What is it about?
In this chapter I make a distinction between elegy and lament. Modern Greece offers an interesting case of a culture in which a long tradition of lamentation exists, one that has influenced literary practice. Twentieth Greek poets, male and female, and contemporary song lyricists have drawn on the imagery and sentiment of these traditional women’s laments to mourn not only their personal losses but the series of tragedies that have dominated Modern Greek history. What distinguishes these laments from the tradition of elegy is the positive value ascribed to pain and the concomitant refusal of comfort for the bereaved. Women lament-singers speak of using pain as an inspiration for their poetic and musical expressions of grief.
Featured Image
Photo by Uta Scholl on Unsplash
Why is it important?
In modern societies, where the bereaved are encouraged to recover from grief or "find closure", it may be valuable to consider the very different Greek tradition of women's laments for the dead. In their laments, women speak of the value of pain and the necessity of preserving it. Women have created a "poetics of pain" where grief is expressed in a formal musical and poetic structure that derives its perceived value from the pain of bereavement
Perspectives
A combination if personal grief and a knowledge of modern Greek folk culture led me to explore the traditional laments of various regions of Greece. I listened to many laments and spoke to the women who performed them, and I was impressed by how unsentimental and powerful they were. Unlike the poetry of elegy and consolation, they spoke to me as no other poetry did.
Gail Holst-Warhaft
Cornell University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Poetics of Pain, January 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004723603_011.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
