DRAMATIC DIALOGUE POEMS *

by Sebastian BROCK
It was undoubtedly in the realm of poetry that Syriac literature
reached its highest achievements, and Ephrem in particular is now
emerging (thanks to Dom Edmund BECK'S editions of his madrashe
cycles) as one of the great Christian poets of all times. In this paper,
however, I shall only touch indirectly on Ephrem; instead I shall con-
cern myself with a body of anonymous poetry, probably belonging to
the fifth and sixth centuries, concentrating on one particular type of
poem, the narrative memra containing dramatized dialogue.
The reasons for my choice are threefold. In the first place this is a
topic which amply illustrates the problems of classification and demar-
kation between one genre and another. Secondly, this type of poem is
of considerable interest to the student of comparative literature, seeing
that both in form and in theme there are clearly connections of some
sort with subsequent developments in Christian Greek (and possibly
also Latin) poetry; it was also to prove influential in the Arabic world,
both through direct translations and by way of free adaptations. The
third reason for my choice is simply the fact that there happen to be
some splendid memre of this sort which deserve to be better known for
their own sake.
I
Classification
At the outset it will be helpful to distinguish between five some-
what different forms of dramatic dialogue.
* Abbreviations: Soghyatha = S. P. BROCK (ed.), Soghytitha mgabbytitha
Monastery of St ~ m Glane, 1982; Dialogue poems = S. P. BROCK, Syriac dia-
logue poems: mdrginalia to a recent edition, in Mus 97 (1984), pp. 29-58.
136
S. Brock
TYPE I. In this category come formal dialogues in alternating
stanzas. Apart from a brief introduction (and sometimes an epilogue)
there is no narrative framework.
This type normally takes the form of a precedence dispute (a very
old genre, inherited from Ancient Mesopotamia), or a Christianized
adaptation of this, where an argument is resolved 1. The verse form
employed is the madrasha, always employing a simple stanzaic pattern.
Ephrem already offers some poems of this sort, notably the formal dis-
putes between Death and Satan in Carmina Nisibena 52-54. A fairly
large number of later anonymous poems of this sort go under the name
of soghyatha (which in fact constitute a subdivision of the ma-
drashaV
Exceptions to the madrasha (soghftha) verse form are provided by
a single memra (twelve syllable), and two prose disputes 3.
TYPE II. This is a transitional form of the disputation poem
where the two parties no longer speak in alternating stanzas, . but are
allocated uneven blocks of speeches. Ephrem, Carmina Nisibena 56-59
show the beginnings of this movement away from alternating stanzas,
but Type 11 is most clearly found in a soghftha dispute between Wheat
and Gold4, and in two memre, Jacob of Serugh's Homily VI against the
Jews5, and David bar Paulos' memra on the Cedar and the Vine
6

TYPE Ill. This is provided by poems where the dialogue is still
the main constituent, but three important developments have taken
place: (1) a bare narrative framework is introduced; (2) there is a new
element of thematic development: a whole episode is covered, and it is
1 See Dialogue poems, pp. 31-33 (with further literature cited).
2 A selection is edited in Soghyatha (English translation in preparation). For
earlier editions see Dialogue poems pp. 53-55 (on p. 54, under "Two Thieves",
add "KIRSCHNER, OC7 (1907) "). The term soghUha is of course by no means
limited to dialogue poems.
3 The memra (Body and Soul) is edited in Soghyathli no 21 (cp Dialogue
poems, p. 50). The prose dispute between Heaven and Earth is edited, with
Engl. tr., in Mus91 (1978), pp. 261-70; only the opening of the second (Grace
and Justice) is preserved.
4 Soghyathli, no 24.
5 Ed. M. ALBERT in PO 38, 1, (1976).
6 Ed. P. Y. DOLABANI, EgrOtho d-Dowld bar Fawlos, Mardin, 1953, p. 166-7
(incomplete).
Dramatic Dialogue Poems
137
no longer a single moment within an episode which serves as a starting
point (as is the case with Types 1-11); (3) the speeches are no longer in
alternating stanzas (so already Type 11), and more than two people may
be involved.
