Adonic

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Adonic refers to meter and beauty, linked to Adonis and used in ancient Greek poetry. Its rhythm captures emotion, often in laments. Explore its charm! 🌸🎶 #Adonic #Poetry #Adonis #Literature #Beauty https://wp.me/p3JLEZ-3Eb

Adonic (Latin: adoneus, Adōnicus, adōnidium, back to 1670-80). Etymology from Ancient Greek Ἀδώνιος (Adṓnios, “of Adonis”) and Ἄδωνις (Ádōnis, “Adonis”). The meaning referring to a plant is a misreading in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia. The meaning referring to meter, μέτρον (métron, “meter”) Ἀδώνιον (Adṓnion), reportedly named for its use in the festival of Adonis.

Adonic meaning: 1. adjetive of, relating to, or like Adonis. (exceptionally handsome). 2. (grammar, meter, verse) a) In Greek and Latin Prosody, it is a noun/adjective, an Adonic verse, so called because used in songs sung at the Adonia, or festival of Adonis: a yearly festival celebrated by women in ancient Greece to mourn the death of Adonis, the consort of Aphrodite. It is a verse having rhythm consisting of a dactyl followed by a spondee. orby a trochee. The first known use of adonic was in 1579.

In botanical uses, It is related to adonium, a plant, a species of southernwood, bearing a flower of golden color or bloodred, as if from the blood of Adonis. To others, adonium is a mode of gardening, way of cultivating flowers, as if Adonis horti, the garden of Adonis.

Literature

It is a unit of Aeolic verse, a five-syllable metrical foot consisting of a dactyl followed by a trochee or spondee.[1] The last line of a Sapphic stanza is an adonic. The pattern (where “-” stands for a long and “u” for a short syllable) is: “- u u – -” when the pattern ends with a spondee (i.e. –) or ” -uu -u ” if a trochee is intended.

Hexameter lines often end in an adonic. Adonic verse is often used in the last line of a Sapphic stanza and in hexameter lines. It was also often used in laments or mournful remembrances for Adonis, which may be the origin of its name.

It gets its name from the Greek expression: O ton Adonin! (“Oh Adonis!”), ritual lament for the death of Adonis, which follows this metrical scheme. In Spanish poetry, some authors have recreated this verse using stressed and unstressed syllables instead of the long and short syllables used in Greco-Latin meter.

 This results in a pentasyllabic verse with an accent mark in the first and fourth syllables. Esteban Manuel de Villegas used this verse as the culmination of the sapphic stanza. Other authors, such as Leandro Fernández de Moratín, have composed poems in this meter. In later compositions, the adonic appears alternating with other pentasyllable forms.

Thus, in this passage from Federico García Lorca’s Chinese Song in Europe, included in his 1927 book Songs, the third verse is adonic, and the first two can be read as adonic (with a secondary accent on the first syllable):

Example:

La señorita
del abanico
va por el puente
del fresco río.

References

• Halporn, J.W. (2012). “Adonic”. In Greene, Roland; Cushman, Stephen; Cavanagh, Clare; Ramazani, Jahan; Rouzer, Paul (eds.). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th ed.). Princeton University Press.
• “adōnium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• adonium in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• adonium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

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