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The Portable Greek Reader
It is commonplace to say that our civilization is built on the ruins of Greece. W. H. Auden’s splendid anthology locates the truth behind the truism, while filling in the gaps in our knowledge of a people who gave us so much of our cultural legacy.
Every page in The Portable Greek Reader contains some fundamental precursor of the ways in which we think about heroism, destiny, love, politics, tragedy, science, virtue, and thought itself. Presented in their most elegant and authoritative translations, and accompanied by Auden’s brilliant introduction, these selections recreate the Greek world in all its splendor, strangeness, and sophistication.
Every page in The Portable Greek Reader contains some fundamental precursor of the ways in which we think about heroism, destiny, love, politics, tragedy, science, virtue, and thought itself. Presented in their most elegant and authoritative translations, and accompanied by Auden’s brilliant introduction, these selections recreate the Greek world in all its splendor, strangeness, and sophistication.
726 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
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410 people want to read
About the author
W.H. Auden
617 books1,061 followersPoems, published in such collections as
Look, Stranger!
(1936) and
The Shield of Achilles
(1955), established importance of British-American writer and critic Wystan Hugh Auden in 20th-century literature.
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 7, 2016
The Viking Portable Library collection is a gem. The worst of the volumes are merely uninspired.
The Portable Hawthorne
, for example, contains The Scarlet Letter (which is often included in collections of Hawthorne's "short" fiction regardless of the fact that Hawthorne wrote only two or three longer works!) and the regular short stories. The only inspired addition to Hawthorne's collection are the letters. But why not
The Blithedale Romance
or House of Seven Gables? A casual Hawthorne reader could get the same material in any other collection, and the Hawthorne aficionado learns nothing new.
Compare this with an inspired volume like Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, which creates a new synthesis of Faulkner's universe. Or the utilitarian volumes: The Portable James Joyce includes Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist, along with Joyce's play and his poems; the most avid Joycean needs only the two other novels to have a complete collection of Joyce's completed work. A true Joyce nut may want excerpts from Stephen Hero, but at that point you are a scholar, and not a reader. The Portable Dante is perfect. Gibbon and Cervantes are nearly synonymous with these author's greatest works, though truncated.
Auden's Greek Reader is one of the worst volumes of the Portable Library. Auden's perspective, laid out in his introduction, is that we cannot know the true feelings of the ancient Greeks. Well! This is maybe the definition of a sad modernist--he has destroyed his ability to understand before he even gets started. This is the literary equivalent of the guy who goes on a date and spends the first fifteen minutes telling the woman why she's too good for him. If he weren't good enough to be with her, they wouldn't be on the date. And if the Greeks were uninterpretable to us, we wouldn't be reading this book.
The selections: How can one deride The Oresteia, Plato, Aristotle? Yet Auden's selections are strange. Why choose "Timeaus" as the one complete dialogue to include? Plato has a rightful claim to being the most influential thinker in human history. Yet the cosmology he describes in "Timeaus" has not held great sway since the Emperor Constantine at least. Why include a dialogue which no longer resonates, when so many of Plato's dialogues are as fresh and liberating as when they were written. To go back to the claim that we cannot know the Greeks--before understanding them, first we must make an effort to meet them at some common ground. Plato is as good of a bridge as anyone. Yet Auden chooses one of the very few of the dialogues which can be appreciated only from a historical perspective. Again, our tour guide through ancient Greece simply does not want to allow us to leave the station.
Like The Divine Comedy, the latter two parts of The Oresteia are often ignored in favor of its violent first part. But like The Comedy, The Oresteia is a tale of hope and redemption, not the tale of misery and woe which one might presume after reading only the first book. It is appreciated that Auden includes the entirety of Aeschylus' work.
Because there is no translator listed next to the translation of "The Birds" included in this volume, I assume it is Auden's. It is quite poor. Too gross to be funny.
The many excerpts from great works are lacking. Again, if Auden really thought it was possible for the modern reader to understand the workings of the ancient Greek mind, it would have been more likely he included one of the more philosophical tracts from Thucydides, which still have much to teach us about the nature of foreign relations and war. But Auden's selection, which describes the Syracuse fiasco, only describes a historical event. Its location at the end of the volume seems to be Auden's attempt to make a statement about the end of the greatness of Greece. But this defeat came before Plato, Aristotle, Alexander...
Anyway, Auden's volume is probably the worst of the all the Reader volumes of the Portable Library. One assumes this is the result of Auden's name. An anonymous professor at a small liberal arts school would have less of a vision in putting together the volume, and therefore more respect for the material. A more haphazardly collected volume would be more enlightening--for the greatest works of the Greeks need no accompaniment--but also a lot more fun. Our tour guide Auden is more interested in navel-gazing than exploring the Greek isles.
Compare this with an inspired volume like Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, which creates a new synthesis of Faulkner's universe. Or the utilitarian volumes: The Portable James Joyce includes Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist, along with Joyce's play and his poems; the most avid Joycean needs only the two other novels to have a complete collection of Joyce's completed work. A true Joyce nut may want excerpts from Stephen Hero, but at that point you are a scholar, and not a reader. The Portable Dante is perfect. Gibbon and Cervantes are nearly synonymous with these author's greatest works, though truncated.
Auden's Greek Reader is one of the worst volumes of the Portable Library. Auden's perspective, laid out in his introduction, is that we cannot know the true feelings of the ancient Greeks. Well! This is maybe the definition of a sad modernist--he has destroyed his ability to understand before he even gets started. This is the literary equivalent of the guy who goes on a date and spends the first fifteen minutes telling the woman why she's too good for him. If he weren't good enough to be with her, they wouldn't be on the date. And if the Greeks were uninterpretable to us, we wouldn't be reading this book.
