Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Pantheon (1978), Edition: 1st, Hardcover, 290 pages
Description
In the story of the great lyric poet Simonides, Mary Renault brings alive a time in Greece when tyrants kept an unsteady rule and poetry, music, and royal patronage combined to produce a flowering of the arts. Born into a stern farming family on the island of Keos, Simonides escapes his harsh childhood through a lucky apprenticeship with a renowned Ionian singer. As they travel through 5th century B.C. Greece, Simonides learns not only how to play the kithara and compose poetry, but also how to navigate the shifting alliances surrounding his rich patrons. He is witness to the Persian invasion of Ionia, to the decadent reign of the Samian pirate king Polykrates, and to the fall of the Pisistratids in the Athenian court. Along the way, he encounters artists, statesmen, athletes, thinkers, and lovers, including the likes of Pythagoras and Aischylos. Using the singer's unique perspective, Renault combines her vibrant imagination and her formidable knowledge of history to establish a sweeping, resilient vision of a golden century.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member richardderus
This book was a re-read, I feel sure, since I was hooked on her stuff in the Seventies...yet I felt curiously unfamiliar with the book. I recalled some scenes, such as Simonides returning from home to rejoin his master Kleobis in their Samian exile; I found a lot of the book to be less clear in my
I put this down to the fact that as I was reading it in 1978 or 1979, I was disappointed that the main character wasn't gay and wasn't even very excitingly drawn. (Can you tell I was a youth who loved the Alexander novels, The Bull from the Sea, The King Must Die, The Persian Boy? Especially The Persian Boy, quite salacious!)
But, in the end, as a fifty-year-old who's tastes have matured (ha), I liked this book quite a lot. It was a lovely tale of how the world has always judged others by their looks and not their deeds or talents. It presents itself as a harmless historical novel, and examines human nature minutely, unsparingly, and with what can only be called a jaundiced eye. Renault was clearly irritated at the follies of mankind. It shows in such lines as this, spoken by Simonides in his old age: "I have never desired young maids, preferrinig ripe fruit to green; maybe it is because I feared their laughter when I was a boy." (p262, Pantheon hardcover edition 1978)
Still scared of the masses. Still subject to the fears and foibles of youth. Wiser? Renault is too good a writer to make you take her view. She tells her story, and leaves you to take her meanings.
Sheer pleasure, friends, and all too seldom met, when a storyteller trusts you to read, and read again, and reach your own conclusions. Read it and conclude, and you won't be sorry.
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mind than most I've read before and choose to re-read.I put this down to the fact that as I was reading it in 1978 or 1979, I was disappointed that the main character wasn't gay and wasn't even very excitingly drawn. (Can you tell I was a youth who loved the Alexander novels, The Bull from the Sea, The King Must Die, The Persian Boy? Especially The Persian Boy, quite salacious!)
But, in the end, as a fifty-year-old who's tastes have matured (ha), I liked this book quite a lot. It was a lovely tale of how the world has always judged others by their looks and not their deeds or talents. It presents itself as a harmless historical novel, and examines human nature minutely, unsparingly, and with what can only be called a jaundiced eye. Renault was clearly irritated at the follies of mankind. It shows in such lines as this, spoken by Simonides in his old age: "I have never desired young maids, preferrinig ripe fruit to green; maybe it is because I feared their laughter when I was a boy." (p262, Pantheon hardcover edition 1978)
Still scared of the masses. Still subject to the fears and foibles of youth. Wiser? Renault is too good a writer to make you take her view. She tells her story, and leaves you to take her meanings.
Sheer pleasure, friends, and all too seldom met, when a storyteller trusts you to read, and read again, and reach your own conclusions. Read it and conclude, and you won't be sorry.
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LibraryThing member 2chances
This is not my absolute favorite Mary Renault - that would be The Persian Boy OF COURSE - but I give it five stars nonetheless because the worst book by Mary Renault is better than the best book of most writers. And The Praise Singer is definitely in the top tier of Renault's novels of ancient
Renault's imagined life of the poet Simonides begins with young Sim's wretched early days as little better than a slave in his harsh father's house. When Sim gathers enough courage to beg a traveling singer to apprentice him, his life takes a dramatic turn for the better; at last he is able to give voice to the words and music he has been hiding from his family. I like the small authentic details that Renault always brings to her historical fiction; she always provides the reader with a whole world to wander about in. And I like that she doesn't (in Josephine Tey's words) "write forsoothly;" her characters converse in modern English, with just the occasional soupcon of antiquity.
Unlike other Renault protagonists, Simonides is straight, not gay; I find that Renault is more skilled at creating romantic tension with her gay or bisexual characters. Still, Simonides' relationship with the beautiful hetaera Lyra is handled with grace and tenderness, and in any case, it is clear from the get-go that the poet's driving force is not love, but the quest for immortality through his art. A lovely novel.
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Greece.Renault's imagined life of the poet Simonides begins with young Sim's wretched early days as little better than a slave in his harsh father's house. When Sim gathers enough courage to beg a traveling singer to apprentice him, his life takes a dramatic turn for the better; at last he is able to give voice to the words and music he has been hiding from his family. I like the small authentic details that Renault always brings to her historical fiction; she always provides the reader with a whole world to wander about in. And I like that she doesn't (in Josephine Tey's words) "write forsoothly;" her characters converse in modern English, with just the occasional soupcon of antiquity.
