasparov M. L. Ancient Greek choral lyrics // Pindar. Bacchylides. Odes. Fragments / Ed. preparation M. Gasparov; resp. ed. F. Petrovsky. - M. : Science, 1980. - pp. 331-360. - 504 s. - (Literary monuments).
Gasparov M. L. Poetry of Pindar // Pindar. Bacchylides. Odes. Fragments / Ed. preparation M. Gasparov; resp. ed. F. Petrovsky. - M. : Science, 1980. - pp. 361-383. - 504 s. - (Literary monuments).
Greenbaum N. S. Early classics of ancient Greece in the economic terms of Pindar // Antiquity as a type of culture. - M., 1988.
Greenbaum N. S. The artistic world of ancient poetry: The creative search of Pindar: To the 2500th anniversary of the poet’s birth. - M.: Nauka, 1990, 166 p. ISBN 5-02-010956-8.
Toporov V.N. Pindar and Rigveda: Hymns of Pindar and Vedic hymns as the basis for the reconstruction of the Indo-European hymn tradition. - M.: RSUH, 2012. ISBN 978-5-7281-1275-4.

Scholium to Pindar

.
Subsequent reissues:
- Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina - vol I: Scholia in Olympionicas. Recensuit A. B. Drachmann. 1969.
- Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina - vol. II. Scholia in Pythionicas. Recensuit A. B. Drachmann. 1903.
- Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina - vol III: Scholia in Nemeonicas et Isthmionicas epimetrum, indices. Recensuit A. B. Drachmann. 1997.
Scholia Metrica Vetera In Pindari Carmina (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana). 1989.
Scholium to Pindar (information about Scythia and the Caucasus). // Bulletin of ancient history. 1947. No. 1. P. 311-314.

Research into musical activity

Rome A. L’origine de la prétendue mélodie de Pindare // Les Études Classiques 1 (1932), p. 3-11.
Rome A. Pindare ou Kircher // Les Études Classiques 4 (1935), p. 337-350.
Pöhlmann E. Denkmäler altgriechischer Musik. Nürnberg, 1970, SS. 47-49.
Barker A. Pindar // Greek musical writings. Part I: The musician and his art. Cambridge, 1984, p.54-61.
Mathiesen T. Apollo's lyre. Greek music and music theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Lincoln & London, 1999.
Documents of ancient Greek music. The extant melodies and fragments edited and transcribed with commentary by Egert Pöhlmann and Martin L. West. Oxford, 2001.

Links

F. G. Mishchenko.// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
Sample of creativity:

Passage characterizing Pindar

“I already told you, daddy,” said the son, “that if you don’t want to let me go, I’ll stay.” But I know that I am not fit for anything except military service; “I’m not a diplomat, not an official, I don’t know how to hide what I feel,” he said, still looking with the coquetry of beautiful youth at Sonya and the guest young lady.
The cat, glaring at him with her eyes, seemed every second ready to play and show all her cat nature.
- Well, well, okay! - said the old count, - everything is getting hot. Bonaparte turned everyone's heads; everyone thinks how he got from lieutenant to emperor. Well, God willing,” he added, not noticing the guest’s mocking smile.
The big ones started talking about Bonaparte. Julie, Karagina’s daughter, turned to young Rostov:
– What a pity that you weren’t at the Arkharovs’ on Thursday. “I was bored without you,” she said, smiling tenderly at him.
The flattered young man with a flirtatious smile of youth moved closer to her and entered into a separate conversation with the smiling Julie, not noticing at all that this involuntary smile of his was cutting the heart of the blushing and feignedly smiling Sonya with a knife of jealousy. “In the middle of the conversation, he looked back at her. Sonya looked at him passionately and embitteredly and, barely holding back the tears in her eyes and a feigned smile on her lips, she stood up and left the room. All Nikolai's animation disappeared. He waited for the first break in the conversation and, with an upset face, left the room to look for Sonya.
– How the secrets of all these young people are sewn with white thread! - said Anna Mikhailovna, pointing to Nikolai coming out. “Cousinage dangereux voisinage,” she added.
“Yes,” said the countess, after the ray of sunshine that had penetrated into the living room with this young generation had disappeared, and as if answering a question that no one had asked her, but which constantly occupied her. - How much suffering, how much anxiety has been endured in order to now rejoice in them! And now, really, there is more fear than joy. You're still afraid, you're still afraid! This is precisely the age at which there are so many dangers for both girls and boys.
“Everything depends on upbringing,” said the guest.
“Yes, your truth,” continued the Countess. “Until now, thank God, I have been a friend of my children and enjoy their complete trust,” said the countess, repeating the misconception of many parents who believe that their children have no secrets from them. “I know that I will always be the first confidente [confidant] of my daughters, and that Nikolenka, due to her ardent character, if she plays naughty (a boy cannot live without this), then everything is not like these St. Petersburg gentlemen.
“Yes, nice, nice guys,” confirmed the count, who always resolved issues that confused him by finding everything nice. - Come on, I want to become a hussar! Yes, that's what you want, ma chere!
“What a sweet creature your little one is,” said the guest. - Gunpowder!
“Yes, gunpowder,” said the count. - It hit me! And what a voice: even though it’s my daughter, I’ll tell the truth, she will be a singer, Salomoni is different. We hired an Italian to teach her.
- Is not it too early? They say it is harmful for your voice to study at this time.
- Oh, no, it’s so early! - said the count. - How did our mothers get married at twelve thirteen?
- She’s already in love with Boris! What? - said the countess, smiling quietly, looking at Boris’s mother, and, apparently answering the thought that had always occupied her, she continued. - Well, you see, if I had kept her strictly, I would have forbidden her... God knows what they would have done on the sly (the countess meant: they would have kissed), and now I know every word she says. She will come running in the evening and tell me everything. Maybe I'm spoiling her; but, really, this seems to be better. I kept the eldest strictly.
“Yes, I was brought up completely differently,” said the eldest, beautiful Countess Vera, smiling.
But a smile did not grace Vera’s face, as usually happens; on the contrary, her face became unnatural and therefore unpleasant.
The eldest, Vera, was good, she was not stupid, she studied well, she was well brought up, her voice was pleasant, what she said was fair and appropriate; but, strangely, everyone, both the guest and the countess, looked back at her, as if they were surprised why she said this, and felt awkward.
“They always play tricks with older children, they want to do something extraordinary,” said the guest.
- To be honest, ma chere! The Countess was playing tricks with Vera,” said the Count. - Well, oh well! Still, she turned out nice,” he added, winking approvingly at Vera.
The guests got up and left, promising to come for dinner.
- What a manner! They were already sitting, sitting! - said the countess, ushering the guests out.

When Natasha left the living room and ran, she only reached the flower shop. She stopped in this room, listening to the conversation in the living room and waiting for Boris to come out. She was already beginning to get impatient and, stamping her foot, was about to cry because he was not walking now, when she heard the quiet, not fast, decent steps of a young man.
Natasha quickly rushed between the flower pots and hid.
Boris stopped in the middle of the room, looked around, brushed specks from his uniform sleeve with his hand and walked up to the mirror, examining his handsome face. Natasha, having become quiet, looked out from her ambush, waiting for what he would do. He stood in front of the mirror for a while, smiled and went to the exit door. Natasha wanted to call out to him, but then changed her mind. “Let him search,” she told herself. Boris had just left when a flushed Sonya emerged from another door, whispering something angrily through her tears. Natasha restrained herself from her first move to run out to her and remained in her ambush, as if under an invisible cap, looking out for what was happening in the world. She experienced a special new pleasure. Sonya whispered something and looked back at the living room door. Nikolai came out of the door.
- Sonya! What happened to you? Is this possible? - Nikolai said, running up to her.
- Nothing, nothing, leave me! – Sonya began to sob.
- No, I know what.
- Well, you know, that’s great, and go to her.
- Sooo! One word! Is it possible to torture me and yourself like this because of a fantasy? - Nikolai said, taking her hand.
Sonya did not pull his hands away and stopped crying.
Natasha, without moving or breathing, looked out from her ambush with shining heads. "What will happen now"? she thought.
- Sonya! I don't need the whole world! “You alone are everything to me,” Nikolai said. - I'll prove it to you.
“I don’t like it when you talk like that.”
- Well, I won’t, I’m sorry, Sonya! “He pulled her towards him and kissed her.
“Oh, how good!” thought Natasha, and when Sonya and Nikolai left the room, she followed them and called Boris to her.
“Boris, come here,” she said with a significant and cunning look. – I need to tell you one thing. Here, here,” she said and led him into the flower shop to the place between the tubs where she was hidden. Boris, smiling, followed her.
– What is this one thing? - he asked.
She was embarrassed, looked around her and, seeing her doll abandoned on the tub, took it in her hands.
“Kiss the doll,” she said.
Boris looked into her lively face with an attentive, affectionate gaze and did not answer.
- You do not want? Well, come here,” she said and went deeper into the flowers and threw the doll. - Closer, closer! - she whispered. She caught the officer's cuffs with her hands, and solemnity and fear were visible in her reddened face.
- Do you want to kiss me? – she whispered barely audibly, looking at him from under her brows, smiling and almost crying with excitement.
Boris blushed.
- How funny you are! - he said, bending over to her, blushing even more, but doing nothing and waiting.
She suddenly jumped up on the tub so that she stood taller than him, hugged him with both arms so that her thin bare arms bent above his neck and, moving her hair back with a movement of her head, kissed him right on the lips.
She slipped between the pots to the other side of the flowers and, lowering her head, stopped.
“Natasha,” he said, “you know that I love you, but...
-Are you in love with me? – Natasha interrupted him.
- Yes, I’m in love, but please, let’s not do what we’re doing now... Four more years... Then I’ll ask for your hand.
Natasha thought.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen...” she said, counting with her thin fingers. - Fine! So it's over?
And a smile of joy and peace lit up her lively face.
- It's over! - said Boris.
- Forever? - said the girl. - Until death?
And, taking his arm, with a happy face, she quietly walked next to him into the sofa.

The countess was so tired of the visits that she did not order to receive anyone else, and the doorman was only ordered to invite everyone who would still come with congratulations to eat. The Countess wanted to talk privately with her childhood friend, Princess Anna Mikhailovna, whom she had not seen well since her arrival from St. Petersburg. Anna Mikhailovna, with her tear-stained and pleasant face, moved closer to the countess’s chair.
“I’ll be completely frank with you,” said Anna Mikhailovna. – There are very few of us left, old friends! This is why I value your friendship so much.
Anna Mikhailovna looked at Vera and stopped. The Countess shook hands with her friend.
“Vera,” said the countess, addressing her eldest daughter, obviously unloved. - How come you have no idea about anything? Don't you feel like you're out of place here? Go to your sisters, or...
Beautiful Vera smiled contemptuously, apparently not feeling the slightest insult.
“If you had told me long ago, mamma, I would have left immediately,” she said, and went to her room.
But, passing by the sofa, she noticed that there were two couples sitting symmetrically at two windows. She stopped and smiled contemptuously. Sonya sat close to Nikolai, who was copying out poems for her that he had written for the first time. Boris and Natasha were sitting at another window and fell silent when Vera entered. Sonya and Natasha looked at Vera with guilty and happy faces.
It was fun and touching to look at these girls in love, but the sight of them, obviously, did not arouse a pleasant feeling in Vera.
“How many times have I asked you,” she said, “not to take my things, you have your own room.”
She took the inkwell from Nikolai.
“Now, now,” he said, wetting his pen.
“You know how to do everything at the wrong time,” said Vera. “Then they ran into the living room, so everyone felt ashamed of you.”
Despite the fact that, or precisely because, what she said was completely fair, no one answered her, and all four only looked at each other. She lingered in the room with the inkwell in her hand.
- And what secrets could there be at your age between Natasha and Boris and between you - they’re all just nonsense!
- Well, what do you care, Vera? – Natasha said intercedingly in a quiet voice.
She, apparently, was even more kind and affectionate to everyone than always that day.
“Very stupid,” said Vera, “I’m ashamed of you.” What are the secrets?...
- Everyone has their own secrets. We won’t touch you and Berg,” Natasha said, getting excited.
“I think you won’t touch me,” said Vera, “because there can never be anything bad in my actions.” But I’ll tell mommy how you treat Boris.
“Natalya Ilyinishna treats me very well,” said Boris. “I can't complain,” he said.
- Leave it, Boris, you are such a diplomat (the word diplomat was in great use among children in the special meaning that they attached to this word); It’s even boring,” Natasha said in an offended, trembling voice. - Why is she pestering me? You will never understand this,” she said, turning to Vera, “because you have never loved anyone; you have no heart, you are only madame de Genlis [Madame Genlis] (this nickname, considered very offensive, was given to Vera by Nikolai), and your first pleasure is to cause trouble for others. “You flirt with Berg as much as you want,” she said quickly.
- Yes, I certainly won’t start chasing a young man in front of guests...
“Well, she achieved her goal,” Nikolai intervened, “she said unpleasant things to everyone, upset everyone.” Let's go to the nursery.
All four, like a frightened flock of birds, got up and left the room.
“They told me some troubles, but I didn’t mean anything to anyone,” said Vera.
- Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis! - Laughing voices said from behind the door.
Beautiful Vera, who had such an irritating, unpleasant effect on everyone, smiled and, apparently unaffected by what was said to her, went to the mirror and straightened her scarf and hairstyle. Looking at her beautiful face, she apparently became even colder and calmer.

The conversation continued in the living room.
- Ah! chere,” said the countess, “and in my life tout n”est pas rose. Don’t I see that du train, que nous allons, [not everything is roses. - given our way of life,] our condition will not last long for us! And "It's all a club, and its kindness. We live in the village, do we really relax? Theatres, hunting and God knows what. But what can I say about me! Well, how did you arrange all this? I'm often surprised at you, Annette, how it's possible You, at your age, ride alone in a carriage, to Moscow, to St. Petersburg, to all the ministers, to all the nobility, you know how to get along with everyone, I’m surprised! Well, how did this work out? I don’t know how to do any of this.
- Oh, my soul! - answered Princess Anna Mikhailovna. “God forbid you know how hard it is to remain a widow without support and with a son whom you love to the point of adoration.” “You’ll learn everything,” she continued with some pride. – My process taught me. If I need to see one of these aces, I write a note: “princesse une telle [princess so-and-so] wants to see so-and-so,” and I drive myself in a cab at least two, at least three times, at least four times, until I achieve what I need. I don't care what anyone thinks about me.
- Well, well, who did you ask about Borenka? – asked the Countess. - After all, yours is already a guard officer, and Nikolushka is a cadet. There is no one to bother. Who did you ask?
- Prince Vasily. He was very nice. Now I agreed to everything, reported to the sovereign,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna said with delight, completely forgetting all the humiliation she went through to achieve her goal.
- That he has aged, Prince Vasily? – asked the Countess. – I haven’t seen him since our theaters at the Rumyantsevs’. And I think he forgot about me. “Il me faisait la cour, [He was trailing after me,” the countess recalled with a smile.
“Still the same,” answered Anna Mikhailovna, “kind, crumbling.” Les grandeurs ne lui ont pas touriene la tete du tout. [The high position did not turn his head at all.] “I regret that I can do too little for you, dear princess,” he tells me, “order.” No, he is a nice man and a wonderful family member. But you know, Nathalieie, my love for my son. I don't know what I wouldn't do to make him happy. “And my circumstances are so bad,” Anna Mikhailovna continued with sadness and lowering her voice, “so bad that I am now in the most terrible situation. My miserable process is eating up everything I have and is not moving. I don’t have, you can imagine, a la lettre [literally], I don’t have a dime of money, and I don’t know what to outfit Boris with. “She took out a handkerchief and began to cry. “I need five hundred rubles, but I have one twenty-five-ruble note.” I am in this position... My only hope now is Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he does not want to support his godson - after all, he baptized Borya - and assign him something for his maintenance, then all my troubles will be lost: I will have nothing to outfit him with.

1. Pindar is the most Greek of the Greek poets. His techniques were borrowed by the creators of pathetic lyricism of the Baroque and pre-Romanticism. In the 19th century Pindar fell into the hands of narrow specialist philologists and remains in this position today. Beginning at the end of the 19th century, when Europe rediscovered the beauty of the Greek archaic, Pindar began to be better understood. But he never became a widely read author.

The peculiarity of Pindar's poetry is that he always glorifies not victory, but the winner; He spares no words to describe the valor of his hero, his family and city, and usually does not pay attention to the description of wrestling. Most Greek poets describe in detail the actions of their heroes, but Pindar concentrates only on the main character, on his personal qualities.

Pindar's contemporaries closely followed the sports games of that time, as they believed that the winners were protected by the Gods. In addition to four pan-Greek competitions - Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, Isthmian - Pindar mentions about 30 regional and local competitions; in Thebes, Aegina, Athens, Megara, Argos, Tegea, Onchest, Cyrene, etc. Interest in the moment being experienced is the most characteristic feature of the era, the decline of which found Pindar.

The previous era, the time of epic creativity, did not have this interest. The world of the epic is the world of the past, depicted nostalgically and in detail. But the era of social revolution of the 7th-6th centuries. highlighted the opposite social layer - the aristocracy. Their art became a new poetry - lyric poetry. The epic glorified the past - the lyrics were the poetry of the present. Especially the choir.

The genres of choral lyrics were divided into two groups: in honor of the gods (hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, prosody, parthenias) and in honor of people (hyporchemes, encomia, phrenes, epinikia). Lyrics in honor of the gods spoke of the eternal, lyrics in honor of people spoke of the changeable. Each epinikia was a response to a task posed by reality. To solve it, the lyric poet had to take in the world and find a place for a new event. This was the affirmation of a changing world, the herald of which was the lyrics.

The central concepts of the Pindarian value system are valor, feat and success. Pindar lists the components of success several times: the “breed” of the winner’s ancestors, his own efforts, and the will of the gods.

2. A series of events for Pindar is not a cause-and-effect series: his era does not think in terms of causes and effects, but in precedents and analogies. They were of two kinds - metaphorical (by similarity) and metonymic (by contiguity). “Zeus once gave victory to the old man Ergin at the Lemnos competitions of the Argonauts - is it surprising that now in Olympia he gave victory to the gray-haired Psaumius of Kamarinsky?” - metaphorical series. “Zeus once blessed the exploits of the former offspring of Aegina - Aeacus, Telamon, Peleus, Aiantes, Achilles, Neoptolemus - is it surprising that now he gave victory to such an Aegina athlete as Alkimedon or Aristoclides, or Timasarchus, or Pytheas, or Sogen etc.?" - metonymic series.

Metonymic associations were easier for the poet and more accessible to listeners: they could come from the place of competition (this is how the Olympic myths of Pelops and Hercules were introduced), from the family of the winner (the myth of the Dioscuri), or from the homeland of the winner and its mythological past.

Metaphorical associations caused more difficulties. Thus, a spectacular ode to Hiero is built on two metaphors, one of them is explicit: the sick, but powerful Hiero is likened to the sick, but fatal for the enemy Philoctetes; the other is hidden: Hiero’s victories over the barbarian Carthaginians are likened to the victory of Zeus over the giant Typhon:

Pindar tried, wherever possible, to reinforce the metonymic connection of an event with a myth with a metaphorical connection and vice versa.

Almost all the myths used by Pindar are about heroes and their exploits. The world of heroes is important to him as an intermediate link between the world of people and the world of gods.

Pindar's myth is a glorification, encouragement, and even a warning (Tantalus, Ixion, Bellerophon) to the recipient of the song. To the reader of modern times, the abundance of myths mentioned by Pindar seems unnecessary, but Pindar himself and his listeners felt the opposite: the more diverse myths are grouped around victory, the stronger it is built into the world and the eternal.

3. The presentation of myths in Pindar is determined by the new function of myth in the ode. The epic told a myth for the sake of a myth. In the lyrics, the myth was told for the sake of a specific modern event. Therefore, Pindar discards the plot coherence and uniformity of the narrative, snatches the necessary moments and episodes from them, and the listener comes up with the rest. It is not the process of events, but instantaneous scenes that are remembered in Pindar’s story: Apollo entering the fire over the body of Coronis (Pyth. 3), the night prayers of Pelops and Jam (Ol. 1, Ol. 6), the baby Jam in flowers (Ol. 6) , Aeacus with two gods in front of the serpent on the Trojan wall (Ol. 8), Hercules at the Telamon feast (Isthm. 6); and everything that lies between such scenes is reported in subordinate clauses, a quick list similar to a synopsis. Pindar's most detailed mythical story is the story of the Argonauts.

Myth is the main means of establishing an event in an ode; therefore, most often it occupies the main part of the ode. In this case, the ode acquires a three-part symmetrical structure: an exposition with a statement of the event, a myth with its interpretation, and an appeal to the gods with prayer. The exhibit included praise for the games and the athlete. The mythological part explained that the victory achieved was an expression of the favor of the gods. The final part called on the gods not to refuse this mercy in the future.

The general symmetry of the construction has always been preserved. The prototype of all choral lyrics consisted of seven parts: “beginning”, “post-starting”, “turn”, “core”, “counter-turn”, “seal”, “conclusion”. Metrics helped to keep track of proportions: almost all of Pindar’s odes were written in strophic triads repeating each other (from 1 to 13), and each triad consists of a stanza, an antistrophe and an epod.

4. Pindar does everything to present what is depicted as tangible, material: visible, audible, tangible. Pindar’s favorite epithets are “golden”, “shining”, “sparkling”, “shining”, “lush”, “light”, “radiant”, “radiant”, “scorching”, etc. Characterized in this way, people, heroes and gods almost lose the ability to act, to move: they exist, radiating around them their glory and power, and that is enough. This depicts a static world of eternal values.

This is how Pindar’s ode completes the perpetuation of the moment, the addition of a new event to the ranks of the previous ones. The performer of this canonization is a poet. The highest apotheosis of Pindar's poetry is the Pythian Ode with its praise of the lyre, a symbol of universal order. The peculiarity of Pindara's poetry is the intensity of the worldview, constant pathetic excitement, persistent desire to embrace the immensity

5. Pindar was born in Thebes in 518 and died in 438. His poetic work spanned more than 50 years. The beginning and end of Pindar's work were marked by severe shocks: at the beginning the Greco-Persian wars, at the end the military expansion of Athens.

The release of this time was for Pindar an invitation to Sicily in 476 to celebrate the Olympic and Pythian victories of Hiero of Syracuse and Feron of Akragant. Here the poet honed his style to perfection: the odes of the Sicilian cycle were considered the highest achievement of Pindar and were placed in first place in the collection of his epinikia (Ol. 1-6, Pyth. 1-3, German 1).

Pindar lived until the Coronean revenge of 447. The last of his surviving odes, Pyth. 8, with its praise of Silence, sounds like a sigh of relief after Coronea, and mentions of the fate of the arrogant Porphyrion and Typhon seem to be a warning to Athens.

pindar poetry lyrics myth

Original taken from gorbutovich in Pindar's Olympic Songs

The reason for this bewilderment is that the Greek competitive games are usually not quite correctly represented by modern man. In the extensive literature about them (especially in popular literature), their most important function and essence is often overlooked. They emphasize the similarities with modern sports competitions; and it would be much more important to emphasize their similarity with such phenomena as the election of officials by lot in the Greek democratic states, like the court of God in medieval customs, like a judicial duel or duel. Greek competitions were supposed to reveal not who is the best in a given sporting art, but who is the best in general - the one who is blessed with divine grace. Athletic victory is only one possible manifestation of this divine grace; sports competitions are only a test, a test (έλεγχος) of the possession of this divine grace. That is why Pindar always glorifies not victory, but the winner; to describe the valor of his hero, his family and city, he does not spare words, and usually does not pay the slightest attention to the description of the sports struggle that brought him victory. Homer in the XXIII book of the Iliad described in detail the competitions over the tomb of Patroclus, Sophocles in Electra - the Delphic chariot races, even Bacchylides in his graceful epinikias finds room for expressive words about the horse of Hiero; but Pindar was as indifferent to these details of tactics and technology as an Athenian citizen was to the kind of stones or beans used to draw lots for members of the Council of Five Hundred.

3.

Reverse, horse race. Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora (jar). Attributed to the Leagros Group. Period: Archaic. Date: ca. 510 B.C. Greek, Attic. Terracotta; black-figure. Dimensions: 63.5 cm. This representation of a horse race includes the post marking the turn in the course. Accession Number:07.286.80. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The fantastic honor that was given in Greece to the Olympic, Pythian and other victors, the desire of cities and parties to have them on their side in any struggle - all this was explained precisely by the fact that they honored not skilled athletes, but the favorites of the gods. Sportsmanship remained the personal property of the athlete, but the mercy of the gods extended through contiguity to his relatives and fellow citizens. Going to war, citizens were glad to have an Olympic winner in their ranks, not because he could kill several more enemy fighters in battle than others, but because his presence promised the favor of Olympian Zeus to the entire army. The outcome of the competition made it possible to judge whose cause the gods considered right and whose not. The Greeks of Pindar's time went to competitions with the same feeling and interest with which they went to the oracle. It is no coincidence that the blooming time of Greek agonism and the time of the highest authority of the Delphic oracle coincide so much. In addition to the four pan-Greek competitions - Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, Isthmian - Pindar mentions about 30 regional and local competitions; in Thebes, Aegina, Athens, Megara, Argos, Tegea, Onchest, Cyrene, etc. The network of these games covered all of Greece, the results of these games formed a complex and motley picture of the attention of the gods to human affairs. And Pindar’s contemporaries gazed intently at this picture, because it was for them a means to understand and navigate the entire situation of the present moment.

4.