The selections: How can one deride The Oresteia, Plato, Aristotle? Yet Auden's selections are strange. Why choose "Timeaus" as the one complete dialogue to include? Plato has a rightful claim to being the most influential thinker in human history. Yet the cosmology he describes in "Timeaus" has not held great sway since the Emperor Constantine at least. Why include a dialogue which no longer resonates, when so many of Plato's dialogues are as fresh and liberating as when they were written. To go back to the claim that we cannot know the Greeks--before understanding them, first we must make an effort to meet them at some common ground. Plato is as good of a bridge as anyone. Yet Auden chooses one of the very few of the dialogues which can be appreciated only from a historical perspective. Again, our tour guide through ancient Greece simply does not want to allow us to leave the station.
Like The Divine Comedy, the latter two parts of The Oresteia are often ignored in favor of its violent first part. But like The Comedy, The Oresteia is a tale of hope and redemption, not the tale of misery and woe which one might presume after reading only the first book. It is appreciated that Auden includes the entirety of Aeschylus' work.
Because there is no translator listed next to the translation of "The Birds" included in this volume, I assume it is Auden's. It is quite poor. Too gross to be funny.
The many excerpts from great works are lacking. Again, if Auden really thought it was possible for the modern reader to understand the workings of the ancient Greek mind, it would have been more likely he included one of the more philosophical tracts from Thucydides, which still have much to teach us about the nature of foreign relations and war. But Auden's selection, which describes the Syracuse fiasco, only describes a historical event. Its location at the end of the volume seems to be Auden's attempt to make a statement about the end of the greatness of Greece. But this defeat came before Plato, Aristotle, Alexander...
Anyway, Auden's volume is probably the worst of the all the Reader volumes of the Portable Library. One assumes this is the result of Auden's name. An anonymous professor at a small liberal arts school would have less of a vision in putting together the volume, and therefore more respect for the material. A more haphazardly collected volume would be more enlightening--for the greatest works of the Greeks need no accompaniment--but also a lot more fun. Our tour guide Auden is more interested in navel-gazing than exploring the Greek isles.
dnf
June 24, 2024I really enjoyed Auden’s introduction but it turns out summer is not the time of year when my mind wants to contemplate Ancient Greek philosophy.
September 6, 2023
I mentioned to my wife how much I had enjoyed my classics course back in university, some thirty-plus years ago. She surprised me recently with "The Portable Greek Reader", and "The Portable Roman Reader". I was so thrilled that I built a reading list around these two volumes and happily dove in. This review is for "The Portable Greek Reader". Some of the selections were old friends, for instance "The Oresteia" and its atmosphere of inescapable fate, others were brand new to me.
As with any anthology, there will be those who dislike the editor's choices, and those who find it just right. As for me, I fall into the latter camp. Auden's selections both jogged my memory of reading and enjoying some of these works back in the day, and gave me new avenues to explore.
Auden penned a very lengthy introduction to this volume, and let the individual selections speak for themselves. This leads me to the only quibble that I have with this book: it could have used a brief, say 1-2 paragraph, introduction to the individual works in order to provide a bit of context for the reader. Just the who, what, where, when, why would have been terrific! As it was, a few quick Google searches were not a great hardship, but still, it would have been nice to have that information incorporated into the text. That said, I have nothing but praise for this work and highly recommend it to those who want to dip their toes into classical Greek literature.
PS: I did pick up the Kindle edition to read while I'm out and about. Penguin/Viking really needs to get a proofreader to run through the text and fix some issues related to glitches in the OCR transfer of the text to a digital format. Misspellings, malformed characters, and spacing issues are fairly abundant in the kindle edition, but not too distracting. A review by a proofreader would clear all of those up in short order. I believe though, that I will stick to hardcopies for the rest of my reading list journey.
As with any anthology, there will be those who dislike the editor's choices, and those who find it just right. As for me, I fall into the latter camp. Auden's selections both jogged my memory of reading and enjoying some of these works back in the day, and gave me new avenues to explore.
Auden penned a very lengthy introduction to this volume, and let the individual selections speak for themselves. This leads me to the only quibble that I have with this book: it could have used a brief, say 1-2 paragraph, introduction to the individual works in order to provide a bit of context for the reader. Just the who, what, where, when, why would have been terrific! As it was, a few quick Google searches were not a great hardship, but still, it would have been nice to have that information incorporated into the text. That said, I have nothing but praise for this work and highly recommend it to those who want to dip their toes into classical Greek literature.
PS: I did pick up the Kindle edition to read while I'm out and about. Penguin/Viking really needs to get a proofreader to run through the text and fix some issues related to glitches in the OCR transfer of the text to a digital format. Misspellings, malformed characters, and spacing issues are fairly abundant in the kindle edition, but not too distracting. A review by a proofreader would clear all of those up in short order. I believe though, that I will stick to hardcopies for the rest of my reading list journey.
March 9, 2019
There were a few interesting selections and some obvious ones. Nothing really blew me away, especially with some of the dated translations. Sadly, the introduction really soured me on the volume. Auden's arrogance and privilege put me off from the very beginning.
Read
May 8, 2025Finished with school!
February 23, 2017
single best introduction to the Greeks. Auden is a master
October 7, 2016
Read selections for my book club. Must admit I did not get a lot out of Aristophanes with out help. I enjoyed the long introduction, a crash course in Greek history and culture, lots of which I knew but enjoyed another's review and impression of it.
June 13, 2009
A necessity for anyone studying the ancient world, especially for those in college.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews