ΕΝΑΣ ΦΙΛΙΚΟΣ ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΟΣ ΔΙΑΓΩΝΙΣΜΟΣ

Τα σονέτα που αναρτούμε γράφτηκαν τη νύχτα
της 4ης Φεβρουαρίου του 1818,
στο σπίτι του εγγλέζου ποιητή Leigh Hunt .
Είναι «καρποί» ενός ιδιότυπου «ανταγωνισμού»
ανάμεσα σ΄αυτόν και στους φίλους του ποιητές
John Keats και Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Κοινό θέμα των ποιημάτων ήταν ο Νείλος,
το μεγάλο αυτό ποτάμι που αρδεύει τόσες
αφρικανικές χώρες .

Ο θρύλος θέλει τα ποιήματα να έχουν
γραφεί μέσα σε... δεκαπέντε λεπτά, όμως αυτό
ελάχιστα ενδιαφέρει τους φιλαναγνώστες.
Το σημαντικό στη χαριτωμένη φιλολογική μας
ιστορία είναι η "ετυμηγορία" των ποιητών Κιτς
και Σέλεϊ,που παραδέχθηκαν την ανωτερότητα
του ποιήματος που έγραψε ο Χάντ, ο οποίος
είδε το Νείλο ως φορέα μεγάλων πολιτισμών,
που άνθισαν στις όχθες του.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792 – 1822)

To the Nile

Month after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,
And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles
Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend
5 On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.
Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells
By Nile's aereal urn, with rapid spells
Urging those waters to their mighty end.
O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level
10 And they are thine, O Nile--and well thou knowest
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.
Beware, O Man--for knowledge must to thee,
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

John Keats
(1795-1821)

To the Nile

Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
5 Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
10 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.

Leigh Hunt
(1784-1859)

A Thought of the Nile

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,--
5 Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
10 As of a world left empty of its throng,
And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.