Commentary on the Three Charms of Ikkulu
From Record Of Fantasy Adventure Venture
Revision as of 10:36, 7 December 2006 by 205.134.0.40 (Talk)
From a Greek tract on the history of poetry, author unknown. Found by Nicephorous in the Library of Constantinople. At the top right margin he has written: "Eorl - you went to Aigai, right? Thought you might want to see this. -N"
In Alexandria there flourished a kind of allusive poetry that is most akin to a riddle. The apotheosis of this style is the Alexandra by Lycophron of Chlacis. The Alexandra may say:
The centipede lovely-faced Stork-colored daughters of The bald lady struck Maiden-slaying Thetis With their blades.
This means, when decoded, that the hundred-oared ships, whose black and white (stork- colored) hulls were made from timber from Phalakra ("Bald Mountain," feminine), and given figureheads of women, dipped their oars in the Hellespont, which is the part of the sea (Thetis) where the maiden Helle drowned. In this way, for several thousand lines, the reader must unravel a host of erudite allusions and abstruse terminology to understand even the most banal of stories.
Some say that the Hyperboreans wrote habitually in this fashion, and that Alexander the Great had an anonymous advisor who hailed from these frigid lands, and who brought the style to Greece. Certainly an early example of the style can be found on a monument in Aigai, now lost, containing three riddling epitaphs for great Macedonians, only one of which has been satisfactorily explained. The first is for Heracles, bastard son of Alexander:
In memory of Heracles The temple-attendant of Alexandrian Suchos Far sailing never again our olive, For he dwells forever, far from his pillars, With the father of Enneadecaeteris.
Here the poet calls Heracles the temple-attendant of Suchos, because the temple attendants of Egyptian gods were known in their native tongue as nothoi [Gk: bastards], and Alexandrian because Heracles was the bastard of Alexander. He is never again our olive because in Latin "our olive" is nos hostos, which the poets elide to nostos [Gk: homecoming], and Heracles will never have a homecoming. He is far from his pillars because divine Heracles set his pillars at the western edge of the world, whereas Dionysus set his up at the eastern, and his namesake lives in the East, the poetic word for which is "Meton"-and Meton of Athens created the 19-year cycle for the calendar known as the Enneadecaeteris.
Similarly runs the epitaph for someone named Kukuth:
In memory of Kukuth: Born amid the dead, Lived among the lost, Kin to your killer, your victim, your avenger, And me.
Clearly this Kukuth lived in the city of Dyrrachion, known to the ancients as Epidamnus, or epi-damnus, epi- being the prefix for "among" and damnos meaning, in Latin, "the lost." The rest of the poem makes no sense.
The final poem is even more difficult, being not even addressed to any person by name:
In memory of The hairless altar: Floated in the lake rushes, far past the wilderness, Beautiful as the sunshine. Killed by Iasa, killed by Tlepolema, As Iason killed Pelias, as Tlepolemus killed Licyrnnius. Avenged by her sister, risking the wrath of the Furies, Fratricide avenged by fratricide. Beloved beyond all reason, Lovely hairless altar.
The anonymous poet has, in the epitaph of Heracles, proved himself fond of puns in other languages, so some have concluded that any analysis of his other work must be understood through similar methods and so have tried to make sense of the poem by looking at the words in Latin-"hairless altar" is ara mina, "lake rushes" are scirpi lacus, "the wilderness" is rus--but the poem nevertheless is indecipherable, although its references to Iason and Tlepolemus, who both killed kinsmen, as well as the Furies and fratricide, hints at the scandal surrounding the anonymous death.
Now Callimachus wrote in a style ...( etc.).