Vehicles for this third type may be either the madrasha (with a
complicated stanza pattern) or the soghftha (i.e. madrasha with simple
stanza pattern). An example of the former is provided by a group of
Ephrem's disputes between Death and Satan, Carmina Nisibena 35-42
of the latter by the soghftha on Abraham and Isaac (which covers t ~
whole narrative of Gen. 22)7. .
TYPE IV. Whereas the third type could be described as poems
consisting of speeches within a bare narrative framework, with Type IV
the roles are reserved: we now have a narrative framework which also
contains speeches. The topic is invariably biblical (this was not the
case with Types I-Ill). Since the author is basically telling a story ra-
ther than preaching a sermon, homiletic material is entirely absent out-
side the prologue and epilogue.
The vehicle for this fourth type is exclusively the memra. Since
the second part of my paper will be devoted to memre of Type IV, I
shall for the present pass directly on to Type V.
TYPE V. The fifth type is characterized by the introduction into
the dramatized narrative of homiletic material, where the author may
offer moralizing and exegetical comment, or he may himself addres[
one of the characters directly (apostrophe).
Here again it is the memra that serves as the standard vehicle:
many of Jacob of Serugh's verse homilies are of this type (e.g. n 109,
"On Abraham and his types" (Gen. 22)), and so are some of Narsai's
(e.g. n 41, " on Joseph "). It should also be noted that the same com-
bination of dramatized narrative and (sparse) homiletic material is oc-
casionally found in prose (e.g. Anonymous homily on Abraham)8.
7 Ed. B. KIRSCHNER in OC 6 (1906), pp. 44-69 and reedited (on a better
manuscript basis) in Soghyatha, no 2. A non-biblical example is provided by the
soghuhli on Queen Helena and the Jews, printed in the /fudra, Trichur, 1962,
Ill, pp. 723-726.
8 Ed. s. rP. BRocK in OLP 12 (1981), pp. 225-60. The Life of Abel (Mus 87
(1974), pp. 46L-92) could also be said to belong to this category.
138 S. Brock
This brings us to the end of our five-fold typology of the dramatic
dialogue. The logical step on from Type V would be to the memrti or
verse homily where a narrative framework may still survive, but where
the characters involved no longer speak directly; numerous examples of
this further development will be found in the corpora of memre by
Jacob of Serugh and by Narsai.
At the end of this paper we shall return briefly to this five-fold
schema to see how it fits with Greek materials.
11
Type IV: memre with dramatic narrative
The corpus of this type of memrti is fairly reduced and at present I
know only of the following:
(1) Abraham and Sarah in Egypt;
(2) - (3) Abraham and Isaac I and 11;
(4) - (5) Joseph and his brothers I (Balai) and II (attributed to
Narsai);
(6) Elijah and the widow of Sarepta;
(7) Jonah and the Ninevites, probably by Ephrem;
(8) Mary and J oseph;
(9) the Sinful Woman, attributed to Ephrem.
Of these only 4, 5, 7 and 9 have been published; for the remainder
I have editions in varying stages of preparation. Here only a brief
word or two about each of these texts can be given.
(1) Abraham and Sarah in Egypt (Gen. 12:10-20)
This is a rare topic in Christian homiletic literature and in Syriac
only two memre dealing with it are known to me, one by Jacob of
Serugh 9 and the other anonymous 10; only the latter belongs to our
9 Unpublished; edition in preparation. Jacob treats the topic in an allegor-
ical manner, with Sarah representing the soul.
to An edition, by S. HOPKINS and myself, is nearly ready. There is an Arab-
ic translation (in several different forms) and a very corrupt Ethiopic version.
In the Arabic and Ethiopic the text is attributed to Ephrem (one Arabic manu-
script, however, attributes it to Jacob, which is equally implausible).
