1. Introduction
What characterizes the literary period that we (tentatively) call the Baroque? The question is immense and can be answered in many different ways â if at all. The Swedish literary scholar Mats Malm is, however, on the trail of something important when he stresses the focus on representation:1
Renässansen utforskade världen, barocken utforskade våra medel att utforska = representera världen. I grunden rör frågan mediernas betydelse.
The Renaissance explored the world, the Baroque explored our means of exploring = representing the world. Fundamentally, it is a question about the importance of media.2
While some literary paradigms want literature to represent nature as closely as possible and try to play down the artificiality that is inherent in every representation, the Baroque chooses to embrace the artificiality in itself. The Baroque author uses his/her wit to make the reader focus on and admire the representation as such. Certain genres and literary phenomena are based almost entirely on the art and artificiality of the representation (and have, accordingly, sometimes been called âartificialâ with a derogatory sneer). Examples of such genres and phenomena, often seen during the period that we call the Baroque, are figure poems, acrostics, parodies, chronostics, echo verses and, last but not least, anagram poetry.3
In this paper, we will discuss the use of anagrams in the works of two poets from the seventeenth century, the Dane Henrik Albertsen Hamilton and the Swede Georg Stiernhielm. We will take a closer look at a few striking examples, but also discuss some more general aspects, such as the question of whether the anagram is to be seen mainly as a witty word play, or if we can detect a deeper symbolic significance.
2. Anagram Poetry
2.1 Definition and distribution of the anagram
What is an anagram? The definition of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is âa word, phrase, or name formed by rearranging the letters of another word, phrase, or name.â4 A typical Latin example is MARIA-AMARI. (Maria-To be loved) The first attestation of the word âanagramâ in the English language dates, also according to the Oxford English Dictionary, from 1589, a fact that is, perhaps, not without interest. Anagrams can, of course, be created and appreciated without any specific context, but they have traditionally often been put in a poetic setting. The typical early modern âanagram poemâ consists of an anagram and an epigram that gives an explanation of the anagram.5
No one can deny that anagrams and anagram poetry enjoyed an enormous popularity in the period that we call the Baroque. As pointed out by the Swedish Latinist Hans Helander,
the Baroque age indeed saw the culmination of the interest in anagrams. Later ages have not been equally fascinated, and anagrams have been related to specific areas of literature.6
Anagram poetry was written and appreciated in the sixteenth century and remained popular well into the eighteenth century, but the seventeenth century can be seen as the golden age of anagram poetry.7 The popularity of the genre seems to have started in France in the 1550s under the influence of the Greek scholar Jean Dorat, one of the founders of La Pléiade and a great admirer of the Hellenistic poet Lycophron. The interest in anagrams then spread to Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and, as we will see, also to the Nordic countries.8 One reason why anagram poetry became so popular in the seventeenth century may be the fact that the seventeenth century was also the heyday of occasional poetry. An occasional poem is (almost) always a poem written for a certain individual, and what could be more fitting than to celebrate that individual by making an anagram of his or her name? From the very beginning, there seems, however, to have been a slight ambiguity in the genre, a kind of oscillation between lusus and gravitas:
The composition of anagrams and chronograms were for most authors a form of intellectual play, quite conforming to the literary baroque themes (Tesauro, Marino) in which ingenuity played a decisive role. But there was also, throughout the epoch in consideration, a kind of belief in these things: It was felt that there were correspondences between names and things [â¦], and that these correspondences were not fortuitous, but a message to be interpreted.9
Modern literature on anagram poetry is somewhat limited and the great work on the genre is still waiting to be written.10 In order to put the works of Hamilton and Stiernhielm into context, we would therefore need to refer to the works of their contemporaries and see what two influential poets and scholars, Nicolaus Reusner and Guillaume Leblanc, wrote about anagram poetry. While we have no proof that Hamilton and Stiernhielm were familiar with the works of Reusner and Leblanc specifically, Reusner and Leblanc may still give us an understanding of the ideas on anagram poetry prevalent in the circles in which both Hamilton and Stiernhielm moved.
2.2 Nicolaus Reusner and Guillaume Leblanc about anagram poetry
Nicolaus Reusner (1545â1602) was a German jurist, publisher and man of letters. He is perhaps most famous for his Icones sive imagines virorum literis illustrium (1587), a book that was often printed interspersed with blank pages and used as an album amicorum. At the very end of his life, he completed his massive Anagrammatographia, printed in Jena in 1602. The huge book (682 pages) contains nine books of anagram poems. Liber I is addressed to the emperors of the Holy Roman empire and to other sovereigns, Liber II to Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Liber III to âillustrious Counts and Baronsâ, Liber IV to other members of the nobility, Liber V to famous jurists and Liber VI to famous theologians and men of letters. Liber VII honours the conjugal love with anagram poems on the names of married couples. The last two books contain anagram poems written to Reusner by friends and colleagues. A typical poem in Reusnerâs hand is the following, addressed to the jurist Joannes Sturcelius:11
A very interesting feature in Reusnerâs book is that it also contains a theoretical text on anagram poetry written by Guillaume Leblanc (1561â1601): De ratione anagrammatismi. Guillaume Leblanc (in Latin Guilielmus Blancus Junior) was a jurist and Latin poet who filled the function of chamberlain to Pope Sixtus V and ended his days as Bishop of Grasse.
Leblanc begins his De ratione anagrammatismi by stating that he, a Frenchman, was surprised when he realised that the art of anagram poetry, long cherished in France, was practically unknown in Italy.12 He then moves on to a discussion of the origin of the genre. He admits that no one can know for sure where the art of the anagram comes from. Some people say that Lycophron learned the art of the anagram from Hebrews. The importance of the Greeks, more specifically the Alexandrian Pleiad in the 3rd century BC, is beyond doubt. The art of anagrams and anagram poetry came to France during the reign of Francis I (1515â1547). Instrumental in this process was the scholar and poet Jean Dorat. Leblanc then moves on to an explanation of what an anagram actually is and a practical guide to anagram writing. An anagram is an artificium that should always be based on a name. The perfect anagram uses all the letters of the name without leaving any letters out and without adding anything new. The author may, however, allow himself a few liberties if the result is good. The French anagram
is not formally perfect, but a very good anagram, nevertheless. The anagram must never stand alone: it must always be placed within an epigram. The epigram is the golden setting of the anagram. Finally, Leblanc arrives at the most important part of his treatise, the vis et efficientia of the anagram. What are anagrams actually good for? That, according to Leblanc, depends on the question if there is power in a name:
Sed tota haec disputatio ab eo pendet, num sit aliqua vis in nominibus.
