Elegy

Elegíaby William Adolphe Bouguereau (1899).

In modern times, elegy is a subgenre of lyric poetry that designates a lamentation poem. The elegiac attitude consists of lamenting anything that is lost: illusion, life, time, a loved one, a feeling, etc. In Greco-Roman Antiquity, however, the elegiac verse referred exclusively to the type of meter used, the so-called elegiac couplet. The funeral elegy (also called a dirge or planto in the Middle Ages) takes the form of a mourning poem for the death of a public figure or a loved one, and should not be confused with the epitaph or epicedium, which are ingenious and lapidaries that were engraved on funerary monuments, more closely related to the epigram, another lyrical genre.

Etymology

The term elegy comes from the masculine noun (έλεγος "élegos") which designates a mourning song accompanied by a flute or (more rarely) lyre. two other nouns: a) n. ἐλεγεῖον ("élegeíon" elegiac couplet), often used in the plural; b) f. ἐλεγεία ("élegeía" elegy).

Elegy in Greek Literature

In Greek literature, the criteria that defined the elegy was formal: the poem composed in elegiac meter was considered an elegy, a type of couplet that alternates a hexameter with a dactylic pentameter.

It is likely that, originally, the elegiac verse was exclusively a mournful theme. In the archaic period (VII-VI BC) the elegiac couplet is frequently used in other types of solemn themes, often in long poems: funeral songs, or to the homeland (Solon), with a war theme (Arquiloco, Calino, Tirteo, etc.), and others, including what we would currently call elegiac poems (Mimnermo, etc.). Since the end of the s. I SAW C., its use extends to symposiacal themes (Teognis, Xenophanes, Dionisio Calco), and it becomes so frequent in funerary epigraphic dedications that sometimes elegy becomes synonymous with funerary inscription in couplets.

In its beginnings the elegiac couplet must always have been sung with flute and/or lyre accompaniment. This accompaniment, especially with the flute, must have been mandatory at least until the beginning of the s. I SAW C. (the lyre would be more closely associated with iambic poetry).

Originally, the dialect of the elegy was Ionian, and the genre must have developed among the Ionians as did hexametric poetry. In the s. VIII, which is from when the first examples are dated (Arquiloco, Callino and Tirteo), the genus had spread to mainland Greece. Over time it became the most widespread genre, and the only one practiced by many poets.

Elegy in Latin literature

Elegy was introduced into Latin poetry by Ennio. Although this poetic form was sometimes put at the service of an elegiac theme in the modern sense of the word, in general it was associated with love themes, with the Latin elegiac poets Tibullus and Propertius being examples of eminently erotic poets. Ovid's early elegiac works, such as Amores, also fall into this field, although his mature collections of poems, such as Sad and Pontic, they offer elegies that satisfy the modern criterion of the genre, since they are lamentation poems for their forced exile from Rome.

Elegy in Hispanic literature

The concept of elegiac poetry adopted by the Spanish poets of the Renaissance is that of Italian Neo-Latin poetry, not that of the Greek tradition: that is, elegiac poetry is understood as certain types of sequences of love poetry. Spanish poetry It has several classics of the genre, among which the Coplas for the death of his father by Jorge Manrique, from the XV. The elegy genre itself would develop from the XVI century, when Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega adapted for use the chained trio or Dantesque trio, imported through Petrarchan poetry. Since then, the triplet would replace the Latin couplet as a lyrical mold for crying. Crying for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías by Federico García Lorca and the Elegy for Ramón Sijé by Miguel Hernández, included in his book El rayo que no cesa, are two modern classics of this type of funeral lament.

Other lesser-known works in the genre include the following:

• Uninterrupted choice (Octavio Paz).
• Oda a Federico García Lorca (Pablo Neruda)[1]
• Rusticatio Mexicana (Rafael Landívar).
• Choice of impossible memory (Jorge Luis Borges)
• Something about the death of Major Sabines (Jaime Sabines)
• Bulletin and election of myths (César Dávila Andrade)
• He chose Atahualpa's death (Jacinto Collahuazo) [2]
• I chose Juana la Loca (Federico García Lorca).
• I chose to die Guatimocín, my father, alias the Globe (Caupolicán Ovalles)
• Autoelegias (Luis Perozo Cervantes)

In music

An elegy (French: élégie) can denote a type of musical work, usually sad or somber in nature. A well-known example is that of Jules Massenet's Élégie, Op. 10. Originally written for piano, as a student work, he later wrote it as a song and finally appeared as the 'Invocation', for cello and orchestra, a section of his incidental music to Les Érinnyes from Leconte de Lisle. Other examples include Edward Elgar's Elegy Op. 58, Gabriel Fauré's Élégie, and Benjamin Britten's Elegy for Strings. Although not specifically designated as an elegy, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings is elegiac in character.

Maurice Ravel, in his piano work Le Tombeau de Couperin, the French word tombeau, which literally translates as "tomb", is refers in the French context to an elegy in memory of someone notable.