Dramatic Dialogue Poems
139
Type IV. The piece is comparatively short, consisting of 180 couplets
of 7 + 7 syllables. Although the narrative distinctly lacks literary polish
and is awkwardly constructed, the anonymous author has nevertheless
handled his theme in a highly imaginative way, giving great prominence
to the role of Sarah, who emerges as the real heroine of the poem.
(2) - (3) Abraham and Isaac I and 11 (Gen. 22)
In contrast to the episode of Abraham and Sarah in Egypt, the
dramatic events of Gen. 22 received a great deal of attention from poets
and homilists in both Syriac 11 and Greek. Mention has already been
made of the soghUhti on the subject, belonging to our Type Ill; in
Syriac there is also a memrti by Jacob of Serugh 12, of Type V, and a
prose homily with dramatized narrative 13, as well as these two memre
of Type IV.
Both memre are comparatively short (186 and 124 lines of 7 + 7
syllable couplets, respectively). Memrti I must be later than Ephrem
since it makes use of his prose Commentary of Genesis, and Memrti n
must be later than Memrti I, upon which it is heavily dependent in
places.
One of the interesting features of both memre is the prominence
once again given to Sarah (who of course does not receive any mention
in Gen. 22). This is indeed in line with both the Greek and the Syriac
homiletic tradition of the fourth to sixth centuries, but what distin-
guishes these two memre from other texts is the very positive attitude
displayed towards Sarah, taking as a cue a remark by Ephrem in his '
Commentary; in Memrti n, in particular, Sarah's faith emerges as even
greater than Abraham's. This sort of approach goes totally against the
rest of the homiletic tradition, both Greek and Syriac, - with the single
exception of the second half of Romanos' famous kontakion on the
subject. There would seem to be good reason for supposing that Ro-
manos must have known and drawn on Memrti II 14.
liOn these see my Genesis 22 in Syriac Tradition, in Melanges D. BARTHEL-
EMY (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 38), Fribourg/Gottingen, 1981, pp. 1-30.
12 Ed. P. BEDJAN, IV, pp. 61-103. .
Il See note 8.
14 I did not yet know of the content of Memre I and 11 in Sarah and the
Aqedah, in Mus87 (1974), pp. 67-77. A brief presentation can be found in my
Genesis22: wf{ere was Sarah?, in The Expository Times 96 (1984), pp. 14-17;
these memre lig, now edited in Mus 99 (1986), pp. 61-129.
140
s. Brock
(4) - (5) 10seph and his brothers
The extended cycle of 12 memre on this topic is probably by Balai,
even most of the manuscripts and the two editors, LAMY and
BEDJAN IS, attribute the work to Ephrem. The shorter cycle of two
memre (with later appendages) is attributed to Narsai ; it is available in
a longer and a shorter recension, of which only the former has been
published in full (by Bedjan) 16. Both cycles in fact have homiletic pro-
logues, but once the narrative has commenced the homiletic element
disappears, and so they are best classified as Type IV, rather than
Type V (to which Narsai's Homily 41, on 10seph, belongs).
These memre cycles stand apart from the other memre with which
we are concerned in that they alone cover a whole series of episodes,
thus taking on the dimensions of an epic narrative. These two cycles
are the subject of a short but valuable Zurich dissertation by Heinrich
NAF (1923) 17.
(6) Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta (I Kings 17)
The theme, linking the end of the drought (I Kings 18) with the
raising of the widow's son, going against the biblical account, occurs in
a number of other sources, Greek 18 and Syriac, but all these pale before
this Syriac memra as far as dramatic effect is concerned. A couple of
excepts will illustrate something of the character of the poem. After
the Heaven has complained to God about Elijah's ban on rain or dew
"unless I give the word" (I Kings 17: 1), God comes to Elijah and
upbraids him:
15 P. BEDJAN, Hist oire complete de Joseph par S. Ephrem, Paris, 1891 ;
T. J. LAMY, S. Ephraem Syri Hymni et Sermones Ill, IV, Malines, 1889, 1902 ;
M. GEERARD, Clavis Patrum Graecorum 11, no 3938.
16 P. BEDJAN, Homiliae Mar-Narsetis in Joseph, Paris/ Leipzig, 1901. The
beginning of the short recension was edited by M. ENGEL, Die Geschichte Josephs
nach einer syrischen Handschrifl der konigl. Bibliothek in Ber/in, Teil I, Berlin,
1895. There is a prose narrative in dramatized form, wrongly attributed to Basil
(see Clavis Patrum Graec. 11, n 2987 for editions).
17 H. NAF, Syrische Jose/-Gedichte, ZUrich, 1923.
18 The text on Elijah in Ephrem Graecus (Clavis Patrum Graec. 11, n 4024)
has no direct relationship with the Syriac memra.
Dramatic Dialogue Poems
What is this that you have done, Elijah,
holding back the heaven from giving rain?
Why did you prevent the rain
and not allow the dew to descend? ..
By your life, Elijah,
it is not a good thing that you have done,
for you have abandoned the whole of creation
and you are only concerned with yourself. . .
141
In the end God only gets Elijahto retract his ban on the heavens giv-
ing rain by striking a bargain: when Elijah prays that the widow's dead
son be restored to life, God replies :
"You owe me one debt : repay it and I will listen to you;
in your hands is placed the key to the heavens,
in my hands the soul of the child".
The holy man opened his mouth
as his heart rejoiced and exulted;
he released the heaven which he had bound
- and the child's soul returned.
(7) 10nah and the Ninevites
The memra on 10nah 19 stands somewhat apart from the other
memre of Type IV, in that it possesses a much smaller dramatic con-
tent: perhaps because the interest is more in the Ninevites than in 10- ,
nah, it is only representatives of the city who are given speeches 20,
whereas not a word is put directly into 10nah's mouth. The memra is
also much longer than the other memre (apart from (4) and (5, run-
ning to 2142 lines (i.e. 1071 couplets of 7 + 7 syllables). BECK is in-
clined to accept the work as genuinely Ephrem's. If this is correct, and
there seem to be no good reasons against this opinion, then the memra
on 10nah will be the only authentic work of Ephrem for which we have
both the Syriac original and a Greek translation. The Greek translator .
keeps reasonably close to the original and he has tried to preserve the
seven-syllable metre of the original.
19 Cia vis Patrum Graec. 11, no 4082 ; Syriac in BECK, Sermones II, n 1,
CSCO 311131 f' (1970).
20 These a series of monologues rather than proper dialogues.
142
S. Brock
(8) Mary and Joseph (Matt. 1:18-21)
This memra of just under 250 couplets of 7 + 7 syllables deals with
Joseph's discovery of Mary's pregnancy and the ensuing public demon-
stration that she has not committed adultery when she drinks the
" water of testing" (Numbers 5:11-30) without ill effects - an episode
derived from the Protogospel of James.
The narrative and dialogue are extremely lively and the memra
serves as one of the best examples of the genre. An examination of the
manuscript tradition throws up an interesting feature: the memra app-
ears in two different recensions, the first belonging to our Type IV,
whereas the second (in Vat. syr. 117) belongs to Type V, having had
homiletic material intruded (and a different ending substituted) - a pro-
cess that has resulted in a sad loss of the overall dramatic effect.
(9) The Sinful Woman (Luke 7:36-50)
The memra on the Sinful Woman
21
, attributed to Ephrem is the
best known- of this group of memre, and MAHR 22 has shown, conclu-
sively it seems, that indirectly it exerted a very widespread influence on
subsequent dramatized treatments of the theme in both Greek and La-
tin; the extant Ephrem Graecus texts on the topic, however, are adap-
tations, rather than translations.
BECK is rightly very hesitant about the attribution to Ephrem 23.
III
Madrasha, memra and kontakion
If we return now to the proposed five-fold classification for poems
containing dramatized dialogue and extend our vision so that we in-
clude Greek evidence that is approximately contemporary, we can draw
up the following schematIC table (prose works in both languages which
fit into the schema have also been included for illustrative purposes):
21 Clavis Patrum Graec. 11, n 3952, 4046; Syriac in BECK, Sermones 11,
n
0
4.
22 A. C. MAHR, Relations of Passion Plays to St Ephrem the Syrian, Colum-
bus, 1942.
23 BECK, Sermones 11 (tr.), p. xii.
Of)
.S
...

I'::
...
o
...
t;
.S
Dramatic Dialogue Poems 143
144
S. Brock
The Syriac verse material falls into a reasonably clear pattern:
Types I and III are predominantly or exclusively madrashe (soghytithti),
where the madrashe have a simple stanza pattern for Type I (i.e. iden-
tical with soghytitha), and a complicated one for Type Ill. Types IV
and V, on the other hand, are exclusively memre
24
Put conversely,
one can say that the madrasha is never used for Types IV and V, while
the memra is never used for Type Ill, and only exceptionally for
Type I. This finding, which might at first seem banal, takes on more
interest if one attempts to fit the comparable Greek materials into the
same fivefold classification.
If we turn, then, to the Greek column of the Table, we find the
following picture:
- For Type I there is an isolated anonymous kontakion, on Elijah
and the Widow2S, and a small number of other formal dialogues bear-
ing a marked similarity to the soghytitha ; among the latter are two dia-
logues perhaps intruded into Proclus, Homily 6
26
.
- For Type 11 there seem to be no comparable examples in verse
(works like the Christus Patiens, based on Classical models, should of
course be excluded).
- For Type III we have a number of kontakia by Romanos 27; no
38 happens to correspond closely in content as well as in form with
Epl,lrem' s CNis. 35-42.
- For Type IV there are again a number of kontakia by Roma-
nos, such as no 7 on Elijah, as well as the isosyllabic poems on Abra-
24 Cyrillona's 'soghuha of the memra' (sic), on the Footwashing, verges on
Type IV, but there the poet himself is one of the speakers. It should also be
noted that Ephrem has many madrashe of homiletic character where biblical
persons (or places) are allocated direct speech, but the narrative element is
absent.
25 C. TRYPANIS, Fourteen Early Byzantine Cantiea (Wiener Byzantinische
Studien, 5), 1968, no 8. This is clearly a very early kontakion and TRYPANIS was
" inclined to place it in the late fifth century" (p. 10 1).
26 See Dialogue poems, pp. 36-7. There are late medieval vernacular dialo-
gues with strophomythia, e.g. between Charon and Everyman (Anthropos), ed.
G. MORAVSCIK, Il Caronte bizantino, in Studi bizantini e neoelleniei 3 (1931),
pp. 47-68, N 2-3.
27 Numbers are those of 1. GROSDlDlERS DE MATONS' edition in se 99
(1964) ; 110 (1965) ; 114 (1965) ; 128 (1967) ; 283 (1981).
Dramatic Dialogue Poems
145
ham and Isaac, and on Elijah, belonging to the Ephrem Graecus cor-
pus 28.
- For Type V there exist once again examples among Romanos'
kontakia, such as no 1 on Adam and Eve. It is to this category that
the many dramatized prose homilies, by Basil of Seleucia and others
,
belong.
What emerges from this comparison between the Syriac and the
Greek is the fact that the kontakion is more versatile - at least as far as
dramatic dialogue poems are concerned - than either the madrashal
soghuha, or the memra 29 :
Table 2
madrashal soghuha memra kontakion
TYPE I x (x) x (rare)
TYPE II x
TYPE III x x
TYPE IV x x
TYPE V x x
Even though dialogue poems constitute only one use (out of many) to
which all four poetic forms, madrasha, soghUha, memra and kontakion,
were put, it could be that the pattern we see in Table 2 has some bear-
ing on the vexed question of the Syriac predecessors (if any) of the
kontakion. The late editor 'of Romanos in Sources chretiennes, who
played down the Syriac background both of the kontakion and of Ro-
manos' sources, nevertheless states at one point that " le memra est sans
doute, par le fonds, ce qui se rapproche le plus des grands kontakia de
Romanos "30. If one considers only Types IV and V, this might at first
28 Among much later examples is Georgius Chumnos' verse paraphrase of
Genesis and Exodus in vernacular Greek (late 15th century).
29 The kontakion is of course no more confined to the types of poem under
discussion here than are the madrasha and memra.
301. GROSDlDlERS DE MA TONS, Romanos le Me/ode, Paris, 1977, p. 17 (lower
down on the same page, however, he acknowledges that " en ce qui concerne la
forme, le madrasha se rapproche plus du kontakion que le memra "). As A. de
HALLEUX points out in his review (Rev. Hist. Eec!. 73 (1978), pp. 632-41,
esp. 639-41) GROSDlDlERS DE MATONS reacts too strongly against the excessive
claims of EM! REAU. Primacy of importance is also given to the memra by
146
S. Brock
seem plausible, but this view overlooks that fact that, from a formal
point of view, the kontakion stands with the madrasha, g i n s ~ th.e
memrti, on the following basic points : it is stanzaic, it has a refram, It
has an acrostic
3l
, it was sung rather than recited. It is furthermore
interesting to observe that the formal correspondance between the ma-
drashti and the kontakion appears most strikingly in the dramatic dia-
logues of Type Ill, where the madrashe in question have a complex
structure.
We are thus pointed back to Paul MAAS' magisterial article of
1910, on the origin of the kontakion 32; there MAAS argued that the
Syriac component
33
that lay behind the kontakion was the madrasha,
and not the memra. The fact that the kontakion extended its range, in
our specific and limited area of dramatic dialogue poems, to Types IV
and V (confined to the memra in Syriac) may possibly be due to the
secondary influence of the memra on the development of the konta-
kion, but at the same time it is clear that the dramatic Greek prose
homily has been influential in this area; this can be seen most notably
in the use of hypothetical speeches (ethopoiia)34. (The dramatic prose
homilies also influenced the content of many kontakia, but this is of
course irrelevant here: form and content do not necessarily go togeth-
er)35.
E. WELLESZ, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd ed. Oxford,
1961, p. 184; E. WERNER, The Sacred Bridge, LondonlNew York, 1959, p.227;
K. METSAKES, Byzantine Ymnographia I, Thessalonike, 1971, p. 188.
31 Not, however, obligatory in the madrasha.
32 P. MAAS, Das Kontakion, in Byz. Zeitschr. 19 (1910), pp. 285-306, re-
printed in his Kleine Schrifien, Miinchen, 1973, pp. 368-91. See also my Syriac
and Greek hymnography: problems of origins, in Studia Patristica, 16 (1985),
pp. 77-81.
33 Of course by no means the only one.
34 Ethopoiia is only rarely present in Syriac, e.g. Prose Homily on Abraham
(note 8) and Jacob of Serugh, Homily 109 (on the same subject).
35 This obvious point is often overlooked. The theme of Abraham and
Isaac, for example, is treated in Syriac in four different ways, all employing dia-
logue: Type III (soghuha), Type IV (memra, and prose), Type V (memrli). For
some striking parallels in content between Ephrem and Romanos see now
W. L. PETERSEN, Romanos and the Diatessaron, in New Testament Studies 29
(1983/4), pp. 484-507, and his The Diatessaron and Ephrem Syrus as Sources of
Romanos the Melodist, Utrecht, 1984 (dissertation).
Dramatic Dialogue Poems
147
*
* *
Enough has been said to indicate something of the interest of these
Syriac poems with dramatic dialogue. They represent but one facet of
that remarkable outburst of literary, artistic and intellectual creativity
which is characteristic of Syria in Late Antiquity: seeing that it was in
Syria above all that three venerable cultures met, Greek, Jewish and
Ancient Near Eastern, it was perhaps not surprising that this encounter
should have given to a period of considerable literary innovation and
inventiveness, some of whose products still retain their freshness and
vigour to this very day.
Oriental Institute
Pusey Lane
Oxford OX 1 aLE
ENGLAND
Sebastian BROCK