Mel Chilianis

I have a translation of Kallimachos’ (310-240 BCE) fragments by Stephanie Burt, which is a very contemporary interpretation. This reaffirms for me just how judicious and potentially political the interpreter’s job is. But there is also suggestion in words’ worlds.

Kallimachos lived in Alexandria and was very much admired in his time. He wrote a collection of short poems and explanations about the world, gathered in the aetia (stories for how things are). Rather than ‘letting his characters do the talking for him’ as Homer was celebrated by Aristotle, Kallimachos puts himself in his writings (Payne 2020, 4).

Stephanie Burt elaborates these fragments, merging the present and the past. Our technological objects, media, music and other cultural artefacts are threaded through with Kallimachos’ poetic fragments and I am finding those I encounter rich and entertaining. An example:

(Iambs, frag. 221)
αιτομεν ευμαθειαν Ερμανοσ δοσιν

In my poems about the origins of
things
I forgot to include the the most
important thing
if you’ve got a school-age child: how
to get
your child out of bed first thing
in the morning.

The answer seems
to be: first, get enought rest
yourself; then pray to Hermes, god
of memes
and pranks and D&D and shaggy-dog
stories, that he will let
the school provide one thing
the kids will consider their thing,
and not the teachers thing.

Freedom, or at least
the illusion of freedom, works better
than any warning.
(Burt 2020, ch 3, 13-4)