Book record
Gastrology, or life of pleasure or study of the belly or inquiry into dinner
Archestratus of Gela
Translated from Greek by Gian Lombardo
Gastrology, or life of pleasure or study of the belly or inquiry into dinner, by Archestratus of Gela and translated by Gian Lombardo from Greek, brings Greek poetry into English through Archestratus's belly, dinner, and ancient Greek pleasure treated with more intelligence than shame. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem begins making its own weather. I would read it for belly, feast, pleasure, and the comic seriousness of appetite as literary inquiry, not as a fixed lesson about a nation, period, or school. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Gastrology, or life of pleasure or study of the belly or inquiry into dinner belongs in the translated poetry library because it reminds the library that poetry also belongs to food, conviviality, and bodily delight.
- Published
- 2009
- Publisher
- Quale Press
- Language
- Greek
- Country
- Greece
- ISBN
- 9780979299964