Greek Lyric Poetry

for [Music] they told me heraclitus they told me you were dead they brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed I wept as I remembered how often you and I had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky and now that you are lying my dear old caran guest a handful of gray ashes long long ago at rest still are thy Pleasant voices thy Nightingales awake for death he taketh all away but them he cannot take this poem was written by a Greek named cicus of the time of the emperor Alexander the Great 400 years before Christ it was translated by a 19th century Englishman William Cory I'd like to read it to you now in Greek so that you get some sense of the Rhythm in the original language you'll notice that the divisions of the English verse tend to be similar to those of the Greek itis herac helki Kus Al the poem is a lament for a dead friend who is also a poet let's try to reduce it to its Bare Essentials as a statement we find that superficially the this is what it says calus's friend was alive and is dead but his poems live after him and indeed the written word is all that death cannot destroy yet we can feel that this is not all that the poem says by means of the arrangement of words by repetition of phrases by peculiar forms of word harmony the poet makes us feel a far deeper emotion than in the simple Pros statement I've just quoted quoted they told me heraclitus they told me you were dead has quite a different effect from either they told me heraclitus you were dead or they told me of your death heraclitus because the effect on us is different the meaning of the line in the poem is different from the pros sentence the Hidden Music in the repetition and the arrangement of the words bring out some hidden meaning that was not there before and when cicus speaks of his dead friend as a handful of gray ashes it doesn't mean the same thing as a dead body it means that and something more a whole mass of associations called up in our minds by this image a handful of gray ashes here then are two aspects of the ludic poem as it is in all times and age which I want you to consider one is word harmony which we call Rhythm and in certain stricter forms rhyme the second is the use of the poetic image to change a simple logical statement into a more complicated one of much wider application some of what I'm going to tell you about Greek lyric is true only for the Greeks much of it is true of the whole body of Lyric poems as they exist inside the Western tradition that is in the history of the peoples of Europe and later America at the head of this tradition stand the Greeks we have less of their lyric poetry than of their dramas or philosophy but what there is is extraordinary in its power and scope a lyric poem as the Greeks originally understood the term was a poem accompanied by a liar and a liar is an instrument like this fitted with strings and struck with a [Music] pleum it was originally supposed to have been invented by the God Hermes and then given by him to the god Apollo who was thereafter for the Greeks the god of the liar and of lyric poetry I don't know when the actual expression in Greek which means lyric poetry was first used certainly the first lyric poem came into existence when someone in reflective mood turned his Reflections extemporary into words and accompanied himself on the liar in a way this is somewhat like the songs sung in the Kentucky mountains and accompanied by a guitar there are many illustrations of liar players on the Greek vases this one for instance but music in the strict sense of the word ceased very early in Greece to be a necessary accompaniment of the lyric poem though some of the Poetry I'll talk about later the Poetry of pindor and the lyrics in the plays was accompanied by both music and dancing but the heraclitus poem I reu had no music with it and neither has most of our modern lyric poetry but he all lyric poetry something of the quality of music is embedded in the very nature of the thing itself though the formal music has gone its place has been taken by word harmony Rhythm and sometimes rhyme their addition to direct verbal communication changes the nature of that communication clouding the sharp outlines of logical statement but also taking more than the logical statement can comprise certain combinations of sounds work on our ear and our feelings in the way that magic is supposed to they convey a sense of that quality of life which is ambiguous mysterious and most profound and with this suffuse the direct meaning of what is said let's now look at the second of the two elements of the lyric poem of which I spoke to you the nature of the poetic image to illustrate this I would like to read you a poem which employs images in a special way it's one of the greatest of the Greek lyric works and is also remarkable for having been one of the great poems of the world written by a woman her name was safo and she lived in lesbos in the 6th Century the poem translated by Walter headlam was written by safo for a girl who was soon to be married blessed beyond Earth's Bliss with Heaven I deem him blessed the man that in thy presence near thee face to face May sit and while thou speakest listening may hear thee and thy sweet voice laughter in my bosom the wrapped heart so troubl wildly stirred let me see thee but a glimpse and straightway utterance of word fails me no no word comes my tongue is psed thrilling fire through all my flesh hath run mine eyes cannot see mine ears make dinning noises that stun the sweat streth down my whole frame seized with shivering and one pness or me spread greener than the grass I seem with faintness almost as dead in the hertis poem The poetic images were effective largely in virtue of metaphor metaphor you remember in poetry is a figurative speech in which one Likens one object to another by speaking of it as if it were actually that other in the heraclitus poem for example the dead body becomes a handful of gray ashes heraclitus's poems become Pleasant voices or Nightingales in the poem of safo which I just read you will have noticed that the same intensification of emotion is achieved by a multiplication of selected realistic details safo describes how with but a glimpse of the loved one there is the wildly stirred heart the failing of the voice the Shivering by this multiplication of detail by adding one realistic image on another we are made to feel most vividly with the speaker of the poem uh to us one of the stranger images is the green palor of the face yet here again Sappo is being realistic she's thinking of a sow Mediterranean skin which in paling takes on a green tint this mass of detail becomes almost a clinical description of a certain state of awe and excitement but the words are not clinical in their associations clinical words are for us those that cannot be divorced from their hospital setting but the thrilling fire the py tongue and the dinning noises that stun are expressions which might come to mind without specialized Association but they have the added sharpness and flavor which marks great poetry and their impact is immediate the greatest passages of lyric poetry are those where the words are words in ordinary using but suddenly in a new combination acquire a unique significance as concerns the poetic image you have now seen two kinds of lyric poetry in one of which intensification is gained by metaphor the other by the skillful use of realistic images and the even more skillful selection of words to express them one can sometimes pick out treads in lyric poetry as we've been doing with these to make it more comprehensible but in the last analysis the effect of such great poetry defies any method of discovering exactly how it works let me illustrate this with another example it's an extremely simple one of only two lines an epit written by the poet simonides for the Spartans who died defending their country against the invading Persians there were you may recall 300 Spartans sent to hold the pass of theropo as long as they could it was a suicide mission in that the Persians in virtue of superior numbers were bound to break through in the end and they did all of the defending troops eventually died the repit was written by simones speaking in the person of the dead heroes the Spartans or they sometimes called the lonians tell them in Ladon pass by that here obedient to their words we lie there seems to be nothing special about either the Rhythm or the words here the sentiment is Simplicity itself yet both in the original Greek which runs like this Ang like a d k toon pyo in this and in the English version you have two lines of great lyric poetry the final quality of their greatness is elusive in all of the poems you've heard so far the heart of the poem's expression has been a personal emotion the sorrow of a man who was lost a friend through death the love which inspired safo the grief felt for the Fallen of thermop this personal emotion creates the words the harmony the music which universalizes the sentiment the man who Mourns for heraclitus is every man facing the death of those dear to him and his own death safo expresses the terror and violence of all love Simon it is speaks for all men who have chosen Annihilation through conscious loyalty to a cause lyric poetry in these poems captures the universal meaning of a personal Theme by means of images Harmony and music but the personal emotion need not be so very personal it's possible for the poet to feel the tragedy or comedy or Splendor of life life inherent in a single incident which touches him only as an observer this impersonal personal emotion if I may call it so brings us to the second kind of Greek lyric which as I told you is more alien and difficult I refer to the Lyric poems typically connected with the festivals of the Gods the great games and the Festival of the god diis there were a number of sacred places in ancient Greece where the Greek peoples assembled for acts of worship the religious Services performed in such places as these were not what we would consider religious rather they were occasions for athletic competitions running wrestling horse racing or the presentation of tragedies and comedies all of which were regarded as acts of worship of the Gods the greatest of all these places of religious significance was Olympia scene of the Olympic Games many Greek gods were honored here but especially Zeus the chief God whose Temple once dominated all [Music] competitors for the athletic events entered the vast Stadium through this Archway to win in the Olympic Games was one of the greatest successes any Greek or Greek Community could attain but what kind of great poetry you might ask could be associated with athletic competitions these were on their simplest level poems of Celebration rich men and princes commissioned poems to celebrate the victory in the games of an athlete a chariot team or a racehorse but more profoundly both the athletic displays and the horse races were regarded as I said as acts of worship of the god involved the solemnity of the occasion awoke the intensity of the poet's passion and the moment of communal worship was the occasion of his vision of human life we have a number of ODS written by pindar a fifth century thien for such religious occasions the first poem of pinders I will read is the first Olympian ode it was commissioned by hyro a prince of Sicily hyro had had his share of political troubles but a cently was much admired by a circle of intellectuals and literary men the name of hyo's horse who won first prize in 467 was appropriately fitus or in English Victor this OD like all of pinders was originally intended for accompaniment by music and dancers and was probably first performed in hierro's household best indeed is water but gold surpassing all else of a hero's wealth shines like a fire Ablaze in the night if it is games you would sing of Dear Heart do not seek for something hotter than the sun no other bright star in the lonely sky nor shall we sing of some greater Festival than Olympia it assails the minds of poets with song to be carried on many voices to peel In Praise of the son of Kronos when they come to hyo's Rich and blessed Heart In hyo's Hand is the rod of lawful rule for sisily rich in flocks he plucks the tops of all man's Excellence he finds his glory in the flower of poetry when many a time we sing men gathered around a friend's table take down the Dorian liar from the peg as your mind yields to the sweetest of thoughts the grace of Pisa and of Victor when he ran by alfio's Banks full stretched body needing no gold and married his master to Victory the king of Syracuse lover of horses you may Wonder as I said about the appropriateness of a great poem devoted to a winning racehorse there seems to be a want of seriousness in the topic somehow but this is to fail to understand what the games meant for the Greeks we can see this I think in the sculpture of the period men who could thus carve in stone the human body would find nothing inappropriate in a great poem celebrating a Victorious athlete or a [Music] racehorse the race horse or the athlete stretched in a moment of supreme physical Endeavor was an emanation of beauty as real and objective in the world as a beautiful statue made by the hand of man to the Greeks the poem The Carving in stone and the deed itself were all due to the interaction of God and man then by God 's help and favor bringing into existence a thing of [Music] beauty at almost the same time as the first Olympian was being written by Pinder escalus the dramatist was writing his great tragedy the Araya this tragedy was presented at the festival of the god dionisis in aens in All Greek tragedies there are two main elements one of which consisted of the parts devoted to the action and dialogue and the other to the lyric utterances of the chorus what you're going to see and hear in a few moments is a piece taken from one of the great choruses of the Arista in the performance you will see the chorus has been cast as citizen soldiers of Argos commenting on the Trojan War recently concluded let me say a few words about this Trojan War so that the meaning of the chorus may be clearer to you the Trojan War haunted the minds of the Greeks for hundreds of years after it actually happened to isalus it was a sort of huge paceo show with its clanging of Shields and Spears its warships its skill of men in combon that the reality is the figure of Aries the war god conceived in a terrifying poetic image as a money changer whose currency is men's bodies in the Greek Marketplace the money changer bartering one currency against another was a common sight but in isis's poem the changer scale is full on the one side of men alive and strong strong and handsome and on the other of dust as the bodies of the slain soldiers come from the funeral P this is the exchange that is being made this is the currency transfer this is the reality which emerges from the tragedy of war the war itself hinged on a relatively trivial event Paris Prince of Troy had run away with Helen the wife of menaus Prince of Argos menelaus's brother Agamemnon had then organized an expedition to sack Troy in Revenge and recover Helen in this the argives or the Greeks as the later ages would have called them were successful but the Trojan War lasted 10 years and the chorus speaks for the people as a whole when they regard it as a national disaster the sorrow of menas for the loss of a frivolous woman is compared with the grief of the argi women who get back the ashes of their dead in an easily handled jar thus the poem becomes a lament concerned with the meaning of Justice on Earth the suffering of the innocent and the resentment the sin of Paris and Helen has entered the world and spread with terrifying complexity until it has embraced all innocent and guilty alike oh Zeus our King and Knight our friend Don of glor Knight who cast on the towers of Troy a close clinging net so that neither the groan nor any of the children can pass the enslaving and huge trap of all taking destruction great Su guardian of host and guest I honor who has done his work and taken a Leisure Dame at Paris so that neither too short or yet over the Stars he might shoot to no purpose pruse is the blow they can tell of this at least can be established they have fared according to his ruling deny that the gods dained to consider those among men who trample on the grace of inviolate things it is the impious man who says this for ruin is revealed the child of not to be attempted actions when men are puffed up unduly and their houses are stuffed with riches measure is the best let danger be distant this should suffice a man with proper part of W for a man has no protection against the drunkenness of riches once he has spurned from his sight the high altar of Justice somber persuasion compels him intolerable child of calculating Doom all cure is vain there is no glossing it over but the Mischief shines forth with a deadly light and like bad coinage by rubbings and frictions he stands this colored and black Under the test like a boy who chases a wing bird he has branded his City forever his prayers are heard by no God who makes such things his practice the gods destroy him this way came Paris to the house of the sons of Atrius outraged the table of friendship stealing the wife of his host leaving to her Countryman the clanging of Shields and Spears and launching of Warships and bringing instead of a doy destruction to Troy lightly she was gone through the gates daring things UND dared many the groans of the palace spokesman on this theme all the house the house and its princes all the bed and the imprint of her limbs one can see him crouching in silence Dishonored and unring through desire for her who is overseas a ghost will seem to rule the household and now her husband hates the grace of shapely statues in The Emptiness of their eyes all their appeal is Departed but appearing in dreams persuasive images come bringing a joy that is vain vain for when in fancy he looks to touch her slipping through his hands the vision rapidly is gone following on wings the walks of sleep such as these and worse than these and everywhere through the land of Greece which men have left are mourning women with enduring Hearts to be seen in all houses many are the thoughts which stabed their hearts for those they sent to war they know but in place of men that which comes home to them is merely an n and dashes at the money changer War changer of bodies holding his place in a battle home from Troy refined by fire sends back to friends the dust that is heavy with tears stowing a man's worth of ashes in an easily handled jar and the whale speaking well of the men how the one was expert in battle and how another fell well in the Carnage but for another man's wife muffled and muttered words and resentful grief creeps up against the sons of Atrius and their cause and others there by the wall inomed in droan ground they lie handsome of limb holding and hidden in enemy soil heavy is the murmur of an angry people performing the purpose of a public curse there is something cow in the night that I anxiously wait to hear for the gods are not blind to the murderers of many the black Furies in time when a man prospers in sin by erosion of Life reduce him to Darkness who once among the Lost can no more be helped over great glory is a sore burden the high peak is blasted by the eyes of Zeus I prefer an un envied Fortune not to be a sacker of cities nor to find myself living at another's ruling myself a captive [Music] the [Music]