Musician and Poet

Music-making was a popular leisure activity in aristocratic households in the early seventeenth century and a growing number of courtier poets wrote and exchanged verse in aristocratic salons and literary coteries. Chapter 12 continues the exploration of Herbert’s intellectual achievements and reputation as a polymath. It traces his interest in playing the lute and singing, and the musical preferences and fashions demonstrated by the music books he owned and the preludes, fantasias, pavanes, galliards, courantes, voltes, sarabands, and airs assembled in his unique manuscript lute book. It probes his inclusion among the metaphysical poets, exploring the influence of John Donne and Giambattista Marino, but also that of Ben Jonson, Thomas Carew, and Sir Philip Sidney, and of Horace, Juvenal, and Ovid. It uses the themes of love, beauty, immortality, and death to examine examples of his sonnets, elegies, epitaphs, satires, and lyrical poems, some of which were published posthumously as The Occasional Verses of Lord Herbert of Cherbury in 1665, and looks briefly at his Latin philosophical poems and his rough draft for a masque. It explores his preference for deploying verbal ingenuity and erudition rather than feelings, his deployment of metaphysical conceits and concepts, his innovative experimentation with rhyme and the extent of his participation in the literary coterie culture of the times. It claims a place for him among the leading minor poets and suggests that this was an impressive achievement for a man heavily engaged in other intellectual fields as well as political and estate matters.

Madrigals, Part 5

Marco da Gagliano's Quinto libro de madrigali a cinque voci was published in October 1608, a little less than two years after his previous book. It contains fourteen madrigals for five voices and one for seven, all composed by Gagliano. The poets represented include Giambattista Marino, Giovanbattista Strozzi, both the older and the younger, Cosimo Galletti, and Ottavio Rinuccini. The madrigals of book 5 are quite varied in their style and their treatment of text. Many are light and remarkably concise, like the canzonetta-influenced madrigals of the Quarto libro, and most often set text syllabically to shorter rhythmic values in motives that alternate between homophony (or near homophony) and polyphony, imitative or nonimitative. Some, however, set poetry very differently. A three-part setting of a Marino sonnet, for instance, is filled with virtuoso melisma, probably intended for the professional singers of the Medici court. Book 5 also includes a concertato madrigal for seven singers and basso continuo that bears the prescriptive direction “per cantare e sonare” (for voices and instruments) in the basso partbook. Although there is no notational indication of instruments, the basso part lacks text for several measures, and it is likely that it was performed with improvised chords on an instrument. The book also contains two threnodies for Count Cammillo della Gheradesca that are in a somber and more traditional polyphony and contrast with the rest of the book's contents.

Madrigals, Part 4

Il quarto libro de madrigali a cinque voci, the fourth of six books of madrigals by the Florentine composer Marco da Gagliano, was published in 1606. The book is distinguished by the excellence of its music as well as by its varied settings of texts by some of the most celebrated poets of the day. Five of the madrigals use texts by Giovanni Battista Guarini, three by Giambattista Marino, one each by Gabriello Chiabrera, Cosimo Galletti, and Alsaldo Cebà, and a final two-part madrigal for six voices sets a sonnet by the great fourteenth-century poet Francesco Petrarca. In addition to fourteen madrigals by Gagliano, the book contains three by guest composers Luca Bati and Giovanni and Lorenzo Del Turco. Gagliano's madrigals in book 4, in contrast with those of his earlier books, are lighter and show the clear influence of the contemporary canzonetta, which is manifested in their brevity; the discrete sectioning of the music, frequently with concurrent rests in all the voices that separate the presentation of individual poetic lines; the omnipresent syllabic setting of words; and the simpler and shorter motives that are most often presented in a homophonic texture. In some of these madrigals, motives shaped by the melody and rhythm of spoken language might serve well in monodies. Indeed, in his magisterial study of the madrigal, Alfred Einstein went so far as to suggest that some of these madrigals have the effect of polyphonic, imitative arrangements of Florentine monodies.

