Callimachus never wrote for the common ear — and Alfred de Wailly didn’t translate him for one, either. This French rendering of the Hymns of Callimachus is a gilded knife: elegant, meticulous, and sharp enough to draw blood from a careless reader. Published in a century that still worshipped Latin and bled Greek, de Wailly’s version captures the strange precision of Callimachus’s voice — part priest, part poet, part archivist of divine mischief.

These hymns don’t praise the gods so much as interrogate them. Apollo arrives not as light but as judgment. Artemis is tender and terrible. Demeter weeps, but never forgets. And in de Wailly’s French — clean, cold, ceremonial — the language becomes ritual. It’s as if each line was lifted from temple stone and laid bare on the page.

This book is for those who understand that not all classics are grand. Some are small, perfect, and cruel. Callimachus was a master of the deliberate cut — and this edition preserves every edge

-Good - Book is well kept but may have noticeable signs of age or wear.

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