If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.
A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb.
Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains Within the sound of silence.
Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up. Hans Christian Andersen
"Send lawyers, guns and money..." -- Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song
`O' LEVEL COUNTER CULTURE Timewarp allowed: 3 hours. Do not scrawl situationalist graffiti in the margins or stub your rollups in the inkwells. Orange may be worn. Credit will be given to candidates who self-actualise. (1) Compare and contrast Pink Floyd with Black Sabbath and say why neither has street credibility. (2) "Even Buddha would have been hard pushed to reach Nirvana squatting on a juggernaut route." Consider the dialectic of inner truth and inner city. (3) Discuss degree of hassle involved in paranoia about being sucked into a black hole. (4) "The Egomaniac's Liberation Front were a bunch of revisionist ripoff merchants." Comment on this insult. (5) Account for the lack of references to brown rice in Dylan's lyrics. (6) "Castenada was a bit of a bozo." How far is this a fair summing up of western dualism? (7) Hermann Hesse was a Pisces. Discuss.
Around the turn of this century, a composer named Camille Saint-Saens wrote a satirical zoological-fantasy called "Le Carnaval des Animaux." Aside from one movement of this piece, "The Swan", Saint-Saens didn't allow this work to be published or even performed until a year had elapsed after his death. (He died in 1921.) Most of us know the "Swan" movement rather well, with its smooth, flowing cello melody against a calm background; but I've been having this fantasy... What if he had written this piece with lyrics, as a song to be sung? And, further, what if he had accompanied this song with a musical saw? (This instrument really does exist, often played by percussionists!) Then the piece would be better known as: SAINT-SAENS' SAW SONG "SWAN"!
Gabriele d' Annunzio has produced original work in poetry, drama and fiction, of extraordinary quality. He began with some lyrics which were distinguished no less by their exquisite beauty of form than by their licence, and these characteristics reappeared in a long series of poems, plays and novels. D' Annunzio's position as a man of the widest literary and artistic culture is undeniable, and even his sternest critics admit his mastery of the Italian tongue, based on a thorough knowledge of Italian literature from the earliest times. But with all his genius, his thought is unhealthy and his pessimism depressing; the beauty of his work is the beauty of decadence. Entry: 7
COLLÉ, CHARLES (1709-1783), French dramatist and song-writer, the son of a notary, was born at Paris in 1709. He was early interested in the rhymes of Jean Heguanier, then the most famous maker of couplets in Paris. From a notary's office Collé was transferred to that of M. de Neulan, the receiver-general of finance, and remained there for nearly twenty years. When about seventeen, however, he made the acquaintance of Alexis Piron, and afterwards, through Gallet (d. 1757), of Panard. The example of these three masters of the vaudeville, while determining his vocation, made him diffident; and for some time he composed nothing but _amphigouris_--verses whose merit was measured by their unintelligibility. The friendship of the younger Crébillon, however, diverted him from this by-way of art, and the establishment in 1729 of the famous "Caveau" gave him a field for the display of his fine talent for popular song. In 1739 the Society of the Caveau, which numbered among its members Helvétius, Charles Duclos, Pierre Joseph Bernard, called Gentil-Bernard, Jean Philippe Rameau, Alexis Piron, and the two Crébillons, was dissolved, and was not reconstituted till twenty years afterwards. His first and his best comedy, _La Vérité dans le vin_, appeared in 1747. Meanwhile, the Regent Orleans, who was an excellent comic actor, particularly in representations of low life, and had been looking out for an author to write suitable parts for him, made Collé his reader. It was for the duke and his associates that Collé composed the greater part of his _Théâtre de société_. In 1763 Collé produced at the Théâtre Français _Dupuis et Desronais_, a successful sentimental comedy, which was followed in 1771 by _La Veuve_, which was a complete failure. In 1774 appeared _La Partie de chasse de Henri Quatre_ (partly taken from Dodsley's _King and the Miller of Mansfield_), Collé's last and best play. From 1748 to 1772, besides these and a multitude of songs, Collé was writing his _Journal_, a curious collection of literary and personal strictures on his boon companions as well as on their enemies, on Piron as on Voltaire, on La Harpe as on Corneille. Collé died on the 3rd of November 1783. His lyrics are frank and jovial, though often licentious. The subjects are love and wine; occasionally, however, as in the famous lyric (1756) on the capture of Port Mahon, for which the author received a pension of 600 livres, the note of patriotism is struck with no unskilful hand, while in many others Collé shows himself possessed of considerable epigrammatic force. Entry: COLLÉ
