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Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo: A Commentary
Hardcover with dust jacket. VG. Some sun fading and edgewear to DJ.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
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August 15, 2023
found an unusual quote in trying to find some reviews of this one
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
In the last and, appropriately in a book on Callimachus, most terse of the collection, Frederick Williams questions the applicability of “realism” to all of Callimachus’ poetry in his piece “Callimachus and the Supranormal.” Rather than limit readings of Callimachean passages at the level of mere pictorialism, Williams pushes even further such scenarios as the description of the Cyclopes in the Hymn to Artemis (50-51). We are dealing not merely with mythological figures, but with “mountains with eyes” (219). Since Callimachus includes in his poetry floating islands, fleeing mountains, divine foetuses honoring unconceived mortals—one could add other oddities such as people eating cats or whole cows!—”realism,” as Williams suggests, does not appropriately describe the poet’s literary creations. “If we must appropriate technical terms from the visual arts, perhaps we might try ‘surrealism,’ which, according to a standard definition ‘sought to explore the frontiers of experience and to broaden the logical and matter-of-fact view of reality by fusing it with instinctual, subconscious, and dream experience in order to achieve an absolute or ‘super’ reality'” (224-225).
James Clauss, University of Washington
........
Williams, Frederick. “Callimachus and the Supranormal.”
In Hellenistica Gronigana: Proceedings of the Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry,
edited by Annette Harder.
Groningen, Germany: Egbert Forster, 1993.
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
In the last and, appropriately in a book on Callimachus, most terse of the collection, Frederick Williams questions the applicability of “realism” to all of Callimachus’ poetry in his piece “Callimachus and the Supranormal.” Rather than limit readings of Callimachean passages at the level of mere pictorialism, Williams pushes even further such scenarios as the description of the Cyclopes in the Hymn to Artemis (50-51). We are dealing not merely with mythological figures, but with “mountains with eyes” (219). Since Callimachus includes in his poetry floating islands, fleeing mountains, divine foetuses honoring unconceived mortals—one could add other oddities such as people eating cats or whole cows!—”realism,” as Williams suggests, does not appropriately describe the poet’s literary creations. “If we must appropriate technical terms from the visual arts, perhaps we might try ‘surrealism,’ which, according to a standard definition ‘sought to explore the frontiers of experience and to broaden the logical and matter-of-fact view of reality by fusing it with instinctual, subconscious, and dream experience in order to achieve an absolute or ‘super’ reality'” (224-225).
James Clauss, University of Washington
........
Williams, Frederick. “Callimachus and the Supranormal.”
In Hellenistica Gronigana: Proceedings of the Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry,
edited by Annette Harder.
Groningen, Germany: Egbert Forster, 1993.
Displaying 1 of 1 review