Pausanias, describing the temple of Hera at Olympia, talks about the competitions of women called Heraeans: “Every four years on the fifth, sixteen women weave Gere peplos (robes); they also organize games called Gereia. These games consist of girls running in a race; these girls are not all the same age, so the youngest run first, followed by those , who are somewhat older than their age, and finally, the oldest of the girls run. They run like this: their hair is loose, their chiton does not reach their knees a little, their right shoulder is open to the chest. And for their competition the Olympic Stadium is provided, but for running the space of the stadium is reduced to them by about one-sixth. The winners are given wreaths of olives and part of the cow sacrificed to Hera. They are allowed to erect their statues with their names inscribed on them, and the attendants of these sixteen stewards of the games are like them elderly women. 3. Beginning these competitions of girls,<как и состязаний мужчин>, also trace back to ancient times, saying that Hippodamia introduced them, giving thanks to Hera for her marriage to Pelops; she gathered sixteen women for this and with them organized the first Heraia<…>" / Although women were not allowed to compete in the ancient Greek Olympics, they did compete at Olympia in the Heraean Games. This competition was named after Hera, the goddess for women, and the only event was a 160-meter running race. Spartan women were particularly strong competitors, and this 2,500-year-old bronze statue is a rare depiction of a Spartan girl running. British Museum.

This intense interest in the moment being experienced is the most characteristic feature of that historical and cultural era, the decline of which Pindar found.<…>

Pindar was born in Thebes in 518 (less likely date 522) and died in 438. His poetic work spanned more than 50 years. Both the beginning and the end of this creative streak were marked for Pindar by severe upheavals: at the beginning the Greco-Persian wars, at the end the military expansion of Athens.<…>

<…>Pindar's work dates back to an era when Greek literature was not yet bookish: his odes for a long time were preserved only in the memory of listeners, while handwritten texts existed only in single copies - in temples, in city archives, in the families of customers. Only in the 4th century. BC Apparently, work begins on collecting Pindar's texts and information about the poet.<…>

5.

Euphiletos Painter. Chariot race with quadriga and terma. Side B of an Attic black-figure pseudo-panathenaic amphora, ca. 500 BC. From Vulci. Inv. 1452 (= J 657). Staatliche Antikensammlungen. via

Pindar. Odes. Olympic songs.

Translation by Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov

2. <«Острова Блаженных»>
Feron Akragantsky, son of Enesidamus, to win the chariot race. Year - 476.

My songs, mistress of the lyre,
What god
What hero
What kind of husband will we sing about?
Zeus rules over Pisa;
The Olympic Games were founded by Hercules
From the beginnings of victory;
But let us now exclaim about Feron, (5)
For his four were victorious.

He is merciful to those who wander,
He is the stronghold of Akragant,
It is the color of the root of illustrious ancestors,
Guardians of the city;
Having endured a lot in spirit,
They found this sacred abode above the river,
They became the apple of Sicily,
Time and Fate were watching over them, (10)
Showering with wealth and blessings
Their ancestral valor.
And you, Zeus,
Son of Cronus and Rhea,
Seated on the throne of Olympus,
Above the top of the games at the Alpheus Ford,
Touch me with my song
And leave them their father’s fields in your mercy -
During labor and delivery. (15)
Everything that happened, both right and wrong,
Will not become unexistent
Won't change the outcome
Even by the power of Time, which is the father of everything;
But a merciful fate can plunge him into oblivion.
Unbearable pain, tamed, dies,
Drowned by the joys of success, (20)
When the Share sent from God
Raises our happiness to the skies.
<…> [Start. Ode in full]

A comment:

Feron of Akragant, an ally of Hiero, ruled Akragant from 487 to 472; his daughter was married to Gelon of Syracuse, and after the death of Gelon (478) she married his brother Polizal in his will; the third brother, Hiero, expelled Polizal, who sought help from Pheron (a hint of this in Art. 6?), a war threatened, very dangerous for Akragant and for the entire Greek domination in Sicily; but in 476, through the mediation of Simonides of Ceos, who had just arrived in Sicily, peace was concluded (Diodorus, XIII.86). This coincided with the Olympic victories of Hiero and Feron at the races in 476, which was considered the end of troubles and a good sign of the future; the Isle of the Blessed appears as a symbol of this in Pindar’s ode (already ancient commentators saw in Pindar’s discussions about the vicissitudes of fate and ultimate luck a hint of political events). This theme of the Isles of the Blessed and metempsychosis is a clear echo of Pythagoreanism, popular in Greek Italy, which was generally rather alien to Pindar. The plan of the ode is symmetrical: the city and the winner - the vicissitudes of fate - the valor of Feron - the final reward - the city and the winner.

Art. 1. ...the mistress of the lyre... - “for first songs are composed, and then the lyre adapts to them” (scholiast). The dramatic opening of this ode is reproduced by Horace in his famous Ode I.
. Art. 12. From the first fruits of victory... - see Ol. 10.
. Art. 19. ...Time, which is the father of everything.— A frequent play in later Greek literature with the consonance “Kronos” (father of the gods) and “chronos” (time).

6.

Javelin throwers on pottery illustration. Scene from a Panathenaic prize amphora showing pentathletes. The discus thrower is holding his discus side on. via

6. <«Иам»>
Agesius of Syracuse, the son of Sostratus from the clan of Iamides and his charioteer Phintias to win the mule race to sing in Stymphalus. Sent with Aeneas, the choir teacher. Year - 472 or 468.

Golden columns
Rising above the kind walls in chorus,
Let's build a vestibule,
How the canopy of a wondrous palace is erected:
To the work begun - a shining brow.

Olympic victorious,
Guardian of the prophetic altar of Zeus, (5)
Co-founder of glorious Syracuse, -
What kind of counter-praise will pass him by?
In the desired songs of selfless fellow citizens?
Let the son of Sostratus know:
Its sole is under the divine heel.
Untroubled Valor
Not in honor
Neither among men on foot, nor on hollow ships; (10)
And since the beautiful was difficult,
Don't forget him.
<…> [Start. Ode in full]

A comment:

The exact date of the ode is unknown, since the lists of winners on mules have not been preserved. The prominent priestly family of the Iamides, whose origins are described in the ode, practiced fire divination at the altar of Zeus at Olympia; Agesius also belonged to this family, an Arcadian from Stymphalus on his mother’s side, a Syracusan on his father’s side (judging by Article 6, his ancestors moved to Sicily at the very foundation of the city)<…>Agesius died around 466 in the turmoil during the fall of Thrasybulus, son of Hiero.<…>

Art. 6. victorious... guardian... co-founder... - the first definition refers to Agesius himself, the second and third to his ancestors. Agesius, as a Syracusan, could not be a permanent fortuneteller at Olympia, but as Iamides could consult the oracle without the help of priests.

7.

Amphora, attributed to the Leagros Group, 515-500 BC. British Museum.

7. <«Родос»>
Diagoras of Rhodes, descendant of Tlepolem, to win a fist fight. Year - 404.

Like a cup boiling with grape dew,
From generous hands the father accepts
And, having taken a sip,
Passes from house to house to young son-in-law
Pure gold of its best
For the glory of the feast and for the glory of matchmaking (5)
To the envy of friends
Jealous from the bed of consent, -
So do I
My flowing nectar, gift of the Muses,
Sweet fruit of my heart
I'm sending you to the libation
To the winning husbands,
Crowned at Olympia, crowned at Python. (10)

8.

Amphora, attributed to the Leagros Group, 510-500 BC. British Museum.

Good for the one about whom good rumors are said!
Now to one, tomorrow to another
Charita rushes forward in its life-giving color
Your look and the sound of the lyre and polyphonic flutes;
To the singing of lyres and flutes
Now I go out with Diagoras
Praise the daughter of Aphrodite, the bride of the Sun, the sea Rod,
To give praise for a fist fight
No miss to the batter (15)
The giant in the Alpheus and Castalian wreaths,
And to his father Damaget, pleasing to Truth,
Inhabitants of the island of three cities
Between the Argive peaks,
Under the tusk of the wide round dances of Asia,
This is for them (20)
From the very source of Tlepolem
I want to send a total speech
About the broad power of the Hercules breed, -
For their desperate honor is from Zeus,
Maternal, according to Astydamia, - from Amyntor.
<…> [Start. Ode in full]

A comment:

One of Pindar's most famous odes; in the Rhodes temple of Athena Lindskaya, its text was written in golden letters (scholiast). Diagoras from the Eratid clan in Ialis, Rhodes, is one of the most famous Greek athletes, a winner in all four great games; it was said about him that when his two sons, also Olympic winners, carried their father in their arms through the jubilant crowd, one Spartan shouted: “Die, Diagoras, you still won’t ascend to heaven alive” (Cicero, “Tusculan Conversations”, I .46.111; Pausanias, VI.7.1-7). A symmetrical plan with a very developed mythological part: three myths - about the killer Tlepolem, about the birth of Athena and the golden shower, about the emergence of Rhodes - take the mythological perspective further and further into the depths of time. The introductory and final triads are separated, the middle, mythological ones are articulated with each other.

