The Alcaic stanza is a
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
lyrical meter
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
, an
Aeolic verse
Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed in their native Aeolic dialect. These verse forms we ...
form traditionally believed to have been invented by
Alcaeus, a lyric
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...
from Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, about 600 BC.
The Alcaic stanza and the
Sapphic stanza
The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form of four lines. Originally composed in quantitative verse and unrhymed, since the Middle Ages imitations of the form typically feature rhyme and accentual prosody. It is "the longes ...
named for Alcaeus' contemporary,
Sappho, are two important forms of Classical poetry. The Alcaic stanza consists of two Alcaic
hendecasyllable
In poetry, a hendecasyllable (sometimes hendecasyllabic) is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical (Ancient Greek and Latin) poetry, and ...
s, followed by an Alcaic enneasyllable and an Alcaic decasyllable.
In Sappho's and Alcaeus' poetry
The Alcaic stanza as used by Sappho and Alcaeus has the scheme ( where "–" is a
longum, "u" a
breve
A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in S ...
, and "×" an
anceps
In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps (plural ''ancipitia'' or ''(syllabae) ancipites'') is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either ...
):
× – u – × – u u – u – , , (alc
11)
× – u – × – u u – u – , , (alc
11)
× – u – × – u – – , , (alc
9 )
– u u – u u – u – – , , , (alc
10)
In Latin poetry
One
stanza consists of four lines; the first two lines are divided into two parts by a
caesura after the fifth syllable. The metrical pattern of an Alcaic stanza would look like this:
– – u – – : – u u – u –
– – u – – : – u u – u –
– – u – – – u – –
– u u – u u – u – –
(An "–" denotes a long syllable, "u" a short one, and ":" is the caesura.)
Horace frequently used the Alcaic stanza in his
Odes
Odes may refer to:
*The plural of ode, a type of poem
* ''Odes'' (Horace), a collection of poems by the Roman author Horace, circa 23 BCE
*Odes of Solomon, a pseudepigraphic book of the Bible
*Book of Odes (Bible), a Deuterocanonical book of the ...
, as can be seen from this example :
– – u – – – u u – u –
Antehac nefas, depromere Caecubum
– – u – – : – u u – u–
cellis avitis, dum Capitolio
– – u – – – u– –
Regina dementis ruinas
– u u – u u– u – –
funus et Imperio parabat. (''Odes'' 1.37, lines 5-8)
An English translation, which suggests the metre, is :
–– u – – : – u u – u –
Prior to this, 'twas , irreligious to waste
– – u – – : – u u – u –
Old Caecuban wine , whilst, for the Capitol
– –u – – – u – –
Mad ruination plots the Queen, and
– u u – u u – u – –
Even a funeral for the Empire.
Imitations in other languages
A famous example of English Alcaics is
Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
's "Milton":
O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages!
The Alcaic stanza was adapted to use in English and French during the Renaissance. It was very frequently used in Italian poetry of the 19th century, especially by
Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Alessandro Giuseppe Carducci (; 27 July 1835 – 16 February 1907) was an Italian poet, writer, literary critic and teacher. He was very noticeably influential, and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906, h ...
. As in English, the meter is accentual rather than quantitative.
Poi che un sereno vapor d’ambrosia
da la tua còppa diffuso avvolsemi,
o Ebe con passo di dea
trasvolata sorridendo via;
::(Giosuè Carducci, "Ideale", from: ''Odi barbare'')
It was an historically important form in Hungarian poetry. In Polish poetry (in contrast to the
Sapphic stanza
The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form of four lines. Originally composed in quantitative verse and unrhymed, since the Middle Ages imitations of the form typically feature rhyme and accentual prosody. It is "the longes ...
which was extremely popular since the 16th century) Alcaics were used very rarely. Even in translation
Horace's Alcaic stanzas were usually turned into different forms. An example (perhaps the only) of an Alcaic stanza in Polish original literature is Stanisław Trembecki's ''Ode to Adam Naruszewicz'':
[Adam Ważyk, Mickiewicz i wersyfikacja narodowa, Warszawa 1951 (in Polish).]
O ty, kapłanie Delijskiego świętny,
Przeszłego wiadom, przyszłości pojętny
Wieńcz twe skronie, wieszczą bierz laskę,
Śnieżny ubiór i złotą przepaskę.
Trembecki's verse is syllabic (11/11/9/10). There is no accentual metrical pattern.
German has also used alcaics with some success. They were introduced by
Klopstock, and used by
Hölderlin, by
Johann Heinrich Voss
Johann Heinrich Voss (german: Johann Heinrich Voß, ; 20 February 1751 – 29 March 1826) was a German classicist and poet, known mostly for his translation of Homer's ''Odyssey'' (1781) and ''Iliad'' (1793) into German.
Life
Voss was born at S ...
in his translations of Horace, by
August Kopisch and other 19th century German poets.
A notable example of old Alcaic stanza is found in
Miquel Costa i Llobera
Miquel Costa i Llobera (born 10 March 1854 in Pollença, Spain; deceased 16 October 1922 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain), was a Spanish poet from Majorca, who mainly wrote in Catalan language. He is regarded as a prominent figure of Catalan poetry ...
's book "Horacianes", written in Catalan:
Cel i mar lluen blavors diàfanes
en competència. L'oreig anima-s'hi,
i jugant amb les ones qui juguen,
rompre les fa com en rialla fresca.
Notes
{{reflist
Stanzaic form