In Keats's first book there was little foretaste of anything greatly or even genuinely good; but between the marshy and sandy flats of sterile or futile verse there were undoubtedly some few purple patches of floral promise. The style was frequently detestable--a mixture of sham Spenserian and mock Wordsworthian, alternately florid and arid. His second book, _Endymion_, rises in its best passages to the highest level of Barnfield and of Lodge, the two previous poets with whom, had he published nothing more, he might most properly have been classed; and this, among minor minstrels, is no unenviable place. His third book raised him at once to a foremost rank in the highest class of English poets. Shelley, up to twenty, had written little or nothing that would have done credit to a boy of ten; and of Keats also it may be said that the merit of his work at twenty-five was hardly by comparison more wonderful than its demerit at twenty-two. His first book fell as flat as it deserved to fall; the reception of his second, though less considerate than on the whole it deserved, was not more contemptuous than that of immeasurably better books published about the same time by Coleridge, Landor and Shelley. A critic of exceptional carefulness and candour might have noted in the first book so singular an example of a stork among the cranes as the famous and notable sonnet on Chapman's Homer; a just judge would have indicated, a partial advocate might have exaggerated, the value of such golden grain amid a garish harvest of tares as the hymn to Pan and the translation into verse of Titian's Bacchanal which glorify the weedy wilderness of _Endymion_. But the hardest thing said of that poem by the _Quarterly_ reviewer was unconsciously echoed by the future author of _Adonais_--that it was all but absolutely impossible to read through; and the obscener insolence of the "Blackguard's Magazine," as Landor afterwards very justly labelled it, is explicable though certainly not excusable if we glance back at such a passage as that where Endymion exchanges fulsome and liquorish endearments with the "known unknown _from whom his being sips such darling (!) essence_." Such nauseous and pitiful phrases as these, and certain passages in his correspondence, make us understand the source of the most offensive imputations or insinuations levelled against the writer's manhood; and, while admitting that neither his love-letters, nor the last piteous outcries of his wailing and shrieking agony, would ever have been made public by merciful or respectful editors, we must also admit that, if they ought never to have been published, it is no less certain that they ought never to have been written; that a manful kind of man or even a manly sort of boy, in his love-making or in his suffering, will not howl and snivel after such a lamentable fashion. One thing hitherto inexplicable a very slight and rapid glance at his amatory correspondence will amply suffice to explain: how it came to pass that the woman so passionately beloved by so great a poet should have thought it the hopeless attempt of a mistaken kindness to revive the memory of a man for whom the best that could be wished was complete and compassionate oblivion. For the side of the man's nature presented to her inspection, this probably was all that charity or reason could have desired. But that there was a finer side to the man, even if considered apart from the poet, his correspondence with his friends and their general evidence to his character give more sufficient proof than perhaps we might have derived from the general impression left on us by his works; though indeed the preface to _Endymion_ itself, however illogical in its obviously implied suggestion that the poem published was undeniably unworthy of publication, gave proof or hint at least that after all its author was something of a man. And the eighteenth of his letters to Miss Brawne stands out in bright and brave contrast with such as seem incompatible with the traditions of his character on its manlier side. But if it must be said that he lived long enough only to give promise of being a man, it must also be said that he lived long enough to give assurance of being a poet who was not born to come short of the first rank. Not even a hint of such a probability could have been gathered from his first or even