Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Humanities, Psychology and Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Syriac Acrostic Versification
Marika Chachibaia
ABSTRACT:
Despite the different sizes and divisions of stanzas of poems, until the 9th century, the Syrians knew only acrostic versification. Acrostic played a great role in the formation of Syriac hymns and their further development. Alphabetical acrostic deserves special attention, which seems to have been created under the influence of the Psalms and the Lamentations. Sometimes, acrostic is linear and simple. Similar to many verses of the Hebrew poetry of the Bible, Ephraim the Syrian is the author of several examples of acrostic hymns, in which stanzas are arranged in the alphabetical order. Before Ephraim, Aphrahat introduced this type of numbering. Each of his homilies, written in prose, begins with a letter of the alphabet which determines its place. Words composed of acrostic are rare. In some of Ephraim’s poems, his name is used as the acrostic. Verbal acrostic occurs comparatively rarely. The name of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary or some saint to whom a hymn is dedicated is usually used as the source of linear or stanza acrostic. The main basis of classical Syriac versification is the fixed number of syllables in a line, regardless of whether the syllable is short or long. From the 9th century, the influence of Arabic poetry is clearly observable in Syriac hymnography, this was manifested especially in introduction of rhyme. The use of the final line in a poem does not occur until this time. A few examples of such versification was found in the works of authors of earlier periods. The research into the issues of Syriac versification is closely related to the special study of the poetry of Ephraim the Syrian, namely, works of hymnographic genre. The influence of Ephraim the Syrian’s hymnographic heritage on the development of later Christian liturgical poetry is little-studied.
keywords: Acrostic, Ephraim the Syrian, Aphrahat