Orphic hymns: translation, notes and introductory study

• Grant number: 13/25073-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2014
• End date: January 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Literatures
• Principal Investigator: José Marcos Mariani de Macedo
• Grantee: Pedro Barbieri Antunes
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

I intend to conduct a scholarly translation, following the text established by Quandt (2005), of the Orphic Hymns, a collection of an invocation-proem to Musaeus and 87 cletic hymns (a total of 1,129 verses) of unknown authorship, traditionally attributed to the figure of Orpheus, and of controversial dating that, nonetheless, can be established during the imperial period (Athanassakis, 1977; West, 1983). Given that this corpus has not yet been translated into Portuguese, I believe that this proposal will fill a significant gap in classical studies in Brazil, since these hymns allow us a glimpse of what might have been an occasion of cult, which indicates not only their literary value but religious and historical relevance, aspects that also determine these texts. Furthermore, it is my intention to conduct a study on the stylistic and phraseological, mythic and ritual mechanisms overlapped on these poems, enabling a greater understanding of their meaning and importance. When necessary, the hymns will be auxiliated by footnotes on mythic-religious or even on any philological aspects of more obscure passages, taking as reference the translations and previous studies of the Orphic Hymns as well as the entire literature that deals with the orphism, mythology, the mystery cults and the figure of the mústai.