from his second appearance; after the publication of his third volume it was no longer a matter of possible debate among judges of tolerable competence that this improbability had become a certainty. Two or three phrases cancelled, two or three lines erased, would have left us in _Lamia_ one of the most faultless as surely as one of the most glorious jewels in the crown of English poetry. _Isabella_, feeble and awkward in narrative to a degree almost incredible in a student of Dryden and a pupil of Leigh Hunt, is overcharged with episodical effects of splendid and pathetic expression beyond the reach of either. _The Eve of St Agnes_, aiming at no doubtful success, succeeds in evading all casual difficulty in the line of narrative; with no shadow of pretence to such interest as may be derived from stress of incident or depth of sentiment, it stands out among all other famous poems as a perfect and unsurpassable study in pure colour and clear melody--a study in which the figure of Madeline brings back upon the mind's eye, if only as moonlight recalls a sense of sunshine, the nuptial picture of Marlowe's Hero and the sleeping presence of Shakespeare's Imogen. Beside this poem should always be placed the less famous but not less precious _Eve of St Mark_, a fragment unexcelled for the simple perfection of its perfect simplicity, exquisite alike in suggestion and in accomplishment. The triumph of _Hyperion_ is as nearly complete as the failure of _Endymion_; yet Keats never gave such proof of a manly devotion and rational sense of duty to his art as in his resolution to leave this great poem unfinished; not, as we may gather from his correspondence on the subject, for the pitiful reason assigned by his publishers, that of discouragement at the reception given to his former work, but on the solid and reasonable ground that a Miltonic study had something in its very scheme and nature too artificial, too studious of a foreign influence, to be carried on and carried out at such length as was implied by his original design. Fortified and purified as it had been on a first revision, when much introductory allegory and much tentative effusion of sonorous and superfluous verse had been rigorously clipped down or pruned away, it could not long have retained spirit enough to support or inform the shadowy body of a subject so little charged with tangible significance. The faculty of assimilation as distinguished from imitation, than which there can be no surer or stronger sign of strong and sure original genius, is not more evident in the most Miltonic passages of the revised _Hyperion_ than in the more Shakespearian passages of the unrevised tragedy which no radical correction could have left other than radically incorrigible. It is no conventional exaggeration, no hyperbolical phrase of flattery with more sound than sense in it, to say that in this chaotic and puerile play of _Otho the Great_ there are such verses as Shakespeare might not without pride have signed at the age when he wrote and even at the age when he rewrote the tragedy of _Romeo and Juliet_. The dramatic fragment of _King Stephen_ shows far more power of hand and gives far more promise of success than does that of Shelley's _Charles the First_. Yet we cannot say with any confidence that even this far from extravagant promise would certainly or probably have been kept; it is certain only that Keats in these attempts did at least succeed in showing a possibility of future excellence as a tragic or at least a romantic dramatist. In every other line of high and serious poetry his triumph was actual and consummate; here only was it no more than potential or incomplete. As a ballad of the more lyrical order, _La Belle dame sans merci_ is not less absolutely excellent, less triumphantly perfect in force and clearness of impression, that as a narrative poem is _Lamia_. In his lines on Robin Hood, and in one or two other less noticeable studies of the kind, he has shown thorough and easy mastery of the beautiful metre inherited by Fletcher from Barnfield and by Milton from Fletcher. The simple force of spirit and style which distinguishes the genuine ballad manner from all spurious attempts at an artificial simplicity was once more at least achieved in his verses on the crowning creation of Scott's humaner and manlier genius--Meg Merrilies. No little injustice has been done to Keats by such devotees as fix their mind's eye only on the more salient and distinctive notes of a genius which in fact was very much more various and tentative, less limited and peculiar, than would be inferred from an exclusive study of his more specially characteristic work. But within the limits of that work must we look of course for the genuine credentials of his fame; and highest among them we must rate his