"Mary Renault - Greece 3 - Praise Singer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

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Mary Renault - Praise Singer

So I shall never waste my life-span in a vain useless hope, seeking what cannot be, a flawless man among
us all who feed on the fruits of the broad earth. If I find him, I will bring you news.

But I praise and love every man who does nothing base from free will. Against necessity, even gods do
not fight.

simonides

SICILY

A good song, I think. The end's good-that came to me in one piece-and the rest will do. The boy will
need to write it, I suppose, as well as hear it. Trusting to the pen; a disgrace, and he with his own name
made. But write he will, never keep it in the place between his ears. And even then he won't get it right
alone. I still do better after one hearing of something new than he can after three. I doubt he'd keep even
his own songs for long, if he didn't write them. So what can I do, unless I'm to be remembered only by
what's carved in marble? Tell them in Lakedaimon, passer-by, that here, obedient to their word, we lie.
They'll remember that.

That was the year Anakreon died. He had all his songs safe in his head. He proved us that at the city
feast after Marathon; anything we asked for, there it was. Aischylos... no, he wasn't there, he was in
mourning for his brother. I had sung first, of course. And Anakreon finished with something new to all of
us, fifty years old. You could hear him too, short of teeth as he was by then. We Ionian poets are a
long-lived breed.

Well, his songs are sung, and will be unless the barbarians come back again; and the ships at Salamis
have settled that. They sing him; but the young men don't get him right. Just a word here and there; but it
would have grated his fine ear. Men forget how to write upon the mind. To hear, and keep: that is our
heritage from the Sons of Homer. Sometimes I think I shall die their only heir. Themistokles asked if I
had a secret art of memory; which I can forgive in a man with no education to speak of. Practice,
practice, that's all; but who wants to hear nowadays about hard work? Ah, they say, Simonides will take
his secret to the grave with him. At eighty-three he can't have much more use for it; but old men get
miserly.

Well, I bow to the times. Only last year I recited for some scrivener of King Hieron's my whole stock of
Anakreon's songs, for fear some should disappear with me. And having done that, I thought I'd best turn
to and make a book of my own, lest book-taught slovens should garble me when I'm dead. I've not yet
come down to scratching on wax myself; the boy does that, and I don't let him demean himself with
fair-copying. He must learn young what is due to us. (Yes, well, I must try to keep in mind that he's
turned forty.)

King Hieron will send us a clerk, as he would a physician or a cook. Yes, I'm well-found here, and
winter warmth pays for the hot summers. I have not troubled the physician much. Best of good things,
sweet health. That, every wanderer knows. Now I've done with wandering, give me one day at a time,