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4.43 AVERAGE
4.43 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
Goodreads and Amazon - 5 out of 5:
First off, my thanks to NetGalley and the U of California Press (Go Bears!) for an ARC ebook of this title.
Rereading Homer for the first time in over 40 years, I was not even familar with the Hymns previously. Named for Homer, but in all likelihood not a line of them were written by him.
I shuffled back and forth between this collection and Michael Crudden's Oxford Word Classics edition of "The Homeric Hymns".
But what makes this edition stand out is that Powell includes many other Hymns, not just the Homeric ones. There are hymns from Calimachus, Orphic, and a few by Neo-Platonist philosopher Proclus. The Hymns are gathered by god, rather than by poet. So if you are wanting to compare Powell to Crudden, it takes a bit (minimal) of searching - they are not provided numerically.
Excellent Notes and illustrations. Each god gets an Introduction - some short, some long (thanks for including the story of Ares and Aphrodite, and how Hephaistos shackled them to the bed - to be viewed, and laughed at, by the other gods!), each Hymn has a short Intro, and then the Hymn, again with additional Notes.
Powell's translations tend to be more casual, storytelling, Free Verse. At times when Crudden's translation's syntax made it difficult to understand, Powell's straight forward presentation made it easier to comprehend what was occurring.
A University Press publication, but very approachable. For anyone interested in Classical Studies, Greek Myth, or Homer, this is a great title to read. Again, the inclusion of more than the Homeric Hymns, and the Notes and various Introductions (I now know much more about the Eleusinian mysteries/religious cult than I ever expected to!) make it a unique, and valuable, volume.
Loved it, and loved reading it.
First off, my thanks to NetGalley and the U of California Press (Go Bears!) for an ARC ebook of this title.
Rereading Homer for the first time in over 40 years, I was not even familar with the Hymns previously. Named for Homer, but in all likelihood not a line of them were written by him.
I shuffled back and forth between this collection and Michael Crudden's Oxford Word Classics edition of "The Homeric Hymns".
But what makes this edition stand out is that Powell includes many other Hymns, not just the Homeric ones. There are hymns from Calimachus, Orphic, and a few by Neo-Platonist philosopher Proclus. The Hymns are gathered by god, rather than by poet. So if you are wanting to compare Powell to Crudden, it takes a bit (minimal) of searching - they are not provided numerically.
Excellent Notes and illustrations. Each god gets an Introduction - some short, some long (thanks for including the story of Ares and Aphrodite, and how Hephaistos shackled them to the bed - to be viewed, and laughed at, by the other gods!), each Hymn has a short Intro, and then the Hymn, again with additional Notes.
Powell's translations tend to be more casual, storytelling, Free Verse. At times when Crudden's translation's syntax made it difficult to understand, Powell's straight forward presentation made it easier to comprehend what was occurring.
A University Press publication, but very approachable. For anyone interested in Classical Studies, Greek Myth, or Homer, this is a great title to read. Again, the inclusion of more than the Homeric Hymns, and the Notes and various Introductions (I now know much more about the Eleusinian mysteries/religious cult than I ever expected to!) make it a unique, and valuable, volume.
Loved it, and loved reading it.
informative
informative
medium-paced
I would have never discovered proclus’ beautiful hymns if not for this book! Plus, I feel like it’s a much better way to read the long Homeric Hymns, such as Aphrodite’s. I do think they could’ve added other ancient poets hymns, but I still like it. Unfortunately I found some of the info was inaccurate on the Gods and Ancient Greek worship in the little blurbs about them. The one I caught automatically is the info on Ares, which is unfortunate, but we’re really here for the hymns.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
While you can go through this book at any pace you like, it's a very well-translated, poetic, and accessible collection of Greek poetry to any reader. I found myself puzzling and writing notes on the intricacies between different poems and periods of poetry that Powell has collected, and lingering with the rolling, cascading epithets and stories of my childhood all told again. A beautiful work, and one I hope to own a copy of eventually — this is from the library.
informative
relaxing
slow-paced
First off, I preordered this book months ago because I found it by happenstance, and my heart sang with joy. It is exceptionally rare to see translators actually bring the Orphic poems or Platonists like Proclus into their translations — these things, in my experience as a reader, are often shoved aside into a “this is impure because it’s post-Hellenistic” category. Professor Powell deserves applause just for this approach. My heart sang once more when there was a shipping error that caused me to receive this book 11 days before its actual publication date. It would have been 12 days early, but USPS delivered the book to the wrong address and put someone else’s package in my box, so I had to coordinate switching packages with the other person on NextDoor. Once I had the book in my hands, though, I was elated to read it.
