Elegiac Distich

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Elegiac Distich

 

(also elegiac couplet), a strophic unit consisting of one hexameter and one pentameter. In classical literature, the elegiac distich was the basic unit of the elegy, the epigram, and other genres. The following is an example of an imitation of elegiac distich in Russian poetry:

Slyshu umolknuvshii zvuk bozhestvennoi ellinskoi rechi, Startsa velikogo ten’ chuiu smushchennoi dushoi. (“Toward a Translation of the Iliad” by A. S. Pushkin).

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Mentioned in ?
References in periodicals archive ?
The first part follows the details of Notker's dedication and elegiac distich to trace his creative process and evolving style, while the second part addresses three larger issues that allow us to properly access Notker's achievement.
A SCHOLARLY EDITION OF THE LIBER YMNORUM
E "Elegiac Distich," "Elegiac Stanza," "Elegy" in Preminger, 321-25.
The Chicano elegy: urban lament and consolation in Jose Montoya's "El Louie" and J.L. Navarro's "To a Dead Lowrider"
The poetry perhaps fares best, in a chronological survey with brief but often helpful comments on individual poems, and welcome attention is drawn to Schiller's technical skill--his use of a wide range of metres, his unsurpassed mastery of the elegiac distich. The much-maligned 'Lied von der Glocke' is, it is admitted, perhaps valuable only as a historical document, but it is to be regretted that its old-fashioned sentiments distract from its formal accomplishment, which includes 'schone Verse von ausserster Schlichtheit' (p.
Schiller: Elend der Geschichte, Glanz der Kunst

Encyclopedia browser ?
Full browser ?