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This article discusses the relatively unknown poetry of Bessarion, the future Cardinal. The author argues with a negative opinion of F. M. Pontani concerning the three epicedia on the death of Theodora Comnena. The author analyses the composition, artistic means of expression and intertextual links in order to revise the common opinion in the subject and to prove the presence of literary values in the mentioned poems.
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Opet je Nobelovu nagradu za književnost dobio jedan pesnik nevelikog pesničkog obima: grčki pesnik Odisej Eliti ima, doduše, dosta naslova štampanih knjiga (biobibliografske podatke o njemu objavila su Polja u svom martovskom broju prošle godine), ali su to mahom sveščice od pedesetak strana, sa petnaestak do trideset pesama. Njegova najčuvenija knjiga iz 1959. godine, Hvaljeno jest (Axion esti) ima celih 88 strana, zbirka Pastorčad (1974), na primer, samo 14 pesama. Ta zbirka je i inače interesantna, jer se njen naslov odnosi na — pesme: u ovoj knjizi su, naime, štampane pesme koje su prethodno izostavljene iz drugih Elitijevih zbirki. Ova heterogena pesnička knjiga (iz koje donosimo pesmu Mozart: Romance) novog Nobelovca može da posluži i kao opomena nekim našim izdavačima koji od ponekog našeg pesnika danas zahtevaju da zbirka ponuđena za štampanje bude komponovana ne kao knjiga pesama već kao — poema. Eliti ima poverenja u pojedinačnu pesmu, ne tražeći nužno da ona bude samo deo mozaika pesničke (štampane) knjige, vraćajući se tako antičkoj tradiciji. Jer za većinu antičkih lirskih pesnika mi ne samo što ne znamo kako su im mogle izgledati pesničke knjige, već ne znamo često čak ni celu pesmu, pa se ipak već stolećima uživa i u tako krnjim i nepotpunim stihovima.
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The gods as dramatis personae were introduced into the stage of the ancientGreek theatre by the tragedians who kept, however, a distance between the gods and themen in their plays. That distance disappeared almost entirely in Old Comedy, where thegods were reduced to the position of men. The gods fell into dependence of terrestrials,sometimes they even allowed to be treated like slaves. It was possible to show the godsthis way because of the freedom of speech in Athens of that time, and becauseof anthropomorphic attitude of the Greeks towards their gods. Such gods wereintroduced by Aristophanes into the stage particularly in the following plays: in Peace,Birds, Frogs, and Plutus. Those plays were the source of material for the article.The author wanted to show in it mostly the characters and the acting of gods very muchsimilar to human beings, and at the same time departing from their divinity.
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O nama još uvek malo poznatom grčkom pesniku Tasosu Livaditisu (1922-1998) teško je progovoriti sa pouzdanošću punog razumevanja, pogotovo je teško impresije i prva saznanja iskazati sažetim i sintetičkim tekstom, budući da bi on morao navesti, i sabrati više dominantnih dimenzija ove poezije, što po sebi znači i više profila, koji se u ovog pesnika ukazuju kao podjednako verodostojni oblici njegovog poetskog pisma, i bića.
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The ars dictaminis is the medieval theory of letter-writing. The birth of the ars dictaminis is linked to the work of Alberic of Monte Cassino, a teacher and a significant figure in the history of medieval rhetoric. Alberic’s major contribution to the ars dictaminis is his application of rhetorical principles to letter-writing. Two of his works, Dictamina radii and Breviarium de dictamine, represent the first treatises in the area of the ars dictaminis. One of the early writers who set the basic patterns for the ars dictaminis was Adalbertus Samaritanus, who wrote Praecepta dictaminum between 1111. and 1118. The excerpt De epistolis of Iulius Victor, Roman rhetorician (IV century), had an influence on the development of the medieval epistolary theory, ars dictaminis.
