3 The Ode and the Odists

Naples National Archaeological Museum, public domain.

“. . . someone will remember us I say even in another time.”

— Sappho

The Odist:

Pindar for one, Horace too and Sappho. Keats and Shelly and Milton. Neruda. A sort of a poet. A penner of a poem with a particular purpose. Writers of praiseful poems. With lyrical lips vibing through to their pen tips, they write - oding to Odin or Aphrodite or onion, or socks . . .

Pindar

Pindar lived from c. 518 – 438 BC. Born in Greece, he was named among the greatest of the lyric poets. He first developed the ode. Of all the styles of the ode, his is by far the most elaborate and formal. Many of his works have been lost and only fragments remain; however, in 1513, Aldus Manutius published four books of Pindar’s epinician odes. each giving tribute through ode to the winning athletes of the Classical Grecian games: the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean.

In 1510, Pierre de Ronsard published four books of French modeled after Pindar’s examples, and in 1757, writer Thomas Gray was the first to pen the Pindaric style of ode in English. The form began to shift with Abraham Cowley’s odes of 1656, influencing later writers such as Dryden, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson and John Keats.

Ode by Pindar

Horace

Born Quintus Horatius Flaccus in December 65BC, Roman writer, known historically as Horace, developed another distinct style of ode now known as the Horatian ode. Writing on themes of love and friendship his works were much less elaborate and were suited more for reading.

Odes by Horace

Sappho

Sappho lived between 610 BCE to 570 BCE. She lived and worked in Greece though she was exiled twice for her political views. She was so popular that her image was stamped on coins. Little is known about her for sure. She was born to an aristocratic family and is thought to have had 3 brothers. She married and had a little girl. A lyric poet and a musician, she was known as "The Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess” and named as one of the nine lyric poets, equated with the nine muses. She invented a type of lyre, which is a type of a musical instrument and developed the Sapphic verse which consists of 3 lines of 11 beats and a concluding line of 5 beats. She ran a school for women. Today, for the most part, only fragments of her work remain.

Ode by Sappho

John Keats

Born in 1795, in London, English Romantic poet John Keats is known for the many odes he wrote before his early death at the age of 25 in the winter of 1821. In the fall of 1819, Keats contracted tuberculosis, the same disease that took most of his family. Even though he began referring to his life as his “posthumous existence,” he was quite the prolific writer during this time as if the awareness of leaving soon, heightened his senses. In July 1820, he published his third and arguably best volume of poetry, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems in which his most treasured works including Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, and Ode to a Nightingale were first presented.

Ode by Keats

Pablo Neruda

One of my favorite odists is Pablo Neurda. Writer of 225 odes, Neurda was born on July 12, 1904 in Chile and died at the age of 69 on September 23, 1973. I love the freedom he brings to the form. Light and airy, his words move quickly from one to another, but with weight too. He has a way of significating the insignificant and making the ordinary, extraordinary! Tomorrow, we will consider one of my personal favorites of his odes: “Ode to the Onion.”

Ode by Neruda

Resources

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Pindaric ode". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Feb. 2008, https://www.britannica.com/art/Pindaric-ode. Accessed 2 September 2021.

Questions

What do you know about odes?
Who is your favorite odist?
Have you ever read or listened to an ode?
Do you have a favorite ode?
Have you ever written an ode?
If you were to write an ode, what or who would be your subject?