SOURCE: “From Sense to Attitude,” “Ideas,” “A Gathering of Fragments,” “Archilochos and Classical Antiquity,” and “Archilochos and Our Day,” in Archilochos, Twayne's World Authors Series, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1969, pp. 39-91.

In the following excerpt, Will examines Archilochus's point-of-view, ideas, and critical reputation both in his own and in modern times.

From Sense to Attitude

Thus we believe that a certain intelligibility mixed with a certain obscurity exists in every true work of poetry.

Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Situation de la Póesie

Sense-experience as an ingredient in Archilochos' poetry makes a subtle topic. There are some preserved instances of limpid sense-experience in which the sensuous flavor of meter speaks into the texture of an expressed world, the world of the girl with the myrtle, of the columnar young men, and of the dedicatory Alcibie. But even in those cases meter works against sensuous density, toward the more...