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In ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, the Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy explains how the ruling class maintains its power within the context of meanings attributed to the Other, and tells how deeply the extinction of the Other shakes the current socio-political system. As an archetype for a great number of literary studies, this poem also inspires the Northern Irish poet Derek Mahon’s ‘Poem Beginning with a Line by Cavafy’. In this poem, Mahon examines the dilemma of the civilised-self by questioning the reigning Protestant obsession with Catholic presence. Grounded chiefly on the traces of ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ in ‘Poem Beginning with a Line by Cavafy’, this paper tells how the Protestants in Northern Ireland used Catholic presence politically to secure their sovereignty until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and how they transformed this perception of historical threat into a paranoia. The barbarians in both poems are practical scapegoats for the reigning order. Yet, unlike those Cavafy describes, Mahon’s barbarians live not beyond the borders, but together with the civilised-self, aping its lifestyle. The civilised-self perceives even this desire for levelling as a threat and gradually transforms into what it is frightened of, by positioning itself negatively against the Other. If Cavafy’s barbarians are a remedy for the decaying civilisation, Mahon’s barbarians are agents of the Protestant paranoia as well as an outcome of the culturally decayed society.
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The article focuses on female deities and demons appearing in ancient Greek tragedy. At the beginning the classification of female deities and demons is made followed by description of its two categories. The first category consists of deus ex machina characters exemplified by Athena from Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. The second is depicted in the image of Erynies that appear both in the action (Aeschylus’ Eumenides) and in commentaries (Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris).
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Following the suggestions of nineteenth-century linguists (Max Müller, 1838, Monier-Williams, 1898) the author, basing on the linguistic and mythological comparative analysis, shows that the Greek good Hermes can be related to the Vedic goddess Sarama. The article firstly gives on overview of the different conceptions regarding the etymology of the theonym “Hermes”. The most popular and probable of them is the one proposed by Martin P. Nilsson (1949), who connects it with the greek noun ἕρμα ‘prop, support, reef, rock under water’. Some difficulties, which this hypothesis has given rise to, show that the problem of etymology of the name Hermes is long standing and unsolved. Thereafter, the author proves that etymologies of Hermes and Sarama can connect to the same Indo-European root *ser-. Also the oldest Greek and Vedic literature, primarily Homer’s poems, Homeric Hymn to Hermes and Rigvedic Hymn X. 108, demonstrates numerous similarities between both deities.
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The paper presents literary and iconographic sources referring to the stories about the god Hermes,the divine son of Zeus and Maia, born on Mount Cyllene. In this study, we discuss two mainproblems. Firstly, we consider the surviving sources related to the epithet of this god and analysewhether these differ from those stories describing the place of birth and the first days of other Olympiangods. Secondly, we examine the fairy-tale elements reflected in these stories in order to determinewhether they were merely of science-fiction character or if they were created and transformedon the basis of the cult realities connected with the god Hermes.
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The article aims to present one of the possible interpretations of a unique noun ekchyton found in the epigram of Palladas of Alexandria AP IX 395. As its meaning seems at least doubtful, it makes the satisfactory translation and interpretation of the poem utterly unachievable. The problem may be solved, if we recognize the word ekchyton as a sociolect, which corresponds with another noun egchytos that is sufficiently attested in ancient Greek literature. The analysis of source texts lets us interpret the meaning of the word egchytos as a kind of elegant baking that consists of finely ground flour, a large amount of honey, eggs and cottage cheese or sour milk. Ekchyton, in that case, can be interpreted as ‘a honey cake with cheese’.
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We will be exploring the way in which, in the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, the primordial Saying, as unique word, God, signifies as trace in the face of the Other. If the manifestation of the Face is the first discourse, then the infinity that reveals itself in the Face implies that, in the relation to the Other, in the primordial addressing of the Other, language is not anymore a place of the meaning, but instead it is the meeting with the Other that sets the condition of possibility of any meaning, because this meeting is not a fact of the subject, but is primarily provoked by an appellation originating from the Highness. The relation between the original Saying and the Said that introduces the meaning is analogous to the irreversible translation of the Septuagint, being in a first time a translation of the unsayable, and secondly a call to responsibility. Greek is worked from the inside by the word of the Other, that is, the word of the Hebrew, and what gets translated into Greek is merely the trace of the Infinity. The translation is a movement without return, just like the voyage of Abraham who leaves behind his homeland and his possessions in order to follow the word of God.
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Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis received – due to Wilamowitz’ rebukes – some harsh criticism regarding its poetic unity, and the debate about this issue has not yet abated. In this study I would like to enter the discussion with a few new remarks. Firstly, I investigate the place of the hymn in the book of hymns and its relation to the other pieces. Then I try to determine the nature of cohesion by mapping its elements into some frame of unity. I will hereby develop a critical stance towards former influential views, above all the „developmental psychologic” interpretation. Finally, I will broaden the horizon by looking at the poem's historical context and tackling the untoward question of dating.
