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Musicality in Modern Greek Poetry 1900–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Christopher Robinson*
Affiliation:
Christ Church, Oxford

Extract

In the late nineteenth century in France, a division arose between two concepts of poetry: poetry as a distinct form of expression, and poetry as a distinct form of perception. In the former the musicality of the poem was a primary feature: in the latter the aural value of the text was relatively unimportant.

Type
Articles:
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1990

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References

1. The methodology used in my analyses, which has already been applied in my C.P. Cavafy (Bristol 1988), has developed from that pioneered by Massimo Peri in Quattro saggi su Kavafis (Milan 1979).

2. Chesters, G., Some Functions of Sound-repetition in ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ (University of Hull Occasional Papers in Modern Languages No.11) (Hull 1975) 44.Google Scholar

3. Empson, W., Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930: repr. London 1961) 12.Google Scholar

4. The first stanza of Verlaine’s ‘Chanson d’automne’, from the ‘Paysages tristes’ section of Poèmes saturniens (1866). Similar devices are used throughout the poem.

5. Chesters, op. cit. 68.

6. There are other instances of Cavafy’s treatment of initial ia- as rather than ia, e.g. and in in and in the same poem.