Pindar, Song, and Space: Towards a Lyric Archaeology, by Richard Neer and Leslie Kurke

Abstract

The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented one, with severe repercussions in each and every aspect of our lives, not least within academia. One of the things that has struck me during this period is the astonishing, generous outpouring of assistance and collaboration among classicists via the ClassicistsList forum, which has allowed the exchange of books and articles at a time when there has been limited or no access to libraries and other such resources.1 Even though solidarity and constructive dialogue are a given among classicists, paradoxically, this kind of collaboration seldom materializes in the form of coauthored books and articles. Whereas collaboration in research writing is a well-established practice in other disciplines, in classics (not to mention in the humanities as a whole), soleauthored books and articles continue to prevail, and research remains a mostly solitary pursuit. In light of this, the recently published book by Richard Neer, professor of art history, cinema, and media studies at the College at the University of Chicago, and Leslie Kurke, professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, is both a welcome addition and a meritorious initiative. Although it would be a serious omission not to acknowledge the long history of interdisciplinary approaches within classics, interdisciplinary collaborations are de facto more likely to pave wider intellectual pathways and break new ground. The book, entitled Pindar, Song, and Space: Towards a Lyric Archaeology, comprises an introduction; three parts subdivided into a total of eight chapters; a succinct coda; an appendix; an index locorum; and a general index. Prima facie, the title gives the impression that this is a book about Pindar, or more precisely, a book that seeks either to explore how Pindar thematizes and integrates the built environment into his song or to identify the multifarious ways in which the Theban poet uses the language and imagery of material culture to define and aggrandize his poetry. Yet, while Pindar is featured prominently throughout the book and serves as its unifying thread, the book is not, in fact, primarily about him. As Neer and Kurke clarify from the outset, the scope of the book is much broader and more ambitious: to study “the concept and experience of space in Classical Greece” (1) by mapping “the dialectical interaction of song, artifacts, and spatiality” (3). In expounding the rationale of their interdisciplinary approach in the short but informative introduction, the authors make clear that their aim is not merely to set art history, philology, and archaeology side by side but rather to suggest a radically new way of approaching and com-