unequalled and unrivalled odes. Of these perhaps the two nearest to absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that to Autumn and that on a Grecian Urn; the most radiant, fervent and musical is that to a Nightingale; the most pictorial and perhaps the tenderest in its ardour of passionate fancy is that to Psyche; the subtlest in sweetness of thought and feeling is that on Melancholy. Greater lyrical poetry the world may have seen than any that is in these; lovelier it surely has never seen, nor ever can it possibly see. From the divine fragment of an unfinished ode to Maia we can but guess that if completed it would have been worthy of a place beside the highest. His remaining lyrics have many beauties about them, but none perhaps can be called thoroughly beautiful. He has certainly left us one perfect sonnet of the first rank and as certainly he has left us but one. Entry: KEATS
The next five years he spent in Italy and at Vienna, tormented by facial neuralgia. Returning to Weimar in 1850, he was made a chamberlain by the grand-duke, and in 1852, his health being now somewhat restored, he entered the Prussian diplomatic service and went as attaché to Rome. The fruit of his long years of illness was a slender volume of lyrics, _Gedichte_ (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1851), good in form, but seldom inspired, and showing occasionally the influence of a morbid sensuality. In 1854 he was appointed secretary of legation; but the aggressive ultramontanism of the Curia became increasingly intolerable to his overwrought nature, and in 1856 he was transferred, at his own request, as secretary of legation to Dresden. This post he resigned in 1859, in which year he was raised to the rank of _Freiherr_ (baron). In 1866 he received the title of councillor of legation; but he never again occupied any diplomatic post. Entry: _A
His _Canzoniere_ is divided into three parts--the first containing the poems written during Laura's lifetime, the second the poems written after her death, the third the _Trionfi_. The one and only subject of these poems is love; but the treatment is full of variety in conception, in imagery and in sentiment, derived from the most varied impressions of nature. Petrarch's love is real and deep, and to this is due the merit of his lyric verse, which is quite different, not only from that of the Provençal troubadours and of the Italian poets before him, but also from the lyrics of Dante. Petrarch is a psychological poet, who dives down into his own soul, examines all his feelings, and knows how to render them with an art of exquisite sweetness. The lyrics of Petrarch are no longer transcendental like Dante's, but on the contrary keep entirely within human limits. In struggles, in doubts, in fears, in disappointments, in griefs, in joys, in fact in everything, the poet finds material for his poetry. The second part of the _Canzoniere_ is the more passionate. The _Trionfi_ are inferior; it is clear that in them Petrarch tried to imitate the _Divina Commedia_, but never came near it. The _Canzoniere_ includes also a few political poems--a canzone to Italy, one supposed to be addressed to Cola di Rienzi and several sonnets against the court of Avignon. These are remarkable for their vigour of feeling, and also for showing that Petrarch had formed the idea of _Italianità_ better even than Alighieri. The Italy which he wooed was different from any conceived by the men of the middle ages, and in this also he was a precursor of modern times and of modern aspirations. Petrarch had no decided political idea. He exalted Cola di Rienzi, invoked the emperor Charles IV., praised the Visconti; in fact, his politics were affected more by impressions than by principles; but above all this reigned constantly the love of Italy, his ancient and glorious country, which in his mind is reunited with Rome, the great city of his heroes Cicero and Scipio. Entry: 2
The melancholy state of the country consequent upon the persecutions of Rudolph I., Ferdinand II. and Leopold I., as also the continual encroachment of Germanizing influences under the Habsburgs, were unfavourable to the development of the national literature during the next literary period, dating from the Peace of Vienna (1606) to that of Szatmár (1711). A few names were, however, distinguished in theology, philology and poetry. In 1626 a Hungarian version of the Vulgate was published at Vienna by the Jesuit George Káldi,[72] and another complete translation of the Scriptures, the so-called _Komáromi Biblia_ (Komorn Bible) was made in 1685 by the Protestant George Csipkés, though it was not published till 1717 at Leiden, twenty-nine years after his death.