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1、The Lyric Ageafter Homers day,the Greek world started to change dramaticallywith the fall of the Phoenicians to the Assyrian onslaught in the eighth century BCE,sea routes were opened all around the eastern Mediterranean basinGreeks became traders and money began pouring into Greece,The Lyric Agebut
2、 keeping track of ones wealth requires some knowledge of accountingand accounting requires writing!so this new class of wealthy pre-classical Greeks had to learn how to writestarting around 700 BCE,literacy in Greece began to climb,The Lyric Agethese noveaux riches(“the newly wealthy”)were not alway
3、s members of the established,traditional aristocracymany were bright young men who came from humble originsthese merchants did not necessarily have a deep investment in the“heroic past”,The Lyric Agein fact,most of them would just as soon not have talked about their ancestors most of these people li
4、ved for now,not in some mythological pastas a result,these adventurous entrepeneurs wanted a type of poetry closer to their own experiences in life,The Lyric Agethat meant verses which were fast and intense,and immediately rewardingthus,during the Lyric Age an evenings entertainment turned from the
5、recitation of one long,stately poem by an oral bard like Homer to the performance of many short,emotional poems by a lyric poet,The Lyric Ageand the topic of this lyric poetry was almost invariably love or if not love,the need for immediate political changecf.the evolution in music of the modern age
6、 from operas(a century or more ago)to rock music today,The Nature of Lyric Poetrylyric poetry is very different from Homeric epic,even just on the surfacelyric poems were composed in many different poetic meters(rhythms)Homer used only one type of verse everafter all,how many different verse forms c
7、an an oral poet(who works in oral formulas)be expected to master?,The Nature of Lyric Poetryliteracy was an important element in this equationwriting allowed for greater poetic flexibilityif nothing else,poets could now erase and re-compose a lineerasing a word or correcting a line was something an
8、oral poet like Homer could never have done,The Nature of Lyric Poetrymoreover,a lyric poet could send a poem off in written form to be read by someone else in performanceHomer could not ever have done that eitherthus,lyric poetry could spread wherever there was a literate performer availablelyric po
9、etry reached a much wider audience than oral poetry like Homers,The Nature of Lyric Poetrystill,lyric poetry was designed to be sung and heard in public,not read in privatemost lyric poems were designed to be read aloud at parties(or political rallies)to the accompaniment of the lyre(a stringed musi
10、cal instrument)hence,the name“lyric”,Statuette of a Poet Playing the Lyre,The Nature of Lyric Poetrythe lyre is the ancient equivalent of the guitar todayit was associated with intense emotion,and often extreme behaviorseveral stories survive from antiquity of lyric poets who performed drunk and liv
11、ed in non-traditional lifestyles,A Greek Vase Depicting a Lyric Poet in the Rapture of Performance,The Nature of Lyric PoetryGreek lyric poetry was much centered on the music behind the versetoo bad,then,that all the music of lyric poetry has been lostnevertheless,the verse is gloriously beautiful a
12、ll on its ownbut it only hints at the true power of this genre in its day,Sapphothe best exponent of lyric poetry was a woman named Sapphoher poetry represents one of the very few womans voices to emerge from all of Greek and Roman antiquitythe power and beauty of her poetic voice was great enough t
13、o overcome the ancient worlds deep-seated misogyny,A Greek Vase depicting the Lyric Poets Sappho and Alcaeus,Sapphoshe lived on the Greek island of Lesbos,ca.600 BCElittle is known about her,except that she ran a sort of finishing schools for girlsshe wrote love poems to the girls therehence,our wor
14、d“lesbian”,Sapphoin large part because of her sexuality,later ages denounced her poetry as“immoral”even though her surviving poems never include sexually graphic or lurid passagesunlike many other ancient authors who include explicit passages but whose work has survived,Sapphonevertheless,her work w
