Parthenope--All
together now: “Accentuate the Antepenultimate”
In his review of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition THE
WRITINGS OF HERMAN MELVILLE in the June 2019 LEVIATHAN on p. 110 John Bryant
instructed his readers on basic pronunciation:
"Parthenope (pronounced PAR-thin-OH-pee) is now the newly
sanctioned title for what we have in the past referred to as Melville’s Burgundy
Club Sketches.”
Yes, Parthenope is
Melville’s final title for the Gentian-Grandvin material, but Parthenope is NOT to be pronounced PAR-thin-OH-pee.” Now that the Library of America HERMAN MELVILLE COMPLETE POEMS is out, more people than ever will be seeing the title for the first time. Everyone always accented the syllable before the next to last syllable.
The most famous use of the word in poetry during the 19th
century was surely the last line of William Wordsworth’s sonnet on Sir Walter
Scott’s departure for Naples (in the hope that his health would benefit):
“Be true,
Ye winds of ocean, and the
midland sea,
Wafting your Charge to soft
Parthenope!”
My copy of Wordsworth’s poems (the same edition Melville used)
is packed away in its penultimate home (to introduce a term used below), but I
will retrieve it and check this quotation before sending the volume to the
Berkshire Athenaeum, its ultimate home for my books and papers. Melville knew
that poem and he uses “Parthenope” this way:
“Neapolitans, ay, ’tis
the soul of the shell
Intoning your
Naples, Parthenope’s bell.
The rhythm in both Wordsworth and Melville demands that we say
“par-THIN-oh-pee.”
It would be extraordinarily awkward if LEVIATHAN were
responsible for pushing Melville lovers toward a mispronunciation of a “newly
sanctioned title” of an important part of Melville’s works. I am told there is no plan to make a correction in a forthcoming issue, so I am trying to get the news out. Don't say PAR-thin-OH-pee, please.
John Walker in A
Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, and Expositor of the English Language
(Philadelphia: E. H. Butler, 1848) has a section on Greek and Latin Proper
Names, p. 51. There he specifies which words are to be pronounced with emphasis
on the penultimate syllable and which are to be pronounced with the emphasis on
the ante-penultimate syllable:
[Walker says in classic Greek and Roman APE and OPE
endings are accented on the “Antepenultimate” syllable, and he gives Calliope,
Penelope, and Parthenope among the examples.]
That linguistic
phenomenon is exemplified in a good many poems in the 19th century
and violated in none.
One possible exception is a fake Walt Whitman poem on Henry
Ward Beecher’s 1875 trial for adultery with Elizabeth Tilton. The poem can
hardly be called a parody of Whitman, it is so inept, but it was printed in a
great many newspapers, apparently following its first appearance in the Brooklyn
Argus.
This wretched poem
appeared in papers all over the country--such as the Troy, Kansas Chief and the Sacramento, California Bee. I would not argue very strongly
that the writer was pronouncing Parthenope correctly or incorrectly. In case my
image does not come through, here:
Parthenope horrida!
Periscopic woe!
Succotash of social slime
immense,
Dumming the argent
plenilune . . . .
William [yes, William] Southey
in his poem dated 18 November 1831, two weeks after the Barham sailed for Italy, looks forward to Scott’s return to
Scotland, his health restored in Naples:
Then, gallant ship! ere long exultant bear
From soft Parthenope’s reviving air
The Bard to Caledonia’s
joyful shore.--
I don’t yet have the day on
which Wordsworth wrote his sonnet on the departure of Sir Walter Scott. I
wonder if he or William Southey first used “soft.”
1792 16 Jamuary General
Advertiser
Seek not the muses here! The
affrighted maids
Have fled Parthenope’s
polluted shades . . . .
1797 October 4 Elizabethtown
NJ Journal “The New-Fallen Lamb”
A new-fallen Lamb, as
Parthenope past,
In pity she turn’d to behold,
How it shivering shrunk from
the cold wint’ry blast,
Then fell all benumb’d with the cold.
1828 Sept 6 Boston Statesman
quotes from Samuel Rogers’s Italy (which HM knew) {see next item}
1828 Sept 9-Portland ME
Eastern Argus quotes from Samuel Rogers’s Italy
and on the western
shore
Sleeps in a silent grove,
o’erlooking three,
Beloved Parthenope [Beloved 2
syllables]
1832 March 23 Southey’s poem
reprinted in the Portland ME Eastern Argus (another occurrence of word besides
the one already quoted):
A Stranger, from his far and
frozen clime,
Goes forth to woo thy breath,
Parthenope! . . .
1832 November 24 the
Baltimore Gazette reprint from the New York Evening Post an article quoting
Wordsworth’s poem on Scott’s departure for Naples.
1838 August 28 the Charleston
Courier, M.P. on Admiral Caraccioli:
Palermo’s palace rang with
festal strains,
While lost Parthenope wore
foreign chains.
1839 August 28 written for
the Charleston SC Courier
While lost Parthenope wore
foreign chains/ / / /
1842 February 4 NY
Emancipator, poem from Blackwood’s Mag, “Blind Old Milton by William E. Aytoun:
Do the sweet breezes from the
balmy West
Still murmur through thy groves, Parthenope,
In search of odors from the
orange bowers?
1842 Sept and Oct reprints of
piece quoting Wordsworth poem.
1845 Dec. 5--N Y Tribune,
from the French of Millevoye--
Parthenope! thou with thy
bright blue wave . . . .
1852 January 21 Newark Daily
Advertiser quotes from Walter Savage Landor’s Fable:
There was a diver once, whose
boast
Was that he brought up
treasures lost,
However dep beneath the sea,
Of glossy haired Parthenope .
. . .
1855 Punch has this in a poem: “Alas! for the cities of glory / That gem
blue Parthenope’s bay, / Alas! for the pride of their story, / Alas! for the
pomp of decay.”
1875 January 11 the Portland
Press prints an original poem “Ancient and Modern Sirens” :
Hide, hide thy gory head, Parthenope!
And each fell lurer of the
sisters three . . . .
1879 March 4 Staunton VA
Spectator a poem written for the paper by Thomas Hunter Farver [?] Fanver?
Or hast thou erred, oh cold
Parthenope
Has love of mortal caused thy
cheek to pale . . . .
1882 July 29 Washington DC
Evening Star a modern translation from ancient Greek--young Anaxeos about his
dog:
Parthenope, his dog, with
whom in life
It was his wont to play,
Anaxeos here
Hath buried . . .
1889 May 6 The Nebraska State
Journal (Lincoln) prints Herman Merivale’s A Grey Day at Naples:
The lazy waters of the
lifeless sea
That murmur homage to
Parthenope . . . .
1890 Bailey in “Au Revoir” has
this:
““Oft from the east, as
morning’s dawn / Falls soft and calm across the sea, / I’d mark the sumbeam on
the lawn. / And think of fair Parthenope.”
1893 May 28 Chicago Inter
Ocean, Ezra H. Stafford, M. D.:
Before the Achaian hero
steered
Westward beneath Parthenope . . . .
All the really poetic
uses of Parthenope I have found clearly use the antepenultimate pronunciation.
Is there a way of getting word out to readers of LEVIATHAN that what Bryant
recommended in the June 2019 issue is not the correct pronunciation. Granted,
you can get his wrong pronunciation from the Internet, but we need to go by the
practice Melville was familiar with and the emphasis he actually used. Melville
said par-THIN-oh-pee, and so should we. Walker in his dictionary on -ope
endings was correct: accent the antepenultimate syllable.
