the.com/elegy
a poem that turns grief into something you'd actually want to read twice.
means A mournful, reflective poem or song, typically a lament for the dead.
from From Greek 'elegos,' a song of mourning, by way of Latin 'elegia' and French 'élégie.' Originally the word described not the sadness but the meter: 'elegiac' verse came in couplets, paired lines that the Greeks used for all sorts of subjects, from love to war. Only over time did the form settle into grief, until 'elegy' came to mean the lament itself rather than the shape it was poured into.
- Greek roots
- Named for the mournful elegiac meter, not the sadness
- Three stages
- Lament, then praise, then consolation — grief on rails
- Gray's hit
- Elegy in a Country Churchyard took eight years
- Not just death
- Originally mourned anything lost, including love affairs
- Auden's blow
- Stop all the clocks elegized a man in a funeral