But the entire discussion depends on [the question] if there is power in names.
There are many things that indicate that there actually is vis in a name. Leblanc quotes Platoâs dialogue Cratylus, where we can read that we shall reach the true knowledge of the things if we know the true etymon of a word. In Genesis, Leblanc continues, we can read how Adam gave things their names. Socrates showed the significance not only of the names of things, but of the letters themselves. So far, it seems as if anagrams must be very important indeed. But here Leblanc puts in a word of warning. There is a great risk, he says, that this line of argument leads people to superstition and ungodly practices. The Church forbids all kinds of divination:
Absit, igitur, ut aliqua divinatio dicatur anagrammatis effectus!
May, therefore, no divination be pronounced because of an anagram!
Another argument against taking anagrams too seriously is that names may be wrong and that it is also possible for a person to change his/her name. Bearing that in mind â should we then dismiss anagram poetry as an empty practice? No, Leblanc is certainly not prepared to go so far. He reminds us that there are kinds of names that certainly have a meaning of their own: the names applied to God. When it comes to human names, they are not identical with the person, but they may serve as symbols. Leblanc stresses the importance of etymologies and concludes that a nomen, after all, may be an omen. He finally confesses to his ambivalence: as a jurist, he laughs at poems and anagrams, as a poet, he praises them. When it comes to anagrams, he is something of a Proteus.
We have mentioned the works of Nicolaus Reusner and Guillaume Leblanc in order to put the poetry of Hamilton and Stiernhielm in a contemporary context. Before introducing the poets themselves, we will now briefly outline the Latin culture in their home countries.
3. Latin literature in general and anagram poetry in particular in Denmark and Sweden in the seventeenth century: a short survey
First, a word of caution. The men (and in a few cases women) who wrote in Latin in the seventeenth century were first and foremost members of the international community of the learned. Danes or Swedes, they studied and travelled abroad and were influenced by European rather than national tendencies.
The two Nordic countries Denmark and Sweden were, during the entire seventeenth century, each otherâs arch enemies. They were two countries with great similarities, but also with a few differences. To begin with the similarities, neither Denmark nor Sweden had what could be called a Renaissance culture before the Reformation.13 The Reformation opened the doors wide to Renaissance humanism and also to Neo-Latin literature, but the fact that this happened quite late (compared with other European countries) led to a situation where the borders between Renaissance and Baroque culture became strangely blurred. Both Denmark and Sweden had a strong Lutheran church and were heavily influenced by Lutheran orthodoxy. Both in Denmark and in Sweden, the vernacular literature was both small and modest at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries.14 When a vernacular literature slowly emerged and began to grow, Lutheran hymns became an important genre. Both Denmark and Sweden had sovereigns who supported and took pride in Latin literature: in Denmark Christian IV (king 1588â1648), in Sweden Christina (queen 1632â1654). But there were also dissimilarities. While the same tendencies appeared both in Denmark and in Sweden, they were not synchronized: Denmark had a vivacious Neo-Latin literature a few decades earlier than Sweden, and in the same way the vernacular gained the upper hand earlier in Denmark than in Sweden. Were the courts of King Christian and Queen Christina influenced by Renaissance or Baroque culture? Probably by both: the tendencies merged more or less seamlessly.
In the late sixteenth century, Danish poets started to write anagram poetry:
A Baroque tendency begins to appear from c. 1590 in features such as chronograms, anagrams, acrosticha and other forms of play with letters and words: various kinds of visual poetry also turn up, such as fictitious inscriptions.15
Many Danish Latin poets tried their hand at anagram poetry, no one, as far as we know, more diligently than Henrik Albertsen Hamilton. The Swedish poets followed in hot pursuit:
For most of this period [the seventeenth century] Swedish Neo-Latin literature exhibits an abundance of all the artifices of the Baroque, such as acrostics, anagrams, chronograms and all the variations of typeface and size available to the typographerâs art.16
The controversial theologian and poet Johannes Messenius wrote anagram poems as early as in 1607.17 Georg Stiernhielm was neither the first nor the most prolific writer of anagram poetry in Sweden, but he was probably one of the most original.
4. The Anagram poetry of Henrik Albertsen Hamilton
4.1 Henrik Albertsen Hamilton
Henrik Albertsen Hamilton, the son of the Mayor of Copenhagen Christen Albertsen Hamilton, was born c. 1590.18 He was given an excellent education, first by tutors at home, later at a school in Meissen. After a few years spent in Copenhagen, Hamilton left Denmark in 1608 for the universities of Heidelberg and GieÃen. The precocious young man seems to have left a deep impression on those around him, not least on the University Librarian of Heidelberg Jan Gruter (Janus Gruterus). Hamiltonâs first and only collection of poetry, Musaea Adolescentiae Venus, printed in GieÃen in 1610, was provided with introductory poems by (among others) Jan Gruter. A sample of poems from Musaea would later be printed in Jan Gruterâs great anthology Delitiae poetarum Germanorum. The years 1610â1616 were spent partly in Denmark (where Hamilton had friends in the literary circles around the poets Willich Westhoff and Bertel Knudsen Aquilonius), partly abroad.19 In 1616, he attained a position as a secretary at the German Chancellery (roughly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) in Copenhagen. His fatherâs death in 1616 had left Hamilton in possession of a large inheritance, and in 1618 he left Denmark again to give free rein to his Wanderlust. In Germany he met the young Martin Opitz, and the two friends travelled through the Netherlands and Denmark together.20 Opitz eventually went back to Germany, but for Hamilton the journey had just begun. He continued through Northern Italy and France and eventually left Europe. All traces of Hamilton end in Egypt, where he probably died sometime after 1623.
4.2 Musaea Adolescentiae Venus
While we all know that Martin Opitz would later became one of the pioneers of German poetry, we can hardly guess what path Hamilton would have taken if he had continued his literary career. We have to content ourselves with the single book that he published, Musaea Adolescentiae Venus, a title that can be translated roughly âYouthâs Poetical Loveâ. The fame of the book remained intact as late as in 1693, when Frederik Rostgaard reprinted it in its entirety in his anthology Deliciae quorundam poetarum Danorum (vol. 1). The book, which has the motto âJuvenilis error dedecus gignit minusâ (Youthful error causes less shame) â Hamilton was only about 20 years old at the time of its publication â consists of five distinctive parts: Regia Clio, Sortilegia Lycophrontia sive Anagrammata, Elegiarum Fasciculus, Amica Mneme and Odarum et Parodiarum Pugillus.21 While we will concentrate on Sortilegia Lycophrontica sive Anagrammata it is nevertheless important to say a few words about the book as a whole. It was dedicated to the Danish King Christian IV, and the presence of the king is very tangible throughout the book. In Regia Clio, the first part of the book, Hamilton extols the King, Queen and other members of the Royal family. The ânecklace of Regal virtuesâ that characterizes King Christian IV is described in the acrostic (poem no. 4, pp. 3â10)22 Clementia, Humanitas, Religio, Iustitia, Sapientia, Temperantia, Integritas, Amor, Notitia Artium, Veritas and Severitas (Clemency, Humanity, Religion, Justice, Wisdom, Temperance, Integrity, Love, Knowledge of the arts, Truth, Severity). The third part of the book, Elegiarum Fasciculus consists of a few elegiac poems directed to friends, not least Jan Gruter. Part 4, Amica Mneme contains shorter poems to friends, many clearly intended for alba amicorum. Part five, Odarum et Parodiarum Pugillus, finally, contains a few poems written in Horatian meters and a couple of parodies on poems by Horace and Martial.23 It is easy to see the influence from Paulus Melissus, not least in Regia Clio. A genre that was popular with Melissus but is totally absent in Hamiltonâs book is, however, love poetry. We find acrostics (the above mentioned no. 4, pp. 3â10, and no. 64, p. 46, which also has a telestich)24, a chronogram25 (no. 129, p. 88) and an echo poem (no. 197, p. 129), but the single most impressive feature of the book is the overwhelming presence of anagram poems.26 We will now move on to the discussion of part 2, Sortilegia Lycophrontica sive Anagrammata.
4.3 Sortilegia Lycophrontica sive Anagrammata
The title is interesting in itself. The use of the word Lycophrontica shows that Hamilton clearly considered it to be common knowledge that Lycophron was the father of anagram poetry. The use of the word sortilegia indicates that Hamilton regarded anagram poetry as an innocent practice and that he had no fear of being taken for a sortilegus in the truly magical sense of the word.
Sortilegia Lycophrontica is by far the longest part of the book, comprising almost half of its pages and no less than 122 anagram poems.27 The clear structure of the section reminds us of Nicolas Reusnerâs book of anagrams. Hamilton begins with poems to the king and the members of the royal family (no. 42â55, pp. 26â35). Next, we have poems to the members of the Danish senate (no. 56â85, pp. 35â63). The third part is addressed to the professors of Copenhagen University (no. 86â110, pp. 63â76). Finally (and without a clear line of demarcation from the third part) we have poems addressed to family, friends, former tutors etc. (no. 111â168, pp. 77â111). Almost all anagram poems follow the same pattern, which we recognize from Nicolaus Reusner:
1 NAME (or NAME + TITLE, NATIONALITY etc.) in capital letters
2 ANAGRAM in capital letters
3 Poem that explains the anagram. In the poem, the words of the anagram are written in italics.
The poems are almost always written in elegiac couplets, but there are a few cases where Hamilton uses Anacreontic meters. Hamilton seldom breaks the rules described by Guillaume Leblanc. Many of the anagrams are very apt and witty indeed, not least no. 83 (p. 61) SIEGVARDUS â DURAS, VIGES (Siegvardus â you stay strong and are vigorous) and no. 92 (p. 68) CONRADUS ASLACUS â DUC NOS, CARA SALUS (Conradus Aslacus â lead us, dear salvation). Since the anagrams are not meant to be read alone, but explained and embellished by their poems (or âgolden settingsâ, in the words of Guillaume Leblanc), we will here give three examples of anagrams together with their poems. The first example, no. 44 (p. 30) in the book, addresses the King of Denmark, Christian IV:
CHRISTIAN IV, THE KING OF DENMARK AND NORWAY, THE FATHER OF THE REALM.
IN YOU LIVES THE TRUE AIR, THE WELL-KNOWN CALM.
BY YOU THE PIOUS FORTRESS OF CHRIST IS SAVED.
Long ago, when the rulers of the descendants of Romulus and the kings of the Greeks wanted to know the gifts of their lives, they consulted with faithful minds the cauldrons of the old Sibyl and the tripods of the god from Claros. [5] Long live the soothsayers â would you like to know how great you are, oh the best of kings? Consult the name, and you will be sure! In you lives the well-known calm, in you lives the true air of the Holy Spirit and the gift of Sophia and the Castalians: the fortress of Christ will remain happy, saved by you, [10] and Denmark will stand restored in your hand. May Rome, may also Greece stay quiet about its kings, you will flourish, greater with your fame, greater with your honour. O, may you be vigorous, I pray, and may you see to it that the country of Denmark flourishes, made happy because of your dominion.
The addressee is here a sovereign, a person at the very top of society. It is quite natural that Hamilton chooses to depict the king as filled with (divine) calm and the air of the Holy Spirit, a true saviour of the Christian faith. More surprising, perhaps, is the light-handed way in which Hamilton deals with the question of divination. Sibyls, tripods and pythones mix effortlessly with Christianity. The mentioning of divination is totally unproblematic â but does that mean that Hamilton regards anagram-making only as an entertaining lusus? Perhaps not: the solemn note of the latter part of the poem indicates that Hamilton really wants the king (and us) to believe that there is truth in a name. Here, like elsewhere, the ambivalence of the anagram poetry is evident.
The second example, no.132 (pp. 90â91) in the book, addresses a person from a very different social sphere, Hamiltonâs friend and relative Dankert Leiel (in Latin Tancredus Laelius), who was studying to become a medical doctor:
MAGISTER TANCREDUS LAELIUS, DANE
WHEN YOU ARE HEALING, THERE WILL BE A SWEET GALEN IN THE ART
You are wise, and the rare Wisdom has placed the crown upon your hair, honourable Tancred. You are a doctor, and Medicine gives Hygeia to you in marriage: of whom would the daughter of Aesculapius be more worthy? [5] Accept the divine girl (the father himself gives her to you): she provides the riches that she carries with a worthy dowry. Look, the dragon from Epidaurus brings you the subtlety of the art, and the knotty staff is attracted to your hand by itself. May you conquer the difficult roughness of the disease with the medicine, [10] may you solve the knotty infection with your skill! Look, the snake comes to you as well, look, it is eager to rid itself of the scales of old skin. May you in the same way overcome the things that are hurtful for the wounded limbs and re-call new strength for better things! [15] Neither is the crested male with the rattling voice absent, the Rooster, born to survey the watches of the night. In other words, may you conquer it [i.e. the night] with vigilant effort, hailing the Titan every time that he leaves the sea with his horses. There is nothing more, use your healthy dowry happily: [20] when you are healing, there will be a sweet Galen in the art.
The anagram in itself, DUM SANAS, DULCIS ARTE GALENUS ERIT, is both versified, elegant and apt, implying that Dankert Leiel in a way becomes a second Galen. Hamilton skilfully weaves in the whole iconography of the medical profession. Hygieia herself is given to the young doctor in marriage, bringing a rich dowry: we see the Dragon (a faithful companion of Asclepius), the Rod of Asclepius, the Snake and finally the Rooster, a symbol of vigilance. It is interesting to note that the scene that Hamilton depicts is very close to the emblem of Medicina in Cesare Ripaâs Iconologia. In the English translation of Iconologia from 1709, the emblem of Medicine has the following text: âA Woman of full age, with a Laurel-Garland; a Cock in one hand, and a knotty Staff, round which a Serpent is twistedâ.29
The anagram poetry of Hamilton is not always as grave as in the two poems above. Our third example, no. 168 (p. 109) in the book, addresses an otherwise unknown Joannes Freisten, who seems to have a problem to keep his mouth shut:
JOANNES FREISTEN
KEEP YOUR MOUTH BRIDLED
An unbridled mouth brings sad harm to the talkative, an unbridled mouth destroys princes and their riches. You, whoever have fibres of better air and gold: keep your mouth bridled, and you will be safe.
In this short poem, the anagram is not as much a solemn prophecy as a playful reminder, written tongue in cheek.
Taken as a whole, Hamiltonâs anagram poetry is certainly not unique, but perhaps that is the reason why it is so interesting. This is anagram poetry as it was perceived by a young, ambitious Dane in 1610, a man eager to please his patrons and just as eager to show that he belonged to the same literary paradigm as his admired models and mentors. How seriously did he take the anagram? Did he regard it mainly as a witty wordplay, or did it have a deeper meaning? That is difficult to know, and perhaps it is not as important as we may think. The example of Hamilton shows that he regarded anagram poetry as a modern, fruitful genre, a perfect choice for a poet who wanted to show off his skill and rise to fame. The reception of his book shows that his contemporaries thought that he was absolutely right in thinking so.
5. The anagram poetry of Georg Stiernhielm
5.1 Georg Stiernhielm
Georg Stiernhielm was born in 1598 in the Swedish province of Dalecarlia. His name before he was knighted was Jöran Olofsson, Georgius Olai in Latin. As a young official he called himself Lilia, a name that he proudly alludes to in an epigram. The epigram was written in 1633, two years after he was knighted and chose the name Stiernhielm (which means âhelmet of starsâ):30
Tandem Lilia serta dabunt
Finally the Lilies will give you a wreath.
The Lilies shine like a picture of pure virtue. Treasure them, Lilia, and they will give you a beautiful wreath.
Georg Stiernhielm was educated at Greifswald and Wittenberg. He also studied at the University of Herborn and travelled in the Netherlands. He is considered to be one of the greatest poets in Swedish literature, famous for his Swedish didactic poem Hercules, written in hexameter, in 1647. The poem is inspired by an episode in Xenophonâs Memorabilia chapter 1,22â33 i. e. the story of Hercules choosing between Vice and Virtue. In this poem he claims, in his own words, to have âtaught the Muses to sing and play in Swedishâ, thereby meaning that he has written a poem in his native tongue using classical motifs and meter. His poetic Åuvre in Swedish also consists of shorter emblematic poems and texts to ballets and pageants, performed at the court of the Swedish queen, Christina. One of his co-writers, moreover, was the famous French philosopher René Descartes, who wrote the French text to the ballet Fredz-afl (French title La naissance de la paix).31
Literature, however, was not his only domain. Like so many other prominent seventeenth-century sages he was a polymath with a vast intellectual appetite, learned in a great variety of fields: jurisprudence, philosophy, mathematics, antiquities, linguistics, land surveying ⦠His most ambitious work was a vehemently anti-Aristotelian philosophic treatise, in which he strives to explain all the unsolved mysteries of the universe. It was never finished: he died without the consolation of seeing it completed and printed.32 Stiernhielm adheres to the Neo-Platonic renaissance philosophy, leaning on Plato, Plotinos, the Stoics, Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, Galilei and the Renaissance speculations inspired by the hermetic theology. Because of his wide-ranging talents and rare learning Stiernhielm was considered by the authorities as useful in many fields; scientific, administrative and juridical, not least. He spent many years in Estonia (then a part of Sweden) and was appointed deputy judge at the court of appeal in Dorpat in 1629, magistrate in the districts of Dorpat, Walk and Werro (todayâs Tartu, Valga and Võru) in the following year and later director at the senate of the university of Dorpat. Having returned to Stockholm in 1642 he had various commissions, custos archivi (national archivist) amongst others. In 1651 he was endowed with an estate in the Baltics and lived there from 1651 to 1656. Because of the Russian invasion he had to flee, and he returned to Stockholm. There he once more held various official appointments and kept working on his Magnum Opus in spe, his metaphysical System. Hercules was printed in 1658 and Muzae Suetizantes, a collection of Swedish poems including Hercules, in 1668. He died in Stockholm in 1672.
5.2 Stiernhielmâs Latin poetry
Though Stiernhielm considered poetry as a mere hobby, his fame, nevertheless, is founded on his poetry, first and foremost on Hercules. Long before composing this masterpiece, however, he wrote Latin poetry. The poems often excel in anagrams, hyperbata, palindromes, wordplay and other mannerisms. The oldest known Latin poem is âCarmen iambicum dimetrumâ from 1624, dedicated to a fellow student, his friend Johannes Achatii Salemontanus (from Sala in Västmanland), when the latter defended his thesis De Metaphysicae natura et constitutione (On the nature and character of metaphysics) at the University of Uppsala.33
It would not be too farfetched to consider Carmen iambicum an early version of Hercules, composed more than twenty years later. The motif is the same, the two paths of Vice and Virtue, the one leading to hell, the other to the gods and to intellectual and moral bliss. It has not the picturesqueness and concreteness of Hercules however, there are no real personifications of Voluptas, Dame Lust, or Virtus, Dame Virtue. Voluptas and Virtus are here mere abstractions, just as the other personifications, Libido, Metus and so on. Nor is there any debate between the allegorical persons, the voice is entirely the authorâs. In this poem sensuality and picturesqueness belong mainly to the description of the delights that meet the wanderer on the wide path of Pleasure. Birger Bergh and Kurt Johannesson, amongst others, have pointed out Stiernhielmâs astounding skill and metrical and phonetic subtleties in handling the Latin language.34 Its composition is entirely chiastic: The first part begins with pleasant serenity and ends with the horrors awaiting the passive voluptuous Man. The second part begins with the horrors threatening the active, virtuous Man and ends with real, serene bliss. The poem presents us with an early poetic version of Stiernhielmâs philosophy, his ethos, later given full expression in Hercules. Stiernhielm will return to this topic constantly in his poems and his philosophical writings.
