Alkman

Alkman ( Greek  Ἀλκμάν Alkmán ) was an ancient Greek choral lyric poet of the 7th century BC. From Sparta . He is the oldest poet in the Alexandrian Canon of Nine Lyric Poets .

Origin and life

According to the ancient tradition (presumably going back to Aristotle ), Alkman originally came from the Lydian capital Sardis . It is unclear whether he came to Sparta as a slave of Agesidas (= Hagesidamos?) , As stories from antiquity report, but was released because of his talent. Since in antiquity information about the life of writers was often derived from the biographical interpretation of their works, the credibility is doubtful.

Works

Lore

In ancient times, Alkman was ascribed six books of choral poetry (approx. 50–60 songs), which were probably lost in ancient times. Alkman was therefore only known from fragmentary quotations in the works of other Greek writers until the middle of the 19th century. In 1855 a papyrus was found in a tomb in Saqqara, Egypt, with 101 verses of a so-called Partheneion ("girl's song "). It is now on display in the Louvre . In the 1960s, several fragments were discovered and published in the British Collection of Egyptian Papyri from Oxyrhynchos .

Type of seal. Lesbianism

Most of the fragments come from Parthenia; H. Hymns performed by choirs of unmarried women (from Greek παρθένος , virgin) at the initiation rites of the girls. The Swiss classical philologist Claude Calame (1977) has exhaustively described this genre. Alkman probably also composed choral songs for the boys; but the Parthenia were evidently at the center of the interests of the Hellenistic scholars.

The girls more often express homoerotic feelings in the fragments, and the ancient authors report that the Spartan women were involved in same-sex relationships that can be compared to the well-known male pederasty of the Greeks. The roughly contemporary poet Sappho from Lesbos (after whom lesbian love is known to get its name) describes similar relationships in her monodic songs. It remains to be seen whether the relationships had a physical side and, if so, which one. Be that as it may, the fact that love was coded by a man, Alkman, and proclaimed during the town's festivals is a clear sign that the girls' romantic feelings were not only tacitly tolerated, but loudly promoted.

Alkman's choir songs were intended for cult. The Spartan historian Sosibios (approx. 200 BC) reports (according to Athenaios):

“The choirmasters wear [the thyreatic wreaths] to commemorate Thyrea's victory at this festival, when they also celebrate the gymnopaedics. There are three choirs, in front a boys' choir, <on the right an old man's choir> and on the left a men's choir; they dance naked and sing the songs of Thaletas and Alkman and the paean of the Laconian Dionysodotus. "

In other words, until the Hellenistic period, the songs of Alkman were performed again and again by new boys and girls. The single choir song was a kind of drama with certain roles, e.g. B. the role of the choirmaster or the role of the beautiful girl who has a special relationship with the choir director.

language

The fragments that have survived are characterized by Sparta's Doric dialect (the so-called Laconic). This character can be seen above all in phonetic peculiarities such as α = η, ω = ου, η = ει, σ = θ, σδ = ζ, -οισα = -ουσα (although the last two language features have not been documented in laconic itself) and the use of the Doric accent. On the other hand, the fragments also have many prosodic, morphological and phraseological similarities with the Homeric epic.

In a famous article (1954), the Swiss Ernst Risch assessed Alkman's language with the following words:

“Alkman's language is Doric in its entirety, but it cannot be localized in any more detail and in any case shows a strong influence of the Homeric, most probably also the lesbian poetic language and also the epic special branch that is known to us above all through Hesiod. 2. The text was subsequently corrected, mainly a) by introducing σ instead of θ (σιός) in the sense of an adaptation to contemporary Laconian ... and b) by adapting it to the language of Cyrene ... "

The English classical philologist Denys L. Page also concludes in his influential monograph (1951):

“(I) that the dialect of the extant fragments of Alcman is basically and preponderantly the Laconian vernacular; (ii) that there is no sufficient reason for believing that this vernacular in Alcman was contaminated by features from any alien dialect except the Epic; (iii) that features of the epic dialect are observed (a) sporadically throughout the extant fragments, but especially (b) in passages where meter or theme or both are taken from the Epic, and (c) in phrases which are as a whole borrowed or imitated from the Epic ... "

In his dissertation on the language of Alkmans (2001), however, the Danish classical philologist George Hinge came to the opposite conclusion: Alkman basically starts from the same language system as Homer (“the common poet's language”), but since the songs were performed by Laconians, they were also handed down with a laconic accent and finally written down in the 3rd century with laconic orthography.

Translations of selected fragments

Fragment 26: The Kingfisher Song

Fragment 26 Page / Davies, translated by Hermann Fränkel:

“Girls with sweet singing and charming voices,
my old man's legs no longer carry me; oh if I were a kingfisher,
as he floats along with the kingfisher girls, free from fear,
over the tops of the waves, the purple sacred bird. "

(Instead of “holy bird” in the last verse, one should possibly read “spring bird” with the manuscripts (but against the editor).)

Fragment 89: Sleeping Nature

Fragment 89 Page / Davies, translated by Hermann Fränkel:

“The mountain peaks and valleys,
cliffs and ravines sleep ,
and the forest and all beings that are nourished by the black earth,
and the animals that have their camp in the mountains and the bees
and beings in the depths of the purple sea ,
the peoples of the winged birds are sleeping. "

The sometimes alleged similarity with Goethe's Above all summits of 1780 is denied by Winfried Elliger : The representation of the landscape in the Greek poetry (1975), p. 185 . There are no further indications that Goethe knew Alkman's fragment when he was writing his Nachtlied . That would have been possible, however, after the Greek text in Apollonii Sophistae Lexicon Graecum Iliadis et Odysseae , edited by Jean-Baptiste Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison , Paris 1773, and in the review of this work in Philological Library, Göttingen 1773, p. 452 had been published.