Art. 14. Rhoda, i.e. “Rose” is the nymph-eponym of Rhodes, daughter of Posidon and Aphrodite. Hence the beautiful image that disappears in translation: the island rising from the sea towards Helios is like a flower opening towards the sun.

Art. 17. ... pleasing to the Truth ... - i.e., an official.

Art. 18. ...about three cities... - see Art. 75; Homer already mentions them and their king Tlepolem, “Iliad”, II.653-670.

Art. 19. ...under the tusk... of Asia - in front of the Knidos Peninsula. [back]

Art. 24. ... desperate ... maternal ... - Tlepolem was the son of Hercules and Astydamia (according to the Iliad - Astyoch), the daughter of the Dolopian king Amyntor, killed by Hercules. According to historians of the 6th-5th centuries, the settlement of Rhodes by the Heraclides was later. [back]

9.

Panathenaic amphora from Attica, 332-331 BC. British Museum

10. <«Первая Олимпиада»>
To Agesidam of Locri of Episetherius, to Ila’s disciple, a song was promised for the same victory to be sung in his homeland. Year - 474.

About the Olympic victor,
About the youth of Archestratus
Read to me what is written in my heart!
I obliged him with a sweet song -
Could I forget about that?
You, Muse,
And you, Truth, daughter of Zeus,
With a straight hand
Take the reproach away from me (5)
In lies harmful to the guest!
From a distance the time has come
He blames me with a deep debt;
But the excess paid
Extinguishes human blasphemy:
The rolling wave will swallow the stones, (10)
And for joy I will pay the due words in front of everyone.
<…> [Start. Ode in full]

A comment:

Pindar kept himself waiting for a long time with the promised song, so the initial and final parts are occupied mainly with self-justification (the late song is dear to man, like the late son to his father, etc.).<…>

Art. 10. ... stones ... - association with pebbles, which were used for calculations and for court. [back]

10.

The runner's starting position is different from the modern one / The sprint was a favorite event in the ancient Games, featuring heavily in Greek art and decorated pottery. While the running style has remained the same over the centuries, the starting position would have been very different for ancient Greek runners. The amphora depicts the start of a race. The man stands with his arms extended forwards, and his toes gripped in the grooves that provided traction. British Museum.

p.361 Pindar is the most Greek of the Greek poets. That is why the European reader always felt him so distant. He was never such a live interlocutor of modern European culture as Homer or Sophocles were. The creators of the pathetic lyricism of Baroque and pre-Romanticism tried to learn from him, but these lessons were limited to borrowing external techniques. In the 19th century Pindar fell entirely into the hands of narrow specialists from classical philologists and essentially remains in this position to this day. Beginning at the end of the 19th century, when Europe rediscovered the beauty of the Greek archaic, Pindar began to be better understood. But he never became a widely read author. Even professional philologists turn to him reluctantly.

Perhaps one of the unconscious reasons for this attitude is the natural bewilderment of a modern person at the first meeting with the main genre of Pindar’s poetry, with epinikia: why such a bulky fireworks of lofty images and thoughts is set into motion for such a random reason as the victory of such and such a jockey or boxer at sports competitions? Voltaire wrote (Ode 17): “Rise from the grave, divine Pindar, you who in the old days glorified the horses of the most worthy burghers from Corinth or Megara, you who had the incomparable gift of speaking endlessly without saying anything, you who knew how to measure out poetry, with .362 not understandable to anyone, but subject to strict admiration...” The authors of modern textbooks on Greek literature, out of respect for the subject, try not to quote these lines, but it often seems that bewilderment of this kind is as familiar to them as it was to Voltaire.

The reason for this bewilderment is that the Greek competitive games are usually not quite correctly represented by modern man. In the extensive literature about them (especially in popular literature), their most important function and essence is often overlooked. They emphasize the similarities with modern sports competitions; and it would be much more important to emphasize their similarity with such phenomena as the election of officials by lot in the Greek democratic states, like the court of God in medieval customs, like a judicial duel or duel. Greek competitions were supposed to reveal not who is the best in a given sporting art, but who is the best in general - the one who is blessed with divine grace. Sports victory is only one possible manifestation of this divine grace; sports competitions are only a test, a test (έλεγχος) of the possession of this divine grace. That is why Pindar always glorifies not victory, but the winner; to describe the valor of his hero, his family and city, he does not spare words, and usually does not pay the slightest attention to the description of the sports struggle that brought him victory. Homer in the XXIII book of the Iliad described in detail the competitions over the tomb of Patroclus, Sophocles in Electra - the Delphic chariot races, even Bacchylides in his graceful epinikia finds room for expressive words about Hiero's horse; but Pindar was as indifferent to these details of tactics and technology as the Athenian citizen was to what stones or beans were used to draw lots for members of the Council of Five Hundred.

p.364 This intense interest in the moment being experienced is the most characteristic feature of that historical and cultural era, the decline of which Pindar found.

The previous era, the time of epic creativity, did not have this interest. The world of the epic is the world of the past, depicted with nostalgic admiration in all its smallest details. In this world, all beginnings and ends have already been determined, all cause-and-effect chains of events have already been identified and implemented in a whole system of fulfilled predictions. This world is permeated with givenness: Achilles knows the future awaiting him from the very beginning of the Iliad, and no action of his can change anything in this future. This applies to heroes, to those whose destinies for the poet and the listener stand out from the general stream of changing events. For other people, there is only this general flow, a monotonous, once-for-all set cycle of events: “The sons of men are like leaves in the oak forests...” (“Iliad”, XXI. 464). A simple person can only fit his actions into this cycle; how this is done can be explained to him by a poet of a new era, a poet of an epic that has already descended to his social level - Hesiod.

But the era of social revolution of the 7th-6th centuries, which gave birth to Hesiod and his pessimistic listeners, also highlighted the opposite social layer - that aristocracy, whose members felt themselves masters of life, ready for decisive action, struggle and victory or defeat. Their art became a new poetry - lyric poetry. The epic glorified the past time - the lyrics were the poetry of the present time, the poetry of a passing moment. The feeling of determination to action, the outcome of which lies in the unknown future, created here an atmosphere of anxious responsibility, unknown to the previous era. The epic looked at his world as if from afar, perceiving it at once as a whole, and it was easy for him to see how all the actions taking place in this world fit into the system of this whole, without changing anything in it. Lyrics looked at the world as if “from close”, her gaze covered only individual aspects of this world, the whole slipped out of sight, and it seemed that every new action taken was transforming the entire structure of this whole. The epic world in its givenness was confirmed once and for all; the new world in its variability was subject to confirmation every minute again and again. This statement was taken over by the lyrics - primarily choral lyrics.

The genres of choral lyrics were divided into two groups: in honor of the gods (hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, prosody, parthenias) and in honor of people (hyporchemes, encomia, phrenes, epinikia). It was in this sequence that they were located in the Alexandrian edition of the works of Pindar; but only the epinikia have survived. One might think that this is not accidental. Lyrics in honor of the gods spoke, first of all, about what is eternal in the world, lyrics in honor of people - about what is changeable in the world; the latter was practically more important for Pindar and his contemporaries and morally more meaningful for readers of the Alexandrian and later eras. Each epinikia was a response to one task posed by reality: a new event took place - the victory of such and such an athlete in running or in a fist fight; how to include this new event in the system of previous events, how to show that although it changes, it does not cancel what was in the world before it? To solve this problem, the lyric poet had to shift from the point of view “near” to the point “from afar”, take a look at the world as a whole in a wider perspective and find a place in this perspective for a new event. This was the statement of the changing world, the herald of which was the lyrics.

It is very important to emphasize that we are talking here about affirmation and never about protest. For Pindar, everything that exists is right simply because it exists. “Rejection of the world,” so common in modern European civilization from the times of medieval Christianity to the present day, is unthinkable in Pindar. Everything that exists is deserved and true. The measure of any dignity is success. The central concept of the Pindarian system of values - αρετή - is not only a moral quality, “valor”, it is also an act that reveals it, a “feat”, it is also the outcome of such an act, “success”. Pindar glorifies every victorious hero with all the power of his poetry; but if his opponent had won the decisive battle, Pindar would have glorified his opponent with the same passion. For Pindar there is only triumphant valor; valor, expressed, for example, in persistently enduring adversity, is not valor for him. This is because only success is a sign of the will of the gods, and only the will of the gods is the force that holds the world together. Pindar lists the successes several times: firstly, this is the “breed” (γένος) of the winner’s ancestors, secondly, this is his own efforts - spending (δαπάνα) and labor (πόνος), and only thirdly, this is the will of the gods, which granted him victory (δαίμων). But in fact, the first of these elements also come down to the last: “breed” is nothing more than a series of acts of divine mercy towards the ancestors of the winner, “spending” p.367 is the result of wealth, also sent down by the gods (Pindar does not mention unjust gain and thoughts), and “work” without the mercy of the gods is of no use to anyone (Ol. 9, 100-104).

