Epigram

The book Quodlibets by Robert Hayman, 1628, devotes much of his text to the epigrams.

The epigram (from Ancient Greek ἐπί-γραφὼ: literally, 'to overwrite' or 'to write on') is a short poetic composition that expresses a single festive or satirical main thought in a witty way.

History and characteristics

The roots of the genre can be traced back to archaic lyric, not for nothing does Meleager include Archilochus and Semonides of Amorgos in his Crown or Garland, although it is more appropriate to speak of the epigram as a purely Hellenistic genre, since it characterizes that period both by its content and by its extension and by its form. The Hellenistic epigrams constitute a true melting pot of those societies, we see heterosexuals, sailors, carpenters, weavers parade with their simple and arduous life, also heterosexual and lesbian love, parties, religiousness, courtship, sexuality, innocence, the plastic arts, literary criticism, even pets; all this, passed through the filter of erudition and culture (because poets were carriers of such). In short, they produce diverse, beautiful and very vivid testimonies of the main concerns of Hellenistic man.

The epigram was created in classical Greece and, as its name indicates in Greek, it was an inscription that was placed on an object, which could be an ex-voto, a gift (xenion), a statue or a tomb; the epigrams on the tombs formed a separate class and were called epitaphs or, if they were only sung, epicedia, for which reason the word came to designate the ingenious poem that had the quality of being brief to be able to pass as a label or inscription. Most of the Greek epigrams can be found in the so-called Palatine Anthology, Planudes Anthology and Céphalas Anthology.

They have between two and twelve verses in elegiac couplets, but the normal thing is two or four verses, between one and two couplets. The longest epigram runs to twenty-eight, and was the work of a late Byzantine poet, Agathias. In its early days, the epigram was not necessarily geared toward a witty ending. But this ending was being requested more and more until it already characterized the genre in the days of the Hispano-Roman Martial.

Due to its length, the epigram is forced to expressive concentration, to conciseness and density, to a pregnant and allusive language. correlative accumulation, anaphora, amplification, antithesis, emphasis, epanadiplosis, parallelism, chiasmus, hyperbole, etc. abound. This extreme formal elaboration even reached isopsophy in a late period, with which the number of letters was even calculated.

After the Greeks, the Romans stood out in the composition of epigrams, particularly Catullus and Marcus Valerius Martial.

In his Poetices libri septem (Lyon, 1561), the humanist Giulio Cesare Scaligero defines the epigram as:

Poema breve cum simplici cuiuspiam rei, vel personae, vel factis indicatione; aut ex propositis aliquid deducens.

(III, 126)

And he establishes two definitive characteristics for him: «brevĭtas et argutĭa» (brevity and subtlety). In Spanish Baroque literature, the epigram was widely used as it was an appropriate form for the courtly display of ingenuity. The Baroque conceptist writer Baltasar Gracián, in his work Agudeza y arte de ingenuity (1648), carried out a study and anthology of epigrams written in Spanish and Latin. Also the Jesuit Joseph Morell in Selected Poems of Various Latin Authors (Tarragona, 1684) made an excellent anthology. During the 18th century, the genre did not decline, as might have been expected, but took on a less courteous and more educational and moral intention. Authors of the Enlightenment such as León de Arroyal composed books of epigrams and defined it as:

An artificing game of voices, with which it usually covers a most popular concept, ending a thought, apparently ordinary, with a spicy, active and spiritual acuity.

On the other hand, and always according to Arroyal's prologue to his Epigrams (1784), the beauty of the epigram would consist of two fundamental virtues:

The one is a certain return, or play of voices, that delight the ear; and the other, which is the most principal, the brevity, novelty, sharpness or elevation of thought, that tastefully surprises the mood.

And, within the same XVIII century, Juan de Iriarte defined it using the same form of the epigram:

To the like bee,
to cause pleasure,
The epigram must be
small, sweet and punctureful.

Subsequently, some literary forms, such as the brief press article, the greguerías of Ramón Gómez de la Serna or the lembretetes of Oliverio Girondo came close to the epigrammatic genre, as well as the popular anonymous inscriptions in walls or toilets called graffiti or graffiti, which from the ruins of Pompeii to the present are an invaluable source on the popular opinion of a time. Some of these inscriptions are collected by Pío Baroja in his work Picturesque Showcase or Camilo José Cela in his San Camilo 1936. Sometimes, in the lyric of the XX century, it can adopt an elegiac tone (Jaime Gil de Biedma) or the form of love verses, as is the case of Epigramas, by the Nicaraguan priest Ernesto Cardenal. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles also composed a history of the Spanish epigram in El epigrama español del siglo I al siglo XX (Madrid, 1946).