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This paper is dedicated to the volumes of essays Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel. Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet and Der König verneigt sich und tötet, which treat Müller’s reflections on her own style of writing. The paper analyses the author’s inspirations drawn from the stages of her real life, which she has turned into literary fiction by her special perception of the world. The essays that treat her writing offer a reader’s guide to the prose works, and deal with the aspects of the semantisation of space, spatialisation of time, and the transit status.
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The present paper is focused on Psellos’ letters, which contain a number of remarks on his role as a teacher of rhetoric and as a rhetor active at the imperial court, as well as many comments on his correspondents’ and his own style – including considerations on kinds and levels of style, Atticism and sophistry, and judgements on the great rhetorical models of the past. The examination of all these passages makes it possible to highlight the way Psellos constructs his own image as an expert in rhetoric, familiar with Hermogenean theories, but also heavily influenced by Dionysios of Halikarnassos’ aesthetic conceptions. The great diversity of models with whom he identifies testifies to his stylistic versatility and his frequent adoption of a polemical stance can be read as a claim to independence of mind and originality.
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Michael Psellos’ Chronographia as Oral Prose. Until now only Herbert Hunger and Warren Treadgold had pointed out that Michael Psellos has his Chronographia not written by his own hand but dictated to a professional scribe. Therefore also the structure of this work clearly has an oral character: many references back and forward, transition formulas, dialogues instead of orations. All this corresponds to its almost entirely oral sources and its aural reception. Psellos thinks of the recipients of the Chronographia not als readers but as listeners, may it be in a public θέατρον or privately, of course always read out loudly.
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Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke (1939–2020) is one of Greece’s leading female poetic voices with a work that spans over thirty years. She was also a linguist and an acclaimed translator. Her work is widely read in Greece and it has also received official recognition: it has been awarded the Greek National Poetry Prize in 1985 and the Greek Academy’s Poetry Prize in 2000. The body, myth and nature but above all language and its ability to convey emotions and experiences are central features of her poetry. This essay discusses Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke’s poetics with reference to her revision of the character of Penelope in three seminal poems. Her original reworking of the myth shows her knowledge of feminist discourse such as the writing of Adrienne Rich and Hélène Cixous. Above all, it reveals that she was a careful poet-reader. I discuss her affinities with Elisaveta Bagryana’s ‘Penelope of the 20th Century’ (1934) and, perhaps surprisingly, her dialogue with Wallace Stevens’ brilliant poem ‘The World as Meditation’ (1952). The essay also addresses the wider question of the use of ancient Greek myth in feminist writing and by women poets in Greece.
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The tragedy dedicated to Heracles’ lethal insanity stands out within Euripides’ preserved opus for its special divine influence on dramatic fictionality, as well as for its explicit and diverse theological discourse which interweaves the ambivalent relationship of poetry and philosophy in the late classical age of Athenian culture. Both the phenomenon of divine action in the world of mortals and the phenomenon of divine existence itself are thus passed through different prisms and announced in different lights. The complex intertwining of the perceptive and amorphous epiphany begins with the appearance of a divine messenger Iris and the goddess of insanity, Lyssa, in heaven, functioning as dei ex machina in the center of the plot, and has no parallel in the great tragediographer’s work. The unusual dramaturgical process branches out when the goddess of insanity enters the inside of Heracles’ being in order to act from it as a deity from the depths, dea ex profundis, whereby all the hero’s crimes become her amorphous epiphanies. In a hermeneutic effort, through a palimpsestic reading of a number of ancient texts, the paper explores the complex vision of the divine that Euripides exudes in Heracles and its importance for the universe of this tragedy as well as for the tragic phenomenon in general.
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Poezia lui Odysseas Elytis (1911-1996) propune o viziune mitologică modernă asupra Greciei păgâne și creștine, prelucrând Antichitatea, Bizanțul și Elenismul și construind o cosmografie poetică. Autorului i s-a acordat Premiul Nobel, în 1979, tocmai întrucât poezia lui are sens cosmologic, miza creatoare și artistică fiind aceea că întreaga lume ar putea fi o Grecie hibridă, multicefalică.
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