United States or Papua New Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Thus, in Hymn xxxi. 18, the poet says that he is going on to chant "the renowns of men half divine." Other preludes end with a prayer to the God for luck in the competition of reciters. This, then, is the plausible explanation of most of the brief Hymns they were preludes to epic recitations but the question as to the long narrative Hymns with which the collection opens is different.
When the Roman historian first came into contact with them he notes, that their bread was lighter than other bread, because "they use the foam from their beer as yeast." Tacitus writes of them: "The Germans abound with rude strains of verse, the reciters of which, in the language of the country, are called 'Bards."
The French would be the best reciters if they were not constrained by the rhyme, for they say what they feel better than any other people.
Perhaps there is no instance so striking as this of the immense difference that sometimes lies in the mere accent given one monosyllable. Until Mrs. Siddons revealed the real Lady Macbeth, every actress had replied, "We fail?" interrogatively, and then encouragingly, "Screw your courage to the sticking-point and we'll not fail." Such the commonplace reciters.
Santa had a son, viz., the Rishi Sravas. Sravas begot a son named Tama. Tama begot a son named Prakasa, who was a very superior Brahmana. Prakasa had a son named Vagindra who was the foremost of all silent reciters of sacred Mantras. Vagindra begot a son named Pramati who was a complete master of all the Vedas and their branches. Pramati begot upon the Apsara Ghritachi a son who was named Ruru.
Well, the sacred invocations at the beginning of Pulci's cantos were compliances of the like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table; and yet neither compromised the reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout the poem.
How could they, O slayer of Madhu, who were roused from their beds by music of cymbals and drums and conchs and flutes, with the honeyed strains of songstresses and the eulogies chanted by bards and professional reciters, alas, how could they be waked in the deep woods by the yells of wild beasts?
We cannot, then, suppose that many generations of irresponsible reciters at fairs and public festivals conservatively adhered to the huge size of the shield, while altering its material; and also that the same men, for the sake of being "actual" and up to date, dragged bronze corslets and greaves not only into new lays, but into passages of lays by old poets who had never heard of such things.
It is a remarkable fact that many of the great composers sang as boys, and possibly this has had something to do with their writing music for the voice, later, when they were most of them by no means fine singers; but on this too much stress should not be laid. The question at issue is to be sharply marked off from another the public appearance of children as soloists, reciters, etc.
The authors of these poems knew the Iliad, then, as a whole, and how could they have known it thus if it only existed in the casual repertoire of strolling reciters? The Cyclic poets more probably had texts of Homer, and themselves wrote their own poems how it paid, whether they recited them and collected rewards or not, is, of course, unknown.
Word Of The Day