He is strongest in the translations of the Homeric Hymns and Callimachus. I have read several translations of the Homeric Hymns before, including those by Hine and Rayor, and I think that this one is about equal to the rigorousness that I enjoy about Rayor. The hymns of Callimachus were a gap in my reading until now because I had only encountered them in older translations that I was not in the headspace to push through at the time, and I appreciated the smooth ease here — I enjoyed Callimachus so much, and it was a real treat. The geographic footnotes were also very helpful. The Orphic Hymns have some good, fresh moments in these translations, but I still have a soft spot for Athanassakis. I have read those translations often enough to have some of the hymns memorized, so I was reading many of these translations while the Athanassakis was running in my head. Those who want to jump beyond the portion of the Orphic Hymns included in this book will really enjoy Athanassakis as a next step. Many of the footnotes for Proclus’ hymns are useful. It’s really hard to distill the commentary tradition into some brief note to help readers who may be unfamiliar with the references, and for the most part, it was wonderful how he did it.
I do wish that Powell had included the prayer to all of the Gods at the opening of the Orphic Hymns in the final section, and I think that he could have used “people” or “humans” or “human beings” or “our/your species” instead of “man/men” where appropriate to modernize the translation, as it is 2021, not 1960. All it would take would be a note in the intro so readers are aware of the approach.
Now, let’s talk a bit more about Proclus. First off, even with my forthcoming comments in mind, let me emphasize how important and useful it is to have fresh translations of his devotional hymns at a price point that people can afford, as the book Proclus’ Hymns by van den Berg is prohibitively expensive for many people. These translations are not as powerful as van den Berg’s, but they do function effectively.
However, Powell’s comments on Proclus’ theological system in the introduction and in some of the notes on the hymns are misleading (and, in one case, either incorrect or easily misread). I looked at the bibliography to see which texts he read, so I will pull from Chlup’s Proclus, which is cited there: Chlup’s Figure 11 shows the Henads below the One and above Intellect, and Figure 14 is also very helpful in this regard. There is also an extremely detailed list beginning on page 125 of Chlup. Powell places the Henads in an incorrect position. In Proclus’ system, as Chlup notes, the Henads come after the One, and it is their multiplicity that “funnels” (so to speak) down the lower steps of the ladder (technical term: hypostases), and the Henads reveal themselves as Gods at each of these levels based on the receptivity of each level. Or, in Proclus’ words in prop. 125 in the Elements of Theology, “From that station wherein [they] first reveal [themselves] every god proceeds through all the secondary orders, continually multiplying and particularizing [their] bestowals, yet preserving the distinctive character of [their] proper nature.” In Ten Problems Concerning Providence, Proclus makes a distinction in §63 between the Henads’ participation in the One and the participation of Intellects and Souls, as “[e]very god, then, if indeed it is a henad, is a henad complete in itself.” Translators Opsomer & Steel note on another earlier passage that “[t]he superiority of gods to intellect is since Plotinus a common idea in Neoplatonism, but the principle is already formulated by Aristotle” (p. 122, note 21), referring to a part of the Introduction that is discussing the Elements of Theology in the section on the Henads and how it applies to Proclus’ approach to providence. Also, Powell did not effectively capture the difference between the Henads’ causal chain and the Forms. Proclus discusses this in his Parmenides commentary.
Similarly, the discussion of Hekate as a Goddess of witchcraft and material spirits/daimons is an oversimplification when it comes to Late Platonic theological thought. During Proclus’ lifetime, Platonists referred back to the Chaldean Oracles for exegesis and divine symbols to use in worship and contemplation. In the Oracles, Hekate is referred to as releasing soul and virtue from her thighs, as just one example of why the negative view of her is incomplete: while she presides over material daimons, she is also an important deity for theurgy. We could compare her to the Mahavidyas in Tantrism for a better idea of how she works in the Platonic system.
Representing Proclus accurately is especially important because this book will be the only/first exposure to Platonism in Late Antiquity for many readers, so there is a keen intellectual obligation to gloss this extremely complex thinker effectively. (I am also sure that there are things that I missed, as I am not a Proclus scholar, just a librarian who has read 11 of his works, a few fragments in translation, and a bunch of secondary literature.) This is why the book gets only 4 stars from me. Despite these flaws, I do encourage people who want to read the hymns to pick up this book. Chlup’s Proclus is a good supplement for the curious.
Finally, some feedback for the publisher about their production process: The binding of the hardcover seems a bit flimsy, and the glossy paper is atrocious for those of us lefties who like writing marginal notes, as ink doesn’t dry fast and is prone to smearing. There are some typographic and formatting errors that should have been caught by the copyeditor, too.
