Alkman

Alkman (7. Jh. v. Chr.) was a old-Greek choir poet from Sparta. He is an oldest poet of the alexandrinischen canon of the nine poets (the others Sappho , Alkaios , Anakreon , Stesichoros , is Ibykos, pin and Bacchylides).

biography

according to the antique (presumed on Aristoteles decreasing/going back) tradition originally originated Alkman from the lydischen capital Sardes. Whether it, as us stories from the antique one report as a slave of the Agesidas (= Hagesidamos?) to Sparta came, but because of his talent one released, is unclear. There the Vita of the antique writers from biographic interpretations of their seal, are rarely particularly reliable the details were however usually concluded.

[1] (mosaic with one haven-guesses/advises from Alkman, Jordanian one, 2. Jh. n. Chr. ; Kelsey museum)

excessive quantity

one wrote six books of choir-lyric seal in the antiquity Alkman too (approx. 50-60 songs), which were probably already lost before beginning of the Middle Ages, and Alkman was up to the center 19. Jhs. only from fragmentary quotations in the works of other Greek writers admits. In the year 1855 however a papyrus in a grave in the Egyptian Saqqâra was found, in which one can read 101 verses of a so-called Partheneions (“girl song”). It is now in the Louvre issued. In addition into the 1960er years several fragments in the British collection of the Egyptian papyri from Oxyrhynchos were discovered and published.

kind of the seal. Lesbian love

most of the fragments originate from Parthenien, i.e. Hymns, of choirs of ungeheirateter women (too griech. παρθένος “virgin”) were specified. This kind found an exhaustive description in the work of the French Altphilologen Claude Calame (1977). The opportunity of the performance was celebrations in connection with the Initiationsriten of the girls. Probably Alkman also sealed choir songs for the boys; the Parthenien was however obviously located in the center of the interest of the brightistic scholars.

The girls express more frequently homoerotische feelings, and which to antique authors report in the fragments that the spartanischen women were involved into same sex relations, which can be compared with the well-known male Päderastie of the Greeks. The approximately contemporary Dichterin Sappho from Lesbos (after that the lesbian love their names got as well known) describes similar relations in its monodischen songs. Whether the relations had also a physical side and in the case which, remains openly. As also is: the fact that the love were coded by a man, Alkman, and even during the städtlichen celebrations were proclaimed, is an in any case evident indication for it that tacitly does not tolerate the romantic feelings of the girls, but was loud promoted.

Alkmans of choir songs was intended for the cult. Thus the spartanische historian Sosibios reports (approx. 200 v. Chr.) the following (according to Athenaios):

“The choir leaders carry [the thyreatischen wreaths/rings] for the memory of the victory with Thyrea with this celebration, when they celebrate also the Gymnopädien. There are three choirs, in front a boy choir, <on the right of a Greisenchor> and left a man choir; they dance naked and sing the songs of the Thaletas and Alkmans and the Päane of the Lakoners Dionysodotos. “

In other words the songs became Alkmans in the brightistic time certain times from always new girls and/or. Boy led. The individual choir song was a kind drama with certain roles, e.g. the role of the choir leaders and/or. the choir leader or the role of the beautiful girl in a special relationship with the choir chief.

language

the delivered fragments is from Spartas dorischem dialect (that so-called. Laconic one) coined/shaped. This coinage points itself particularly to lautlichen strangenesses as α = η, ω = ου, η = ει, σ = θ, σδ = ζ, - οισα = - ουσα (although the two last language courses in laconic were not occupied) and the use of the dorischen accent. On the other hand the fragments exhibit also many prosodische, morphologic and phraseologische community with the homerischen Epos.

Swiss Ernst Risch judged Alkmans language with the following words in a been based essay (1954);

“The language Alkmans is generally speaking Dorisch, can however more near be located and does not show in any case strong influence of the homerischen, most probably also the lesbian poet language and also the epischen special branch, which admit us particularly by Hesiod are. 2. The text was later corrected, above all A) by introduction of σ instead of θ (σιός) in the sense an adjustment to the contemporary laconic… and likewise b) by adjustment to the language of Kyrene…

“the English Altphilologe Denys PAGE closes in its influential Monographie (1951):

“(i) the dialect OF that extant fragment OF Alcman is basically and preponderantly the Laconian vernacular; (ii) that there is NO sufficient reason for believing that this vernacular in Alcman which contaminated by features from any alien dialect except the Epic; (iii) that feature OF the epic dialect acres observed (A) sporadically the throughout extant fragment, but especially (B) into passages where metre or theme or both acres taken from the Epic, and (C) into phrases which acres as A whole borrowed or imitated from the Epic… “

in its thesis over the language Alkmans (2001) is the Danish Altphilologe George would hang against it arrived at the reverse conclusion: Alkman proceeds grundsätlich from the same language system as Homer (“the common poet language”), but since the songs were demonstrated by Lakonern, they were delivered also with laconic accent and finally also in the 3. Jh. with laconic Orthographie written down.