Fragment 1: The great Partheneion

Fragment 1 Page / Davies, translated by George Hinge:

Because the gods pay home.
The one who is happy is who
goes through happily the whole day
without tears. But I will
sing of Agido's light. I see it
like the sun, of which
Agido is a witness to us
.
The honored choir director does
not allow me to praise or blame her, because she seems to be
outstanding herself, just like
putting a horse on the grass,
stubborn, a prize winner, with thundering hooves,
from the winged (?) Dream.

Don't you see This is a Venetian
racehorse, while
my cousin
Hagesichora's mane blooms
like pure gold.
Her face is silver
- why should I color in all the details?
That's Hagesichora.
She runs like the second behind Agido in appearance (?),
A Kolaxean horse against an Ibener.
Because the Pleiades fight with us (?)
When we bring Orthria a dress,
and they rise through the immortal night
like Sirius the star.

But there is not
enough purple to be able to defend yourself,
nor a colorful snake ornament
made of pure gold, nor a miter
made of Lydia, the violet-eyed
girl's ornament,
nor Nanno's hair,
but also not the divine Areta,
nor Thylakis and Kleesithera,
and you will not go to Ainesimbrota and say:
Would Astaphis be mine,
and Philylla would like to look at me
and Damareta and dear Ianthemis.
No, I am tormented by Hagesichora!

Isn't Hagesichora
with the beautiful ankles with us,
and isn't Agido [here]
and praising our festival?
But, gods, hear their [prayers].
Because the gods are responsible for fulfillment
and completion. Choir director,
if I'm allowed to speak, I'm
just a girl myself who howls in vain from the beam
like an owl. I want to be comfortable with Aotis first
. Because she has become the doctor of
our torments.
But it is thanks to Hagesichora
that the girls have achieved dear peace.

Because the rope carrier
so [...]
you have to
obey the captain on the ship .
She's not a better
singer than the Sirens , though .
They are goddesses, and instead of [eleven]
ten girls are singing here.
It sounds like
the swan once in Xanthos' stream . With the lovely blonde hair

Editions and translations

• Claude Calame: Alcman. Introduction, texte critique, témoignages, traduction et commentaire (Lyricorum Graecorum quae exstant 6). Edizioni dell'Ateneo, Roma 1984.
• David A. Campbell: Greek Lyric . Vol. 2: Anacreon, Anacreontea. Choral lyric from Olympus to Alcman . 1988 ( Loeb Classical Library 143)
• Malcolm Davies : Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta . Vol. 1. Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-814046-0 .
• Denys L. Page: Alcman. The Partheneion . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1951.

literature

General, introductions, comments

• Andreas Bagordo : Alkman . In: Bernhard Zimmermann (Hrsg.): Handbook of the Greek literature of antiquity , Volume 1: The literature of the archaic and classical times . CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-57673-7 , pp. 180-188.
• Otto Crusius : Alkman . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume I, 2, Stuttgart 1894, Col. 1564-1572. - Outdated state of research
• Hermann Fränkel : Poetry and philosophy of the early Greek culture. 5th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-37716-5 , pp. 179-191
• Gregory Owen Hutchinson: Greek lyric poetry: a commentary on selected larger pieces (Alcman, Stesichorus, Sappho, Alceaus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides, Bacchylides, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides) . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001, ISBN 0-19-924017-5 .
• Claude Calame : Les chœurs des jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque , Vol. 1-2, Rome, Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1977 ( Filologia e critica 20-21). English translation (only vol. 1): Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece . Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield 1997, rev. 2001, ISBN 0-7425-1524-9 .

Investigations on individual topics

• George Hinge: The Language of Alkman: Text History and Language History (Serta Graeca 24). Ludwig Reichert, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-89500-492-8 ( summary ).
• Vasiliki Kousoulini: A history of Alcman's early reception. Female-voiced nightingales. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2019.
• Carlo Odo Pavese: Il grande partenio di Alcmane (Lexis, Supplemento 1). Amsterdam, Adolf M. Hakkert 1992, ISBN 90-256-1033-1 .
• Mario Puelma : The self-description of the choir in Alkman's large Partheneion fragment. In: Museum Helveticum 34 (1977) 1-55, doi : 10.5169 / seals-27080 .
• Ernst Risch: The language of Alkman , in: Museum Helveticum 11, 1954, pp. 20–37 doi : 10.5169 / seals-12465 . Reprinted in this: Kleine Schriften. 1981, pp. 314-331.
• AV Zaikov: Alcman and the Image of Scythian Steed . In: Pontus and the Outside World: Studies in Black Sea History, Historiography, and Archeology (= Colloquia Pontica. 9). Brill, Leiden and Boston 2004, ISBN 90-04-12154-4 , pp. 69-84.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alkman in the catalog of the German National Library
• Portrait of Alkman, mosaic from Jordan, 2nd century, in the Kelsey Museum ( Memento from May 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
• Craig Welch: Alcman: Greek lyric, choral poetry , 2000