Quote:
Originally Posted by David Anthony
Quote:
Originally Posted by Allen Tice
HOUSMAN XXVI (not the Greek Anthology, by the way, small point)
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Here's the better and more concise original he nicked it from:
Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow,
The small raine down can raine.
Cryst, if my love were in my armes
And I in my bedde again!
(Anon)
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Exactly, although (great Latinist and often stunning poet that he was), Housman beams a sidelong glance at the
Hellenistic Greek
Anonymous : PMG 976 (here).
I actually prefer the other Housman quotes I gave, and I think Housman wanted to blend yours and PMG 976, but didn't succeed as well as he might have. I like the item for other reasons that chiefly relate to PMG 976 (also Anon).
If you go to the link I gave, and then click on the letters at the upper left
About Allen Tice, and
then scroll down to the heading
'Poetae Melici Graeci 976 ("deduke"...), you will find a discussion of this very much abused text, which is NOT in Aeolic 5th Century Greek. (Even the additional Greek letter 'nu' that is supposed to clinch the pro-Aeolic argument is entered above the line as an afterthought.)
Yet if it were Aeolic, it wouldn't one be whit better, because it is a gem!
Is authorship irrelevant?
If I put the words of Stephen Sondheim over the name William Shakespeare, who cares, right?
Quality is quality is quality.
There are several reasons, metrical and linguistic, why it is not Aeolic....
finally,
beyond the actual text fragment, its style is more like, let's say, a Julie London torch than anything else. There is no actual evidence, not a shred, that it is anything other than a late production made to very high stands indeed, for commercial use in a nightclub for merchants and sailors some time before the Maccabees of Biblical fame to the east, and rather later than Plato also. It was preserved because it was very good, nothing more.
Enough about PMG 976 and all that.
- Allen