Pindar stands, as Jochen Schmidt archly notes, "für die Tradition des Traditionsbraches. This was again seized upon by Sturm und Drang poets as showing the Genius 's necessary defiance of metric and syntactic rules. In a much quoted passage from the same ode, Pindar is also praised for being, or appearing to be, "borne on free rhythms" ("numerisque fertur / lege solutis," 4.2.11-12) and for rolling new words through "daring dithyrambs" ("audaces.
In his letter to Herder, Goethe enthusiasticaUy acknowledges this: "Doch fühl ich indess, was Horaz aussprechen konnte."7 Horace's second ode of the fourth book speaks of Pindar as a mountain stream that rushes down and sweUs over its banks, seething and roaring.8 Horace's river image received new significance in late eighteenthcentury aesthetics where it comes to stand for the organic, inner form of poetry. Like most readings of Pindar from antiquity and weU into the nineteenth century, Goethe's too is mediated through Horace's appraisal of the poet. The translation also comes at a time of intense preoccupation with Pindar in German Uterature in general, attested to by a flurry of translations in the second half of the eighteenth century.6 Goethe's, however, differs in many ways from contemporary translations and already points, avant la lettre, toward Hölderlin's later translations.
The translation is significant not only because it offers telling evidence of Goethe's understanding of Pindar and an insight into the formation of his early poetic language. A letter, a poem, and a translation speak of Goethe's three different approaches to a poet then notorious for his "sehr kühne und erhabene Schreibart,"2 the "Größe und Stärke seiner Beredsamkeit"3 and for his "erudition détournée, tirée de l'histoire particuUere de certaines familUes & certaines viUes." While Goethe's letter to Herder of July 1772 (on the subject of Pindar) and his "Wanderers SturmUed" have been much commented on, translation of one of Pindar's odes has received no such critical attention. JONAS J0LLE Goethe's Translation of Pindar's Fißh Olympian Ode1 IN THE EARLY 1770s, GOETHE made a brief but significant attempt at understanding the Greek lyrical poet Pindar. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
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