2 MARCH 1985, Page 25

The best of dilettantes

Hugh Lloyd-Jones

A History of Greek Literature Peter Levi (Viking £14.95)

Historians of literature', says the Ox- ford Professor of Poetry in his intro- duction, 'are often villains; they are not quite historians and not quite critics, and not quite in command of their subject.' All these charges could, from certain points of view, be levelled at Professor Levi; yet considering the difficulty of the enterprise and the degree of his success, he comes off not as a villain but as something of a hero. Indeed, histories of literature are seldom a success; only three have seemed to me successful — Browne on Persian literature, be Sanctis on Italian, Leo on Latin — and On none of these three literatures am I an expert. Levi has not approached the sub- ject as a historian or as a critic, but has Chosen to describe some of the works most worth describing and to indicate what feelings they arouse. He taught the classics LIM' many years at Campion Hall, the Jesuit Ilemse in Oxford, and is well acquainted With the chief Greek authors and with Much of the work that has been done on them; but he is not so much a researcher as a Poet and a man of letters. He knows Greece well, and has made a highly read- able translation of the ancient Greek 8aedeker by Pausanias; he has written some of the best modern travel books, Including The Light Garden of the Angel ing, which is about Afghanistan; he knows modern literature well, including !h°derri Greek literature. He is a dilettante in the best sense of the word, an enthu- siast, one who reads Greek literature for Pleasure and regards it with affection. .. Levi gives many specimens of Greek literature in translation; sometimes he uses versions by other writers, from the Eli- zabethan age till modern times, but at Other times his own. His selection of other People's translations is of great interest, but his own renderings keep for the most Pall closer to the Greek, and are better Suited to his immediate purpose. Why, for Instance, should he have to stop to explain an allusion in one of Yeats's beautiful but arlsophoclean translations of Sophocles' Plays about Oedipus which is not in Sopho- cles at all? His opinion that the translation of the Women of Trachis by Ezra Pound, Whom he holds to be a great poet, is 'rather accurate will not be shared by all. But his translations are well supplemented by his °Wn accounts of the Greek authors.

_ Anyone who wants a learned history of Greece in one volume can turn to the work of the Austrian scholar Albin Lesky (1896- 1981), first published in 1957; the original reads well, but the clumsy and careless English translation reads badly. Levi has not set out to write a learned history, and gives only short bibliographies; but his knowledge of the work done in the last 30 years gives him an advantage over Lesky, and, having been born 35 years later, he is free of certain attitudes of Lesky's that seem dated. In literary quality and in power to communicate its author's enthu- siasm to its readers, Levi's book is superior to Lesky's, or to any comparable work now on the market.

The bibliographies are in general very useful, though Levi might have made more mention of the best American work on the subject — Bernard Knox on tragedy, Anne Burnett on early lyric, David Young on Pindar, Mary Mary Leflcowitz on victory odes and on the lives of the Greek poets. His weakness appears in occasional lapses into whimsy or sentimentality; in reacting against the dryness of modern positivism, he returns at moments to the wetness against which the positivists reacted. But he succeeds admirably in describing the works of Greek authors and their impact on the reader. He is no philosopher, but this has its advantages; he does not over- intellectualise Greek poetry, in the manner of those numerous learned men who have written as though the poets were so many sophists or philosophers and have been tiresomely preoccupied with 'progress' or 'development'. For a Christian, he is sur- prisingly sympathetic to Greek religion.

The chapters about Homer and Hesiod are not spoiled, like so many modern treatments of the subject, by the tiresome obsession with orality and with theories of multiple authorship; Levi is always aware of the essential unity of Homer's poems. He writes well about many of the lyric poets and about tragedy, particularly Euri- pides, not only avoiding the hard-dying fin-de-siecle notion of Euripides as a reli- gious and philosophical innovator, but daringly going into certain awkward prob- lems in a way which even the least in- formed of his readers is likely to find stimulating.

Unfortunately, his treatment of Pindar, a poet who, thanks to a remarkable critical revolution, is exciting special interest at present, disappoints; like him, I cherish the memory of Sir Maurice Bowra, but anyone who thinks Bowra's Pindar to be still the best introduction to the subject is invited to glance at the remarks about it on p. 282 of my Blood for the Ghosts. Though he is aware of the new approach, Levi cannot resist the temptation to treat Pindar as if he were a romantic poet expressing personal emotions; and Bowra's influence seems to have affected his treatment of certain other lyric poets also.

He writes admirably about Aris- tophanes, being free of the modern tendency to treat him mainly as a source for sociological data and to stress what he has in common with musical comedians but to ignore what he has in common with great artists. His chapter on Herodotus is highly readable, though he does less than justice to modern scepticism about that author's truthfulness; he is excellent on Thucydides, and interesting and sympathe- tic, while by no means uncritical, about Xenophon. In a brief chapter on the orators, he shows himself aware of the absurd pretentiousness of Isocrates and of the greatness of the most neglected among the principal Greek authors, Demosthenes. One must not go to him for an account of Plato's philosophy, but his account of Plato as literature is very good indeed.

Towards the end, the book becomes vaguer and sketchier. He had better not have written about Aristotle, of whose works those that had literary pretensions have not survived; nor is he at his best in writing about any Hellenistic writer except Theocritus, being affected, it appears, by the romantic tendency to disparage Hellen- istic literature. The chapter about Hellen- istic and later prose writers contains in- teresting things, but it is uneven. However, the book finishes with a delightful chapter about Plutarch, which will send readers not only to his Lives but to other works of his, notably his Delphic dialogues.

The book contains much that will in- terest all who are interested in Greek literature; but it will have a special appeal for those who know little or no Greek, and can confidently be recommended to begin- ners in the subject. In general it must be accounted a remarkable achievement and a considerable success.