In other nations the epigram was cultivated with extraordinary success. In the United Kingdom, John Donne, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope (creator in the XVIII century of a form of epigrammatic couplet) stands out) and Oscar Wilde. In France, Voltaire and Nicolás Boileau stand out especially. In Germany, G.E. Lessing. The epigram is also found in non-Western literatures, such as Chinese and Japanese; in the latter it can be said that the epigram is related to the poetic form known as haiku. The term can be applied to any aphorism or more or less sententious saying, and even to a certain type of hyperbrief narration.

In 2018, film producer Pedro Alonso Pablos made a cartoon miniseries entitled Epigramas del Doctor Pelayo, offering a review of the history of the epigram as a literary genre and mentioning many of them. This work used images from the archive of the National Library of Spain.

The Greek Epigram

Beginnings

The Greek epigram in its beginnings were inscriptions in commemorative monuments to the dead, they are also found in ex-votos that remind the gods. The earliest signed inscription is from the late V century BC. C. and principles of the IV a. C., corresponds to Symmachus of Pella. There is one of Ion of Samos in the inscription on the statue consecrated by Lysander to commemorate the capture of Athens, but half a century passed before it was found, indicating that the epigram was a minor genre.

The Subway

The epigram was used pre-eminently on tombs as short verse inscriptions. The earliest were hexameters, occasionally in iambics, as they were contemporaneous with the Homeric poems, but, as early as the VI century to. C., there are testimonies of epigrams in varied meters. Later, after the Medical Wars, the elegiac couplet was imposed, probably due to the influence of elegy, so that in the IV century this meter was imposed.

However, although there is a general tendency of the epigram as a short poem that is written in elegiac couplets, it was never stopped from being written in other metres, either due to the need to mention names that are not adaptable to dactylic metrics, or due to virtuosity.

Book XIII of the palatal manuscript that classifies epigrams thematically, includes what is known by tradition as metric curiosities, that is, they are epigrams that are in unusual metric schemes. There are thirty-one epigrams in various meters, so it is probably a compilation taken from a meter manual.

Hellenistic Age

In the Hellenistic period, that is, throughout the IV century a. C, the epigrammatic inscriptions continue to occur as stone recordings, but they also definitively pass to paper, thus becoming one more literary genre.

As it began to be written, the epigram became important because it was a common medium denoting the military triumphs and achievements not only of individuals but also of entire nations. This taste for establishing the glory of events that are memorable can be traced back to the V century B.C. C. after the Medical Wars. For example, Simonides wrote an epigram for the fallen at Thermopylae.

There is little production of inscriptions on tombs, apart from the fact that normally the poets are anonymous. The symposial and loving elegy influences the epigram, and in the IV century B.C. C. there are already epigrams of erotic-symposiac cut.

All the major poets who wrote epigrams are from the III century BCE. C., but the first author called 'epigrammatic poet' (from the Greek ἐπιγραμματοποιός) was Posidipus, who has an inscription from 263 or 262 BC. C. However, this literary genre equally attracted powerful people, and patronage over the creators was very common, so poets found in these poems means to praise the great patrons, thus increasing the status of epigrammists. In this case, for example, Posidipus himself and his colleague Asclepiades, who enjoy a certain prestige in this field. Well, the kings and courtiers eager to leave a clear memory of their exploits, attracted the most outstanding poets, flourishing the epigram and the epigram writer.

As for the themes, the athematic or offering, epitimbios or funerary and epidictic or description stand out. Originally, votives were composed to be engraved as explanatory legends next to the ex-voto, but later they became dedicatory literary exercises. In the same way, together with these themes, the amatory epigram arose, a category that includes from the beginning sensual or sentimental to the purely erotic and even obscene. Satirical themes will also appear, reaching their culmination already in the imperial era by the hand of Lucilio and Nicarco, in the Greek sphere, and Marcial, in the Latin sphere.

Epigrammatic schools

Because there are many origins, themes, poets and clearly the styles of the epigrams, it is that we speak of schools of the epigram. For this, an essentially geographical division of the authors is usually awarded as a principle.

1. Doric-Peloponnesian-Western school

The characteristics of this school, in broad strokes, would be the social transfer of the epigram from the heroic and aristocratic heights of the classical era to the proletarian and artisan mediocrity, the search for the most intimate worlds such as those of women, children, and even the animal, as well as a taste for the peace of nature, all included in a deep and modest sentimentality paradoxically expressed in a baroque, theatrical and filigree artificial language.

Includes the Peloponnesians:

• Ánite
• Mnasalces,
• Páncrates
• and maybe Damageto.

Great Greece, already influenced by Italic cultures, includes:

• Nóside
• Leónidas
• Teodóridas
• Fans
• and Mosco.

Among the Doric islands of the Aegean Sea are:

• Filitas
• Nicias
• and the Syrian Teocrito

In Rhodes:

• Anthagoras
• Sims
• and Aristodic

In Crete:

• Riano

In central and northern Hellas are:

• Faleco
• Persians
• Alejandro

and the poets linked to Macedonia are:

• Alceo
• and Samio

2. Ionian-Egyptian school

It is considered by some to be superior. It is characterized by extreme verbal and stylistic restraint, back to the lapidary and emphatic, more dealing with refined and subtle themes full of love, invitation, passions, social elitism and cosmopolitanism with hints of epicurean and hedonistic currents.

It includes poets from Asia Minor such as:

• Hegemon
• Duris
• Arato
• Asclepides
• Do it.
• Nicéneto
• Menécrates
• Fédimo
• Diotimo
• Nicandro de Colofón
• Beautiful
• And Timnes,

Along with them will be the court of African foreigners who came to Alexandria seeking the patronage of the kings:

• Teeteto
• Posidipo
• Calyma
• Glauco
• Dioscorides
• and Zenodoto

3. Syro-Phoenician school

School flourishing at the end of the century II a. C. and beginning of the century I a. C. Rhetoric penetrates to an increasing extent, musical and thought figures begin to blur in the epigram. The representatives are three:

• Sidon antipath
• Melegaro de Gádara
• and Filodemo de Gádara.

Epigrammatic collections

Most known Greek epigrams have come from primarily two manuscripts. The most important in terms of the number of poems it contains is known as Palatinus Heidelbergensis Graecus 23, it is dated around the century X y is a heterogeneous anthology of epigrams of unknown authorship. The other is a compilation of epigrams that was made by the Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes, it is the manuscript Marcianus Graecus 481, dated to the beginning of the century XIV.

However, in the Hellenistic period, collections of epigrams in the form of books were popular, such as that of Meleager of Gádara, which is dated around the year 70 with the title “Crown” and which was in alphabetical order. Another collection followed, the work of Philip of Thessalonica following the previous idea and dating from AD 40. c.

In the following period there is news about several collections such as that of Agatias, which connected the epigrams that arose from the revitalization of the genre at the end of the century VI d. c.

Currently, the epigrams come from editions such as the Greek Anthology, which is made up of two collections: the Palatine Anthology dating from the years 930 to 980 of our era and which is named after the duke of the palatine who sponsored its edition in the 17th century; and the Planudea Anthology divided into seven books, which is the creation of Máximo Planudes, a Byzantine scribe from the year 1301. Only three hundred eighty-eight epigrams are known to us exclusively from the Planudes manuscript and these traditionally come from being published as an appendix as book XVI of the Palatina Anthology.

Transcendence

Very early on, Latin poets drew inspiration from Greek epigrammatics for their compositions. Authors such as Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, and Martial, who is the epigram writer par excellence of the ancient world, took advantage of the vast wealth of themes and the wealth of expressive games offered by Greek epigrams. They make direct imitations as in the case of Horace, Propertius and Martial, or make use of themes, motifs and expressive images as in Tibullus.

Greek epigrammatics in general is a model and a source of inspiration even for prose writers and Greek and Latin authors of later times, who resort to them to exemplify some point, just as authors such as Diodorus Siculus, Suetonius, Strabo do, Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, Athenaeus and other later ones such as Clement of Alexandria and Draconcio.

Another major influence of Greek epigrams occurs in the work of Lope de Vega, a Spanish author of the Renaissance and the Golden Age.

Examples of Epigrams

The Marquis and his wife

The Marquis and his wife
both are happy;
She went to see God
And God came to see him.

Attributed to Don Alvaro Cubillo de Aragón, 17th century

Mr. Don Juan de Robres,
with charity without equal,
did this holy hospital...
And so did the poor.

Juan de Iriarte, 18th century

VITA BEATA
In an old inefficient country,
something like Spain between two wars
civilians, in a town by the sea,
own a house and little hacienda
and memory none. Don't read,
not suffer, not write, not pay bills,
and live as a ruined nobleman
among the ruins of my intelligence

Jaime Gil de Biedma, 20th Century

Funeral praise

Reserve your praise for the dead,
You never appreciate a living poet.
Excuse me, I'd rather live
to have your praise.

Marco Valerio Marcial, century I

The Good Land

Questions what gives me my plot in a land so distant from Rome.
Gives a harvest that has no price:
the pleasure of not seeing you

Marco Valerio Marcial, century I

With all due respect for Doña Margarita Maza de Juárez, wife of the Benemerite of the Americas Don Benito Juárez García

Had luck Margarita
as an interposite person,
Juarez found it exposite.

But she turned her wife.

Salvador Novo, Clío TV, Mexico, 2017