What is the purpose of the poem Archaic Torso of Apollo?
“Archaic Torso of Apollo,” a poem written about an encounter with a sculpture, ought to exist itself for its reader like a piece of sculpture or a painting. Both the sculpture and the poem serve as models for the reader, defining how the reader might be or, in fact, ought to be.
Who wrote Archaic Torso of Apollo?
Sarah Stutt
“Apollo’s Archaic Torso” is by a young Yorkshire writer, Sarah Stutt, who recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Hull. Sarah, a fluent speaker of German, has produced two translations, one fairly close to the original, the other looser. I’ve included both.
What does antistrophe mean?
1a : the repetition of words in reversed order. b : the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses. 2a : a returning movement in Greek choral dance exactly answering to a previous strophe. b : the part of a choral song delivered during the antistrophe.
What is a famous ode?
Some of the most famous historical odes describe traditionally romantic things and ideas: William Wordsworth’s “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” is an ode to the Platonic doctrine of “recollection”; John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” describes the timelessness of art; and Percy …
Why is the sonnet ” Archaic Torso of Apollo ” important?
So the sonnet form prepares us to be convinced of something, it prepares us for a turn, and “Archaic Torso of Apollo” has the sharpest last minute turn in sonnet history. It’s also a form that is inescapably linked to wholeness.
What was the head of the Archaic Torso of Apollo?
‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’ details the remaining beauty and power of a damaged sculpture missing its head and legs. The piece begins by making clear that neither the speaker, nor the reader, know what the head of the sculpture looked it, but that it must have been majestic.
When did Rainer Maria Rilke write torso of an archaic Apollo?
From Rilke: Selected Poems (Univ. of California Press, 1957) with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso gleams in all its power. Otherwise to that dark center where procreation flared. that does not see you. You must change your life. tr. Sarah Stutt still persists and gleams.
How many beats per line in Archaic Torso of Apollo?
The poem has no defined rhyme scheme but the syllabic meter stays fairly constant, with no fewer than nine beats per line, and no more than twelve. ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’ details the remaining beauty and power of a damaged sculpture missing its head and legs.
