- Antistrophe
Antistrophe (Greek αντιστροφή, "turn back") is the portion of an
ode sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to thestrophe , which was sung from east to west.It has the nature of a reply and balances the effect of the
strophe . Thus, in Gray's ode called "The Progress of Poesy" (excerpt below), the strophe, which dwelt in triumphant accents on the beauty, power and ecstasy verse, is answered by the antistrophe, in a depressed and melancholy key:::"Man's feeble race what ills await,::Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain ,::Disease and Sorrow's weeping Train,::And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate," etc.
When the sections of the chorus have ended their responses, they unite and close in the
epode , thus exemplifying the triple m in which the ancient sacred hymns of Greece were coined, from the days ofStesichorus onwards. As Milton says, "strophe , antistrophe andepode were a kind ofstanza framed for the music then used with the chorus that sang."Antistrophe was also a kind of ancient
dance , wherein dancers stepped sometimes to the right, and sometimes to the left, still doubling their turns or conversions. The motion toward the left, they called "antistrophe", from "ὰντὶ", "against", and "στροφὴ", of "στρέφω", "I turn".References
*1728
*1911
*External links
* [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/HistSciTech/HistSciTech-idx?type=turn&entity=HistSciTech000900240152&isize=L Antistrophe] .
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