15、as censured and not copied or preserved the way other authors works werethe result was that most of her work was lostwhat little we have today comes for the most part from quotes of her poetry found in the work of other authors,Sapphosome poems,however,have been preserved on ancient papyrithese are
16、often only fragmentsit is possible that today we do not have even one complete poem by Sappho!all in all,the loss of Sapphos poetry is one of the greatest literary catastrophes of all time,Sapphomoreover,to focus on Sapphos sexual orientation is to miss the point of her poetryher songs almost invari
17、ably center around the intensity of feeling inspired by the objects of Sapphos affectionthat is,Sappho writes honestly and elegantly about herself,e.g.what loves does to her,SapphoPoem 31He seems to me,that man,almost a godthe man,who is face to face with you,sitting close enough to you to hearyour
18、sweet whisperingAnd your laughter,glistening,whichthe heart in my breast beats for.For when on you I glance,I do not,not one sound,emit.,SapphoPoem 31But my tongue snaps,lightlyruns beneath my flesh a flame,and from my eyes no light,and rumblingcomes into my ears,And my skin grows damp,and trembling
19、all over racks me,and greener than the grassam I,and one step short of dyingI seem to myself.,SapphoPoem 31note that Poem 31 does not focus on the girl the girl is not even namednor is she mentioned much in the poemindeed,the poem focuses more on the man who is sitting beside the girl,SapphoPoem 31b
20、ut the poem really dwells on Sappho and her reaction to her feelings for this girlPoem 31 was,in fact,preserved among the writings of an ancient doctor who quoted it as a way of diagnosing love sickness in modern terms,then,Poem 31 is a“clinical pathology”of love,SapphoPoem 31the poem was,in fact,pr
21、eserved among the writings of an ancient doctor who quoted it when he was trying to diagnose love sickness in a patient of hisin modern terms,Poem 31 is a“clinical pathology”of love,SapphoPoem 31seen as a medical condition then,Sappho claims that love makes her:dumb(“my tongue snaps”)feverish(“light
22、ly runs beneath my flesh a flame”)blind(“and from my eyes no light”)deaf(“and rumbling comes into my ears”),SapphoPoem 31love makes Sappho:sweaty(“And my skin grows damp”)twitchy(“and trembling all over racks me”)pale(“and greener than the grass am I”)and catatonic(“and one step short of dying I see
23、m to myself”),SapphoPoem 31thus,Poem 31 is not a poem about a girlor even a girl flirting with someone else to make Sappho jealousit is a poem about love and separation,and what they do to a person physiologically which hints that there is much more to the situation than the words on the surface,Sap
24、phoPoem 31after all,if Sappho is looking at the man,and the man is facing the girl(“who is face to face with you”),then who is the girl looking at?Sappho?if so,does she have feelings for Sappho?but shes not the point-Love is!,SapphoPoem 1On a dappled throne,deathless goddess,Aphrodite,Zeus child,cha
25、rmer,I beg of you:break me not with aching,nor with grief,Lady,tame my heart!But come here,if ever before from over therewhen you heard my voice from afaryou listened and left your fathers homeof gold and you came,SapphoPoem 1Hitching up your chariot.Lovely they that lead youthe swift sparrows above
26、 the darkling earthwings whirling countless from heavensent amidst us here,And in a flash appear and you,blessed goddess,the smiling face that never dies,asked me what was wrong this time and whythis time I called her,SapphoPoem 1And what most of all my heart wished to have in my troubled way.“Who i
27、s it this time Im to turn back to your favor?Who hurtsyou now,Sappho dear?You know,if she runs,soon she will chase;and if she spurns presents,some day shell give them;and if she rejects love,soon she will love,like it or not.”So,SapphoPoem 1Come to me even now,and from my hardships free meand from m
