In the overall corpus of Euripides, women spend a
fourth of their time onstage singing and men only one- fourteenth. In the voices of women song different accomplishes
different goals and expresses more varied sentiments than in the voices of men. The most notable songs of loss and mourning in Greek tragedy occur in plays by Euripides. But all of the three extant
tragedians incorporate within their plays the rites of lamentation that we know
from archaic poetry and from other premodern societies. All draw heavily on the
function of song in an oral culture to give ritualized expression to intense
emotion and to provide comfort, solace, and security amid anxiety, confusion,
and loss. By absorbing the cries of grief into the lyricism of a choral lament,
the tragic poet is able to identify the emotional experience of suffering with
the musical and rhythmic impulse of dance and song, and in particular women's song culture,
Folklorist
Anna Caraveli [i]
argues that there are four registers of lament “in ascending order of efficacy
and importance”:
- Laments that are simply recited
as poetry
- Laments that are sung, but not
on a ritual occasion or in an extraordinary emotional context
- Laments that are sung in an
extraordinary, heightened emotional context, but in an ordinary setting
such as one’s home or the fields.
- Laments that are performed both
in a heightened emotional context and on a ritual occasion (for example,
tending the grave, memorial services, funerals)[
These four registers are indicative of the wide
range of meaning and functions women’s laments can have within a given society.
Formal laments for the dead in the Greek tradition
generally conform to a three-part pattern, which consists of a direct address,
a narrative of the past or future, and then a renewed address accompanied by
reproach and lamentation. In tragedy, these three
elements are both combined and isolated from one another in countless ways to
express immeasurable sorrow. Any one of the three parts may evoke the genre,
emotions, and rituals of lament, thereby contributing to the overall atmosphere
of sorrow and evoking the pity of the audience. Just as lamentation in tragedy
is generally separated from the rites of an actual funeral, so also the poetic
structure, traditional themes, and language of lament can be manipulated and
employed with great effect in non-ritual contexts.
[i] Bridge
between Worlds: the Greek Women’s Lament as Communicate Event», Caraveli–Chaves
Anna, Journal of American Folklore, 93, 1980
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