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Editionsbericht
Literatur
LYRIC Poetry, verses written for music; which, with the ancients, implied verses to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. In the supplement to the first edition of the folio Encyclopédie, there is a very long article on the subject. We have often admired the ingenuity, refinement, and apparent feeling, with which the French treat the subject of dramatic music. Even in the feuds and discussions of the Gluckists and Piccinists, many of the tracts and pamphlets seem to breathe the purest taste and most profound reasoning of which the theme is capable. The Italians, who have so long furnished models of perfection to the rest of Europe in composition and performance, have not half so much to say in defence of their talents as the French in attacking them.
The article Lyric Poetry in the supplement to the first edition of the Encyclopédie, written long before the firm adherents to Lulli and Rameau were extinct, is of great length, and seems to flow from a writer who had read, meditated, and felt, with enthusiasm, all the inspirations of the lyric bards of Greece. He has taken a wide range in treating the subject, and considered the union of poetry and music, not only with more enlarged views than any other modern, but perhaps than the ancients themselves. He begins in the following manner: "The lyric poetry of the Grecians was not only sung, but composed to the chords of the lyre. This was at first the characteristic distinction of all that was called lyric poetry by the Romans, and their descendants and imitators in later times. The poet was a musician, he called upon the god of verse, and animated himself with a prelude. He fixed upon the time, the movement, and the musical period; the melody gave birth to the verse; and thence was derived the unity of rhythm, character, and expression, between the music and the poem that was sung. Thus the poetry became naturally subservient to number and cadence, and thus each lyric poet invented not only the proper kind of verse, but also the strophe analogous to the melody which he himself had created, and to which he composed it.
In this respect, the lyric poem or ode with the Latins and with modern nations, has been nothing more than a frivolous imitation of the lyric poem of the Greeks: they say, I sing, but never do sing; they speak of the chords of the lyre, but have never seen a lyre. No poet, since Horace inclusively, appears to have modelled his odes upon a melody. Horace adopting, by turns, the different formulæ of the Greek poets, seems so much to have forgotten that an ode ought to be sung, that he has often suspended the sense at the end of the strophe, where the air ought to repose, to the beginning of the next stanza."
This species of poetry was originally employed in celebrating the praises of gods and heroes; though it was afterwards introduced into feasts and public diversions: it is a mistake to imagine Anacreon, as the Greeks do, the author of it; since it appears from scripture to have been in use above a thousand years before that poet. Mr. Barnes shews how unjust it is to exclude heroic subjects and actions from this sort of verse, lyric poetry being capable of all the elevation and sublimity such subjects require; which he confirms by the examples of Alcæus, Stesichorus, Anacreon, and Horace, and by his own essay, a triumphal ode inscribed to the duke of Marlborough, at the head of this edition: he concludes with the history of lyric poetry, and of those ancients who excelled in it.
The characteristic of lyric poetry, which distinguishes it from all others, is dignity and sweetness. As gravity rules in heroic verse; simplicity, in pastoral; tenderness and softness, in elegy; sharpness and poignancy, in satire; mirth, in comedy; the pathetic, in tragedy; and the point, in epigram; so in the lyric, the poet applies himself wholly to soothe the minds of men, by the sweetness and variety of the verse, and the delicacy and elevation of the words and thoughts; the agreeableness of the numbers, and the description of things most pleasing in their own nature. See ODE and POETRY.
Erstdruck und Druckvorlage
The Cyclopaedia;
or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature.
By Abraham Rees.
With the Assistance of Eminent Professional Gentlemen.
Vol. XXI. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown.
1819; unpaginiert.
Ungezeichnet.
Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck
(Editionsrichtlinien).
The Cyclopaedia online
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001464694
Literatur
Brandmeyer, Rudolf: Poetiken der Lyrik: Von der Normpoetik zur Autorenpoetik.
In: Handbuch Lyrik. Theorie, Analyse, Geschichte.
Hrsg. von Dieter Lamping.
2. Aufl. Stuttgart 2016, S. 2-15.
Duff, David: Romanticism and the Uses of Genre.
Oxford 2009.
Jackson, Virginia: Art. Lyric.
In: The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
Hrsg. von Roland Greene u.a.
4. Aufl. Princeton u.a. 2012, S. 826-834.
Loveland, Jeff: The European Encyclopedia.
From 1650 to the Twenty-First Century.
Cambridge u. New York 2019.
O'Neill, Michael: The Lyric.
In: Handbook of British Romanticism.
Hrsg. von Ralf Haekel.
Berlin 2017, S. 183-200.
Rodriguez, Antonio (Hrsg.): Dictionnaire du lyrique.
Poésie, arts, médias.
Paris 2024.
Spree, Ulrike: Das Streben nach Wissen.
Eine vergleichende Gattungsgeschichte der populären Enzyklopädie in Deutschland und Großbritannien im 19. Jahrhundert.
Tübingen 2000 (= Communicatio, 24).
Vance, Norman / Wallace, Jennifer (Hrsg.):
The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature.
Bd 4: 1790-1880. Oxford 2015.
Stammen, Theo u.a. (Hrsg.): Wissenssicherung, Wissensordnung und Wissensverarbeitung.
Das europäische Modell der Enzyklopädien. Berlin 2004 (= Colloquia Augustana, 18).
Zymner, Rüdiger: Lyrik. Umriss und Begriff.
Paderborn 2009.
Zymner, Rüdiger (Hrsg.): Handbuch Gattungstheorie.
Stuttgart u.a. 2010.
Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer