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Annotating Baroque Poetry: George Herbert's "A Dialogue-Antheme" by Inge Leimberg1 A Dialogue-Antheme Christian. Death. Chr. Alas, poore Death, where is thy glorie? Where is thy famous force, thy ancient sting? Dea. Alas poore mortali, void ofstorie, Go spell and reade how I have kill'd thy King. Chr. Poore Death! and who was hurt thereby? Thy curse being laid on him, makes thee accurst. Dea. Let losers talk: yet thou shalt die; These arms shall crush thee. Chr.Spare not, do thy worst. I shall be one day better than before: Thou so much worse, that thou shalt be no more. The Title The word-pair Dialogue-Antheme summarizes the logical as well as musicological connotations of the two foregoing titles in The Temple. To start with the more obvious analogies: the component true in "A True Hymne" is echoed by the component logos in dialogue; "The Answer," too, introducing a poem which is in itself a fictitious dialogue, refers the reader directly to the field of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric. On the other hand, not only the nearsynonyms "Hymn" and "Antheme"2 but also "Dialogue" and "Answer" are strictly musical terms;3 moreover "The Answer" is a sonnet and has the musical connotations of that genre. In the wider context of The Temple, DA recalls the titles "Dialogue" and "Antiphon." The etymological strutture, as well as the quasi-etymological, traditional interpretations of the synonyms antiphon and anthem (cf. OED, anthem), reveals the poet's summarizing intention in DA, because antiphon, anthem, and dialogue have a common denominator: the element dia, synonymous withanti 50Inge Leimberg in antiphon, is present in anthem, too. The affinity of dia and anti is, of course, questionable in a modem etymological sense,4 but, if it comes to the use of dia as a prefix in dialogue, the correspondence of dia and anti is, traditionally speaking, perfectly valid and can be richly documented. This partial synonymity of dialogue and anthem is completed by the implied pseudo-etymology *anti-theme, which connects doeme with logos,5 thus suggesting an exact semantic parallel between the two words. That holds true for logic as well as music: on the one hand anti-theme paraphrases the logical meaning of dialogue, while on the other it stresses the musical meaning of the whole title, obviously suggested by anthem, because anti-theme is nothing but a literal translation of counter-subject,6 another strictly musical term current in Herbert's time. Thus DA is not only modelled on the lines of an anthem, i.e., a motet (a term Herbert might have used instead of anthem, but did not),7 but it also has the makings of a piece of musical counterpoint. This, again, is corroborated bythe contrapuntal meaning of answer. The title DA is constructed as a synonymia and thus, together with the dramatispersonae "Christian-Death," foreshadows the many antithetical parallels in the poem.8 Moreover, it is the nucleus of the whole denotative as well as connotative complex displayed in the group of titles under discussion. Within this nucleus, the strongest and richest associative power belongs to antheme. Its etymological tradition includes Greek and Germanic etyma, and its semantic range extends over the whole area marked out by the other titles, but it goes further than any of them because it indicates a theological notion which is of crucial importance in DA. The words "curse" and "accursed" in line 6 (both clearly used for the purpose of suggesting cross)9 are synonymous with anathema (which, speaking in terms of similarity, is a homonym of anthem; cf. OED, anadoema, anathematize, anatheme, and counter-, prefix 10.a.), and that is exactly what is realized in this poem.10 Against the historical background of Christ bearing the curse of death, a mutual anathematizing of the Christian and of Death is attempted and finally effected in the Christian's prediction that Death will be completely exterminated, in other words, excommunicated or anathematized.11 One further connotation may be added: for an expert rhetorician of the seventeenth century like Herbert, anthem could not but be suggestive of enthymeme, provided the context allowed for such an analogy. This is the case here...

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