PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

This is a brief essay on ancient literary history; if it is a metaphor, that is up to the reader's interpretation.  The two poets named in the title were both scholars who worked in the library established by the ruling Ptolemaic dynasty in Aleandria, Egypt, after the death of Alexander.

    Both of these scholars were also poets.  A minor dispute between them became overblown into a major controversy, and it diverted attention from the progress of Poetry, and the cataloging work of the Library, while the literary world read the continuing insults these two leveled at each other.  Who was utlimately in the right or wrong no longer matters.

    Those of us who bother to learn the literary canon have benefitted from the work produced by each of these poets.  One can only wonder what more they may have produced had they avoided the literary dispute altogether.  Most readers, to this day, prefer one or the other, and that is a matter of personal taste.  But to deny that either of them was right, wrong, or in between no longer matters.  They produced their poetry; we have access to the productions; enough said.  Both of them should have known better and brought the dispute to its ignoble end.