Halcyon days

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In ancient Greece, halcyon days were a period of fourteen days in December around the winter solstice . The halcyon days were valued because of the usually beautiful weather and the calm, the sea was calm and navigable during this time. The name halcyon goes back to the kingfisher (Greek halcyon or alkyon ); it was assumed that the breeding season of the female kingfisher falls during this period. In the upscale colloquial language, the expression "halcyon days" is used metaphorically for a nice and serene short time.

The myth of Alkyone , the daughter of Aiolus , whose name is derived from that of the kingfisher, belongs in this context . Alkyone ( Attic Halkyone) was married to Keyx . After she lost her husband, she looked for him in vain for a long time. Finally, out of pity, the gods turned her into a kingfisher. She was granted the privilege of beautiful weather during her nesting and breeding season. This story was written by the Roman poet Ovid in his mythological work Metamorphoses .

In the pseudo-Platonic ( wrongly attributed to Plato ) literary dialogue Halcyon ("The Kingfisher"), the philosopher Socrates tells his friend Chairephon the myth of Halcyone's metamorphosis into a kingfisher. The fictional conversation takes place during the halcyon days and the two friends hear the kingfisher's call.

Friedrich Nietzsche's popular word "halcyon" means mentally perfect . In his work Also sprach Zarathustra the image of silence is used in relation to the style of that work. The myth stands for calm and serenity as well as for a short break after overcoming and before new storms.

In Albrecht Schaeffer's novel Helianth it is a chapter heading for the same purpose.

Otto Erich Hartleben sings about in Der Halcyonians. A book of final rhymes (1904) "Halcyon days". The poet founded the “Halcyon Academy of Applied Sciences in Salò”, a group of friends that was continued after his death under the chairmanship of Alfred von Klement.

A painting exhibition by the German painter Michael Kunze in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 2013 was entitled Halcyon Days . The 7th chapter of Thomas Hettche's novel Pfaueninsel (2014) is named like this; there the title alludes equally to the artificial winter mildness of a palm house as to the brief hope of the main character Marie that she could be “like everyone”.

A study examining the stability of the Halcyon days' presence in the 5th and 4th centuries BC extends the period from December 15 to February 15, with a focus on January 15 to 31.

Remarks

  1. ^ Pierre Chantraine : Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots. Klincksieck, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-252-03681-5 , p. 60.
  2. ^ Ovid: Ceyx and Alcyone. In: Egon Gottwein: Metamorphoses - Metamorphoses. 11th book, German and Latin. On Gottwein.de, accessed on January 5, 2019.
  3. Christina Chronopoulou, Anastasios F. Mavrakis: Ancient Greek drama as an eyewitness of a specific meteorological phenomenon: indication of stability of the Halcyon days. Royal Meteorological Society , 2014. From rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com, accessed January 6, 2019.