28、y cares,and all the things to bring aboutmy heart desires,bring about for me.And you,fight here beside me.,SapphoPoem 1to the ancient Greeks,one of the strongest forces in the universe was Eros(“love”)in Poem 1(The Ode to Aphrodite),Sappho invokes Aphrodite,the goddess of Erosnote her comic,sophisti
29、cated self-deprecation:“Who is it this time.,Sappho dear?”,Lyric Poetry and Epiclyric poetry seems very different from epicbut lyric poetry is not a complete break from the epic poetry which preceded itSappho acknowledges her Homeric ancestry in various wayseven sometimes at the same time she is deb
30、unking epic versecf.Poem 16(The Ode to Anactoria),Lyric Poetry and EpicSappho,Poem 16One man has his cavalry,another has his legions,yet another has his ships,on all the earthmost beautiful to him.But to me it is thesingle thing one loves.How easy it is to make this understoodto anyone,for,far outst
31、ripping mortalloveliness,Helen left her manand a good man too!,Lyric Poetry and EpicSappho,Poem 16Left him and went off to Troy,sailingaway with no thought for her child or parents,not one glance back,but he led her astray,Love did,at first sight.The eyes of brides are easy to turn,light things,ligh
32、tly swayed by passionwhich makesme think now of Anactoria,who isnt here now.,Lyric Poetry and EpicSappho,Poem 16I would rather see her lovely stepand her twinkling bright facethan Lydians process in pomp andsoldiers pageantry.,Lyric Poetry and EpicSappho,Poem 16 One man has his cavalry,another has h
33、is legions,yet another has his ships,on all the earthmost beautiful to him.But to me it is thesingle thing one loves.while Sappho openly denounces Homeric values,such as“soldiers pageantry”and insists instead that love controls our lives,Lyric Poetry and EpicSappho,Poem 16but Sappho also borrows muc
34、h from Homer,e.g.,Sappho composes Poem 16 in ring composition,but on a much smaller scale than Homer,Lyric Poetry and EpicSappho,Poem 16also note the way she make comparisons:How easy it is to make this understoodto anyone,for,far outstripping mortalloveliness,Helen left her mancf.Homeric similesHel
35、ens passion is a“simile”for the power of Eros in Sapphos word,Lyric Poetry and Epicbut one major difference between Homer and Sappho stands out while he looks back in time across the sea,she looks at the world around herwhile Homer talks about Aphrodite on some distant mountain centuries ago,Sappho
36、calls Aphrodite to her,cf.Poem 2,Lyric Poetry and EpicSappho,Poem 2Here to me from Crete to this temple herethis shrine,where you have this graceful groveof apples,and the fragrant altars fume with frankincense.In here the cold water bubbles through branchesof apples,and with roses everythingsshaded
37、,and glistening in the wind the leavesrain down gentle sleep.,Lyric Poetry and EpicSappho,Poem 2In here the meadow horses graze flourishesin spring with flowers,and the windssoothing breathe.To there,you.lift,Aphrodite,in golden goblets lightly whats mixed with our delights,the nectarlike the wine,c
38、ome pour!,The Significance of Lyric PoetryHomer takes the listener into a past and distant world of the gods and heroesSappho,instead,brings the gods to us and glorifies what happens in our worldshe gives our daily struggles an“epic”grandeur and a heroic sensibility,The Significance of Lyric Poetryt
39、hat is,our lives here and now stand in the foreground of Sapphos poetryand Homers gods and heroes serve mainly to give our lives dimension and depthin Sapphos world view,we are what is important,not some mythical figuresAphrodites purpose is to rescue us,not Paris,The Significance of Lyric Poetrybut
40、 even more important than this change in world view,lyric poets were clearly literateeven though they still recited their poetry in performanceno longer were poems composed spontaneously before an audience the way oral poets like Homer had done,The Significance of Lyric Poetrythis makes lyric poetry
41、 the beginning of true“literature”(i.e.written down in“letters”)literate poets can revise their work more easily and create a wider diversity of poetry most important of all,a literate poets work is more readily preserved than oral epicsassuming the poet is not censored!,Grammar Review 5:Parts of Speech,
