Genres & Forms
Elegy
The elegy is a lyric poem of a meditative, reflective character, imbued with a mood of sorrow, of contemplation upon the transience of life, lost love, solitude, or the inevitability of death. The name derives from the Greek elegos — a mournful song to the accompaniment of a flute. In antiquity the elegy had a broader content (Ovid, Propertius), acquiring its melancholic coloring in modern European poetry. A classic example is Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. In Ukrainian literature elegiac motifs sound in the poetry of Taras Shevchenko and Lesia Ukrainka, and especially in the philosophical lyric of Volodymyr Svidzinsky and in the elegies of the Neoclassicists Maksym Rylsky and Mykola Zerov, where grief is joined to clarity of thought and perfection of form.
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Compare “Elegy” with another term
Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Two lyric genres, opposite in tonality. The elegy is a poem of meditative, contemplative and mournful mood: a reflection on the transience of life, loss, solitude, unfulfilled love or the fleetingness of beauty, in an intonation of quiet sorrow. The ode is a solemn, elevated poem glorifying a notable event, person or lofty idea with pathetic, festive exaltation. The elegy lowers the voice to personal grief; the ode raises it to civic or philosophical praise.
