What is lyre a symbol for?

Answer 1

a lyre is a musical stringed instrument well known for its use in classical antiquality.

The sentence above should read:

A lyre is a musical stringed instrument well known for its role in classical antiquity as a symbol of wisdom and moderation, a gift attributed to Apollo, and an instrument to accompany public recitation or song.

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In ancient Greece, a lyre was used as an accompaniment to singing or recitation of short poetry or prose. Thus, the instrument usually symbolizes Lyric Poetry or Song -- thus our use of the term "lyrics" when referring to the words of a song.

Lyrical poetry refers to short, expressive poems. Haiku is the shortest form of lyrical writing, written in three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. It has been defined as "Bottled Poetry"! Of Japanese origin, haiku traditionally invokes an aspect of nature or the seasons. Look up Basho, the 17th C. poet who elevated haiku to its highest form. While traditional Japanese haiku focuses on nature and the place of humans in it, some modern haiku poets (in Japan and the West) consider a broader range of subject matter, especially with the urbanization of the 20th C. and its impact on the globe. English teachers find haiku an appealing way to introduce poetry to students: a fifth grader won a local contest with her haiku: Evaporation/ Condensation's next in line/Precipitation. Another middle-schooler entered and won with Clean and beautiful/Look at our precious water/Remember! Conserve! Even in cartoon form, such as MTV's "Beavis and Butthead," the teacher assigned haiku and asked the students to read theirs aloud. Of course, Beavis and Butthead were unprepared. Butthead, noted for his nervous laugh "heh, heh"-- when called upon, stammered Heh, Heh, Heh, Heh, Heh, / Heh, Heh, Heh, Heh, Heh, Heh, Heh, / Heh, Heh, Heh, Heh, Heh.for which he was mistakenly commended by the teacher for his coincidental 5-7-5 form!

When poets wish to express serious, noble themes, they use the Ode, a lyrical form that allows the writer to emote, usually full of high praise and elevated, lofty expression of deep feelings. Odes celebrate a person, event, or some inspirational thing, written in an exalted style, traditionally with an ABABCDECDE rhyme scheme. Say the word "ode" and most everyone thinks Ode to a Nightingale or Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats! Although seldom used in the 20th C., Allen Tate in Ode on the Confederate Dead and Wallace Stevens in The Idea of Order at Key West made successful, highly personal use of the form.

Another common lyric is the Elegy, a poet's meditation on life and death, usually inspired by the death of a famous person or a close friend or relative, or caught by such solemn moments as life's transience or its sorrows. Though "elegy" first reminds one of earlier poets --Gray, Swinburne, Browning, Whitman, Swift, Milton, Donne, et. al. studied in many a literature class -- modern poets, too, use(d) elegaic expression to seek the meaning of life when struck by death or solemnity: Auden's In Memory of W. B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas's And Death Shall Have No Dominion, Kenneth Koch's A Momentary Longing to Hear Sad Advice from One Long Dead. An elegy (or funerary dirge) can also be a musical piece to lament a death.

Now, back to the instrument, the Lyre itself is also a metaphor for the skill and work/ writing of a Poet. When poets use the lyre metaphorically in their poems, they are often appealing to the improvement of their craft, as in Shelley's Ode to the West Wind: "Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is..." or "I wish to tune my quivering lyre / To deeds of fame and notes of fire" -- from Byron's Hours of Idleness: To His Lyre. Octavio Paz (1990 Nobel Laureate for Literature) wrote El Arco y La Lira(The Bow and the Lyre) in 1956, a major work on poetics. Edith Sodergran's poetry Septemberlyran (The September Lyre) reflects her reaction to the Bolshevik Russian Civil War that bordered her village, written in poetic language that helped shape the Modernist movement of the early 20th C. and profoundly influenced the Swedish literary canon.

And to conclude with the lyre simply as a musical instrument, it looks very much like a hand-held, U-shaped, smaller version of a harp, but it is not strummed or plucked by hand the way a harp is played. The lyrist or lyre player places one hand in back to still the unplucked strings... while the other hand plucks the notes string by string with a plectrum.

lyre

Answer 2

marble is what lyre is made of