5.3 Nomen est omen?
âWhatâs in a name?â the lovelorn Juliet asks in Shakespeareâs famous tragedy. Most modern readers would probably agree with her nominalistic opinion that âwhat we call a rose Ç by another name would smell as sweetâ. Names are mere conventions. However, considering the tragic end of the play, the protagonistsâ names were a matter of no small significance. Stiernhielm, for his part, would certainly not have taken his own name so lightly. As a follower of the Florentine Platonists and an ardent reader of Hermes Trimegistus and the Stoics, he thought that words had a deeper significance, manifest in the web of universal correspondences. Stiernhielm sides with Socratesâ views in Platoâs dialogue Cratylus. Words are not mere conventional signs, they are the true images of things. Hence knowledge of the true etymon of a word reveals the true meaning of the word itself. Socrates exemplifies his thesis with explications of onomatopoetic words and etymologies of names, a method Stiernhielm found extremely fruitful. In a prose-draft with the title âConiugium Cadmi et Harmoniaeâ Stiernhielm gives the concept a deeper metaphysical significance. There he tells the story of Echo and Pan, how Echo only repeats words she has learned from Pan, a symbol of a pantheistic God, creator of the universe:35
Vox enim ratione animata nihil aliud est quam Echo Pani nupta: hoc est Mundi ipsius simulachrum et reflexio. Quae nihil addit de proprio, sed tantum iterat et resonat.
For the voice, animated by reason, is nothing but Echo married to Pan, that is an image and reflexion of the World itself, which adds nothing of itself, but only repeats and resounds.
The concept nourished Stiernhielmâs self-esteem. He is often punning on his own name, exploring the secrets of his own existence. The epigram Tandem Lilia serta dabunt mentioned above, written on New Yearâs Eve 1633, where he dwells on the lilyâs enchanting purity and symbolic significance, foreshadows his later profound interest in Platonic linguistic philosophy. Nomen est omen: The wreath, it is hinted, is a token, not only of his well-earned nobility, but also of his honor and virtus, giving flowers of unexpected beauty â and utility.36
Stoical ideals are also preached in his poemata gratulatoria to academic friends. The motif inaugurated in his first known poem âCarmen Iambicumâ is once more repeated in the Horatian ode âOde alcaica gratulatoriaâ (12) written in 1641.37 It celebrates three of Stiernhielmâs friends in Dorpat, namely Michael Bostadius and Johannes Gezelius, who had successfully defended their respective theses, and their promotor Laurentius Ludenius. Bristling with obscure mythological allusions it progresses with solemn gravitas. The poet is inspired by ancient Roman festivities celebrated in honour of Mars. In his month the victory prizes were awarded, after the campaigns were ended. Likewise, his friends are bestowed their rightful honours after their academic battles.
Fair Mavors, the proud honour and father of Romulusâ people, rewards those who are energetic and famous for their deeds with glory and an excellent prize.
In the three following stanzas (5â7) Poseidon and Ceres are mentioned, whose devotees are richly compensated. Neither do Honour (Virtus) and Solicitude (Cura) treat those who are worthy of their gifts ungenerously. In the following stanzas (9, 10 and 12) the poet addresses his newly laureated friends and their promotor. In the margin of three verses Stiernhielm has pointed out that the italicized words are anagrams of their names:
You, Sealteâs flower, Uraniaâs remarkable ornament, rejoice, Michael, and say: Here is the goal, Praise God. I have sacrificed to the Muse and bring home the divine reward for my labours.
You, son of George, Minervaâs nursling, why do you not move? Will you go fired with a remarkable zeal? Rise! Take the beautiful and weighty prize for your sweat.
Lo, a beautiful ring will adorn the finger: a token of honour and a splendid ornament. Your hair shall be adorned with a mitre by the hand of a venerable man who is worthy of being honoured with Indian incense.
Michael Olai Bostadius Svecus is interpreted Scopus hic, Laus Deo, Musae litavi. Ioannes Georgii Gezelius is transformed into An is Zelo egregio igneus? and Laurentius Ludenus doctor (i.e. the promotor) is forsooth vir altus ture colendus Indo. These witty and playful anagrams break for a moment the gravitas of the poem, though the wordplay is not only a jest. The names, thus interpreted, are consonant with the inner qualities of their bearers and in harmony with the virtues described in the preceding and following verses (a universal discourse on the essence of Virtue). The poetâs friends have gained their prizes by honouring Camaenas, Minerva and Sapientia and spurning Murtia, Vacuna (the gods of bestial sloth),39 Venus, Eros and Bacchos. The latter gods, love and wine, are characterized by rather obscure epitetha: Pellax pontigenae puer (the seaborn oneâs cunning boy) and Castalidum viator Evan (You Evan, desecrator of the Muses). Stiernhielm emphasizes both the theoretical and the practical virtues: The ideal man is an uomo universale: wise, a lover of beauty and philosophy, but he is also a man of deeds, zealous for mankind and his countryâs wellbeing and an example for his fellow men. Igneus (v. 38) and ignis are moreover, keywords in Stierhielmâs philosophy, The principle of life and light, Lux, is the opposite of Murtia and Vacuna, who represent mere negation, nothingness, matter.
Trophaeum Sibyllinum (number 16), written in elegiac distichs, is distinguished by far less gravitas, instead brimming with exhilarated Schadenfreude.40 The poem was written in 1644 celebrating the battle of Fehrmarn on October 27th of the same year, where the Danish fleet was utterly defeated by the victorious Swedish men-of-war. The entire poem is structured as a pun on the keywords and anagrams Danus, Sunda and nudas undas (Dane, strait and empty waves) in various constellations. The poem itself is given the title Tropheum sibyllinum and the vates calles himself Egregius throni miles, âdistinguished knight of the (Swedish) throneâ, an anagram of Stierhielmâs name:
As the wild Ocean, the Swedish Mars and the fire-breathing Vulcan claim the Danish fleet as their rightful booty, the Strait finds its waves empty of ships. While the one devours them, the other drowns them and the third snatches them away. [5] Woe, cries the Dane, the waves are empty! Woe to me, the strait! Woe, empty waves! The Strait and the Dane [i. e. Denmark] perish. The strait is all Denmark. Strait, have you perished? You will perish yourself, Dane: the strait is life and salvation to the Dane.
The waves are naked, i. e. empty of Danish ships. To be Danish is the same as being without a navy or having had one. Now the Danes have vanished into emptiness, driven there by the Swedish force.41
Two rather obscure poems (17 and 18) may illustrate Stiernhielmâs linguistic method. In both poems he plays with the philosophically important term veritas, trying to uncover its deeper significance by combining the wordâs roots into new concepts: Vetaris, tueraris, ius erat, uti eras, esuriat, etc. He finds that the revered word has no less than 42 different meanings. This insight, he writes, dawned on him unexpectedly early in the morning of October 12, 1641, when he was still in bed.42 Poem number 18 seems to have been composed impromptu at a court proceeding on October 7, 1647, dictated by righteous wrath. Supposedly a mendacious culprit or a recalcitrant witness had made Stiernhielmâs choler rise:43
VERITAS
SERUIAT, ESURIAT: VI tandem Tersa resurget/ Serta resumet
Et quintiplici anagrammate:
VERITAS
SERVIAT, ESURIAT, RES, VITA, et cuncta periclis
iactentur licèt: AT VIRES VI TERSA resumet.
VERITAS. She may live i thraldom, she may be starving: yet with might she will finally rise purged/ recapture her wreath. And with a fivefold anagram: VERITAS. She may live in thralldom and starve, goods and life and everything may be in peril: but purged she will with might recapture her strength.
Three epigrams containing anagrams on his three sonsâ names were written in the 1640âs when his interest in anagrams was at its zenith. The eldest son, Johan Markvard (1630â1685) studied in Dorpat and Leiden and eventually became an officer. The younger one, Gustav, (1635â1662) seems to have gone in for a diplomatic career. He died on his way home from a mission in Russia. The youngest, Georg Otto, (1638â1673) became a deputy judge in Bergslagen (in Dalecarlia). The anagrams allude rather ingeniously to their respective choice of profession, wishing them success and renown, an oraculum neque inane neque frivolum (a nether silly nor frivolous oracle). We confine ourselves to quoting the poem to the eldest, Johan Markvard:44
Other people may be raised to the stars by the Muses, by the cultivating of the soul or by service at the court. His courage is fired and beset by Mavors so that he wishes to be energetic in arms. [5] May you be happy! You will enjoy a remarkable fame in the art of war, for your king and your country
The name gives the key to his character and his natural abilities, his virtus. Stierhielmâs well-wishings are at the same time admonitions to use his talents, making them useful for commune bonum.
Noblesse oblige. Stierhielm is never tired of repeating the essence of this dictum. Behind the ideal man outlined in this and other poems, the reader perceives Stiernhielmâs own qualities. Virtus is reached by sapientia, one of Stiernhielmâs favourite words â and he was wise enough to write his own epitaph: Dum vixit, vixit laetus (As long as he lived, he lived happily). One must admit that the epigram gives a fair picture of the man. He was of a sanguine temper, though sometimes irascible and opiniated â he lost his right hand in a quarrel â he seems to have enjoyed life, in spite of temporary misfortunes and poverty, always in good cheer and with an unswerving confidence in his own abilities and his own virtus and fortitudo. According to his biographer and pupil Samuel Columbus he also delighted in practical jokes, often rather rough ones. Though when it came to his mission in life, as official, poet and philosopher he was always in deadly earnest â and also when it came to his name. Proudly he made the following anagram of his name, alluding to his ambitions: Linguis Heros emergit (He came forward as a hero, through his languages [i. e. through his poems, his eloquence and his linguistic scholarship]).45
Late in life on January 1, 1667, he, lecto surgens Deo plenus (rising from his bed, filled with God) wrote the epigram:46
In his mind it touches God and pours out over the world that which was was poured in to it, desiring to be like God.
The epigram alludes to the star on his coat of arms. Communicating with God, it reflects his brightness to the world. He wrote about 22 epigrams on the same motif. Like T. S. Eliotâs practical cats, he evidently never tired of raptly contemplating âthe thought of the thought of the thought of his name:
6. Concluding remarks
Henrik Albertsen Hamilton and Georg Stiernhielm lived roughly at the same time. Their time was a period of cultural transition, a period whose poetae docti were imbued with Renaissance culture, but had already taken the first steps into the new era, the Baroque. But the boundary between Renaissance and Baroque was blurred. Few of the ideas of the Baroque were new. Not even the battle between Latin and the vernaculars, which would be fought during the Baroque period and eventually won by the vernaculars, was new. It existed already in the Renaissance and even within La Pléiade, where Jean Dorat wrote in Latin and Greek, while Ronsard chose French. Latin was the natural choice for the young Hamiltonâs first and only collection of poetry. We do not know what language he would have chosen if his career and life had been longer â his friend Martin Opitz chose German and became the pioneer of German poetry. Georg Stiernhielm used Latin and Swedish alternately during his comparatively long life, and is remembered as the father of Swedish poetry.
Both Hamilton and Stiernhielm wrote anagram poetry both frequently and successfully, but with quite different purposes. For Hamilton, the anagram poetry was perhaps chiefly a useful tool for a young man to show his wit, and as such, it did him great service. For Stiernhielm, whose poetry was less conventional and more innovative, the anagram belonged to a greater philosophical system, where it became a means to explore the truths hidden in the words themselves. Totally free from religious scruples, Stiernhielm used the language to try to reveal the profoundest secrets of Nature and God, cupiens assimilare Deo. Taken together, the anagram poems of Hamilton and Stiernhielm show the richness and fruitful diversity of a genre that emerged in the late Renaissance and held a key position in the literature of the Baroque period.
Perhaps anagram poetry, brought into new light by La Pléiade and cherished by the Neo-Latin poets of the Baroque, can be seen as an example of the close links between the Renaissance and the Baroque. The Renaissance poets rediscovered the power that lies in a name, but the Baroque poets went one step further, exploring the means of representation to a maximum. Anagram poetry, a conscious and conspicuous play with words, is meant to create admiration â but also awe, for below the surface lies truths that can only be accessed through the seemingly superficial.
Primary Texts
Johann Heinrich Alsted, Encyclopaedia, Herborn, 1630, pp. 549â568.
Bertel Knudsen Aquilonius, B. Canutii Juvenilium reliquiae, Rostock: Mauritius Saxo, 1615.
Henrik Albertsen Hamilton, Henrici Albertii Hafnia-Dani Musaea Adolescentiae Venus, GieÃen: Caspar Chemlin, 1610.
Guillaume Leblanc, Libellus de ratione anagrammatismi in Reusner, Anagrammatographia [â¦], Jena: Tobias Steinmann, 1602.