To approve a new event by including it in the system of the world order meant: to identify in the past a series of events, the continuation of which turns out to be a new event. At the same time, the “past” for Pindar is, of course, a mythological past: eternity crystallized in the consciousness of his era precisely in mythological images. And the “series of events” for Pindar is, of course, not a cause-and-effect series: his pre-rationalist era does not think in terms of causes and effects, but in precedents and analogies. Such precedents and analogies can be of two kinds - either metaphorical, by similarity, or metonymic, by contiguity. “Zeus once gave victory to the old man Ergin at the Lemnos competitions of the Argonauts - is it surprising that now in Olympia he gave victory to the gray-haired Psaumius of Kamarinsky (the hero of Ol. 4)?” - here is an example of a metaphorical series. “Zeus once blessed the exploits of the former offspring of Aegina - Aeacus, Telamon, Peleus, Aiantes, Achilles, Neoptolemus - is it surprising that now he gave victory to such an Aegina athlete as Alkimedon (Ol. 8) or Aristoclides (German 3 ), or Timasarh (German 4), or Pytheas (German 5), or Sogen (German 6), etc.?” - here is an example of a metonymic series.

Metonymic associations, by contiguity, were easier for the poet and more accessible to listeners: they could come from the place of competition (this is how the Olympic myths about Pelops and Hercules were introduced in Ol. 1, 3, 10), from the race of the winner (the myth of Dioscuri in German 10), but most often - from the homeland of the winner and its mythological past: here it was always possible to start with an impressively cursory overview of many local myths, and then stop at just one (this is how Pindar talks about Argos in Him 10, about Thebes in Isthmus 7; one of Pindar’s first works was a hymn to Thebes, which began: “Shall we sing Ismene..., or Melia..., or Cadmus..., or the Spartans..., or Thebes..., or Hercules..., or Dionysus ..., or Harmony...?" - to which, according to legend, Corinna said to the poet: “This, Pindar, not in a bag, but in a handful!”). Metaphorical associations caused more difficulties. So, a spectacular ode to Hiero, Pyth. 1, is built on two metaphors, one of them is explicit: the sick, but mighty Hiero is likened to the sick, but fatal for the enemy Philoctetes; the other is hidden: Hiero’s victories over the barbarian Carthaginians are likened to the victory of Zeus over the giant Typhon. It can be assumed that the same hidden association lies at the heart of the ode to Him. 1 in honor of Chromius, commander of Hiero: the myth of Hercules, the tamer of monsters, should also recall the taming of barbarism by Hellenism, but this association was already unclear to ancient commentators, and they reproached Pindar for forcing the myth on them. Despite such difficulties, Pindar clearly tried, wherever possible, to reinforce the metonymic connection of an event with a myth with a metaphorical connection and vice versa. Yes, Ol. 2 begins with a metaphorical association - the worries of Feron of Akragant are likened to the disasters of the Theban princesses Semele and Ino, for which they were subsequently rewarded a hundredfold; but then this metaphorical association turns into a metonymic one - from the same Theban royal house comes the grandson of Oedipus Thersander, whose descendant turns out to be Feron. Yes, Ol. 6 begins with the myth of Amphiaraus, p. 369 introduced by similarity: the hero of the ode, like Amphiaraus, is both a soothsayer and a warrior at the same time - and continues with the myth of Iam, introduced by contiguity: Iam is the ancestor of the hero. We know little about Pindar's heroes and the circumstances of their victories, so metaphorical comparisons are often not entirely clear to us: why, for example, in Pyth. 9 Are both myths about Cyrene's past myths about matchmaking? (ancient commentators innocently concluded from this that the addressee of the ode, Telesicrates, was himself going to get married at that time); or why, for example, in Ol. 7 are all three myths about the past of Rhodes myths about troubles, which, however, all have a successful outcome?

The selection of myths that Pindar turns to in this way from the event he glorifies is relatively narrow: he speaks about Hercules, and about Achilles, and about the Aeginean Aeacidae many times, but does not turn to other myths even once. This is partly explained by external reasons: if a quarter of all epinikia is dedicated to Aeginean athletes, then it was difficult not to repeat ourselves, recalling the Aeginean heroes from Aeacus to Neoptolemus; but partly there were more general reasons for this. Almost all the myths used by Pindar are myths about heroes and their exploits, and those in which the hero directly comes into contact with the world of the gods: he is born of a god (Hercules, Asclepius, Achilles), fights and works together with the gods (Hercules, Aeacus) , loved by God (Pelops, Cyrene), follows the broadcasts of God (Iam, Bellerophon); feasts with the gods (Peleus, Cadmus), ascends to heaven (Hercules) or ends up on the Isles of the Blessed (Achilles). The world of heroes is important to Pindar as an intermediate link between the world of people and the world of gods: the same events take place here as in the world of people, but the divine guidance of these events, the divine proclamation at the beginning and the reward at the end are visible here and can serve as a lesson and an example to people. Thus, Pindar's myth is a praise, encouragement, and even a warning (Tantalus, Ixion, Bellerophon) to the addressee of the song. In relation to this goal, Pindar varies his material quite freely: he mentions myths that denigrate the gods only in order to reject them (the eating of Pelops in Ol. 1, the fight against God in Ol. 9), and myths that denigrate heroes - only in order to tactfully remain silent (the murder of Phocas in Hem. 5, the insolence of Bellerophon in Ol. 13; he describes the death of Neoptolemus with condemnation in paean 6 and with praise in Hem. 7). The connection between heroes and gods forms, so to speak, an "upward perspective" in Pindar's Odes; it is complemented by a “distant perspective” - continuity in time of mythological generations, and sometimes a “broad perspective” - the deployment of their actions in space: for example, the mention of the Aeacides in Ol. 8 outlines the historical perspective of the heroic world from Aeacus to Neoptolemus, and in Him. 4 - his geographical perspective from Phthia to Cyprus. It is as if the mythological system of the world into which Pindar inscribes every event he glorifies is revealed in three dimensions. To the reader of modern times, the abundance of myths mentioned by Pindar seems unnecessary diversity, but Pindar himself and his listeners felt the opposite: the more diverse myths are grouped around the next victory of such and such an athlete, the more firmly this victory is built into the world of the natural and eternal.

Pindar's presentation of myths is determined by the new function of myth in the ode. The epic told myth for the sake of myth, consistently and coherently, with all the nostalgic detail, Erzählungslust incidental myths p.371 were inserted into the story in a more condensed, but equally coherent form. In the lyrics, the myth was told for the sake of a specific modern event; not all the details in it are interesting, but only those that are associated with the event, and incidental myths are not subordinate to the main thing, but are equal to it. Therefore, Pindar discards plot coherence and uniformity of narration; he shows myths as if in instantaneous flashes, snatching from them the necessary moments and episodes, and leaving the rest to be thought out and felt by the listener. The active participation of the listener is the most important element of the lyrical structure: the epic poet seemed to assume that the listener knows only what is being communicated to him, the lyric poet assumes that the listener already knows much more, and that a fleeting hint is enough for everything to rise up in the listener’s mind. mythological associations necessary for the poet. This reliance on the listener's complicity unusually expands the field of action of the lyrical story - however, due to the fact that the outskirts of this field are left more or less vague, since the associations that arise in the minds of different listeners can be different. This is also one of the reasons that makes it difficult for the modern reader to perceive Pindar's poems. But the poet, leaving passing episodes for the listener to speculate, can concentrate entirely on the most expressive and striking moments. It is not the process of events, but instantaneous scenes that are remembered in Pindar’s story: Apollo entering the fire over the body of Coronis (Pyth. 3), the night prayers of Pelops and Jam (Ol. 1, Ol. 6), the baby Jam in flowers (Ol. 6) , Aeacus with two gods in front of the serpent on the Trojan wall (Ol. 8), Hercules at the Telamon feast (Isthm. 6); and everything that lies between such scenes is reported in subordinate clauses p. 372, a quick list similar to a synopsis. Pindar's most detailed mythical story is the story of the Argonauts in the huge ode of Pythus. 4 (probably, according to its model, we should imagine the unsurvived compositions of the leader of mythological lyrics - Stesichorus); but even here Pindar seems to deliberately destroy the coherence of the narrative: the story begins with the prophecy of Medea on Lemnos, the last (according to Pindar) stage of the Argonauts’ journey - this prophecy speaks of the founding of Cyrene, the homeland of the glorified winner, and an episode from one of the previous stages of the journey, a meeting with Triton - Euripylus; then with an unexpected epic beginning “And how did their voyage begin?” “- the poet proceeds to describe the history of the Argonauts from the very beginning of the myth - but even in this description only four scenes are actually highlighted, “Jason in the square”, “Jason in front of Pelias”, “sailing”, and “ploughing”; and then, at the most tense place (the fleece and the dragon), Pindar defiantly breaks off the narrative and in a few crumpled lines only briefly informs about the further path of the Argonauts up to Lemnos; The end of the story thus closes with its beginning. Such circular closures are repeated in Pindar: returning the listener to the starting point, they thereby remind that the myth in the ode is not an end in itself, but only a link in a chain of images that serve to comprehend the glorified victory.

Myth is the main means of establishing an event in an ode; therefore, most often it occupies the main, middle part of the ode. In this case, the ode acquires a three-part symmetrical structure: an exposition with a statement of the event, a myth with its understanding, and an appeal to the gods with a prayer so that such understanding turns out to be true and lasting. The exhibition included praise for the games, the athlete, his relatives, his city; here the previous victories of the hero and his relatives were usually listed, and if the winner was a boy, praise for his coach was added here. The mythological part figuratively explained that the victory achieved was not accidental, but was a natural expression of the long-known mercy of the gods towards the bearers of such valor or towards the inhabitants of a given city. The final part called on the gods not to refuse this mercy in the future. However, the initial and final parts could easily be changed by separate motives: certain doxologies from the initial part moved to the end; and the beginning was decorated with an appeal to the deity, modeled on the final part. In addition, each part freely allowed digressions of any kind (in Pindar, most often - about himself and about poetry). Articulations between disparate motives were usually filled with maxims of general content and instructive nature; Pindar was an unsurpassed master of coining such maxims. For him, they vary mostly on two main themes: “the good breed overcomes everything” and “fate is changeable, and tomorrow is not certain”; These choruses run like a leitmotif through all his odes. And sometimes the poet refused such connections and deliberately flaunted the sharpness of compositional transitions, turning to himself: “Turn the helm!” ... (Pyth. 10), “My boat was carried far away...” (Pyth. 11), etc. Individual sections of the ode could swell or shrink greatly depending on the availability of material (and on the direct requirements of the customer who paid for the odes), but the general symmetry of the construction was almost always preserved. It was conscious and almost canonized: the prototype of the entire choral lyric, “Terpandrovsky p. ", "counterrotation", "seal", "conclusion". Let us imagine in the “core” - a myth, in the “beginning” and “conclusion” - praises and prayers, in the “print” - the poet’s words about himself, in the “turn” and “counter-turn” - connecting moralistic reflections - and before us there will be an almost exact diagram of the structure of Pindar's ode. The metric helped to keep track of the proportions: almost all of Pindar’s odes were written in strophic triads repeating each other (from 1 to 13), and each triad consists of a stanza, an antistrophe and an epod; this two-degree division is well perceived by the ear. Occasionally, Pindar constructed odes in such a way that the thematic and strophic divisions in them coincided and emphasized each other (Ol. 13), but much more often, on the contrary, he played up the discrepancy between these divisions, which sharply highlighted the large tirades that spilled from stanza to stanza.

Following the means of composition, the means of style were used to establish the event in the ode. Each event is a moment that has flowed from the area of the future, where everything is unknown and unsteady, into the area of the past, where everything is complete and unchangeable; and poetry is the first to stop this moment, giving it the required completeness and certainty. To do this, she must turn the event from elusive to tangible. And Pindar does everything to present what is depicted as tangible, material: visible, audible, tangible. Vision requires brightness: and we see that Pindar’s favorite epithets are “golden”, “shining”, “sparkling”, “brilliant”, “lush”, “light”, “radiant”, “radiant”, “scorching” and with .375 etc. Hearing requires sonority: and we see that in Pindar everything is surrounded by “fame”, “rumor”, “praise”, “song”, “chant”, “news”, everything here is “famous”, “ driven", "glorified". Taste requires sweetness - and so every joy becomes “sweet”, “honey”, “honey” for him. Touch requires sensual tribute for itself - and to designate everything that has reached its highest flowering, Pindar uses the word “άωτος” “fleece”, “woolly fluff” - a word that is rarely amenable to exact translation. Often feelings change their property - and then we read about the “shine of the feet” of the runner (Ol. 13, 36), “a cup raised with gold” (Isthm. 10), “a flashing cry” (Ol. 10, 72), “white anger" (Pyth. 4:109), and the foliage crowning the winner turns out to be either “golden” or “crimson” (German 1:17; 11:28). The figurative expressions that Pindar uses only enhance this concreteness, materiality, and tangibility of his world. Both his words and deeds are “woven” like fabric, or “woven” like a wreath. His Etna is “the forehead of the abundant earth” (Pyth. 1, 30), the Emmenides family is “the apple of Sicily” (Ol. 2, 10), the rains are “children of the clouds” (Ol. 11, 3), apology is “daughter late mind" (Pyth. 5, 27), Asclepius "a painless carpenter" (Pyth. 3, 6), honeycombs - "dugout bee labor" (Pyth. 6, 54), a timid person "cooks a worry-free life with his mother" (Pyth. 4, 186), the bold has “a sole under the divine heel” (Ol. 6, 8), and instead of expressively saying “in front of me is a grateful object about which my song can be well honed,” the poet says even more expressively: “ a melodious touchstone on my tongue" (Ol. 6, 82). Among these images, even such commonly used metaphors, loved by Pindar, such as the “storm of adversity” or the “path of thought” (by land - in a chariot or by sea - p. 376 in a boat with an anchor and helm) seem tangible and visual.

For Pindar, “to be” means “to be noticeable”: the brighter, louder, more tangible the hero, object or feat that the poet talks about, the more rightly we can say that he is “flourishing”, “beautiful”, “kind” ", "abundant", "mighty", "powerful". Characterized in this way, people, heroes and gods almost lose the ability to act, to move: they exist, radiating around them their glory and power, and that is enough. Pindar's phrases are a stormy jumble of definitions, thick layers of adjectives and participles around every noun, with scant action verbs almost lost in between. This depicts a static world of eternal values, and the endless weaving of unexpected subordinate clauses is only a means of the whimsical movement of the poet’s gaze through such a world.

This is how Pindar’s ode completes the perpetuation of the moment, the addition of a new event to the ranks of the previous ones. The performer of this canonization is a poet. If an event has not found its poet, it is forgotten, that is, it ceases to exist: “the happiness of the past is a dream: people are unconscious... of everything that is not drenched in the streams of praise” (Isthm. 7, 16-19; cf. German 7 , 13). If an event finds a poet who evaluates and glorifies it incorrectly, the entire system of world values is distorted: thus, Homer, having over-praised Odysseus, became an indirect culprit for the triumph of slander in the world (German 7, 20; 8, 25-35; cf., however , Istm. 4, 35-52). Hence the immeasurable importance of the poet’s mission: he alone is the affirmer, the interpreter of the world order and rightfully bears the epithet σοφός, “sage” (with a connotation: “craftsman”). Usually the truth is revealed only p.377 in time, in a long series of events (“running days are the most reliable witnesses”, Ol. 1, 28-34; “God - Time alone brings out the tortured truth”, Ol. 10, 53-55) - but the poet seems to hurry its revelation. A poet is like a prophet who “foretells backwards”: just as a prophet reveals in an event the prospect of the future, so a poet reveals the prospect of the past, just as a prophet guesses about the truth by fire or by bird’s flight, so a poet by the outcome of athletic competitions. And if the prophet is inspired to broadcast by a deity, then the poet is also overshadowed by his deities - the Muses, who give him insight, and the Charites, who decorate this insight with joy. Thus, the poet is no less a favorite of the gods than the athlete whom he sings of; This is why Pindar so often likens himself to an athlete or wrestler, ready for a long jump, for throwing a dart, for archery (Nom. 5, Ol. 1, 9, 13, etc.); That’s why in general he speaks so often in odes about himself and the song he composes - he realizes that he has the right to do so. The highest apotheosis of Pindar's poetry is the 1st Pythian Ode with its praise of the lyre, a symbol of universal order, the sounds of which bring peace and bliss to all who are involved in world harmony, and plunge into madness all who are hostile to it.

This is the system of artistic means from which Pindar's poetry is composed. It is easy to see that everything said applies not only to Pindar - these are characteristic features of the entire Greek worldview, or, in any case, the archaic Greek worldview. But the very intensity of this worldview, the constant pathetic excitement, the persistent desire to embrace the immensity - this is already a feature of Pindar’s poetry. His older contemporary in choral lyricism was Simonides, his younger - p.378 Bacchylides - both of them use the same arsenal of lyrical means, but Pindar’s mighty bulkiness and tension are not here, but there is grace and subtlety. They do not confirm the world order - they decorate the world order that has already been established. The very passion of Pindar's claims to the poet's supreme right to comprehend and affirm reality means that we are not talking about something self-evident, but that this right is already being contested.

