The Icelandic Canadian - 01.10.1942, Blaðsíða 16

12
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
In the hexameter rises the foun-
tain's silvery column.
In the pentameter aye falling
in melody back.
This simple working-definition gives
however no inkling of the intricacies
and of the delicate nuances of the
mature Latin elegy. This model
Egilsson faithfully follows; indeed his
poem proves on examination to be a
Latin version of an elegy by Tibullus
(ca. 50-19 B.C.) who was one of the
literary glories of the Golden Age of
Latin literature. Seldom does the youth-
ful imitator—Egilsson was then only in
his twentieth year—employ the Latin
phrasing of his model, nor yet does he
in more than a half a dozen places in
this extensive piece part company with
the thought of the classical poem: such
minor variations and omissions as do
occur appear to be mainly inspired by a
slight difference in aesthetic taste. On
all the main matters of metre and of
meaning, however, the modern Icelandic
and the ancient Roman poets are at
one. This close correspondence extends
to stylistic merits such as purity of dic-
tion, elegance of expression and natural-
ness in the association of elegiac
motifs, likewise to the strict adherence
to minutiae in metrics as for instance
the avoidance of excessive or harsh
elision, or that of a long vowel before
a short one, and the practice of closing
the pentameter lines on dissyllabics.
Egilsson’s poem is indeed a literary
tour de force; in it the author, then a
mere peasant lad in Iceland, establishes
his ability to equal such consummate
masters as Tibullus and Ovid. The
piece is an early indication of Egilsson’s
greatest natural gifts, possessing the
linguistic perfection and the literary
felicity that men readily came to
recognize as the chief characteristics of
his writings.
The occasion for which Tibullus wrote
this elegy was a rural festival. It
illustrates excellently the poet’s, as well
as his people’s, love for life on the
land; likewise it effectively proves his
genuine interest in the preoccupations
of the countryside. Nowhere are tradi-
tional doings more deeply imbedded
than here; nowhere else is it more ap-
propriate that "Work and Pray" (Ora
atque labora) should be the rule of life.
With that high seriousness, however,
and that propitiating of the powers who
preside over nature and the energizing
of man, there could fittingly go, the
ancients well recognized, a great deal
of robust, and even rude enjoyment.
This natural association of worship and
merry-making is to be observed par
excellence in “the rural practice olden”
of the ancient Romans. With them the
purification of the fields involved both
of these elements and took the form of
both public and private festivals cele-
brated annually. The public occasion
was in May while the private one was
usually held, (as Tibullus held his, on
his own estate), at the close of April
or the commencement of May; for his
fields and crops every Roman possessor
of a farm performed on that occasion a
well-defined ritual; Cato has preserved
for us the formula of the prayer, and
Vergil, in his Georgies, outlines the
doings of the festival. Tibullus, how-
ever, in the elegy under discussion, is
our best literary source for the occasion
which has been so well delineated for
English readers in the delicate prose of
Walter Pater.
Tibullus composed this elegy when he
was in his early twenties; the reference
to his pajtron Messalla serves to show
that the poem was written shortly after
27 B.C. It is composed in the artless
elegance of this accomplished poet, and
its perusal is indeed an aesthetic de-
light. Though the diverse motifs of
elegiac verse are unobtrusively blended,
the various divisions of the poem are
readily discernible. The earlier portion
of it deals with such matters as the
Invocation, the Procession, the Prayer
and the Sacrifice; the later, and the