Johannes Messenius, Xenion amplissimo, nobili, et clarissimo, prvdentissimoqve consessvi, coronæqve ordinis senatorij, percelebris, atq; regij emporij Dantiscanj Borussorum, concinnatum, & porrectum a M. Joanne Messenio, Gdansk: Martin Rhodius, 1607.
Martin Opitz, Teutsche Poemata, Strassburg: Eberhard Zetzner, 1624.
Martin Opitz, Briefwechsel und Lebenszeugnisse: Kritische Edition mit Ãbersetzung 1, ed. by K. Conermann, Berlin 2009, p. 273.
Johannes Paschasius, Poesis artificiosa [â¦], Würzburg: Elias Michaelis Zinck, 1668.
Nicolaus Reusner, Anagrammatographia [â¦], Jena: Tobias Steinmann, 1602.
Cesare Ripa, Iconologia or Moral Emblems by Caesar Ripa, ed. P. Tempest, London: Benjamin Motte, 1709. p. 50.
Frederik Rostgaard, Deliciae quorundam poetarum Danorum [â¦] 1, Leiden: Jordanus Luchtmans, 1693.
Georg Stiernhielm, Filosofiska fragment [Philosophical fragments], ed. by Johan Nordström, Stockholm: Alb. Bonniers boktryckeri, 1924 (in library catalogues sometimes also classified: Georg Stiernhielm, Samlade skrifter. D. 2, Filosofiska fragment, Bd 2. H. 1).
Georg Stiernhielm, Samlade skrifter av Georg Stiernhielm [Collected writings by Georg Stiernhielm], ed. by Johan Nordström and Bernt Olsson: Första delen (andra häftet): Poetiska skrifter, Lund: Carl Bloms Boktryckeri, 1973.
Georg Stiernhielm, Samlade skrifter av Georg Stiernhielm [Collected writings by Georg Stiernhielm], ed. by Johan Nordström and Bernt Olsson: Första delen, andra bandet, fjärde häftet, Lund: Carl Bloms Boktryckeri, 1987.
Research literature
Hans Aili, âSwedenâ in Minna Skafte Jensen (ed.), A History of Nordic Neo-Latin Literature, Odense 1995, pp. 129â158, here p. 143.
Ã. Andreasen, âHenrik Albertsen Hamiltonâ in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon at lex.dk. https://biografiskleksikon.lex.dk/Henrik_Albertsen_Hamiltonâ(lastâaccessed 31. October 2021).
Maria Berggren, âNär musan talade latin â Georg Stiernhielm som latinpoetâ in R. Boström Andersson (ed.), Den nordiska mosaiken. SprÃ¥k- och kulturmöten i gammal tid och i vÃ¥ra dagar, Uppsala 1997, pp. 53â61.
Fernand Hallyn, âPutaneus sur lâAnagrammeâ in: Humanistica Lovaniensia. Journal of Neo-Latin Studies 49 (2000), pp. 255â266, here p. 256.
Hans Helander, Neo-Latin Literature in Sweden in the period 1620â1720. Stylistics, Vocabulary and Characteristic Ideas, Uppsala 2004 p. 461.
Kurt Johannesson, I polstjärnans tecken. Studier i svensk barock [In the sign of the Pole star. Studies in Swedish Baroque], Uppsala 1963, pp. 22â31.
Kurt Johannesson, âLatinpoesi i Sverigeâ [Latin Poetry in Sweden] in Den svenska litteraturen. FrÃ¥n runor till romantik. 800â1830 [From Runes to Romanticism, 800â1830], Lars Lönnroth, Sven Delblanc (eds), Stockholm 1999, pp. 162â200, here p. 184.
Mats Malm, Det liderliga språket. Poetisk ambivalens i svensk barock [Voluptous Language. Poetic Ambivalence in Swedish Baroque], Stockholm / Stehag 2004, p. 222.
Veronika Marshall, Das Chronogramm, Frankfurt am Main 1997.
Wilfried Secker, âAnagrammaâ in Historisches Wörterbuch der Retorik, Bd 1: AâBib, ed. Gert Ueding et al., Tübingen 1992, col. 479â482.
Minna Skafte Jensen, âDenmarkâ in Minna Skafte Jensen (ed.), A History of Nordic Neo-Latin Literature, Odense 1995, pp. 19â65, here p. 22, p. 33 and p. 40.
Malm, Det liderliga språket. Poetisk ambivalens i svensk barock, p. 222.
All English translations are by L. N. and J. S.
In the section âDe Technopaegnio poetico Latinoâ in his Encyclopaedia from 1630 (pp. 549â568), Johann Heinrich Alsted lists and describes no less than 60 different sorts of technopaegnia, a term that he defines as âartificiosus ludusâ (an artificial play). The technopaegnia listed by Alsted are 1. Achromonosyllabicum, 2. Acrostichum, 3. Aenigmaticum, 4. Aenittologium, 5. Aequidicum, 6. Alliteratio, 7. Alphabeticum, 8. Amphora, 9. Anagrammaticum, 10. Anastrophe, 11. Ara, 12. Calix, 13. Centauricum, 14. Cento, 15. Chronosticon, 16. Clepsydra, 17. Clypeus, 18. Cochlea, 19. Columna, 20. Concordantes versus, 21. Cor, 22. Cubus, 23. Ecloga, 24. Emblema, 25. Euthysylloge, 26. Fusus, 27. Hymnus thearchicus, 28. Hypotchema, 29. Jocosi versus, 30. Isogrammaticum, 31. Leoninum, 32. Logogriphus, 33. Macrocoli versus, 34. Memoriale, 35. Metamorphosis poetica, 36. Metatheticum, 37. Ode, 38. Omnivocum, 39. Organum, 40. Ovum, 41. Parallelum, 42. Parodia, 43. Paromoeum, 44. Philomelisma, 45. Pileus, 46. Poculum, 47. Proteus, 48. Pyramis, 49. Rastrum, 50. Reprehensio philologica, 51. Rota, 52. Scala, 53. Securis, 54. Serpentinum, 55. Serra, 56. Spathalion, 57. Talaria, 58. Triangulum, 59. Tripus and 60. Turris (p. 550). At a later date (1668), Paschasius wrote an entire book, Poesis Artificiosa, on technopaegnia. Paschasius treats anagram poetry on pp. 122â138.
The Oxford English Dictionary, cf. https://www-oed-com.ludwig.lub.lu.se/view/Entry/6977?rskey=SE1QRs&result=1#eid (last accessed 31 May 2023).
Cf. Wilfried Secker, âAnagrammaâ in Historisches Wörterbuch der Retorik, Bd 1 column 481.
