Mount Parnassus
38.5330°N 22.6167°E · Q105261
2 English words in this atlas trace back to Mount Parnassus. It sits in Greece.
Poetry itself is a Greek mountain.
Mount Parnassus above Delphi was sacred to Apollo and the Muses. English uses it for the domain of poets.
A limestone mountain above Delphi became the postal address of poetry itself.
Parnassus rises above Delphi and was held sacred to Apollo and the Muses, so climbing Parnassus became a figure for writing verse, and English has used Parnassian for anything poetic since the seventeenth century. The narrower sense comes from the anthology Le Parnasse contemporain, published from 1866, whose contributors, including Leconte de Lisle and Heredia, were called Parnassiens. Their creed was precision and impersonality.