[73] On behalf of the Catholics the Jesuit Peter Pázmán, eventually primate, Nicholas Eszterházy, Sámbár, Balásfi and others were the authors of various works of a polemical nature. Especially famous was the _Hodaegus, kalauz_ of Pázmán, which first appeared at Pozsony (Pressburg) in 1613. Among the Protestants who exerted themselves in theological and controversial writings were Németi, Alvinczy, Alexander Felvinczy, Mártonfalvi and Melotai, who was attached to the court of Bethlen Gábor. Telkibányai wrote on "English Puritanism" (1654). The Calvinist Albert Molnár, already mentioned, was more remarkable for his philological than for his theological labours. Párispápai compiled an Hungarian-Latin Dictionary, _Dictionarium magyar és deák nyelven_ (Löcse, 1708), and Apáczai-Csere, a _Magyar Encyclopaedia_ (Utrecht, 1653). John Szalárdi, Paul Lisznyai, Gregory Pethö, John Kemény and Benjamin Szilágyi, which last, however, wrote in Latin, were the authors of various historical works. In polite literature the heroic poem _Zrinyiász_ (1651), descriptive of the fall of Sziget, by Nicholas Zrinyi, grandson of the defender of that fortress, marks a new era in Hungarian poetry. Of a far inferior character was the monotonous _Mohácsi veszedelem_ (Disaster of Mohács), in 13 cantos, produced two years afterwards at Vienna by Baron Liszti. The lyric and epic poems of Stephen Gyöngyösi, who sang the deeds of Maria Széchy, the heroine of Murány, _Murányi Venus_ (Kassa, 1664), are samples rather of a general improvement in the style than of the purity of the language. As a didactic and elegiac poet Stephen Kohári is much esteemed. More fluent but not less gloomy are the sacred lyrics of Nyéki-Veres first published in 1636 under the Latin title of _Tintinnabulum Tripudiantium_. The songs and proverbs of Peter Beniczky, who lived in the early part o£ the 17th century, are not without merit, and have been several times reprinted. From the appearance of the first extant printed Magyar work[74] at Cracow in 1531 to the end of the period just treated, more than 1800 publications in the native language are known.[75] Entry: IV
The sustained popularity of the Don Juan legend is undoubtedly due in great measure to Mozart's incomparable setting of Da Ponte's mediocre libretto. In this pale version of _El Burlador de Sevilla_ the French romantic school made acquaintance with Don Juan, and hence, no doubt, the works of Mérimée and Dumas already mentioned, Balzac's _Élexir d'une longue vie_, and Alfred de Musset's _Une Matinée de Don Juan_ and _Namouna_. The legend has been treated subsequently by Flaubert and Barbey d'Aurevilly in France, by Landau and Heyse in Germany, and by Sacher-Masoch in Austria. It has always fascinated composers. Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ has annihilated the earlier operas of Le Tellier, Righini, Tritto, Gardi and Gazzaniga; but Gluck's ballet-music still survives, and Henry Purcell's setting--the oldest of all--has saved some of Shadwell's insipid lyrics from oblivion. Entry: DON
Many of the best poets of modern Greece have written in the vernacular, which is best adapted for the natural and spontaneous expression of the feelings. Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857), the greatest of them all, employed the dialect of the Ionian Islands. Of his lyrics, which are full of poetic fire and inspiration, the most celebrated is his "Ode to Liberty." Other poets, of what may be described as the Ionic school, such as Andreas Kalvos (1796-1869), Julius Typaldos (1814-1883), John Zampelios (1787-1856), and Gerasimos Markoras (b. 1826), followed his example in using the Heptanesian dialect. On the other hand, Georgios Terzetes (1806-1874), Aristotle Valaorites (1824-1879) and Gerasimos Mavrogiannes, though natives of the Ionian Islands, adopted in their lyrics the language of the Klephtic ballads--in other words, the vernacular of the Pindus range and the mountainous district of Epirus. This dialect had at least the advantage of being generally current throughout the mainland, while it derived distinction from the heroic exploits of the champions of Greek liberty. The poems of Valaorites, which are characterized by vivid imagination and grace of style, have made a deep impression on the nation. Other poets who largely employed the Epirotic dialect and drew their inspiration from the Klephtic songs were John Vilaras (1771-1823), George Zalokostas (1805-1857) in his lyric pieces, and Theodore Aphentoules, a Cretan (d. 1893). With the poems of this group may be classed those of Demetrius Bikelas (b. 1835). The popular language has been generally adopted by the younger generation of poets, among whom may be mentioned Aristomenes Probelegios (b. 1850), George Bizyenos (1853-1896), George Drosines, Kostes Palamas (b. 1859), John Polemes, Argyres Ephthaliotes, and Jacob Polylas (d. 1896). Entry: A