Helander, Neo-Latin Literature in Sweden in the period 1620â1720. Stylistics, Vocabulary and Characteristic Ideas, p. 461. The entire chapter âThe Hidden Significance of Names and Wordsâ (pp. 453â466) is highly relevant, not least for its analysis of the poetry of Georg Stiernhielm.
âAu XVIIe siècle, une passion pour la permutation de lettres se rencontre un peu partout en Europeâ. Hallyn, âPutaneus sur lâAnagrammeâ, p. 256.
Hallyn, âPutaneus sur lâAnagrammeâ, p. 256. Hallyn does not mention the Nordic countries, but the anagram poetry of the Dane Hamilton and the Swede Stiernhielm shows that the genre was popular in the Nordic countries as well.
Helander, Neo-Latin Literature in Sweden, p. 454.
Veronika Marshallâs Das Chronogramm is highly relevant in this context, but focuses, as the title shows, on chronograms.
Reusner 1602, p. 373.
Leblancâs treatise is unfortunately not provided with page numbers, but can be found near the beginning of Reusnerâs Anagrammatographia.
Cf. Skafte Jensen, âDenmarkâ, p. 22.
Cf. Johannesson, âLatinpoesi i Sverigeâ, p. 184.
Skafte Jensen, âDenmarkâ, p. 33.
Hans Aili, âSwedenâ, p. 143.
Messenius, Xenion amplissimo, nobili, et clarissimo, prvdentissimoqve consessvi, coronæqve ordinis senatorij, percelebris, atq; regij emporij Dantiscanj Borussorum, concinnatum, & porrectum a M. Joanne Messenio.
The biographical data on Hamilton in this article were taken from Ã. Andreasen: âHenrik Albertsen Hamiltonâ in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon at lex.dk. https://biografiskleksikon.lex.dk/Henrik_Albertsen_Hamilton (last accessed 31. October 2021). Very little has been written on Hamiltonâs poetry. For a short introduction, see Skafte Jensen, âDenmarkâ, p. 40.
For more information on Hamiltonâs friendship with Aquilonius, see B. Canutii Juvenilium reliquiae, Rostock 1615, for example pp. 107â108. The book contains many poems to Hamilton.
See for example Opitz, Briefwechsel und Lebenszeugnisse, p. 273. Opitz book Teutsche Poemata from 1624 has an introductory poem by Hamilton.
âA Royal Clioâ, âLycophrontic divinations or Anagramsâ, âA bundle of epigramsâ, âA friendly Mnemeâ and âA handful of odes and parodiesâ.
In Hamiltonâs own edition from 1610, the poems were not numbered. The numbering here is borrowed from Rostgaardâs edition (1693). The page numbers refer to the 1610 edition, which serves as basis for the poems by Hamilton in this article. The differences between the two editions are, on the whole, insignificant. In the few cases where a reading in the edition from 1610 is clearly wrong, we have used the reading in the edition from 1692.
Parody: a genre where the poet uses another poem as a sort of pattern, where he keeps the metre, much of the syntax, a similarity in sound and most of the wording but substitutes as many words as he can in order to create a new work of art.
Acrostic: the first letter of every line spells out a word or sentence. Telestich: the last letter of every line spells out a word or sentence.
Chronogram: specific letters, interpreted as numerals, can be rearranged to form a particular date.
Echo-poem: the last sound or syllable of each line is repeated or âechoedâ (in Hamiltonâs echo-poem, for example: âEt tibi sit nomen Pallade quale; valeâ.
A few poems are not anagram poems in themselves, but serve as introductions.
tuo 1610.
Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, p. 50.
Samlade skrifter 1973 p. 170. Stiernhielmâs Latin poetry is collected in Samlade skrifter av Georg Stiernhielm, ed. Johan Nordström and Bernt Olsson: Första delen, andra häftet Lund, 1973 (=Samlade skrifter 1973). Birger Berghâs commentaries on the text together with a Swedish translation can be found in Samlade skrifter av Georg Stiernhielm, ed. by Johan Nordström and Bernt Olsson: Första delen, andra bandet, fjärde häftet, Lund, 1987 (hereafter Samlade skrifter 1987).
Descartes was one of Queen Christinaâs many learned correspondents. He was invited to Stockholm by the queen and arrived in the end of September 1649. Stiernhielm and Descartes seem to have debated philosophical questions under the Queenâs presidium. Stiernhielm, however, was not impressed by his French colleagueâs metaphysical system, though he was acquainted with his writings. He philosophized sine mente, Stiernhielm is said to have commented.
A major part of the manuscripts has been edited by Johan Nordström as a doctoral thesis (Georg Stiernhielm, Filosofiska fragment, Stockholm, Bonniers 1924).
Samlade skrifter 1973, pp. 155â159 (text), Samlade skrifter 1987, p. 577â580 (commentary).
Kurt Johannesson, I polstjärnans tecken, pp. 22â31, Birger Bergh, Samlade skrifter 1987, p. 573; see also Berggren, «När musan talade latin».
Filosofiska fragment, p. CCXXXII.
Birger Bergh (Samlade skrifter 1987, p. 569) comments. âThe short poem manifests a stoical moral philosophy that runs through his entire literary work, [â¦] i. e. his energetic emphasis on Virtus.â (Our translation of the original Swedish).
Johannesson, I polstjärnans tecken, p. 29.
For the text of the entire poem, see Samlade skrifter 1973 pp. 172â176. For the commentary, see Samlade skrifter 1987 pp. 591â593. In a poem (31) written at the same time, Stiernhielm apostrophizes Mars: âVirtus magnanimum decus â¦â The poem proclaims, however, the superiority of learning and poetry over martial virtue. The latter is essentially vain, it will soon be forgotten without the kleos bestowed by the poets: âMusas, Musarum sacerdotes reverenter | habete: sic post funera | fama perennabit.â Samlade skrifter 1973 pp. 197â198.
Johannesson, I polstjärnans tecken, p. 30.
Samlade skrifter 1973 pp. 178â179 (text), Samlade skrifter 1987 pp. 596â597 (commentary).
Bergh, Samlade skrifter, 1987, p. 567.
Johannesson, I polstjärnans tecken, p. 31; Bergh, Samlade skrifter, p. 597.
Johannesson, I polstjärnans tecken, p. 31; Samlade skrifter 1973 p. 180; Samlade skrifter 1987 pp. 598â599.
Samlade skrifter 1973 pp. 196â197; Samlade skrifter 1987 pp. 613â614.
Johannesson, I polstjärnans tecken, p. 31.
Samlade skrifter 1973, p. 189 (poem number 27).