Anacreónticos

Los anacreónticos son versos con una métrica empleada por el poeta griego Anacreonte en sus poemas sobre el amor y el vino. Sus imitadores griegos posteriores (cuyos poemas conservados se conocen como las Anacreontea ) retomaron los mismos temas y utilizaron la métrica anacreóntica. En la poesía moderna, los anacreónticos son breves composiciones líricas que conservan la temática anacreóntica, pero no la métrica.

El verso anacreóntico o anacreonteus es el verso de ocho sílabas uu – u – u – – ^{[ 2 ]} (donde u = breve y – longum ). Se ha sugerido que el anacreóntico en su origen puede ser una variante « anaclástica » del dímetro jónico (uu – – uu – –), es decir, un dímetro jónico con la cuarta y quinta sílabas invertidas; pero sea esto cierto o no, ambos metros se han asociado desde Anacreonte, quien a menudo los usaba juntos en sus composiciones. ^{[ 3 ]}

Un ejemplo de anacreóntica del corpus de Anacreonte es fr. 11b PMG , que termina así:

En este fragmento, los primeros cuatro versos son anacreónticos, mientras que el último es un dímetro iónico.

El ritmo anacreóntico también aparece en la poesía persa clásica, por ejemplo en el siguiente ejemplo del poeta Saadi, del siglo XIII :

hombre agar nazar harām ast * bas-ī gonāh dāram

če konam? nemītavānam * ke nazar negāh dāram

u – u – u – – || (u)u – u – (u) – –

"If looking is forbidden, I have plenty of sin.

What am I to do? I can't stop looking!"

The syllables ast, nāh and gāh are "overlong" and count in Persian metre as equivalent to – u.

In English poetry, Anacreontics are the title given to short lyrical pieces, of an easy kind, dealing with love and wine. The English word appears to have been first used in 1656 by Abraham Cowley, who called a section of his poems "anacreontiques" because they were paraphrased out of the so-called writings of Anacreon into a familiar measure which was supposed to represent the meter of the Greek.^[4]

Half a century later, when the form had been much cultivated, John Phillips (1631–1706) laid down the arbitrary rule that an anacreontic line "consists of seven syllables, without being tied to any certain law of quantity." In the 18th century, the antiquary William Oldys (1696–1761) was the author of a little piece which is the perfect type of an anacreontic; this begins:

"Busy, curious, thirsty fly,

Drink with me, and drink as I;

Freely welcome to my cup,

Could'st thou sip and sip it up.

Make the most of life you may;

Life is short and wears away."^[4]

In 1800 Thomas Moore published a collection of erotic anacreontics which are also typical in form; Moore speaks of the necessity of catching "the careless facility with which Anacreon appears to have trifled," as a reason why anacreontics are often tame and worthless. He dwells, moreover, on the absurdity of writing "pious anacreontics," a feat, however, which was performed by several of the Greek Christian poets, and in particular by Gregory of Nazianzus and John of Damascus.^[4]

• Anacreontic Society