translations of selected fragments

Fr. 26: The ice bird song

Fr. 26 PAGE/Davies (over. Hermann Fränkel):

“Girls with sweet singing and with attractive voice, the legs

carry me for old persons not longer; oh if I a Eisvogel,

like he with the ice bird girls together would freely have there-floated, from fear,

over the crowns of the waves, the purpurne holy bird "

(place “holy bird” in the last verse am one possibly with the handwriting (however against the publishers) “spring bird” to read.)

Fr. 89: Sleeping nature

Fr. 89 PAGE/Davies (over. Hermann Fränkel):

“Sleep the mountains summits and valleys,

cliffs and ravines,

and the forest and all natures by the black earth to be fed,

and the animals in the mountains their camp to have and the bees sex

and the natures in the depths of the purpurnen sea,

it sleep the peoples of the wing-spreading birds "

One thinks automatically of Goethe's 1780, only seven years after the first publication of the alkene one fragment, written of Wanderers night song:

Over all summits

is rest,

in all treetops

feel you.

Hardly a breath;

The small birds are silent in the forest.

Control room only, balde

you also [

rest 1: The large Partheneion

Fr. 1 PAGE/Davies (over. George would hang):

Because the Gods pay home.

That is lucky, that goes through

gladly all day long

without tears. I will sing however from

Agidos light. I see it

like the sun, of whose light

Agido us is

a witness. Doesn't the fact that I praise or

blame it permit the honoured choir chief however

by any means, because she seems

to be outstanding completely like if one

a horse on the grass would set,

stubbornly, a winner, with thundering hooves,

from the accelerated (?) Dreams.

Don't you see it? Is there a venetisches

running horse, while the Mähne

of my cousin

Hagesichora flowers

like pure gold.

Their face is silver

- why am I to paint all details?

That is Hagesichora.

She runs like second behind Agido in the appearance (?),

a Kolaxäer horse against a Ibener.

Because the Pleiaden fights with us (?),

when we bring Orthria a dress,

and they come up by the unsterbliche night

like Sirius the star.

Magenta gives it however not

sufficiently, in order to be able to resist,

still another multicolored queue decoration

from pure gold still another Mitra

from Lydien, the veiläugigen

girls Zierde,

still to Nannos of hair,

in addition, not the göttliche Areta

still Thylakis and Kleesithera,

and you will go not to Ainesimbrota and will say:

Astaphis mine would like to be,

and would like Philylla me to regard

and to Damareta and the dear Ianthemis.

No, Hagesichora torments me!

Isn't Hagesichora with

the beautiful Knöcheln with us,

and is not Agido [here]

and praises our celebration?

But, Gods, their höhrt [prayers].

Because at the Gods the fulfilment and

carrying out lie. Choir chief,

if I may talk, I is even

only a girl, who howls in vain from the bar

like the owl. I want to behagen first

Aotis. Because it became

a lady doctor of our agonies.

It is to be owed however Hagesichora

that the girls arrived at the dear peace.

Because must obey

the rope carrier

thus [...] one on the ship

first the captain.

She is not a better

singer as the sirens.

Those are God inside, and instead of [eleven]

here ten girls sing.

It sounds like once with Xanthos' river

the swan. With the delightful blond hair

literature

Denys L. PAGE: Alcman. The Partheneion. 1951.

Ernst Risch: “The language Alkmans”. Museum Helveticum 11 (1954) 20-37 (= “small writings” 1981, 314-331).

Claude Calame: Les chœurs the jeunes filles EN Grèce archaïque. Bd. 1-2. 1977. English one. Over. (only Bd. 1): Choruses OF Young Women in Ancient Greece. 1997.

Claude Calame: Alcman. Introduction, writes the text critique, témoignages, traduction et commentaire. 1983. David A. Campbell: Greek lyric poetry. Bd. 2. Anacreon, Anacreontea. Choral lyric from Olympus ton Alcman. 1988.

Malcolm Davies: Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Bd. 1. Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus. 1991.

Craig what: Alcman: Greek lyric, choral poetry. A short essay over the alkmanische Chorlyrik (on English) 2000 (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~artsfx/alcman.html).

George would hang: The language Alkmans: Text history and language history. PhD thesis, Århus 2001 (not yet in the pressure appeared, = http://alkman.georgehinge.com).

Matthias Bothe: ALKENE-MAN - a world on Dorisch. Skilled work in the subject Greek, rose home 2003 (http://home.arcor.de/angelion/alkman).