Out of this Dithyramb arose, Aristotle says, tragedy--that is, out of Ritual arose Art.
The Dithyramb is a Spring Song at a Spring Festival, and the importance of the Spring Festival is that it magically promotes the food-supply.
The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull.
It was, therefore, of the first importance to realize the nature of the dithyramb from which the drama rose, and so far as might be to mark the cause and circumstances of the transition.
The orchestra on which the Dithyramb was danced was just a circular dancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and sometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle.
And even as the dithyramb had been pressed into the service of poetry, so was drinking made rhythmic by music.
Arion was the first to attempt to bring the dithyramb into poetry, by teaching the dancers to use a slower movement and to observe greater regularity in their various steps.
The beginning of a Pindaric dithyramb and the opening sentences of the introduction to Thucydides’ History are minutely examined from this point of view.
Arion is named as the first great poet who cultivated the dithyramb and wrote elaborate odes for recitation by the Chorus in their evolutions round the Bacchic altar.
As the paean and the hyporchem were originally consecrated to Apollo, so the dithyramb and the phallic hymn belonged to Dionysus.
It is greatly to be regretted that our information respecting the dithyramb and the phallic chorus has to be obtained from a dramatic poet rather than from any perfect specimens of these compositions.
The dithyramb never lost the tempestuous and enthusiastic character of Bacchic revelry; but in time it grew from being a wild celebration of the mystic sufferings of Bacchus into the sublime art of tragedy.
Simonides wrote a dithyramb on Memnon and Tithonus; Pindar, on Orion and on Heracles.
Originally concerned with the birth of the god, the dithyramb came to deal with all his fortunes: then its scope became still larger; it might celebrate, not Dionysus alone, but any god or hero.
The dithyrambhad a spectacular character, combining verse with music.
A dithyramb is defined by Grote as a round choric dance and song in honour of the wine-god.
But when tragic drama had so far developed as to be quite independent, the dithyramb did not, on that account, disappear.
The dithyramb was traditionally first practised in Naxos; it spread to other islands, to Boeotia and finally to Athens.
In Pierre, Melville spends a chapter ofdithyramb in celebration of this sentiment which, inspired by one’s mother, one transfers to all other women honourably loved.
And the last letter is a dithyramb of gratitude to Hawthorne for a letter of Hawthorne’s (would that it survived!
Of Arion the greatest work was a dithyramb or choral hymn to the god of wine.
See George Eliot's poem beginning Arion, whose melodic soul Taught thedithyramb to roll.
The satyric chorus of dithyramb is the saving deed of Greek art; the paroxysms described above spent their force in the intermediary world of these Dionysian followers.
Here we shall ask first of all where that new germ which subsequently developed into tragedy and dramatic dithyramb first makes itself perceptible in the Hellenic world.
This fitness or affinity, he says, was so marked that a poet who tried to compose a dithyramb in another mode found himself passing unawares into the Phrygian (Pol.
Some of them expressed the sufferings of Dionysus; and it was from this more mournful species of dithyramb that tragedy, properly so called, arose.
The improvements in the dithyramb were introduced by Arion at Corinth; and it was chiefly among the Dorian states of the Peloponnesus that these choral dithyrambic songs prevailed.
The reply to such a dithyramb on the sun's solitude in light would be Ariadne.
The whole of my Zarathustra is a dithyramb in honour of solitude, or, if I have been understood, in honour of purity.
Of arm that lifts a skully lyre Whose dithyramb whirls ever higher!
