Analysis of Young Men of Sidon
Constantine P. Cavafy 1863 (Alexandria) – 1933 (Alexandria)
The actor they'd brought in to entertain them
also recited a few choice epigrams.
The room opened out on the garden
and the delicate odour of flowers
mingled with the scent
of the five perfumed young Sidonians.
There were readings from Meleager, Krinagoras, Rhianos.
But when the actor recited
'Here lies Aeschylus, the Athenian, son of Euphorion'
(stressing maybe more than he should have
'his renowned valour' and 'sacred Marathonian grove'),
a vivacious young man, mad about literature,
suddenly jumped up and said:
'I don't like that quatrain at all.
Sentiments of that kind seem somehow weak.
Give, I say, all your strength to your work,
make it your total concern. And don't forget your work
even in times of stress or when you begin to decline.
This is what I expect, what I demand of you
and not that you completely dismiss from your mind
the magnificent art of your tragedies
your Agamemnon, your marvellous Prometheus,
your representations of Orestes and Cassandra,
your Seven Against Thebes -merely to set down for your
memorial
that as an ordinary soldier, one of the herd,
you too fought against Datis and Artaphernis.'
Scheme | ABCBDBBECFGHIJKLLMNOBBPQRSB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0101101011 100100111 011011010 001001110 10101 1010111 10101111 11010010 11100100111 101011111 101101011 0010111011000 1001101 1111111 100111111 111111111 1111001010111 10011111101101 111101110111 011101001111 00100111100 101111 1001010100010 1100111011111 0100 111100101101 11101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,116 |
Words | 193 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 27 |
Lines Amount | 27 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 904 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 190 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 58 sec read
- 84 Views
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