Epigram

At the origin, a epigram , old Greek ἐπίγραμμα ( epígramma ), “inscription”, is an inscription, initially in prose, then in worms, which one engraved on the monuments, the statues, the tombs and the trophies, to perpetuate the memory of a hero or an event. As from fourth century BC, the epigram becomes a small part of poetry on an unspecified subject, imitating by its brevity the inscriptions, offering a clever or delicate thought expressed with grace and precision. Lastly, as from the 16th century, the kind specializes in the witty remark: the epigram generally contains a point grivoise or assassinates.

The oldest epigrams are anonymous: they are of only one practical nature, aiming at identifying the owner or the person dedicating the object. The first author of epigrams, according to the Greek tradition, is Simonide de Céos (Hérodote, VII, 228,4), which lives at the end of sixth century BC It is of this same time as date the first known signed epigram; it is about a dedication of Ion of Tap-holes to Delphes.

The history of this small literary kind shows it changing, like the large ones, according to times and manners. As from fourth century BC, the epigram becomes a literary kind, which we know mainly by the means of anthologies. One finds there almost always a grace exquisite, an elegant brevity. Mythology, the history, arts, the new discoveries provide the subject of it. The first goes back to third century BC: it is about the Monceau , probably the work of Hédylus de Samos. At the second century BC, Méléagre de Gadara produces one of most famous collections the, the Guirlande , of which the title will be taken again by Philippe de Thessalonique, contemporary of Claude or Néron. “By the voice of Alcée, the epigram inspired to the men the love of freedom, the hatred of the tyrants; with Simonide, it celebrated the stamping from Greece; Anacréon made him sing the love and the wine; Archiloque armed it with a sharp-edged point, mortal; Plato and his disciples, holy Gregoire even, lent their divine eloquence to him. ” The need where was the poet to contain his thought in a court spaces led it to give to the expression of the force and the feature.

The Greek epigrams are sometimes erotic, like this one of Méléagre: “Bee which screw of the juice of the flowers, why, hurling you their scented chalices, come you to be posed on Héliodora? Do you want to teach us that it also has in its heart the pivot of the love, if soft and so land-mark? … Eh well! good adviser, turns over to your flowers. For a long time let us know we it as well as you. ” Sometimes they are funerary and contain a discrete philosophical reflection, like the following one of Simonide: “You died, old Sophocle, the glory of the poets, choked by a practical lesson or grape,”, like this one, of Julien of Egypt: “Often I sang it, and of the bottom of my tomb I will shout it: Drink, before you are not, like me, vacuum-cleaned a little. ” Sometimes also they are bitterly satirists, like that of Antiphane against the race of the grammairiens, which, instead of gathering the flowers, devour the roots and are baited, like cheap insects, after the beautiful ones towards. They can be still votive, descriptive, exhortatives and morals… Some were eulogistic with a point of mocking remark, like that on the Venus of Praxitèle, so lightly translated by Voltaire.

Among Latin, the epigram had initially the same variety. The poets made use of his metric and concise farm to express their personal feelings of hatred or love, anger or tenderness. Catulle laboriously imitated the Greeks by giving to its epigrams this spiritual turn, this fine and delicate spirit which was the charm of the kind, but it printed a more marked satirical pace to them, it struck with strength the corruption of the Roman company, the peculating ones, the intrigants, without forgetting the bad writers of which it finds the writings “good to wrap sardines and anchovies”. Its paintings are often obscenes, its coarse and cynical expressions.

Under the feather of Martial at the 2nd century, the epigram became even rougher and bitterer. While adapting the shape of the Greeks, it imagined to hold for the conclusion the relief, the feature that Catulle spread in each one of its worms. Its epigrams gained into unforeseen. They are often elegant, spiritual and prints of the Atticisme of form that the old ones liked to preserve until in the coarseness of the ideas or the license of the tables. Its work was appreciated at the same time by the grammairiens and the Pères of the Church, for reasons certainly different.

Many epigrams was preserved to us in collections Byzantine time. Two more famous are the palatine Anthologie (10th century), which reproduces the work of compilation of Constantin Céphalas and the Anthologie of Planude (1301), also derived from Céphalas, works of the monk Maxime Planude.

While passing to the modern ones, the epigram lost the significance which it had had among Greeks, and the French language gave an exclusively satirical meaning to this mot. a rather general opinion restricts it with the satirical kind, according to the definition of Boileau: the epigram, freer in its course more limited, is often only one decorated witty remark of two rhymes. In consequence of this significance of malignity, one gave to the insipid epigrams and without salt the name of epigrams to Greek. It is in France that this small poetry, if specific to our critical and caustic spirit, was most fortunately cultivated. As of, Clement Marot, makes admire by delicacy, elegant simplicity, or the liveliness of its epigrams. With, it was the weapon of which almost all the poets in their literary quarrels were useful themselves.

As in literature, the epigram was made frightening also in policy. During the Fronde this kind of satire into small was done day in the Mazarinade S, and, among the lampoons of the Révolution, the Acts of the Apostles are filled with rough and bloody points. The political epigram is not only, in France, the abuse the agitated or too free times; it is, under the modes of oppression, the revenge of the spirit against the force.

the Fountain, with its naivety full with mischievousness, Root, with its irritable sensitivity, Voltaire, with his inexorable good sense, Piron, Rousseau, Lebrun, etc, each one with its qualities and its defects, were illustrated in this kind, and became the Masters about it.

Under the First Empire, a crowd of features launched by clandestine hands did not become less popular and remained attached to the idols of the day about it. Napoleon itself, his passion of the war, its improvised institutions, its ministers, its flattering especially, were in hillock with epigrams of an incredible violence, like that on the Colonne Vendôme, or of a malicious coarseness, like that against the kindness of the Geoffroy critic and the Senate.

The famous following epigram is due to Voltaire:

the other day at the bottom of a small valley,

a snake bit Jean Fréron.
What do you believe that it arrived?
It was the snake which burst.

Source

  • Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 711-2

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