"Dithyrambic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... independent spirit than most parasites, and the history of his sojourn in Syracuse gives us an amusing insight into the state of Court life in Sicily 400 years B.C. He was an Athenian dithyrambic poet and musician; and as Dionysius affected literature, he was welcomed at his palace, where he wrote a poem entitled "The Banquet," containing an account of the luxurious style of living there adopted. Philoxenus was probably the least esteemed guest at these feasts, of which, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... half-dozen beds were so many cantos. Nature crowded them for him with imagery such as no Laureate could copy in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm of alternating dawn and sunset, the strophe and antistrophe still perceptible through all the sudden shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in corresponding floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain serving- man. It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped God according to the strict way of his fathers; but a florist's Puritanism is always ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... demand of Whitman ample compensation for the absence from his work of those things which current poets give us in such full measure. Whether or not the compensation is ample, whether the music of his verse as of winds and waves, the long, irregular, dithyrambic movement, its fluid and tonic character, the vastness of conception, the large, biblical speech, the surging cosmic emotion, the vivid personal presence as of the living man looking into your eye or walking by your side,—whether all these things, the refreshing quality as of "harsh salt spray" ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... did love him, as few women have ever loved. Then man measures woman's love by his own; but when was man's heart stirred by nature's strongest passion like that of devoted woman? while now the world did not contain one heart that was moved to him by anything stronger than dithyrambic delirium. Who knows? But there was Fletcher looking on the corpse of his wife, and waving over her face the light of the small cruse he held in his hand! Was he moved, as he saw the still, death-bound features, that once could not contain the expression which the leaping ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... up the Figaro and opened it. The leading article was entitled "Modern Painting." It was a dithyrambic eulogy on four or five young painters who, gifted with real ability as colorists, and exaggerating them for effect, now pretended to be revolutionists and ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... occurs in the diction of Plato, it is owing to the magnitude of the inspiring influence of deity with which he is then replete. For that he sometimes wrote from divine inspiration is evident from his own confession in the Phaedrus, a great part of which is not so much like an orderly discourse as a dithyrambic poem. Such a style therefore, as it is the progeny of divine mania, which, as Plato justly observes, is better than all human prudence, spontaneously adapts itself to its producing cause, imitates a supernatural power as far as this can be effected by words, ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... in the large sense then attached to that word. He is said to have displayed both diligence and remarkable quickness of apprehension, combined too with the utmost gravity and modesty. He not only acquired great familiarity with the poets, but composed poetry of his own—dithyrambic, lyric, and tragic; and he is even reported to have prepared a tragic tetralogy, with the view of competing for victory at the Dionysian festival. We are told that he burned these poems, when he attached ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... support his theory of development. Translated, the passage runs: 'And why should it not be thought lawful for the eclogue to grow out of its infancy and arrive at mature years, if this has been possible in the case of tragedy? ... Even as the Muses grafted tragedy upon the dithyrambic stock, and comedy upon the phallic, so in their ever-fertile garden they set the eclogue as a tiny cutting, whence sprang in later years the stately growth of the pastoral,' that is, of the favola di pastori, or dramatic pastoral, as he elsewhere explains. 'But in these words,' ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... bent their powerful backs a little and their great arms swept the paddles through the water at an amazing rate. The soul of Shif'less Sol surged up to the heights. He became dithyrambic and he spoke in a tone not loud, but full of concentrated fire ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the 4th century B.C., a dithyrambic measure, irregular and wild, was introduced and enjoyed considerable vogue. It has indeed been freely adopted by numerous poets from that early date down to the present day; but since the 2nd century B.C. it has been displaced from pre-eminence by the seven-word ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... to bring him up among the flocks. Atlas, the great astronomer, is represented as a shepherd. [1237][Greek: Atlas mathematikos en Libus aner.—Polueidos de ho dithurambopoios ton Atlanta touton POIMENA Libun phesin.] Atlas the great mathematician, was a person of Libya. The Dithyrambic poet Polueidos says, that Atlas was a Libyan shepherd. There was a tradition that the temple of Ammon in Libya was built by a shepherd, from whom it received its name; [1238][Greek: apo tou hidrusamenou poimenos.] It is reported ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... happiness to an end. Goethe died in the following year, and Germany went into mourning. Then in 1835 Bettina appeared before the world for the first time as an authoress, in 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child.' The dithyrambic exaltation, the unrestrained but beautiful enthusiasm of the book came like an electric shock. Into an atmosphere of spiritual stagnation, these letters brought a fresh access of vitality and hope. Bettina's old friendly relations with Goethe had ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... who, in the presence of nature, loses all shyness, and moves regally like a king. One afternoon, Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him down the river. Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice—very remarkable, but very ugly, methought. Next him followed Mr. Hawthorne who, wrapped in his cloak, moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave. Mr. Emerson closed the line, evidently too weary to hold himself erect, pitching ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... pastorate two years before, on his golden wedding-day. Consequently there was a funeral sermon, and the young man, his successor, chose II. Samuel, i. 23, for his text—"Lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided." Himself a newly-married man, he waxed dithyrambic on the sustained affection and accord of the departed couple. "Truly," he wound up, "such marriages as theirs were made in Heaven." And could they have heard, the two bodies in the cemetery had not denied it; but the woman, after the fashion of women, would have ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic: poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ, however, from one: another in three respects,—the medium, ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... Thorwaldsen Gallery of Copenhagen had ever dazzled his imagination. Bond Street was not Paris, certainly, but in the greatest metropolis of the world his memory would be for ever perpetuated. Turning to the dithyrambic utterances of the London Press at the time we can hardly wonder at ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the praise of carefulness, and the masterly skill of a finished artist. His language is extremely polished, the purest Atticism reigns in it throughout, and with the greatest dexterity he adapts it to every tone, from the most familiar dialogue up to the high elevation of the Dithyrambic ode. We cannot doubt that he would have been eminently successful in grave poetry, when we see how at times with capricious wantonness he lavishes it only to destroy at the next moment the impression he has made. The elegant choice of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel |
