SOURCE: Levitan, William. “Plexed Artistry: Aratean Acrostics.” Glyph 5 (1979): 55-68.

In the following excerpt, Levitan identifies three hidden acrostics in the Phaenomena that, he concludes, suggest the concepts of “subtlety, totality, and signification” which inform the literary aesthetics of Aratus.

ϕύσιs κρύπτεσθαι ϕιλεῖ 

Heraclitus

Well, we have frankly enjoyed more than anything these secret workings of nature. … 

Finnegans Wake

The aesthetic revolution that gave rise to the literature of the Hellenistic period (and ultimately to the literature of Rome) was occasioned at least in part by the growing awareness that the medium of literary expression had suffered a change in orientation from spoken to written language, and that the new emphasis on the visual aspect of literature had opened new possibilities and made new demands on both the writer and his audience. The most dramatic evidence of this re-orientation can be found in a number of figurative poems in the shape...