Visual images of beauty of the word in the Persian poetry of XVI - the beginning of XVIII century: the Indian style and painting by word

The article is devoted to the problem of changing stylistic paradigm in the Persian poetry of XVI-XVII centuries and reflection of this process in self-consciousness of outstanding authors of the period. Parallel with preserving stable norms of traditional poetics literary practice demonstrates flexibility and forms new range of popular poetic strategies. New aesthetic criteria if ideal poetic language, expressed with epithet ‘colourful’ ( rangin ), appears alongside with criteria of previous period, expressed with epithet ‘sweet’ ( shirin ) and step by step gets leadership. Lyric poetry ( qhazal ) of three famous authors of the period of formation and golden age of Indian style served the object of analyses. The phenomena of visualization of imagery connected with perfect poetic language illustrated by examples of ‘Poet and Poetry’ motifs located in ‘frame text’ in end of the qhazal . These motifs serve one of the regular contexts of author’s name ( takhallus ) and show author’s attitude to his creation, including stylistic preferences. Refinement of poetic fantasy being declared basic condition of creating perfect poetry described visually as coiling lasso, poetry itself as flourishing garden, fountain or European house decorated with painting. Such characteristic of word creation has analogies in the works of Baroque style theorist Giambattista Marino (1569-1625).

KÉPELMÉLETI KÉRDÉSEK ZRÍNYI MIKLÓS SYRENA-KÖTETÉBEN

Giambattista Marino festményeket leíró verseiben az ut pictura poesis elméletre játszik rá. Zrínyi a Syrena-kötet sok helyén Marinót imitálja, de a képelmélet vonatkozásában nem követi az olasz költőt. Ugyanakkor egyik legjelentősebb költői eszköze a jelenségeket különös erővel megjelenítő kép, amelyet a retorikai hagyomány enargeiának vagy evidentiának nevez. A Marino-féle képelméleti gondolkodásról nem a szöveg, hanem a Syrena-kötet a díszcímlapja tanúskodik. A metszetet valószínűleg az Obsidio XIV. énekének kezdő reflexióját inspirálta: a címlapkép tengeri jelenete a vizuális kép eszközeivel ábrázolja a szövegben az eposzírást jelölő metaforát, a hajózást. Joggal tételezhetjük fel, hogy a metszet allegorikus alakjai közül a magát tükörben fésülő szirén Marino képelméletét idézi meg.

“Smash, shred, crush!” (“Zerhaut, zerreißt, zerschmettert!”)

The Massacre of the Innocents of Matthew 2,16–18 is a famous motif of Early Modern European art and transcends borders of genre and confession. This article explores an example of its cross-confessional use looking at the sacred poem La Strage degli Innocenti (1632) by Italian poet Giambattista Marino, its German adaptation Verdeutschter Bethlehemitischer Kinder-Mord (1715) by Hamburg Protestant poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes and the influence of paintings from the Dutch milieu. Die biblische Episode des Bethlehemitischen Kindermordes aus Matthäus 2,16-18, ist ein prominentes und überaus beliebtes Motiv der frühneuzeitlichen Künste in Europa. Sein Erfolg ist derart groß, dass bei seiner Rezeption nicht nur die verschiedenen Genres und Gattungen, sondern auch die Konfessionsgrenzen überwunden werden. Dieser Artikel untersucht einen fruchtbaren Austausch von Katholiken und Protestanten am Beispiel von zwei geistlichen Epen: La Strage degli Innocenti (1632) des italienischen Dichters Giambattista Marino sowie die deutsche Adapation Verdeutschter Bethlehemitischer Kinder-Mord (1715) des protestantischen Hamburger Dichters Barthold Heinrich Brockes. Bis heute jedoch ist das italienische Opus dem literarischen Kanon kaum bekannt, obgleich es inmitten der konfessionellen Auseinandersetzung zu einer kulturellen Schnittstellte Europas avanciert. Der folgende Beitrag diskutiert also nicht allein den interkonfessionellen Gebrauch des Motivs, sondern veranschaulicht darüber hinaus die kulturhistorische Relevanz von Marinos geistlichem Epos über den Vergleich mit Kindermord-Gemälden aus dem niederländischen Milieu.

Caravaggios Medusenschild von 1597 – ein Gorgoneion?

Caravaggio’s emblematic Medusa is mostly regarded as a representation of the mirrored decapitation of the Gorgon and thus as a reflection on Perseus’ protective shield. This essay proposes a new interpretation: Caravaggio’s Medusa is an adaptation of the antique Gorgoneion. The Gorgoneion historically depicted Medusa’s head with its petrifying gaze, which was placed on the shield of Athena. Due to its symbolic and protective power, the Gorgoneion became a frequent subject in art and handicraft well into Baroque art. Caravaggio’s contemporaries – including the poets Gaspare Murtola and Giambattista Marino – left witness that they interpreted the image as a Gorgoneion. In addition, the image itself contains elements that buttress this interpretation, including, inter alia, the green surface of the shield and the shadow. Both the historic accounts and the painted details therefore render an interpretation of the painting as Gorgoneion very likely.