And so it was. Pindar worked in an era when the aristocratic ideology, of which he was the herald, began to waver and retreat under the pressure of a new ideology, which was already giving birth to its poets. Pindar believed in a consistent and unchanging world, and his peers Heraclitus and Aeschylus already saw the contradictions reigning in the world, and development is a consequence of these contradictions. For Pindar, the change of events in the world was determined by the instant will of the gods; for new people it was determined by the eternal world law. In Pindar, the interpreter and seer of things is the poet, whose inspiration covers a series of specific similar events - in the 5th century. such an interpreter becomes a philosopher who comprehends with his mind the abstract law that lies behind events. Lyrics cease to be a tool for affirming reality and become only a means of decorating it, high entertainment, important fun. For Pindar this was unacceptable, and he fought for the traditional view of the world and the traditional place of the lyric poet in this world.

This struggle was unsuccessful. The inconsistency of the world was not a philosophical abstraction for Pindar and his contemporaries - it was revealed at every step in the rapid change of events at the end of the 6th - p.379 first half of the 5th century. In the face of these contradictions, Pindar's perception of the world turned out to be untenable. The lyrical poet saw in the event that presented itself to him the triumph of such and such a principle and, with all the pathos of his art, he proved the regularity of this triumph, and the next event turned into the triumph of the opposite principle, and the poet, with the same conviction and the same pathos, proved its regularity. For Pindar, who imagined the world as an interrupted chain of instantaneous revelations, there was no inconsistency in this. For each city that commissioned him for an ode, he wrote with such dedication, as if he himself were a citizen of this city: the “I” of the poet and the “I” of the choir in his songs are often indistinguishable. This position for Pindar is programmatic: “Be like the skin of a rock sea animal (i.e., an octopus) with your mind: know how to live with every city, praise with all your heart what is presented to you, think now one thing, now another” (fr. 43, words of Amphiaraus). From his “perspective of eternity,” Pindar did not see contradictions between cities in Greece and between parties in cities - the victory of an Athenian athlete or the victory of an Aeginetan athlete told him the same thing: “the best wins.” The victory of one is balanced by the victory of the other, and the general harmony remains unshaken; on the contrary, any attempt to upset the balance, to give exaggerated importance to an individual victory is doomed to collapse in the succession of ups and downs of a perverse fate. It is enough to warn the winner so that he does not become too exalted in happiness, and to pray to the gods that, while bestowing new heroes, they do not leave the old ones with mercy, - and all the world's contradictions will be resolved. This is Pindar's belief; the naivety and inconsistency of this view in the social conditions of the 5th century. more and more was revealed to him through his own life experience.

In the year of Xerxes's campaign, Pindar was already famous as a lyric poet; he was commissioned to write odes from the Thessalian Alevades (Pyth. 10), the Athenian exile Megacles (Pyth. 7), and competitors from Magna Graecia (Pyth. 6 and 12); but, as it seems, in these years Pindar no longer wrote epinikia, but hymns to the gods, preserved only in small fragments. When Delphi and Thebes sided with Xerxes, for Pindar it was a self-evident act: the strength and success of Xerxes seemed undoubted, therefore, the mercy of the gods was on his side. But everything turned out differently: Xerxes was defeated, Thebes was seriously compromised by its “treason” and miraculously avoided the threat of ruin. An anxious and tense ode to Isthm. 8 (“A certain god took the Tantalus block away from our heads...”, “Stay on the bandwagon, for Time insidiously hangs over people and circles their path of life...”) remained a monument to Pindar’s experiences: this is his most direct response to the great events of our time. Echoes of this crisis are heard in the poems of Pindar and later: the odes of Isthmus. 1 and 3-4 are dedicated to the Thebans who suffered in the war, where they fought on the side of the Persians.

The release of this crisis was for Pindar an invitation to Sicily in 476 to celebrate the Olympian and Pythian victories of Hiero of Syracuse p.381 and Feron of Akragant. Here, in the most brilliant political center of Greece, where all the cultural trends close to Pindar appeared more nakedly and brightly, the poet finally developed his manner, honed his style to perfection: the odes of the Sicilian cycle were considered the highest achievement of Pindar and were placed in the first place in his collection Epinikians (Ol. 1-6, Pyth. 1-3, German 1). Pindar was not embarrassed that he had to praise the tyrant: Hiero’s successes were for him sufficient guarantee of Hiero’s right to song. Pindar continued to write odes for the Sicilians upon his return to Greece; but this relationship ended painfully - in 468, Hiero, having won a long-awaited chariot victory at Olympia, ordered an ode not to Pindar, but to Bacchylides (this ode has been preserved), and Pindar responded to him with a passionate poem Pythus. 2, where the myth of Ixion hints at the ingratitude of Hiero, and his rival Bacchylides is called a monkey. This meant that there was no longer complete mutual understanding between the poet and his audience.

Upon his return from Sicily, Pindar began a period of most sustained success - 475-460. The military-aristocratic reaction that dominated most of the Greek states after the Persian Wars was good soil for Pindar's lyrics; his senior rival Simonides died around 468, and the younger, Bacchylides, was too clearly inferior to Pindar. About half of Pindar's surviving works come from this period: he writes for Corinth, and for Rhodes, and for Argos (Ol. 13, Ol. 7, German 10), and for the Cyrenian king Arcesilaus (Pyth. 4-5, cf. . Pyth. 9), but his strongest connection is established with the oligarchy of Aegina: out of 45 epinikia of Pindar, 11 are dedicated to Aegina athletes. But even at this time, rare but characteristic misunderstandings arise between Pindar p.382 and his public. Around 474, Athens ordered Pindar a dithyramb, and he composed it so brilliantly that his fellow Thebans accused the poet of treason and punished him with a fine; the Athenians paid this fine. Another time, writing paean 6 for Delphi, Pindar, in order to glorify the greatness of Apollo, spoke unflatteringly about the mythological enemy of Apollo - Aeacides Neoptolemus; Aegina, where the Aeacids were local heroes, was offended, and Pindar had to justify himself to them in another ode for the Aegines (German 7) and retell the myth of Neoptolemus in a new way. Pindar's all-acceptance and all-affirmation of reality clearly turned out to be too broad and high for his customers.

In Pindar's later odes, the further, the more persistently one feels the exhortation for rapprochement and peace. The episode with the praise to Athens, the ancient enemies of Thebes, is only the most striking example of this. In odes for the Aeginetan athletes, he emphatically praises their Athenian coach Melesius (Gem. 6, Ol. 8, for the first time in Germ. 5); in Isthm. 7 by the myth of the Dorian migration, and in Isthm. 1 by bringing together the myths of Castor and Iolaus, he glorifies the traditional closeness of Sparta and Thebes; in him. 10 the myth of the Dioscuri is woven in to emphasize the ancient friendship of Sparta and Argos in contrast to their current enmity; in him. 11 ties of kinship stretch between Thebes, Sparta and distant Tenedos; in him. 8 describes with delight how the Aeginean Aeacus united even Athens and Sparta with friendship. This is the last attempt to appeal to the traditions of Panhellenic aristocratic unity. Of course, such an attempt was hopeless. In the very years when these works were written, Athens expelled Cimon and switched p.383 to an offensive policy: in 458 they ravaged Aegina, dear to Pindara, in 457, under the Oenophytes, they struck a blow to the power of Thebes over Boeotia. For Pindar, this must have been as shocking as the defeat of Xerxes had once been. His creativity is drying up. Pindar still lived to see the Coronean revenge of 447. The last of his surviving odes, Pyth. 8, with its praise of Silence, sounds like a sigh of relief after Coronea, and mentions of the fate of the arrogant Porphyrion and Typhon seem to be a warning to Athens. But in the same ode one reads the famous words about the human race: “Ephemeral creatures, what are we? what are we not? The dream of a shadow is a man"; and another ode of the same time, Nem. 11, responds to this: whoever is beautiful and strong, “let him remember: he is dressed in a mortal body, and the end of the end will be the earth that will cover him.” Such gloomy notes had never been seen in Pindar’s previous works. He outlived his age: a few years after his death, he was already something hopelessly outdated for the Athenian theatrical public (Athenaeus, I. 3a, and XIV. 638a) and at the same time - the hero of legends of the most archaic kind - about how they met Pan in the forest singing Pindar’s paean, or how Persephone ordered him a posthumous hymn (Pausanias, IX. 23). With such dual glory, Pindar's poems reached the Alexandrian scholars, in order to finally become, from an object of living perception, a subject of philological study.