Unlike other Renault protagonists, Simonides is straight, not gay; I find that Renault is more skilled at creating romantic tension with her gay or bisexual characters. Still, Simonides' relationship with the beautiful hetaera Lyra is handled with grace and tenderness, and in any case, it is clear from the get-go that the poet's driving force is not love, but the quest for immortality through his art. A lovely novel.
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LibraryThing member belgrade18
A beautifully written book, a historical novel, first person account of the life of Simonides, a lyric poet of the late sixth and early fifth century Greece. Great detail and attempt to capture the period. Spoiler alert, but the climax at the end is the assassination of Hipparchus, an
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archon/dictator of Athens who brought Simonides to that city; I was a little disappointed that the book did not move more quickly and also include the battle of Thermopylae, for which Simonides wrote a famous epitaph, and his life in Thessaly and Sicily. Anyway, highly recommended for students and lovers of the period and the culture, but a bit of patience is necessary. Show Less
LibraryThing member antiquary
I would give this six stars if I could -- utterly wonderful recreation of the life of a wandering poet in ancient Greece, just at the time the Persians were conquering the Ionians. It may flatter Simonides --who may have been more greedy and mercenary than this version -- but it does not see him as
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perfect --clearly he is very reluctant to see evil in the Pisistratids, and may be deceiving himself in acquitting them of the murder of Cimon . However, he does recognize how Hipparchus is gradually corrupted by his infatuation with Harmodius, and actually defies Hipparchus for humiliating Harmodius's sister. The story ends with the killing of Hipparchus by Harmodius and Aristogeiton and their deaths. There are a number of references forward to the Persian Wars, and I always wished Renault would do a sequel giving the wars as seen by Simonides (who wrote the epitaph for the Spartan dead at Theomopylae) but she never did, though she wrote an account of the war for children. Show Less
LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
My introduction to Mary Renault was The King Must Die, the first of two novels about Theseus--it was actually assigned reading in high school. What impressed me so much there was how she took a figure out of myth and grounded him historically. After that I quickly gobbled up all of Renault's works
I wouldn't put The Praise Singer in the first tier of Mary Renault's historical fiction with the novels mentioned above, but it's heads above most historical fiction you can find on shelves. And in a way you could see this as a prequel to The Last of the Wine. While that dealt with Athens during the the Peloponnesian War, this is mostly set in Athens during the beginning of the Persian War. The central title figure, Simonides, is a real historical figure, an important lyric poet who wrote the famous epitaph for the 300 Spartans who fell at Thermopylae: Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie. The Praise Singer is a great portrait of the early Classical period.
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of historical fiction set in Ancient Greece. The two novels about Theseus and the trilogy centered on Alexander the Great are undoubtedly her most famous of those eight novels, and I'd add The Last of the Wine.I wouldn't put The Praise Singer in the first tier of Mary Renault's historical fiction with the novels mentioned above, but it's heads above most historical fiction you can find on shelves. And in a way you could see this as a prequel to The Last of the Wine. While that dealt with Athens during the the Peloponnesian War, this is mostly set in Athens during the beginning of the Persian War. The central title figure, Simonides, is a real historical figure, an important lyric poet who wrote the famous epitaph for the 300 Spartans who fell at Thermopylae: Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie. The Praise Singer is a great portrait of the early Classical period.
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LibraryThing member janerawoof
Reread in October 2014; originally read in October 2012. Fictional retelling of the story of Simonides, the ancient Greek lyric poet and bard. I've read several novels on Welsh bards of the Dark Ages, so this was a departure for me. I liked this novel better the second time around. Simonides tells
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his story from childhood, through apprenticeship to another bard to learn his trade, how he wins and keeps his fame, then the cycle starts again, with his travelling with his talented nephew as apprentice. Another of Renault's masterly works with ancient Greek theme. Show Less
LibraryThing member et.carole
Renault has a beautiful way with descriptions of land and society, and effectively creates the social, political, and geographic climate of ancient Greece, particularly ancient Athens, in this novel. Her willingness to leave her hero in the dark is one of the ways she does this so effectively. As a
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poet, Simonides would have been hyperaware of the court's status, but not necessarily high enough to know all the secrets of the tyrants. It is this exchange of information, and the way Simonides collects and responds to this information, which make her rendition of the social setting so persuasive. The arc of Simonides' travel, which structures the book into sections by his geographic location, is also very effective, as the reader follows him in growing knowledge of the Athenian climate from his ignorant rural boyhood to favor and acceptance for his talent. Show Less
LibraryThing member themulhern
A typical Mary Renault. Ancient Greeks drily accept their circumstances and numerous barbaric cruelties, while staying pious somehow. A good re-telling of the events preceding the Persian Wars; the conquest of the Ionian cities by Cyrus, the death of Polykrates of Samos, the ascendancy of
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Pisistratus and the murder of his son, Hipparchos, who seems to have become very Nero-like to provoke the assassination. Simonides is telling the tale many years later while living in Sicily; every so often he like to remind us that a large part of the beautiful Athens he knew was burned by the Persians. For him there is no going back to those lyric days of yore. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1978
Physical description
290 p.; 8.3 inches
ISBN
0394502736 / 9780394502731
Other editions
The Praise Singer by Mary Renault (Hardcover)