{"id":24942,"date":"2014-04-06T06:30:49","date_gmt":"2014-04-05T18:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=24942"},"modified":"2014-04-02T16:31:26","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T03:31:26","slug":"gorgeous-words-mary-renault-the-praise-singer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2014\/04\/06\/gorgeous-words-mary-renault-the-praise-singer\/","title":{"rendered":"Gorgeous Words: Mary Renault & “The Praise Singer”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Mary Renault is another writer whose work I esteem immensely, particularly the way she brings the historical eras of ancient Greece—from the legendary-historical Athens of Thesues, through the “classical” Athenian period of 5th century BC Greece, to the Macedonian era of Alexander—to life.<\/p>\n

She also has quite the way with words, as well as worlds, as I believe this quote from The Praise Singer<\/em><\/strong>—a book centred on\u00a0 the lyric poet, Simonides, but about so much more—shows:<\/p>\n

“If\u00a0 a fine ship with a painted sail passed proudly by the port, keeping its mystery, for me it was the <\/em>Argo with its talking prow and its crew of heroes, going north to the bewitched Kolchian shore. If a hawk hovered, I saw winged Persues poised for his flashing swoop; grasping, like the hawk its prey, the Gorgon’s deadly head to freeze the dragon. The boulder I sat on had been flung by Herakles, playing ball as a boy. When I drove my flock to pasture, I was with Achilles on some great cattle-raid, bringing the spoils of a plundered city back to camp.<\/em><\/p>\n

As I dreamed I sang, as far back as I can remember. I needed only to be alone, among the creatures of my thought, and the songs would come.<\/em><\/p>\n

…”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Renault is another writer whose work I esteem immensely, particularly the way she brings the historical eras of ancient Greece—from the legendary-historical Athens of Thesues, through the “classical” Athenian period of 5th century BC Greece, to the Macedonian era of Alexander—to life. She also has quite the way with words, as well as worlds, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-other-writers","category-recommended-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24942"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24955,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24942\/revisions\/24955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}