A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

After the death of my mother, the work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter M

Marie Antoinette

Historical Figure
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Queen of France whose extravagance and perceived indifference fueled revolutionary anger

Detailed Definition
Marie Antoinette, Austrian by birth, became a scapegoat for royal excess. Her execution marked monarchy’s fall. Poets invoke her as a symbol of doomed elegance, the foreign queen misunderstood, and the tragic cost of privilege in times of upheaval.
Example
Example in poetry:
Marie Antoinette, “let them eat cake,” though likely false, seals her fate’s make; Poets contrast Versailles’ glitter with the mob’s rising bitter twitter; Her trial and execution fuel stanzas on privilege’s tragic illusion; In feminist re-readings, her name evokes the scapegoated queen’s scene; “I was a queen, and you took away my crown…”—a line poets adapt with frown; Her legacy: symbol of excess, yet human in history’s complex text.
Additional Notes
Marie Antoinette (1755–1793), Queen of France, became a symbol of aristocratic excess during the French Revolution (“Let them eat cake”); in poetry, she represents doomed elegance, victimhood, or the collapse of ancien régime—reimagined by poets like Wordsworth, Hugo, and contemporary feminist writers; useful for analyzing poems on revolution, spectacle, or the gendering of political blame.
Also Known As
Maria Antonia of Austria
Skip to main content