Volume 48, Number 14 · September 20, 2001
Paradise Lost
By Charles Simic
Literature and the Gods
by Roberto Calasso, translated from the Italian by Tim Parks
Knopf, 212 pp., $22.00
The surprising durability of ancient Greek myths in an age when Homer, Ovid, and other classics are no longer taught in our schools is astonishing and not easy to explain. In this country, we have never been very good at history, barely troubling to remember our own in much detail, and the same is true of the literary past, which is gradually being expunged from the curriculum. When it comes to pagan myth, most of the champions of progress take it for granted that they have nothing to say to us anymore. How wrong they are. This year, for example, saw the publication of Gods and Mortals, an anthology of modern poems based on classical myths.[1] Out of 323 poems in the book, roughly one fourth are the work of contemporary American poets. When it comes to being out of sync with reigning intellectual fashions, poets get the prize every time.
Review, 4143 words
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