He is strongest in the translations of the Homeric Hymns and Callimachus. I have read several translations of the Homeric Hymns before, including those by Hine and Rayor, and I think that this one is about equal to the rigorousness that I enjoy about Rayor. The hymns of Callimachus were a gap in my reading until now because I had only encountered them in older translations that I was not in the headspace to push through at the time, and I appreciated the smooth ease here — I enjoyed Callimachus so much, and it was a real treat. The geographic footnotes were also very helpful. The Orphic Hymns have some good, fresh moments in these translations, but I still have a soft spot for Athanassakis. I have read those translations often enough to have some of the hymns memorized, so I was reading many of these translations while the Athanassakis was running in my head. Those who want to jump beyond the portion of the Orphic Hymns included in this book will really enjoy Athanassakis as a next step. Many of the footnotes for Proclus’ hymns are useful. It’s really hard to distill the commentary tradition into some brief note to help readers who may be unfamiliar with the references, and for the most part, it was wonderful how he did it.
I do wish that Powell had included the prayer to all of the Gods at the opening of the Orphic Hymns in the final section, and I think that he could have used “people” or “humans” or “human beings” or “our/your species” instead of “man/men” where appropriate to modernize the translation, as it is 2021, not 1960. All it would take would be a note in the intro so readers are aware of the approach.
Now, let’s talk a bit more about Proclus. First off, even with my forthcoming comments in mind, let me emphasize how important and useful it is to have fresh translations of his devotional hymns at a price point that people can afford, as the book Proclus’ Hymns by van den Berg is prohibitively expensive for many people. These translations are not as powerful as van den Berg’s, but they do function effectively.
However, Powell’s comments on Proclus’ theological system in the introduction and in some of the notes on the hymns are misleading (and, in one case, either incorrect or easily misread). I looked at the bibliography to see which texts he read, so I will pull from Chlup’s Proclus, which is cited there: Chlup’s Figure 11 shows the Henads below the One and above Intellect, and Figure 14 is also very helpful in this regard. There is also an extremely detailed list beginning on page 125 of Chlup. Powell places the Henads in an incorrect position. In Proclus’ system, as Chlup notes, the Henads come after the One, and it is their multiplicity that “funnels” (so to speak) down the lower steps of the ladder (technical term: hypostases), and the Henads reveal themselves as Gods at each of these levels based on the receptivity of each level. Or, in Proclus’ words in prop. 125 in the Elements of Theology, “From that station wherein [they] first reveal [themselves] every god proceeds through all the secondary orders, continually multiplying and particularizing [their] bestowals, yet preserving the distinctive character of [their] proper nature.” In Ten Problems Concerning Providence, Proclus makes a distinction in §63 between the Henads’ participation in the One and the participation of Intellects and Souls, as “[e]very god, then, if indeed it is a henad, is a henad complete in itself.” Translators Opsomer & Steel note on another earlier passage that “[t]he superiority of gods to intellect is since Plotinus a common idea in Neoplatonism, but the principle is already formulated by Aristotle” (p. 122, note 21), referring to a part of the Introduction that is discussing the Elements of Theology in the section on the Henads and how it applies to Proclus’ approach to providence. Also, Powell did not effectively capture the difference between the Henads’ causal chain and the Forms. Proclus discusses this in his Parmenides commentary.
Similarly, the discussion of Hekate as a Goddess of witchcraft and material spirits/daimons is an oversimplification when it comes to Late Platonic theological thought. During Proclus’ lifetime, Platonists referred back to the Chaldean Oracles for exegesis and divine symbols to use in worship and contemplation. In the Oracles, Hekate is referred to as releasing soul and virtue from her thighs, as just one example of why the negative view of her is incomplete: while she presides over material daimons, she is also an important deity for theurgy. We could compare her to the Mahavidyas in Tantrism for a better idea of how she works in the Platonic system.
Representing Proclus accurately is especially important because this book will be the only/first exposure to Platonism in Late Antiquity for many readers, so there is a keen intellectual obligation to gloss this extremely complex thinker effectively. (I am also sure that there are things that I missed, as I am not a Proclus scholar, just a librarian who has read 11 of his works, a few fragments in translation, and a bunch of secondary literature.) This is why the book gets only 4 stars from me. Despite these flaws, I do encourage people who want to read the hymns to pick up this book. Chlup’s Proclus is a good supplement for the curious.
Finally, some feedback for the publisher about their production process: The binding of the hardcover seems a bit flimsy, and the glossy paper is atrocious for those of us lefties who like writing marginal notes, as ink doesn’t dry fast and is prone to smearing. There are some typographic and formatting errors that should have been caught by the copyeditor, too.
