Composition

Abstract In the previous chapter, we examined the inner structure of individual stanzas, turning our attention only in the last instance, the catalogues of Solon 13, to how these stanzas might be arranged with others in a longer sequence. In what follows I shift entirely to this second, more complex order of analysis and once again I Wnd it helpful to invoke the two diVerent derivations of the term ‘ stanza’ . Italian musicians and poets originally imagined stanzas as regular ‘ stopping points’ on a journey, at which the poet could pause and then change the content, tone, or mode of his discourse, a model that is most apt for the Wrst section of this chapter, where I discuss how elegiac poets regularly use the boundaries between stanzas as points of transition between advice and meditation, the two basic linguistic actions of the elegiac genre.1 The second deWnition of stanza as a ‘ room’ , which proved useful in the previous chapter, will be invoked again in the second half of this chapter. Here, however, I draw upon a wider architectural metaphor and imagine the structure of a longer poem as a building of sorts assembled from a series of ‘ rooms’ , that are joined together in complimentary and coordinated ways. This use of individual stanzas as building blocks allows the poet to present and explore more complex ideas in an extended and orderly fashion, such as we Wnd, for example, in Tyrtaeus’ lengthy discussion of excellence (IæET) in his Fragment 12 or Solon’ s ‘ Ages of Man’ elegy (Fragment 24).